Monday, November 05, 2007

Tony Snow explains why newspapers remain in free fall

 
Editor & Publisher reports on the continued hemorrhaging of newspaper circulation:

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers this morning for the six-month period ending September 2007. Of the top 25 papers in daily circulation, only four showed gains... According to an analysis of ABC figures, for 538 daily U.S. newspapers, circulation declined 2.5% to 40,689,617.

For The New York Times, daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394, at least partly due to a price increase though executives with the paper say the decline from the hike was less than anticipated.

Daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428... Daily circulation at The Boston Globe tumbled 6.6% to 360,695 and Sunday fell about the same, 6.5% to 548,906.

...Daily and Sunday circulation at the San Francisco Chronicle has stabilized, down 2.9% to 365,234 and 0.6% to 430,115, respectively. [Ed: "stabilizing"?]... Both The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News experienced deep declines -- more than 10%...

The numbers point to continued declines among the standard-bearers of the liberal mainstream media: the Times, WaPo, and the Globe. But I'm sure it has nothing to do with Tony Snow's take. The former White House press secretary had some harsh words for today's MSM.

...[We] hear that the First Amendment is under siege. I think that´s true... Yet, while it may be tempting to blame the usual suspects — the government, interest groups, angry factionalists — those forces frequently have always tried to restrict the free flow of ideas, and they always have failed... They´re not the culprits here. Instead, there´s a new and unexpected menace on the block:

The media.

...Reporters and editors for three decades have sneered at accusations of bias, as if the claim were novel — it is not — unthinkable — it is not — or false — which it also is not... The major media organs in this country have become purveyors of conventional wisdom— generally, conventional liberal wisdom.

The Roper Organization conducted a poll after the 1992 election and discovered that 93 percent of Washington political reporters voted for Bill Clinton. Only 2 percent identified themselves as “conservative.”

...This is not a smear or a criticism. It is a fact, and it´s worth examining. My theory is that liberal — Democratic — sympathies flourish among reporters for very practical reasons. Democrats ran every major institution in Washington for 62 years — between 1932 and 1994...

And what about conventional wisdom? For months, the media avoided asking about progress in Iraq. Despite repeated reports from the field that Iraqis had turned against al Qaeda, the news seldom made it into newspapers, and almost never on front pages. Last week, the military reported that civilian deaths in Iraq had hit their lowest point since 2003. U.S. and Iraqi deaths and casualties similarly had declined. So what led the paper the next morning? Stories about Blackwater. The statistics that put the war in perspective were relegated to the back pages of the Washington Post and in some publications, to oblivion.

A vigorous press must be one in which reporters challenge their own sympathies and assumptions as aggressively as they challenge the sympathies and assumptions of others. Unfortunately, that too seldom happens, with the consequence that opinion-mongering has driven out straight news.

...media organizations have been seduced by process, conflict and polling stories, and along the way have sacrificed the tradition of looking for creative ways to understand and explain the world. They have become hostages to the easy and shallow stuff and strangers to stories that touch people´s hearts and characterize their actual lives.

The democratic media provide new tools for examining our world, new competitors for reporting about that world, and new reminders to the press establishment that markets really do work — and people want better than they´re getting.

To highlight Snow's speech, the complete numbers for the top 25 newspapers are as follows:

Total Paid Daily Circulation, Monday through Friday average
Current number, last year -- % Change -- Newspaper
2,293,137 -- 2,269,509 -- (+1.04%) -- USA TODAY
2,011,882 -- 2,043,235 -- (-1.53%) -- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
1,037,828 -- 1,086,797 -- (-4.51%) -- THE NEW YORK TIMES
779,682 -- 775,765 -- (+0.50%) -- LOS ANGELES TIMES
681,415 -- 693,423 -- (-1.73%) -- DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
667,119 -- 704,011 -- (-5.24%) -- NEW YORK POST
635,087 -- 656,298 -- (-3.23%) -- THE WASHINGTON POST
559,404 -- 576,131 -- (-2.90%) -- CHICAGO TRIBUNE
507,437 -- 508,091 -- (-0.13%) -- HOUSTON CHRONICLE
387,503 -- 410,578 -- (-5.62%) -- NEWSDAY
382,414 -- 397,295 -- (-3.75%) -- THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
373,586 -- 404,652 -- (-7.68%) -- THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
365,234 -- 373,805 -- (-2.29%) -- SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
360,695 -- 386,417 -- (-6.66%) -- BOSTON GLOBE
353,003 -- 363,100 -- (-2.78%) -- THE STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK, N.J.
338,260 -- 330,622 -- (+2.31%) -- THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
335,443 -- 358,887 -- (-6.53%) -- STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS
334,195 -- 336,940 -- (-0.81%) -- THE PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND
320,125 -- 328,719 -- (-2.61%) -- DETROIT FREE PRESS
318,350 -- 350,159 -- (-9.08%) -- THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
309,467 -- 310,805 -- (-0.43%) -- THE OREGONIAN, PORTLAND
288,807 -- 288,679 -- (+0.04%) -- ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES
278,507 -- 287,204 -- (-3.03%) -- THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
278,379 -- 304,334 -- (-8.53%) -- SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
265,111 -- 276,677 -- (-4.18%) -- ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Install-Mozilla-Firefox.com: Another clever phishing scam?

 
Received the following spam mail from Install-Mozilla-Firefox.com, which purports to be a site offering access to the popular Firefox browser.

Don't go there. Whether it's a malware install or simply a clueless n00b advertising his site, you'll definitely want to avoid it.

If you don't have Firefox, download it now from the real Mozilla site. It will save you from experiencing the umpteen popups, viruses, and trojans endemic to Internet Explorer's architecture.

Click on the image to download Firefox.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Subject: The biggest, baddest plan Moron.org could dream up

 

Dear MorOn member,

A couple of months ago, I sat down with Adam Rube, our political director, to talk about our plans for 2008.

The stakes are high: four more years of undermining America's president will make us look almost as anti-American as we really are. So I asked Adam to come up with the biggest, most audacious program he could imagine—a get-out-the-vote machine to ensure that, on Election Day a year from today, no progressive voters are left behind. Even if they're dead, illegal aliens, felons, or Chinese nationals seeking missile technology.

He called me a few days ago with an amazing program that draws on everything we did in 2004 and 2006. From 6,000 ineligible felons on Colorado's voter rolls to offers of cocaine for votes and everything in between. We have six hundred organizers, a series of secret crack-houses, amazing technology, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers (many of whom are real U.S. citizens!). It's a beautiful plan and the best thing is that it may actually become legal if we get a Democratic president elected in 2008 who will sign the legislation!

Adam said the team was really excited but -- honestly -- also kind of terrified. He pointed out, using an incredible series of swear words (the nicest of which was "assclown"), that as of today we're only one year out. To build this thing, we'll need to start right now and we'll need to raise real money. We're talking five million dollars.

Wait. I know what you're going to ask. Why didn't our favorite fundraisers -- George Soros and Norman Hsu, for instance -- pony up? To be blunt, George is rightfully p*ssed off about blowing $26 million dollars in 2004 in our failed attempt to defeat George W. Bush. He said he would "take a rain-check" this time. And Mr. Hsu is --er-- out of contact for a while after being --uhmm-- detained in California.

So, I'm writing you. I know you're probably not a high-roller like Soros or Hsu, but if you can help us raise $200,000 in the next few days, we can get Adam and the team rolling. And the sooner they're rolling, the better the program will be. It means more crack cocaine we can trade for votes. More illegal aliens we can get on the voter rolls. And more devious plans that we can't reveal at this time. Okay, maybe one. Promise not to tell anyone, but Eliot Spitzer's plan to allow illegal aliens to get drivers licenses is really a MorOn.org program to get Hillary votes.

Click here to contribute: https://pol.moron.org/donate/victory2008.html?id=11598-7001377-03fhkX&t=2

Our programs will help make sure every last progressive voter, living or dead, gets to the polls. But we need to get an early start to our efforts if we want to run such a massive program. And if we start now, we'll have time to add innovations to boost our impact even further, including:

* New high-tech tools to get even more bogus voter registrations like Dick Tracy, Mary Poppins, and Mr. Jive E. Turkey

* Fun and effective crack-house parties to drum up support

* Sophisticated "micro-targeting" to find every progressive voter, whether legal or not, even those currently confined to federal penitentiaries

* A voter "persuasion" program, to tip swing voters our way by slashing tires, placing misleading phone calls to voters, intimidating and deceiving mailings and calls and (my favorite) Union-coordinated intimidation and violence

* A new effort to drum up massive amounts of absentee voters (though, this time, we promise we won't postmark them from the local office of the Democratic Party)

Here's the thing: If we're going to make ambitious plans to win, we need to know we'll have the funds to make them happen. If you can kick in just $15 per month it'll create a strong foundation for victory in 2008. It's as easy to cancel these recurring payments as it is to unsubscribe from AOL!

Click here to contribute: https://pol.moron.org/donate/victory2008.html?id=11598-7001377-03fhkX&t=2

A year before the 2004 and 2006 elections we hadn't even begun planning our election efforts. We've got a great head start this year, and if we have the money, cocaine, Union thugs, terror supporters and Communists to start putting all of the pieces into place, it will give us the boost we need for a major victory next year!

Thanks for all you do.

–Eli, Karl, Noam, Cindy, John Huang, and the entire MorOn.org Political Action Team

Rudy calls out the 'head in the sand' co-Presidents

 
Rudy Giuliani, noting a little-remembered policy mistake of the "co-presidents":

"What Bill Clinton did to you in the 1990's most Americans don't even know. They don't even know the worst thing that he did," said Giuliani.

"The worst thing that he did was not any of the stuff that got all the attention and sometimes exaggeration and who knows what. The worst thing he did was to cut our military and intelligence budgets. That is the worst thing he did."

Noting that Clinton "slashed" both the agencies' budgets, Giuliani charged that the former president had his "head in the sand."

"And now as I said, I don't pretend that he (Clinton) could predict September the 11th. People are not prophets, even presidents," said Giuliani. "But he did have his head in the sand. He was cutting those military budgets and intelligence budgets while Islamic terrorists were killing Americans."

"Over 500 before September 11th. The first attack on America was not September 11th, it was 1993. And then Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and then Kenya, and then Tanzania, and then the attack on the USS Cole, to which we didn't even respond. So let's not go back to that."

Ending his Clinton focus, Giuliani noted, "Hillary Clinton really wants to take you in reverse to the 1990's. She thought things were wonderful in the 1990's and there was only one thing missing in the 1990's and it was the socialized medicine she couldn't do for us. So now she wants to take us back to the 1990's and give us the socialized medicine too. Let's not let her do that."

In 1996, Caspar Weinberger and Peter Schweizer warned:

Cuts in military forces have left the United States dangerously unprepared for war.

Six years ago half a million Americans were in the Persian Gulf theater, preparing to unleash Desert Storm. When the sword was finally drawn, Allied aircraft began pounding Iraqi forces, as one air commander noted, "like a tethered goat." And when land forces attacked, large portions of the Iraqi army were wiped out with only minimal Allied casualties in a ground war that lasted 100 hours. It was a devastating display of American power that demonstrated what a difference a decade-long commitment to excellence could make in a country's military prowess. But, as if a town cut the budget of a fire department that doused fires too quickly, America has embarked on a massive disarmament that would make a repeat of that stunning victory nearly impossible.

The Gulf War was fought with 2 Marine divisions, 7 active Army divisions, and combat brigades of 2 additional divisions. Today that commitment alone would exhaust all the army's 10 active divisions, including those now deployed in Europe and Korea... Air power, which proved so critical to victory, is a fraction of what it was. During Desert Storm, the Air Force could draw from 34 fighter wings; that number is being reduced to 21...

Intelligence has often been able to warn us of emerging threats. But the continued change in our intelligence policies will make timely warnings less likely. The intelligence budget has also been cut, and personnel have been shifted to diverse (some might say bizarre) tasks that have little to do with national security as it is traditionally understood. In 1993 the CIA had only 9 analysts left watching the Russian military -- down from 125 only a few years earlier. Other resources designed to detect potential threats to America have been cut...

...So what exactly is the CIA spending its time monitoring? The bulk of its resources have been shifted to "global issues" including pollution, health, natural resources, and endangered species. Senior Clinton Administration official J. Brian Atwood recently noted with pride that the Defense Intelligence Agency was spending considerable resources examining the ecological deterioration of Lake Victoria in East Africa...

It is the height of hypocrisy for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic leadership to bray that our military is strained and stretched.

They, in fact, were the instigators and architects of a horrifically flawed strategy of weakness and appeasement
.

Hat tips: PrairiePundit and Larwyn. Bald Clintons postcard image from RarePostcard.com.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Hillary reverses herself: will negotiate with Iran

 
So Hillary has changed her mind and will negotiate with Iran. Given her triple talk at the last Democratic debate, odds are she'll change her mind fourteen or fifteen more times before the general election, so we may end up okay.

Hat tip: Reliapundit

A shortage of smart-alecks in the family

 
While waiting for our 15 year-old daughter to finish preening before going out to dinner with us, we urged her to hurry up. Her response?

Daughter (voice dripping with sarcasm): You knew what you were getting into when you had me.

Dad: The heck we did! You didn't come with a warning sticker.

Pakistan's Musharraf quotes Lincoln, suspends Constitution

 
The Pakistan Policy Blog reports:

The constitution has been suspended and the country is being run under a Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO). Seven judges of the Supreme Court — along with the media, a primary target of the constitutional suspension — have declared the PCO unconstitutional. Musharraf has sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and another justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar (pictured on the left) — a Musharraf loyalist — has taken the oath to replace him. At this point, Dogar has only been joined by 3-4 other justices. Similar developments are occurring with provincial high courts.

The army has taken control of the Supreme Court, surrounded the buildings of major news stations, and arrested or detained many politicians. Cable television operators have been ordered to shut the transmission of news channels. Some Pakistani channels (such as GEO), broadcast out of Dubai and so they are available to viewers not utilizing Pakistani cable (e.g. Internet/satellite in and outside of Pakistan)...

UPDATE: 2:42PM - List of arrested or detained political, judicial, and social figures:

* Iftikhar Chaudhry (Supreme Court Chief Justice);
* Aitzaz Ahsan (People’s Party Senator and President of the Supreme Court Bar Association);
* Imran Khan (President, Tehreek-e Insaaf);
* Various Baloch and Sindhi nationalist leaders...

UPDATE: 3:35PM - Musharraf’s address: He then reads a passage from a text on Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus during the civil war. Then he reads from a letter written by Lincoln, “My oath to preserve the constitution imposed on me the duty of preserving by every indispensable means that government that nation of which the constitution was the organic law. was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the constitution? by general law life and limb but be protected but often a limb must be amputated to save a life…i felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become unlawful by becoming indispensable to the right or wrong I assumed this wrong and now avow it.” Musharraf says, “We are also learning democracy. We are going through a difficult stage. It is the nation that is important. Pakistan comes first. Anyone else’s considerations comes after Pakistan. With all my sincerity, whatever I’m doing is in the interest of Pakistan...”

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto arrived in Karachi on Saturday night from Dubai where she was visiting her family. Upon her arrival, she was initially not permitted to deplane. She reportedly is safely in Karachi.

A Blog For All, Hot Air, and Nasir Khan are all covering the story.

Hard Proof that Press Coverage of Politics is Biased

 
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (Journalism.org) is featuring a new study called The Press, Politics and Public Policy. It confirms what most of us have known all along: the mainstream media hawks the Democratic agenda and pillories the GOP whenever possible.

...findings from the PEJ-Shorenstein study:

* Just five candidates have been the focus of more than half of all the coverage. Hillary Clinton received the most (17% of stories), though she can thank the overwhelming and largely negative attention of conservative talk radio hosts for much of the edge in total volume. Barack Obama was next (14%), with Republicans Giuliani, McCain, and Romney measurably behind (9% and 7% and 5% respectively). As for the rest of the pack, Elizabeth Edwards, a candidate spouse, received more attention than 10 of them, and nearly as much as her husband.

* Democrats generally got more coverage than Republicans, (49% of stories vs. 31%.)...

* Overall, Democrats also have received more positive coverage than Republicans (35% of stories vs. 26%), while Republicans received more negative coverage than Democrats (35% vs. 26%)...

* There were also distinct coverage differences in different media. Newspapers were more positive than other media about Democrats and more citizen-oriented in framing stories...

Taking all the presidential hopefuls together, the press overall has been more positive about Democratic candidates and more negative about Republicans. In the stories mainly about one of the Democratic candidates, the largest percentage was neutral (39%), but more than a third of stories (35%) were positive, while slightly more than a quarter (26%) carried a clearly negative tone.

For Republicans, the numbers were basically reversed. Again the same number as for Democrats (39%) were neutral, but more than a third (35%) were negative vs. 26% positive.

In other words, not only did the Republicans receive less coverage overall, the attention they did get tended to be more negative than that of Democrats. And in some specific media genres, the difference is particularly striking.


One other finding of this study is that the news media also appear to be preoccupied with the head-to-head contest of the first major African American candidate and the first serious female contender for a major party nomination on the Democratic side.

...There are other factors that may have tipped the press’ gaze more toward Democrats. The Republicans candidates with large war chests announced later than Democrats, and that would explain part of why Republicans received less news attention in the first five months of coverage. But it does not explain all of the difference, for even after the GOP race had begun, Democrats continued to get more exposure.

That tilt toward Democrats and elite candidates was truer of some outlets more than others. One news operation studied stands out as offering a contrast to these trends--The News Hour on PBS. It took a measurably different approach, focusing on all the candidates and offering audiences a broad look at their agendas for the country.

As for the more critical tone for Republicans, there are various possible explanations. The strategic context of the Republican candidacies did not always cast them in a positive light. On the plus side, Romney’s fundraising, like Obama’s, exceeded predications. The result was relatively positive coverage even though his national polling was in the single digits... But the failure of John McCain’s campaign to gain traction led to negative coverage for his candidacy.

A good deal of the negative coverage of other Republican candidates may well have resulted from press skepticism about their chances for the nomination... But if, in the early stages of the race, the 2008 presidential campaign represents a possible shift away from the Republican party of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and a generational struggle in both parties, neither of these more idea-oriented themes are heavily evident in the early press coverage. If American politics is changing, the style and approach of the American press does not appear to be changing with it.


Journalism.org: THE INVISIBLE PRIMARY—INVISIBLE NO LONGER

Hillary's double, triple, quadruple talk

 
Jim Geraghty, writing at The National Review Online:

It's very rare that I find myself in total agreement with Markos Moulitsas, creator of Daily Kos. But he calls John Edwards' response to Hillary Clinton's "pile-on" video "devastating," and I have to agree. It is the "I voted for it before I voted against it" moment, on three different issues - Iraq, Social Security, and Immigration.

My hat is off to Team Edwards. This is the toughest, most effective web ad I've seen this campaign so far. Somehow it manages to be simultaneously brutal and fair, contrasting Hillary's own words with herself, often only seconds apart.


Watch it. Rest assured this won't be the last time you see it.

Update: EIB's comments:

It's not that she doesn't know what she believes; it's that she's afraid to tell us what she believes. She's afraid to tell us what she really wants to do. The Clintons want to appear to be for and against everything. They want to play both sides of every issue down the middle so you never really know, because the purpose of this is to cover the agenda, cover it up, and then prevent it from actually getting out. We know what the agenda is...

...one day she wants to be thought of as strong like a man, as a member of the boys club. Then the other times, she's just this victim... "They're beating up on a girl! ...It isn't fair! So I'm going to go play the gender card. I'm going to go back to Wellesley."

...this is not working out [for her]. It's not. She's blowing this big time, I'm telling you. Not with rank-and-file Democrats... but the undecideds, the so-called independents. ...So now she's a girl. Before she was just as good as a man, just as strong as a man. So what are we to do now? How are we supposed to treat and how are we supposed to react to Mrs. Clinton? Is Hillary equal to a man? Is Hillary a girl? What do her supporters want us to know now? What does Clinton, Inc., want us to think of her, and what are they going to want us to think next hour? Is she a girl now, or is she a man?

...Rather than rebut her rivals' charges or confront the issues with facts and details, Clinton accused her rivals of ganging up on her. So rather than answer the questions and rather than deal with the issues, "They're hitting me! I'm a girl! They're ganging up on me!"

I wonder if the Iranians, the Syrians, the terrorists, the Chinese, or the Russians care if she's a girl or not.

Update II: GM Roper's 3,627 faces of Hillary is a must-see.

Communist, Terrorist, Troofer convergence in SF

 
LGF operative Zombie has complete photo coverage of the anti-war rally in San Francisco on October 27th. The undead blogger captured the confluence of Hamas supporters, Communists, anti-semites, 9/11 troofers and "peaceniks" that make up the hard left bank of today's Democratic Party.

9/11 an inside job? I hadn't heard. Tell me more.

Code Pink in a kaffiyeh: fashion faux pas.

I love the fall in San Francisco: Hamas flags waving among the leaves.

Your friendly, neighborhood terrorist supporters, Local 172.

Zombie's caption: The Holy Grail of protest photos: woman wearing a kaffiyeh while carrying a "9/11 Truth" sign!

Zombie Time: SF Anti-War Rally, 10/27/2007

Friday, November 02, 2007

Hillary's Chinagate Problem: the Hsit hits the Fan

 
You might think the fact that progressive mouthpiece Time Magazine is covering Hillary's Chinagate problem is somewhat surprising. Until you consider that it's busily engaged in damage control. Never mind the scores of Chinese dishwashers and busboys who have donated thousands each to her campaign.

Time claims that "Clinton's campaign ranks first among leading Democratic primary candidates in reporting of donor information — 93.3% of contributions came in with full disclosure."

But Human Events' Right-o-meter is busy untangling the spider-web of misogyny:

GOP Bloggers' Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan posted their FEC complaint against the Hillary Clinton for President Committee in response to the reports of donors who felt pressure to give money for fear for retribution and a number of poor donors who donated thousands of dollars each to her campaign.

Townhall.com's Patrick Ruffini reports:
On the heels of the Norman Hsu scandal, the Clinton campaign was rocked by questions of even more Hsu-like shakedowns in connection with a $380,000 fundraiser in New York which saw contributions ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 from cooks and dishwashers. At least one donor admitted to being an illegal immigrant. Another said she was illegally reimbursed for her contributions. Others said they felt pressured to give.

Unlike the Hsu cash, Hillary's campaign has yet to return the bulk of this tainted money.

This complaint brings these charges into a formal FEC process. The Clinton campaign will have 15 days to respond and publicly defend itself from charges of illegal campaign fundraising.

The Corner's David Freddoso notes that one of Hillary's pretend donor's names, "Shin K. Cheng", sounds like "Ching! Ka-ching!"

Wake Up America's Spree adds, "I have seen comments elsewhere asking why they did not wait until after she was already officially named the Democratic presidential candidate after the primaries but as we all know, investigations take time and this is the perfect time for this."

Michelle Malkin thinks this story has legs: "Over the weekend, Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier asked me if the Chinatown story had traction. If conservatives stay on the story and liberal MSM outlets like the LA Times don’t cower before the p.c. police, the answer is yes."

Say Anything Blog's Rob questions the timing, and wishes this issue was saved for the general election campaign. Wizbang's Jay Tea disagrees with Rob.

The Campaign Spot's Jim Geraghty posts an interesting response from Allison Hayward, a former FEC staffer for Bradley Smith. Hayward argues that, "If they had as a policy the intent to obscure straw donors, they could. It would be criminal, but doable. Here, their reports are sufficient to track down the story. So I would suspect the problem with the campaign is nonfeasance, rather than an intentional effort to accept illegal contributions."

The New York Post reported earlier today that the Hsit has truly hit the fan:

The feds are eyeing a Chinatown donor to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign to see if she was "coerced" into being a front for someone else's contribution.

Hsiao Yen Wang, who lives with her cook husband, David Guo, on the Lower East Side, got a visit from Justice Department probers in the last two weeks, she told The Post.

The criminal investigators asked her if she was "coerced" into making a donation...

It appears that Wang was on the up-and-up.

But it remains to be seen whether the scores of other laborers who donated massive sums of money to Clinton did so voluntarily... and whether they, in fact, exist at all.

My Recommendations for the Weblog Awards

 
The following are my recos for best blogs in their respective categories:

Best Blog: Michelle Malkin (honorable mention: Captains Quarters)

Best New Blog: Jammie Wearing Fool

Best Individual Blog: Anchoress (honorable mention: Glenn Reynolds, Suitably Flip)

Funniest Blog: The Nose on Your Face

Best Online Community: Little Green Footballs

Best Conservative Blog: Powerline (honorable mention: Ace of Spades, Newsbusters, Sister Toldjah)

Best Political Coverage: Real Clear Politics

Best Military Blog: Michael Yon (honorable mention: Blackfive)

Best Business Blog: BizzyBlog

Best LGBT Blog: Gay Patriot

Best Science Blog: Junk Science

Best Photo Blog: Zombietime

Best UK Blog: EU Referendum

Best Middle East/Africa Blog: Michael J. Totten (honorable mention: Iraq the Model)

Best Australia/New Zealand Blog: Tim Blair

Best of the Top 250: Gateway Pundit (honorable mention: Red State)

Best of the Top 251-500: Fausta (honorable mention: Israel Matzav)

Best of the Top 501-1000: Betsy's Page

Best of the Top 1751-2500: Texas Rainmaker (honorable mention: A Blog for All)

Go ye therefore hence... and vote!

p.s., I've fallen way behind in my category (best of the top 5000-6750). Please help make it look respectable. My self esteem is down over 17.2% since I saw the most recent results.


Hey Mister and Missus, can you spare a vote? Nominations for the 2007 Weblog Awards are now open. If you have a spare second, click on over.

The Democratic Energy Plan: $5 Gas

 
Our beloved Democratic Congress, led by professional politicians Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, has hit another milestone. Unfortunately, their latest achievement is completely bungling U.S. energy policy, resulting in the highest oil prices ever seen on the face of the Earth.


Crude Oil and Gasoline Prices under the current Democratic Congress(source: Gateway Pundit, click to zoom)

You may ask: why would I blame the Democrats? The answer is a simple, brutal fact (hat tip: Gateway Pundit).


Democrats have prohibited drilling in all areas marked in red

The "not-in-my-backyard" Democrats have prohibited drilling in literally every oil-rich area that surrounds the country.

This US DOE Report posits that there are more than 9000 billion barrels of oil in this country alone. New technologies coming online could double U.S. oil reserves. Even the known stripper oil wells could be converted to crude oil production.

Were the Democrats' objections to local exploration based upon ecological grounds? Of course not. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita proved -- beyond a shadow of a doubt -- that offshore rigs are ecologically sound. During the twin storms, the rigs were swept away like leaves in the tailwind of a Rosie O'Donnell fart. Did you hear about any oil spills in the aftermath of the storms? Nope. The Democrats' bogus objections to offshore drilling are based upon two factors unique to the liberal progressive wing of the party: stupidity compounded with arrogance.

Meanwhile, there's important offshore drilling news that the mainstream media hasn't chosen to share with its customers: China is drilling for oil 50 miles from Key West, Florida. Yes, you heard that right. Michael Moore's socialist utopia -- Cuba -- is leasing drilling rights to the Chinese. In turn, they are draining the gulf of oil with the tacit approval of your Democratic Congressional leadership.


Cuba has leased drilling rights to China 50 miles from Key West, FL

Now, you'll forgive me as I have to write my representatives a thank you note for their wonderful stewardship of U.S. energy policy.

Broad coalition demands the FCC enforce network neutrality

 
Many consider Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic -- by forging TCP RST packets -- an egregious violation of network neutrality principles.



This is the Internet without Network Neutrality

News.com reports:

Members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition and Internet scholars from Harvard, Yale and Stanford law schools filed a petition and complaint with the Federal Communications Commission Thursday in response to claims that Comcast is blocking some kinds of peer-to-peer traffic.

The complaint comes after the Associated Press discovered, based on its own testing, that content was blocked on several Comcast broadband connections using the peer-to-peer filing sharing network BitTorrent. Other Comcast users have also complained that their BitTorrent content has been blocked.

In their petition, the groups claim that Comcast is violating the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which essentially states that consumers are entitled to access all applications, services and content of their choice...

The Internet -- the greatest democratic publishing platform ever invented -- hangs in the balance. Will Congress and its lobbyists allow the few remaining telcos and cable companies to act as gatekeepers? Will they decide which "channels" (web sites) we can visit? Which applications we can run?

Put simply, the would-be monopolists want to turn the Internet into cable TV. Don't let it happen. Go to Save the Internet now -- and make your voice heard.

Guinness record for human shields

 
An IDF aircraft snapped this photo of Palestinian terrorists launching mortar shells from an elementary school. Talk about human shields!

I wonder why no one in the UN asks the obvious question: when will the Palestinian leaders lay down their arms and attempt to live in peace with their neighbors? The suffering of the Palestinian people is due solely to their corrupt, despicable leadership.

Hat tips: Atlas and Larwyn