Saturday, June 13, 2009

Larwyn's Linx: ACORN's massive tax problem

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email!

Nation

Hypocrisy, anyone? ACORN's massive tax problem: Provocateur
The Jobs Killer: $600B in New Taxes: Bloomberg
The RAT hiding inside the Stimulus bill: York

Video: the public plan deception: Hot Air
That didn't take long: public distrusts Dems on economy: Morris
Fraudsters targeting Stimulus package: Lucianne

Congress seeks explanation of dealership closure decisions: RadioIowa
Punk'd On Health Care Reform: LegalIns
Whose campaign did Matt Lesko contribute to?: Blatt

Dodd's Irish Cottage: Was $190,000. Now $658,000: Courant
Dodd's health care conflicts-of-interest: AP

Extremism

Vote count has Ahmadinejad leading in Iran elections: Times
Fast Action By SPO Saved Lives, Officials Say: WaPo
Obama's Promises of Great Things Are Utter Rubbish: Rubin

Pat Buchanan and the BNP: LGF
Atheist Left Wing Journalism Major Kills Guard at Holocaust Museum: MoneyRunner

Media

Hugh Hewitt's interview with Mark Steyn: Nicholas Jacob
Media discovers Democrat corruption in Washington: PJM (Rubin)
Ray Nagin feared assassination by George W. Bush: Tim Blair

David Letterman, Rev. Wright, and Thoughts on a Creepy Culture: Hanson
Bozell to Letterman: Apologize Like a Real Man: MRC

Climate & Energy

The Anti-Stimulus Package: Cap-and-Trade: SIGIS
Climate pact in jeopardy: China refuses to cut emissions: Times of London

Cornucopia

Autopsy Finds David Carradine Did Not Commit Suicide: Lucianne
'Should I work as a prostitute to pay my debt?': Ask Bossy
Budgetball on the Mall: Pass the Ball, Not the Buck: Sunday, June 14, Washington DC

Friday, June 12, 2009

Google's Top 10 Malware Sites & China's Information Warfare


Google's Online Security Blog offers its take on the current epidemic of compromised web servers.

...we constantly scan our index for potentially dangerous sites. Our automated systems found more than 4,000 different sites that appeared to be set up for distributing malware by massively compromising popular web sites. Of these domains more than 1,400 were hosted in the .cn TLD [Ed: China top-level domain]. Several contained plays on the name of Google such as goooogleadsence.biz, etc.

The graph shows the top-10 malware sites as counted by the number of compromised web sites that referenced it. All domains on the top-10 list are suspected to have compromised more than 10,000 web sites on the Internet. The graph also contains arrows indicating when these domains where first listed via the Safe Browsing API and flagged in our search results as potentially dangerous.

Other malware researchers reported widespread compromises pointing to the domains gumblar.cn and martuz.cn, both of which made it on our top-10 list. For gumblar, we saw about 60,000 compromised sites; Martuz peaked at slightly over 35,000 sites. Beladen.net was also reported to be part of a mass compromise, but made it only to position 124 on the list with about 3,500 compromised sites...

A 2008 issue of IOsphere Magazine described the odd affiliation (PDF) between China's military and civilian hackers.

The most obvious reason for Beijing’s apparent tolerance of the [Hacking] Alliance is that it likely receives valuable information from the group. Thousands of hackers, working around the clock, could surely fill in some of the blanks of a composite intelligence picture. As a civilian organization, the Red Hacker Alliance also provides the government with plausible deniability.

Even if Alliance members are caught red-handed breaking into a system, it is easily disavowed as the actions of overzealous youth, not that of the government. In December 2005, as accusations of China’s involvement in government-sponsored hacking heated up, People’s Republic of China Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang flatly denied charges of PRC government involvement, asking the US to produce any information proving these allegations...

China's hazy lines between military and civilian information warfare complicate matters greatly. One wonders whether the U.S. could employ similar measures to protect and defend the nation's infrastructure.


Obama's Pharmaceutical Delusion [Mister R.]


Health care insider Mister R. offers his examination of the pharmaceutical industry and the impact that socialized medicine would have on it.

I think many writers are hitting the healthcare issue on the head with their comments, so I want to deviate from that a little to another issue not getting much focus.

The United States develops 93% of all new and breakthrough drugs worldwide. The reason for this is pharmaceutical companies are willing to spend the resources and take risks in order to develop new drugs that people will use to improve their wellbeing.

The cost for each drug to get from concept to market is $1,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 ($1 billion to $3 billion) each. And that does not include the money spent on drugs that do not make it to market (that's over and above the $1 to $3 billion).

The United States then issues a patent for the drug, which usually lasts seven years. Now, the company could appeal and it would then last longer, but for the most part, the pharmaceutical company has seven years to get their money back. After seven years, it comes off patent, and any company can make the drug generically. And since "other companies" didn't spend any research and development funds on the drug, the cost to make the drug is very low, and that is why generics are so much cheaper.

Most times, the company that actually developed the drug will also manufacture the drug in generic form to squeeze more revenue from the market.

A person reading this might say, "oh, so that's why new drugs are so expensive." And the answer is, "yes", that's one reason. However, the other major reason will make everyone cringe.

Pharmaceutical companies then bring their drugs to other countries for their approval. Once approved by a country, they can sell their new drug there, but there's a catch: the drug is either hit with high tariffs or there are price controls on the drug.

In other words, the foreign country is dictating the price a drug company can sell their drugs. The pharmaceuticals still make money, but not nearly what it should be making if it were sold at fair market value.

People in the United States are furious that we're paying much more for the exact same drug. But the anger is misplaced. It is not the pharmaceutical companies' fault they cannot make nearly enough money by selling in other countries than in the United States. The companies need to make their money back, and they need additional resources to continue to research and develop other drugs to improve our lives. They can only do that by selling the drugs they've already developed.


The bottom line is other countries do not have the resources to develop breakthrough drugs, and they rely heavily on the U.S.

The U.S. has the resources because they have a free market system that encourages the development of new drugs. A government takeover of health care in the U.S. will result in huge cutbacks in research and development and a screeching halt to the development of new drugs.

President Obama can fix this problem very easily and reduce the prices of new drugs in this country: he should demand other countries drop their tariffs and price controls and pay the same fair market value as citizens of the United States. That alone would drop the price of new drugs in this country by 20-30%.

But you won't see that happen. Because other countries must impose price controls because they have closed, government-run health care systems and do not have the resources to pay for the drugs at fair market price. If they did pay fair market price, they would have to ration care even more.

Put simply, the U.S. is the last bastion of medical innovation. Our free market system drives the invention of new drugs. If, heaven forbid, government takes over health care, then our pharmaceutical innovation process will simply drop dead.


Related:
• Mister R. Chapter 1: The '47 Million Uninsured' Lie
• Mister R. Chapter 2: Health Care Insurance: Puzzling Questions No One Will Answer

Update: Commenter Fred notes, "The last major drug from Canada was insulin, discovered at the University of Toronto in 1926."


Larwyn's Linx: The Utter Destruction of the Economy

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email!

Nation

Gretchen Carlson has questions for Car Czar: SIGIS
How to bankrupt a country: PJM (Anderson)
China moves away from dollar investments, buying gold, oil: GWP

AMA speaks out, rejects Obamacare: GWP
Barack Obama is destroying the economy: EIB (Video)
Act now to stop the bailout of the IMF: Morrissey

Digging in for the Healthcare Offensive: York
Army Report: Drug Cartels, Terrorists Infiltrate U.S.: Helms
Stumped Speech: Six Meat

Signs of GOP life in Northeast: Driscoll
You have the right to burst out laughing: Maguire

A right-wing, Christian hate crime? Hardly: PJM (Simberg)
And now they want to run health care: Rick
Sotomayor and a post-racial America: MoneyRunner

World

What If Israel Strikes Iran?: Bolton
Rep. seeks action against Islamic Republic polling places: Iran.org
How Ends the Amazon Defense Coalition’s Lawsuit Against Chevron in Ecuador?: BMW

Lebanese credit Bush; Friedman credits Obama: Klinghoffer
Israel need not appy for Hope 'n' Change: PJM (Meister)
UK must not kowtow to the Islamic World like Obama: PJM (Gould)

Hard Truths are really just Political Convenience: Glick
An innocent abroad: GLORIA
A Letterman Top Ten List You'll Never See on Letterman: AT (Arlandson)

Now he tells us: Geller
They're baaa-aaa--aaack: Re-launching al-Muhajiroun: Jawa

Media

Star Trek: the Dowd Conundrum: PJTV
George Will on Obama's Appalling Speech: Power Line
CBS News Uses Rape Analogy For Sarah Palin: LegalIns

From White House to Blog Troll: Riehl

Climate & Energy

Warming causes more intense storms and lessening winds: Depot
SUVs at fault for global collision: Punky Kitten

Cornucopia

How to make a Malawian Soccer Ball: Crittenden
London Underground Song: Amateur Transplants (NSFW)
Gitmo Detainee Petitions Canadian Prime Minister For Relocation: TNOYF

Thursday, June 11, 2009

E.R. P.R.: The Lying Liars of Socialized Medicine


The push for socialized medicine has begun in earnest. Radio and TV commercials are airing. Print ads are showing up in newspapers and magazines.

And the Democrat Party's public relations arm -- also known as the mainstream media -- is laying down covering fire. It began with a New York Times op-ed (what else?) by Nicholas Kristof exclaiming the virtues of the Canadian health care system using the anecdotal experiences of one woman.

Of course, Kristof studiously ignored Canadian medical publications like the fascinating bestseller Management of MRI Wait Lists in Canada (Health Care Policy, 2009), the abstract for which reads: "Excessive wait times for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies are a major problem in the Canadian healthcare system."

And Kristof carefully omitted trivial matters like cancer survival rates. The United States is number one in the world -- for all of its citizens, insured or not. U.S. females have a 63% of living five years or more after a cancer diagnosis versus 56% of European women. Men have a larger advantage: 66% to 47%.

The average survival rate for all cancers is 60 percent in the United States compared to 55 percent in Canada. That five percent would mean the world to you if, heaven forbid, one of your parents -- or one of your children -- received that diagnosis.

We can gain valuable insights into Obama's plans for socialized medicine using one specific book as a guide. Tom Daschle, Obama's first choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, authored Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis. The book was endorsed by Barack Obama.

The book proposes the establishment of a "board" to set standards for health care. The board would be modeled after the Federal Reserve and the SEC, overseeing every aspect of care for public health systems. Thus the board would automatically come to administer Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Health Administration, etc., or roughly one third of all health care in the country.

Presumably Daschle recommends the Federal Reserve-SEC-Politburo-style central planning model, presumably because it's functioned so smoothly during the current financial crisis.

On Page 179, Daschle writes, “The Federal Health Board (FHB) wouldn’t be a regulatory agency, but its recommendations would have teeth because all federal health programs would have to abide by them.” Although the FHB would have no official oversight of the two-thirds of health care delivered through the private sector, Daschle asserts that Congress could easily change that aspect of the Board: "[Congress] could... link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board’s recommendation.”

Yesterday USA Today reported that Democrats are using just that approach. "The biggest tax break in America — tax-free health benefits from employers — could be scaled back to pay for President Obama's overhaul of the nation's health care system."

By doing so, Congress would utterly and completely destroy America's private-sector health care system because no health insurance program could survive if it were denied the tax deduction. And it would never be able to match the inherent pricing advantages of a publicly-funded plan.

And using this approach, the FHB would effectively control the operation and practices of every doctor, every nurse, every drug company, every hospital, every health insurance company, every third-party administrator, etc.

On page 199 Daschle helpfully describes who the "losers" would be in his centrally managed system: "Doctors and patients might resent any encroachment on their ability to choose certain treatments, even if they are expensive or ineffectual compared to alternatives. Some insurers might object to new rules that restrict their coverage decisions. And the health-care industry would have to reconsider its business plan."

Put simply, government bureaucrats would decide whether your parents or your children or you live or die. They'll use statistics and actuarial tables and computers in Washington, DC to figure out which treatments are most affordable, where in the queue you'll be placed and how rationing will work.

The book states that the FHB will force and end to the "technology arms race", which he asserts health care systems use "to attract aging baby boomers with the latest diagnostic imaging machines." These are, of course, the same machines that Daschle says "help(s) doctors estimate the spread of cancer or the extent of cardiac disease without surgery." (Page 125)

Daschle believes those tests often lead to treatment; and there's far too much of that going on. To prove his point, he spotlights a study of 828 angiograms in which a third were likely to benefit patients, 50% might or might not, and 14% were not likely to offer a benefit. Thus 86% of patients might benefit, but Daschle claims the approach is too wasteful: "When the test revealed a narrowing of the artery, however slight, cardiologists couldn’t resist doing something about it."

If it were your spouse or parent or child involved, wouldn't you want something done?

In other words, the Obama-Daschle plan proposes to have the Federal Health Board dictate to cardiologists -- and all other Doctors -- which treatments can be rationed to whom. I somehow doubt that Daschle and his cadre of FHB bureaucrats would ever be denied treatment, though.

Daschle also offers a stunning criticism of the current private sector health care system: "Many patients with insurance want any care that might do some good, and plenty of doctors will oblige them." (Page 122)

Anticipating a massive outcry over this Politburo-style approach, he recommends two legislative tactics for creating the Federal Health Board. First, the bill must be passed in the first year of Obama's presidency, when he is most popular. Second, the bill must omit any details of the program. It must be nebulous and vague: "[the] Federal Health Board should be charged with... filling in most of the details. This independent board would be insulated from political pressure.” By "political pressure", Democrats want to prevent our representative democracy from interfering with the Kremlin of Health Care.

By hiding the details of the program, the FHB will be unaccountable to the American people. Which is why the Democrat-Statists are always in a hurry. With the Stimulus bill that no one read. The massive, deficit-ballooning budget bill. The choking deficit spending that quadrupled 2008 levels. And socialized medicine. They want to rush that through before the American people even have a chance to read the bill. That's how much they care about you.

No, they care about power. Acquiring more power. And taking more of your liberty and more of your money to distribute to the unions and the community agitators.

* * *

Freddie Mac: bankrupt. Fannie Mae: bankrupt. Social Security: bankrupt. Medicare: bankrupt. Medicaid: bankrupt. Postal Service: bankrupt. Amtrak: bankrupt.

But the drones still think the government can run health care!

When Obama said, earlier today, that he is not interested in socialized medicine, he is lying. Just as he lied about how the Stimulus package would keep unemployment capped at 8%. How it would revive the economy. How 95% of Americans would receive tax cuts.

This illustration is my depiction of our future health care system should the Statist-Democrats get their wish.


Update: The Obamacare Payoff to Unions. Based upon: Tony Blankley's "Daschle-Obama health care possibilities". Hat tip: Mark Levin. Linked by: Dan Riehl, Dr. Sanity and Libertarian Bass. Thanks!

Comeback of the Year Nominee


Sent in by Dave W.: If you ever testify in court, you might wish you could have been as sharp as this policeman. He was being cross-examined by a defense attorney during a felony trial. The lawyer was trying to undermine the police officer's credibility...

Q: 'Officer -- did you see my client fleeing the scene?'

A: 'No sir. But I subsequently observed a person matching the description of the offender, running several blocks away.'

Q: 'Officer -- who provided this description?'

A: 'The officer who responded to the scene.'

Q: 'A fellow officer provided the description of this so-called offender. Do you trust your fellow officers?'

A: 'Yes, sir. With my life.'

Q: 'With your life? Let me ask you this then officer. Do you have a room where you change your clothes in preparation for your daily duties?'

A: 'Yes sir, we do!'

Q: 'And do you have a locker in the room?'

A: 'Yes sir, I do.'

Q: 'And do you have a lock on your locker?'

A: 'Yes sir.'

Q: 'Now why is it, officer, if you trust your fellow officers with your life, you find it necessary to lock your locker in a room you share with these same officers?'

A: 'You see, sir -- we share the building with the court complex, and sometimes lawyers have been known to walk through that room.'

At this point, the courtroom exploded with laughter and a recess was called.


They don't make toys like this anymore


When I was in first grade, I was green with envy over a single toy owned by my next-door neighbor and best friend. His parents had bought him a Johnny Seven OMA.

In the sixties, the Johnny Seven OMA (One Man Army) was the ultimate toy firearm. It integrated seven distinct weapons (thus the Johnny Seven) into a single chassis:

* Grenade
* Anti-Tank Rocket
* Armor-Piercing Shell
* Anti-Bunker Rocket
* Repeating Rifle
* Tommy Gun
* Automatic Pistol

All of the firing mechanisms were attached to the main rifle assembly - the pistol inserted from the bottom to provide the rifle grip (the pistol also held caps for authentic firing sounds). The main ammunition included various sized white bullets that would "shoot" from the barrels via spring-action. The rockets and grenade also fired via spring-action. The weapon featured a working bipod that provided stability for the various rockets and grenade. The stock could be removed to shorten the weapon while in Tommy Gun mode. The toy when fully assembled is over three feet long.

Decades later, I still remember the Johnny Seven and how my parents would never spring for one.

But I'm not bitter.

Honestly, though, if a kid was walking around with a Johnny Seven these days, they would call in a SWAT team and a hostage negotiator. And Chuck Schumer would hold a press conference to get more face time on TV.

Man, how times have changed.



Update: More Toys That Would Be Completely Illegal Today.

Linked by: American Digest and Six Meat Buffet. Thanks!

Eco-statists fighting Dems' Cap-and-Trade Scheme as too weak


Green Hell reports that the eco-statists are gearing up for a war against the Democrats' egregious carbon trading scheme. They feel it isn't restrictive enough.

Carbon Control News reports that two “environmental justice” groups (Communities for a Better Environment and California Communities Against Toxics) sued the state of California on June 10 alleging the state’s climate change program violates its 2006 global warming law...


"[It] could foreshadow similar legal challenges facing a federal GHG cap-and-trade program, because the California groups, who question the effectiveness of emissions trading, are also opposed to the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation."

I heard someone refer to Cap-and-trade as "Tax-and-Kill". The name is apt.


Larwyn's Linx: It's come to this -- Miranda-izing Terrorists

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email!

Nation

'Obama Ordered FBI to Read Rights to Detainees'...: Fox
...and Palin Predicted It: GWP
Visual aid: Just how miserably has the stimulus failed?: Morrissey

No wonder the unions need card check passed: Morrissey
Once we would have called it a scandal: HE
Supply Sergeant Speak: Parkway

New Documents Expose ACORN’s Lies: MonCrief
Nationalizing Public Education is Next: AT (Cary)
Obama, Pay-Go and Higher Taxes: Patterico

Rev. Wright: 'Them Jews Aren't Going to Let Him Talk to Me': LGF
Congress takes sides: BlogProf
A Stimulus Plan for Lobbyists: MYODBP

World

Terror Names Linked To Doomed Flight AF 447: Sky News
A President who supports Sharia?: Times (Gaffney)
An Open Letter to President Obama: Gabriel

Sacrifice! Obama spends $200 million to unload 17 Gitmo terrorists: GWP

Media

Letterman's blast of pure intolerance: Morrissey
Rove on Dowd: Twisted, Deranged, Nasty.: Politico
NYT airbrushes Letterman's child assault joke: GWP

The great educator: Denny

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Transcript: Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX) on Dealergate


This is the transcript of Rep. Poe's speech on the House floor (courtesy of XBMT, Channel 12).

Mr. Speaker, just south of Houston, there is a town called Alvin, Texas, where a Chrysler dealership called Rogers Dodge is making a lot of money selling Chryslers; but on June 9, they are going to close down because the auto task force gang has notified them that they have to close.

Rogers Dodge is on the list of 789 Chrysler dealerships around the country that are being closed down under questionable circumstances. There are five in the Houston area alone. The question remains: What are the criteria for closing down these dealerships?

The auto task force gang picks winners and losers, but they refuse to tell America how those decisions are made. Well, neither they nor the administration is talking. The blissful silence makes us wonder what's going on. Some of these Chrysler dealerships being ordered to close are profitable--others are not--but according to some news reports, there's one thing they all have in common except for one single exception found so far: they all have connections in some manner to making campaign contributions to Republicans.

Chrysler, an American institution, is no longer being run as a private-sector company. It has been taken over by the auto task force tyrants appointed personally by the administration. These individuals tell Chrysler what to do, and they have to do it because Chrysler took all that bailout money before they went into bankruptcy. Now the auto task force gang gets to run the company.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, we still don't know where that wasted bailout money went.

According to the Federal Election Commission Web site, there are reporters and bloggers around the country who have been digging through lists of donations. They have been comparing donor names on the lists with the names of owners of the Chrysler dealerships that have been forced to close. Some of these reports say that campaign contributions went to GOP candidates or to political action committees from the Chrysler dealerships that are being forcibly shut down.

Did this group of auto task force individuals discriminate against Republican dealerships in Chrysler-style or in Chicago-style paybacks? We don't know. How in the world can we square that with the reports that only one dealership being ordered to close down so far contributed to the administration's campaign--and that was only for $200? Campaign contributions appear to be the common thread in all of these ordered closures. That's some coincidence.

Rogers Dodge in Alvin, Texas, is one of the more profitable dealerships. Newspaper reports say they have increased their new car sales by 50 percent in just the last 4 months. That's a big accomplishment in this economy. They paid cash for their brand-new $3.7 million building 3 years ago. Along with many other dealerships, they bought millions of dollars of inventory after being pressured by Chrysler to help the company's financial situation so that Chrysler wouldn't go bankrupt. Now all of these assets paid for by these dealerships will be worth mere pennies on the dollar. One report in the Houston Chronicle said this inventory of cars that the dealerships were pressured to buy now will have to be sold as used cars. Some of these dealerships are fighting back against the Auto Task Force with a lawsuit of their own. According to the Houston Chronicle article, Nicholas Parks, the president of Rogers Dodge and a lawyer, says he's fighting the closure because he doesn't think the bankruptcy court should be used to close these vendors, especially those that are making money. How can you use the bankruptcy laws to shut down a vendor who is making a profit for Chrysler? This is very interesting. The American people are starting to ask a few questions on their own.

Are these Auto Task Force tyrants picking the winners and losers based on campaign contributions? Does the administration have a Nixon-style enemies list? All these questions because the Auto Task Force guys aren't talking and aren't telling us why they closed down certain dealerships and why they let others remain open.

We are now living in a time where the government controls both Chrysler and GM, which we should call Government Motors. And the government alone, not the free market, decides who wins, who loses, who stays in business and who must be forcibly closed down. Meanwhile, 100,000-plus Chrysler workers at auto dealerships who did nothing wrong will be out of work on June 9 thanks to government control. So much for the promise of new jobs.

And that's just the way it is.

The video of his speech is available on YouTube.

Update: The first Congressional hearing on the dealership closures will occur on Friday:

U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. EST on Friday, June 12, 2009 in Room 2322 of the Rayburn House Office Building to examine the recent auto dealership closures announced by Chrysler and General Motors. The hearing will be the first held in the U.S. House of Representatives on the proposed closures...



Dealergate Highlights

06/07/2009: Yoo hoo! 538.com and Keefus Olbermann: Both parties in Congress want Dealergate investigated!
06/04/2009: Dealergate: Some minorities more equal than others
06/03/2009: Media Matters, Huffington Post Beclown Themselves... Again
05/31/2009: RED ALERT: Dealergate -- Quantitative Analysis Indicates Clinton
05/31/2009: Dealergate: Zero Hedge understated 'The Clinton Effect'
05/30/2009: Daily Dealergate: A 'Dealer Council' & Reverse Discrimination
05/29/2009: Dealergate: 40 Democrat-friendly Dealers Become 42 After The Dust Settles
05/28/2009: Awesome: Olbermann and 538.com echo-chambers inadvertently confirm Dealergate findings
05/25/2009: RED ALERT: Did anti-Obama campaign contributions dictate which Chrysler dealers were shuttered?

Smart Power: The Fruits of Appeasement


Writing at The Spectator, Melanie Phillips describes "the fruits of appeasement."


"...after Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear facility there was evidence of North Korean involvement in that forbidden programme. North Korea is also selling nuclear and missile technology to Pakistan as well as Iran. Yet Obama appears ‘relaxed’ about everyone’s nukes except Israel's -- the one country that will never use them except to prevent itself from being annihilated by the countries Obama is appeasing... Naivety – or the profound idiocy of malice?"

I have a dream... about the newspaper business



The Fedex truck pulled up this morning.


They dropped off my newspaper replacement. It's a very specialized printer called NewsPrinter.


You plug it in and then attach the USB jack to your computer.


Then watch your computer monitor.


A really cool application automatically starts and it interviews you. It asks just a few questions. What time each morning do you want your newspaper printed? How many pages? And do you want to preview an on-screen copy?


If you're okay with the layout, you quit. Elapsed time since Fedex arrived? About four minutes. When you wake up in the morning, your newspaper is already printed and waiting for you at the printer. And it's up-to-the-minute.


The software can even tell where you're located, so the Local section will default to your area.


Want to change the defaults? The software can actually step you through an easy configuration. Need coverage of your favorite football or baseball team? Just choose the team's logo from the list. The neatest thing about NewsPrinter? You can completely customize every aspect of the newspaper down to the tiniest detail.


Getting older? You can completely adjust the size of the typeface and headlines.


So who makes money from NewsPrinter? How's the business-model work? I'm not really sure, but the printer manufacturer didn't charge me for the printer. I pay for paper (of course) and special inkjet cartridges, the price of which I'll admit are slightly inflated.


The content is provided by blogging networks and, I think, the McClatchy news service. The news service has a partnership with the printer manufacturer and gets a cut of NewsPrinter ink cartridges.


I have two words for legacy media and the New York Times, specifically.

Buh. Bye.

Larwyn's Linx: Democrats, Unions poised to kill FedEx

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email!

Nation

Democrats, Unions poised to kill FedEx: Times
Stimulus: if only we had done nothing: Instapundit (Video)
States to Feds: Stay Off Our Turf: Politico

House quietly restricts Ethics probes to protect Democrats: Times
Obama's mortgage rescue: 4,969,000 homes short of goal: Morris
The 70's Made Sotomayor Do It: LegalIns

Cantor: Obama damaged hopes for peace: Power Line
Threats, Coercion, and Bullying at Missouri State: FIRE (Video)
Top Ten People That Need to Resign: MYODBP

Slowing down Obama: Pundette
DOJ files suit to protect Muslim garb: Creeping Sharia

World

America's newfound respect in the world: Blatt
2-year peace plan will lead to 'Hamastan in Gaza': ynet
Obama's speech reviewed: Shadowlands

Climate & Energy

ACORN Enters the Highly Lucrative Global Warming Hysteria Business: Spectator
Parts of US may have year without summer: Depot
Upsetting nature's delicate balance: MoneyRunner

Media

The Media Fall for Phony 'Jobs' Claims: WSJ
Letterman: jokes about child rape a-okay if Palin's kids involved: Treacher
CBS sets another Nielsen record: Surber

I am afraid I no longer believe . . .: Hanson
Ayers and Dohrn on C-SPAN: AT (May)
Barney Frank's Lies, Chapter 4,323: ClusterStock

Cornucopia

Top ten lines never heard before in a Star Trek film: Letterman
A POTUS without a TOTUS: TigerHawk
Five real life soldiers who make Rambo look like a p****: Cracked

Quote o' the day:

"And ultimately everybody on the economic team knows that at the end of the day we’re going to hold hands and jump together." --David Axelrod, describing how Obama's economic team works.

"This wasn't in the brochure"


Dave M. sent this one in.