What Rough Beast Leans Leftward to be Born?

UPDATE: You’d have to be deaf and blind to miss this from other sources but Arlen Specter being busted down to junior senator after his defection to the democrats, losing committee seniority on five committees, and only retaining next-to-last seniority on the Special Committee on Aging (lots of power there).

Talk about just rewards for a power-hungry turncoat traitor.  With the issue of whether or not he regains his seniority in the next session of Congress, it kind of puts in jeopardy the very reasons why he wanted to stay there in the first place.  Heh heh heh heh heh heh.  Bastard.

… Specter — who as a Republican was ranking member on the Judiciary Committee and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, as well as ranking member of the panel’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education — will now rank behind all the other Democrats, at least until the end of this Congress.

Specter at a news conference just after announcing his switch in parties.

According to a senior Democratic aide, it remains unclear whether Specter — who will still retain his seniority in the Senate outside of the committees — will see a boost in his committee seniority should he be re-elected for the next session. The status of his seniority for the next Congress will be determined once the 112th Congress convenes in 2011, the aide said.

Let’s hope he doesn’t regain seniority.  I know that if I were a ranking dem and got bumped by a traitor, I’d be pissed.

Update:  Thursday, May 7:  Details will kill you.

In a sitdown with the New York Times’ Deborah Solomon, Specter said he was hoping that the Minnesota courts would do “justice” and declare former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman the winner in the contested 2008 election. Whoops! Specter tried to walk the comment back [and] told Reid that he briefly “forgot what team I was on.”

Yeah, I can imagine how remembering where your loyalties lie could be hard if you have no loyalties.

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John Kerry was on the Diane Rhem Show today (NPR).  The topic at hand was his investigation of the failing of newspapers.

He contends:

• Our democracy is based on a free press
• Diversity is absolutely critical
• Gov’t needs to portion out shares for an equal balance
• The internet is causing the problem by being a free source of information
• The model needs to change so that papers can be competitive in the new media (internet)

Ok, a large number of publications have been liberal bastions – LA Times, NY Times, Newsweek, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Ann Arbor News, and the list goes on.  Yes, conservative papers are suffering, too.

Here’s the kicker – the big liberal giants (Times of both coasts) are often referred to as “gold standard” and are read and quoted by other sources – with their biases (covert, overt, or thinly veiled) intact.  To lose those sources is of grave concern to the liberal agenda keepers – imagine what it is to lose some of the most powerful tools in your propaganda machine!

To think about the issues, in response to Kerry, I ask several questions and make a few comments.

1. How are failing newspapers, certainly a possibility in a capitalistic society, considered to be an indicator of  not-a-free-press?
2. Why is diversity of newspapers critical?  Before the failing of papers, was there a great concern that the needs of NAMBLA and the I-LUV-EWE constituents were not being represented?  Why is it more important now?
3. Why does the government need to portion out shares by the Fairness Doctrine?  The most important blocs of readers will be supported by virtue of their patronage of the media outlets that serve their needs – in other words, capitalism will keep alive the most important viable sources of information that can be supported.  It is selective based on the consumer’s self-perceived need, not some committee or federal department’s guesses.
4. If  the internet’s model of predominantly free access is a prime culprit in the demise of the hardcopy printed word, should we not try to explain the popularity of cable (which is not free) vs. that of public airwaves (which is free) and how this could be turned to an advantage?  By “we” it is understood that this comes from within the newspaper industry, not congress.
5. The internet has been a tremendous source of revenue for many other business models.  Why cannot newspapers adapt/adopt and succeed in the same fashion?  If this is a matter of being lenient and helping the papers out (read: subsidies) because of difficulties in adapting and adopting, why are auto manufacturers being taken to account for not adapting?

Sadly, there is another unanticipated problem with the demise of newspapers and the reduced demand for newsprint paper…

Newspapers Failing, Pelosi Warns of Tree Overpopulation

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Months ago I posted a link where people did flaying in strips instead of tattoos to create some pretty wicked body art.

This… this… this tops that.  I think.   Not branding, but repeated burns and strokes with an electro-cautery tool.

I'll stick with my tats, thank you.

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You know my stance on the whole swine flu thing – that it was responded to incorrectly in the beginning (ignored) and then overreacted later on.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that vaccines are a bad idea.   The holy grail is to develop a vaccine that sensitizes the body to the parts of virus families that are common across all members, not the ever-changing protein coats.

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Using shock collars on your kids is “bad”?  I never thought it hur… I mean, I’d never do anything like that.  Where do these people come from?