IN THE MAIL: The Universe Twister. Three of Keith Laumer’s amusing Lafayette O’Leary novels in one paperback volume, edited by Eric Flint. And — in what I hope will be a trend — the cover makes clear that this is a reissue of previous works. Good for Baen on that one.

“The favorite of millions from Bronx to Miami, the key to the riddle is . . .” Oh, that would be telling.

JOHN TIERNEY: Heart-Warming News on Hot Coffee.

REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH: Theory vs. practice. And if you split the tip among two homeless guys, they can outvote the waiter every time!

OPPOSING THE PEOPLE’S TRIBUNE MUST BE A CRIME OF SOME SORT: Venezuela’s Chavez wants to jail rival.

MORE ON financial problems for Big Media. Add to that this story on the Associated Press’s problems. Key bit: “But in a world, and a Web, full of analysis, opinion and ‘accountability journalism,’ what’s missing is a neutral referee. Which is a bit like living in a world with a North Pole and a South Pole but no equator. If there’s no one to set the standard, how will we know when we’ve crossed the line?” Neutral hard-news reporting is the one thing the AP can do better than anyone else if it tries. So why isn’t it trying harder?

UPDATE: Reader Jim Warren writes: “Duh.The AP can’t do unbiased because they’re not. The Long March of the Left through the institutions continues apace, more often than not at the expense of the institutions themselves. The AP may have to be sacrificed for the greater good, and what of it? A small price to pay for educating the proles…”

If I owned stock in some of these media companies I’d be making a stink at the shareholders’ meeting.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Stanton emails that it’s not “yellow journalism,” but “blue journalism:”

Shouldn’t this sort of partisan hackery have a name? Does it? Yellow journalism had a name and that helped identify it and eventually get rid of it. I came up with the term but others may have either seeded my thought unconsciously or come up with it first. I did a quick google of ‘blue journalism’ and got hits but it didn’t turn up much. I didn’t see any that seemed to indicate its use in this context. I like the term and would like your opinion of it.

The pendulum will eventually swing back I hope. The NYT actually made its name in the swing back from yellow. Some struggling organization will figure it out and ride the swing back.

Let’s hope. And reader Todd Hester writes:

Glenn, maybe that’s the next (and best) strategy: Buy up stock in these companies and make a stink at shareholders’ meetings. Heck, we could buy low, and–if we do our job well–end up selling high. Of
course, the strategy of buying stock is predicated on the hope that we’re not taxed into poverty first. . .

Activism that makes a buck! Hey, it works for ACORN . . . .

INDICTMENTS OVER underfunded public pensions. Sounds messy.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, gasoline cheaper than a year ago, as oil drops below $65. So where are all the cheap-gas news stories?

MAKING X-RAYS by peeling Scotch Tape.

JERRY POURNELLE on spreading the wealth. “Pure capitalism leads to business cycles, in which the low point is generally better (in terms of standard of living) than Socialism (and certainly preferable to Communism, if only because the low points in a business cycle are considerably shorter than the reign of the bureaucrats in either Socialist or Communist states, even if the Communism has a human face, which it seldom does). . . . One does wonder whether the efficiency of having a few very large financial institutions outweighs the cost of the disasters that ensue when a Black Swan appears; whether it might not be better to have, instead of one institution so large that it justifies paying its top executives $100 million a year, one hundred such institutions paying executives $1 million a year? Certainly this would be less efficient. The highs would not be as high. But would the lows be as low? Why must there be institutions so large that they cannot be permitted to fail, and must be rescued by the common purse?”

THE INSTA-DAD, ON THE BAILOUT: “The bad thing is that the federal government has figured out that it can borrow a lot more money than it previously thought.”

DAN RIEHL IS UNIMPRESSED:

Look folks – I’m seeing this stuff about an alleged Obama affair being shipped around on the Right blogs. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a lot of nonsense and the people going on about “sources” and “confirmations” but the MSM is holding back aren’t doing themselves good service by trafficking in this.

Here’s the deal – you don’t need the MSM to break a story today. If you got the goods – spill it. If you don’t, then STFU.

Give me names, times and dates – because the media can’t ignore those. But rank speculation and disguised voices ain’t cuttting it with me.

Indeed.

JILL STEWART ON California’s ballot initiatives.

HEARING ABOUT UNTRUSTWORTHINESS from people you can’t trust.

BOB KERREY ON OUR IN-THE-TANK PRESS:

Kerrey, who’s now president of The New School, claimed that “the big unreported story” of the election cycle “is the tremendous spending advantage Obama’s got. If everything else is equal, and it’s not equal in this race, but if everything else is equal, McCain hasn’t got a chance.”

Asked why he thinks the story isn’t getting adequate coverage, he responded, “There’s a liberal bias. There’s a preference for Obama and it’s getting underreported as a result.”

Then Kerrey got specific.

“If this thing was running the other way, if Obama was taking the public money and McCain had opted out and raised $150 million in September, do you think The New York Times would have an editorial against it?

Indeed.

BIDEN GRILLED ON TV: Obama campaign responds by cutting off the station. Was the questioning out of bounds? Watch for yourself and make up your own mind. (Both links via Drudge).

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “He got a straighter run than Palin has. No one edited his answers. No one used false quotes against him. No one edited the video tape. No one took him out of context. No one pissed and moaned about his wardrobe or his hair plugs. No one has asked to see his kid’s birth ceritifcate. Thin skinned much, Obama campaign?” Note that they’re only getting these questions from local TV. There was a time when network folks laughed at softball local TV coverage, but in this election we’ve seen more hard coverage of Obama et al. from local media.

ANOTHER UPDATE: David Bernstein is sidin’ with Biden. And TigerHawk calls the questions “obnoxious to the point of being ineffective.” He also comments: “Second, journalists ask equally obnoxious, left-wing conspiracy-oriented questions of Republicans all the time. The effect is different, though, because we are used to seeing aggressive questioning in that direction.”

A SMALL VICTORY for Tennessee wine lovers.

HOORAY FOR POLIWOOD: A new PJTV show on Hollywood and politics, from Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd. Free to nonsubscribers. And it got a rave review from Power Line.

MORE MEDIA RETRENCHMENT: “The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey’s largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability.” Whatever happens to the rest of the world, the news business is already in a depression.

THE BEST-LOOKING BLU-RAY EVER? “Shot in 70mm and scanned in 8K UltraResolution (8,192 pixels across the frame, the highest resolution available), the film looks incredibly gorgeous and detailed, and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (@96k/24bits) is also impressive.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON has some questions about this election.

AT THE AMERICAN THINKER, BOLDLY STANDING AGAINST CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Signs Pointing To A McCain Victory.

OOPS: Financial Meltdown, SILO Tax Shelters Leave Transit Agencies Owing Billions to Banks.

GERARD VAN DER LEUN WONDERS WHAT HAPPENS if we run out of “jobs Americans won’t do.”

HOW TO HATE your local grocery store.

WILL FEMIA: “Do we still need to begin articles about blogging with an explanation of web + log = blog? That’s only half a step away from ‘Webster’s defines blogging as…'”