February 10, 2024

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Shot: The Lefty L.A. Times Is in Hospice. Could There Be a Death Bed Conversion?

In 2018, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the newspaper. The South African-born emigre discovered a drug to slow metastatic cancer and became a billionaire. He believed it was his civic duty to take over the troubled newspaper as online news and social media platforms eviscerate print journalism.

The newspaper went even more woke. Soon-Shiong was derided as an absentee landlord and excoriated by the newspaper’s union shop. The clashes continued and so did the layoffs. This week’s layoff, which goes into effect in March, was the worst in the paper’s history.

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What good is a regional newspaper if it tells only one point of view and chooses stories based on young, dumb, activist reporters’ confirmation biases? As a result, the Fourth Estate has become the Fifth Column. These flaws are the reason PJ Media and other conservative media exist.

—Victoria Taft, PJ Media, January 26th.

Chaser: Opinion: Age matters. Which is why Biden’s age is his superpower.

Joe Biden is old. Like each of us, he comes from a particular place in history, in his case the LBJ years. And that’s one big reason why his first term has been so full of accomplishment: His age, often cited as the greatest obstacle to his reelection, is actually his superpower.

There was never much question that Third Act, the progressive organizing group for people over 60 that I helped found, would end up endorsing President Biden for reelection. We campaign to protect our climate and our democracy, and so the chances we would back Donald Trump — who pulled us out of the Paris climate accords and helped mount the Jan. 6 insurrection — were nil. (Nikki Haley, another no-go, strenuously backed Trump’s Paris pullout.)

Biden, on the other hand, is a scrupulous small-d democrat. His record on climate isn’t perfect, but he has helped jump-start renewable energy development, and just last month he showed real bravery in standing up to Big Oil and pausing new permits for LNG — liquid natural gas — export.

—The L.A. Times, yesterday.

Keep rockin’! In seeking ever-higher energy prices, the L.A. Times wants even more of its readers to enjoy that sweet, sweet “funemployment,” which is how the paper described the results of the recession during Joe’s boss’ first time in office, back in 2009. It’s like “a blessing disguise!”

To be fair, the L.A. Times aren’t the only Democratic Party operatives with bylines pushing this narrative, Ace of Spades notes: The Leftwing Media Says “Biden Has Dementia, And Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing!“ “We have entered the Soviet grain report phase of the Biden presidency.”

Not surprisingly, but in sharp contrast, the overseas papers, which aren’t staffed with Democratic Party operatives with bylines, aren’t carrying Biden’s water:

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll