Archive for 2014

ED DRISCOLL: The Bonfire Of The MSM’s Vanities. “The journalists who populated America’s newspapers in the pre-Watergate 20th century by and large weren’t Columbia Journalism School graduates, but for the most part, blue collar types who could pound their Underwoods and had a keen sense for wanting to know who was screwing who over what and a desire to share it with the world. . . . No matter how many degrees they have on their cubicle walls, today’s MSM journalists are, if anything, much more ignorant about the state of their city and America — and certainly about the average Joe who reads their paper, whom they openly despise — than the hardscrabble predecessors who earned their papers’ reputations.”

AIRBRUSHING THE PAST, IN ORDER TO CONTROL THE FUTURE: Dan Rather Plots Comeback, With Assist From Robert Redford. Here’s a hint: Dan Rather was pushing a lie. And with this, so is Robert Redford. “What actually happened was that Mary Mapes deliberately published a false story in hopes of helping the John Kerry presidential campaign, and was fired for it. It will be interesting to see how Hollywood tries to paper over those facts.”

REMEMBER, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TALKED THIS GUY INTO RUNNING AGAIN: Thad Cochran Gets Lost In Capitol. “Cochran didn’t seem to realize he was in the wrong place until someone in the room asked him if he was planning to join the Democrats for lunch.”

Reminder: If I recall correctly, Mark Foley, whose text-message scandal was the tipping point for the GOP in 2006, didn’t want to run for another term and was talked into it by Karl Rove.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: Man vs. Lionfish.

This sounds kinda familiar, but that’s okay.

MICKEY KAUS: Poor Malia! “I don’t even want to think about the intricate political calculations involved in picking out Malia Obama’s new car. The poor girl’s going to get stuck with a Cruze… Update: A Volt, you say? She’d be lucky to get a Volt. People who have them like them. But it seems a little upscale, and would remind voters of Obama and GM then-CEO Dan Akerson’s insane projections for electric vehicle sales. …”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Andrew Klavan: Is Obama Just A Hapless Putz? “Many people on the right think Obama is an Evil Leftist Genius. Not me. I think he is a hapless putz. I think his ideas are all wrong, his applications of his ideas is incompetent, and the chaos that he causes with his wrongness and incompetence will not lead in the direction he thinks it will. I think when the history of the 21st century is written, Obama will not merit more than a single line. Even the fact that he was the first black president may come to seem irrelevant in a couple of decades. In which case, he will not merit any line at all.”

WHY YOUR YOGA CLASS is so white.

A LOYAL CUSTOMER BASE IS POLITICALLY VALUABLE: Uber’s Brilliant Strategy to Make Itself Too Big to Ban. “The more riders Uber can get in its cars and accustomed to having its push-button convenience as an option, the less incentive politicians have to stay on Uber’s case. By drastically lowering its prices, Uber is doing more than increasing its customer base. It’s cultivating constituents — the people who will complain when someone in power tries to take away their Uber.”