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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Ken Davidoff on WFAN says he doesn't think Carl Crawford is on Yankee radar

Ken Davidoff on WFAN tonight with Tony Paige said he doesn't think Carl Crawford is on Yankees' radar but they are interested in Cliff Lee. The interview ran shortly before 11:30pm. Ken elaborates in his Newsday column tomorrow. The Carl Crawford subject came up in context of Paige asking Davidoff if he thought they might trade Granderson (which has been mentioned in speculation, not actually being considered). Davidoff said no, he didn't think so.

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Yankee deadline moves trample others as if they were third world victims-media theme

MLB Network TV anchor's response to what the Yankees did at the trading deadline noted by commenter to Yankee LoHud blog:
  • 7/31, ""Betsy July 31st, 2010 at 4:52 pm
MLB Network's "Matt V. (Vasgersian) is really a freaking clown; he just said the Yankees tramped over the other teams from blog thread, Park designated for assignment," 7/31
  • This is the line Bud Selig wants MLB media people to beat into the ground. This way he hopes to take more money from Yankee fans' pockets and put it into the hands of other teams' owners:
10/05/06, Bud Selig with Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN, Chris Russo says to Selig,
  • "Bud, I know you probably won't answer this but you must be happy the Yankees lost today, must be thrilled, because this helps your argument for parity. How about that?"
Bud answers:
  • "Well, you're right, Chris, I'm not going to answer that. But my guideline is how many teams are in the running at the end of the season." (Translation: You Yankee fans can dine on beans and franks, just hand over your money to me and shut the hell up).
(posted on this blog 10/5/06)
  • Vasgersian photo from MLB Network; third world children photo NowPublic

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Best Buy aims to legally restrict American use of electricity via Soros cap and trade pressure group

7/30, "In this case, Best Buy equals worst thinking," Worthington Daily Globe, by Steve Milloy, 7/30/10 BICEP’s mission is to provide Congress and the public with the impression that U.S. business is demanding cap-and-trade and its corollary, renewable energy welfare programs."...As the oil 'spill' seems to be 'disappearing', US interests are racing to get some kind of climate/energy scheme through. BICEP is pressing US lawmakers to pass "an “energy efficiency resource standard” (EERS) that would

Although EERS is a dubious proposition for all BICEP’s members — including the Aspen Skiing Company, eBay, Levi Strauss, Nike and Target — Best Buy’s support makes one wonder what’s in the air at corporate headquarters....

  • Past the proliferation and increased use of all sorts of devices from cell phones to personal computers to electronic games, Americans are now turning to electronic book readers like the Kindle and iPad.

Add into the mix the push for electric vehicles, and the notion that there’ll be less need for electricity becomes even more absurd. The only way to use less electricity is to buy and use fewer and smaller gadgets, appliances and other consumer goods. It’s hard to see how these trends will bring any benefits to Best Buy’s bottom line.

  • Additionally, the question must be asked: Why should Americans want to use less electricity? What would be the economic impact of reduced electricity use?

As the National Academy of Sciences pointed out in its landmark report, “Electricity in Economic Growth (1986), “Electricity use and gross national product have been, and will probably continue to be, strongly correlated.” This truth of this relationship continues to exist — the economy is struggling and electricity use is down. More generally, there probably never has been a time in human history when social and economic advancement has occurred without increased use of energy.

  • In other words — and for the benefit of Best Buy’s management — if the goal is to have consumers that can continually afford to indulge in the latest electronic gadgetry, two things must happen — increased economic growth and available and affordable electricity.

Best Buy and the BICEP coalition, however, seem to be in favor of neither scenario — not so surprising given BICEP’s provenance. BICEP is the brainchild of Ceres, a environmental activist organization dedicated to co-opting business to the political left’s fight against capitalism and free enterprise. BICEP’s mission is to provide Congress and the public with the impression that U.S. business is demanding cap-and-trade and its corollary, renewable energy welfare programs.

Unlike, in their estimation, those they preach to, the BICEP companies care about the planet. In the end, BICEP’s precepts are simply bone-headed.

via Tom Nelson

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Friday, July 30, 2010

Protester unfurls Mexican flag on dash across Mets Citifield in New York. Why not?

The US government considers its borders and citizens to be garbage so why shouldn't everyone? Mets security personnel attempts to catch up with man carrying Mexican flag across the field during Mets game v Arizona Diamondbacks, 7/30/10, ap. Arizona won 9-6. If you did something like the above in Mexico, you'd likely be beaten, robbed, raped, and put in jail. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieevUV1hAKkb8Pt-FOYrWZByUhnGS5T1sbQAuuWmd53B9w0VHUhTHx3SYlskSL7XQcwaBQE_Ny3sdihklG7h7ejsfywxchD9sR9urKnhEc6oQYOtvYxl7IgVVXKpuGYLUp1Sp86w/s1600/decapitatedheadsmexicogiovanni.jpg Decapitated heads found in Mexico, a not uncommon occurrence. via Giovanni. 7/28/10, BBC, 8 decapitated heads found in Mexico, prison guards gave guns to prisoners and freed them to go on killing spree. (above photo from different event)
  • Trash on Arizona border, Rape Tree in background,
  • photo 3/16/09, Now Public
"Arizona Sheriff says cops are being killed by illegal aliens," Violence has reached epidemic proportions, April 20, 2010, cns news service Arizona deputy shot by illegal alien taken to hospital, 4/30, ap

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Red Sox radio pre-game show adds calls from fans

7/23, "Pre-game, WEEI calls for a change-up," Boston Globe by Chad Finn
  • Red Sox radio's pre-game show on WEEI is still an hour long with features like the Terry Francona show, but it has eliminated other interviews and added fan calls with studio host John Ryder. The Boston Globe article also suggests Red Sox radio booth members will be on hand to chat with fans.
A WEEI executive says: ""It’s really about trying to do something different and giving people a chance to participate in shows they otherwise might not be able to participate in, in addition to the fact thatvia Radio Daily News

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Thursday, July 29, 2010

NY Times angel investor buys Doris Duke 5th Avenue mansion

7/28, "Carlos Slim buys Manhattan townhouse on 5th avenue for $44 million," WSJ, J. Barbanel

Last month, Slim paid $140 million for an 11-story office building at 417 Fifth Avenue in Midtown. Slim is a major investor in the New York Times.

He owns the townhouse, located on Fifth Avenue at East 82nd Street across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through a limited liability company, a technique used by many wealthy buyers....
  • The 1901 house, known as the Duke-Semans mansion, was owned by descendants of the original owner, tobacco magnate Benjamin N. Duke, until 2006."...photo flickr wallyg
Yankee Alex Rodriguez with NY Times investor Slim at a Telmex baseball event in Mexico, 11/30/08, ap

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Man wearing LeBron James Miami Heat t-shirt forced to leave Cleveland Indians game

Escorted out by police, 7/28, getty

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Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Mets channel SNY promotes two to VP

7/28, via Neil Best: "Congratulations to SNY's Brad Como, who recently was promoted to Vice President of News Programming....

“Our studio news and entertainment programming has continued to grow and set new standards under Brad’s leadership and creative vision. He was instrumental in overhauling our entertainment block with the creation of 'The Wheelhouse' and 'Loud Mouths' and has successfully managed and directed an outstanding group of men and women in our news room who continue to create and produce exceptional New York Mets, Jets, Big East and 'SportsNite' programming.”

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MLB offers San Jose $1 million to hold off on Oakland A's stadium vote to cover cost of special election if needed

7/28, "San Jose backs away from November ballpark vote," SF Gate by Demian Bulwa

In pursuing the ballot drive, Reed had sought to light a fire under Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, who has had a three-member committee studying the plight of the A's and their desired South Bay move for 16 months. The long review has frustrated San Jose officials and A's owner Lew Wolff.

  • But Reed, speaking at City Hall, said he would honor a request from Selig to shelve the ballot drive as the study moves along.

Reed said Selig's second-in-command, Bob DuPuy, promised in a telephone conversation this week that Major League Baseball would help pay the $1 million-plus cost of a special election in the spring if, by then, baseball deems San Jose to be the best place for the A's to play.

  • "I think that's a good sign," Reed said of the promise. "I think we did apply the appropriate amount of pressure, and we got some progress."

Reed said he had assumed that voter approval for a ballpark in San Jose was important to the committee studying the A's. But "getting it done before (the study is finished) is not as important as I thought it was," Reed said.

  • To put a ballpark measure on the November ballot, San Jose's City Council would have had to act by its next meeting on Tuesday. A council committee shelved the plan Wednesday.

The measure would have authorized the city to use redevelopment funds to acquire, clear and lease a stadium site for the A's, who would then build and maintain the ballpark.

  • The stadium would be built adjacent to Diridon Station, a couple of blocks south of the HP Pavilion. The station is served by Caltrain and Amtrak and by VTA light rail lines."...

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4 more journalists go missing in Mexico

BBC, 7/27, "Four journalists missing in Mexican state of Durango,"

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Media rejoice forthcoming decapitated heads. Rhode Island allowed to defend itself against terrorist invasion, Arizona not.

Decapitated heads in Mexico, a common experience. photo via Giovanni.
  • "You say you want a revolution
  • Well you know"... John Lennon
  • Trash on Arizona border, Rape Tree in background,
  • photo 3/16/09, Now Public
"Managers of the area estimate each person leaves behind 8 pounds of trash as they cross this area, resulting in over 2 MILLION pounds of trash annually"...Media delirious with joy at the thought of garbage, vermin, disease, and suffering. ed. photo of sign from People for Preserving our Western Heritage, meaning freedom from torture, decapitations, human smuggling, disease, vermin, garbage, and terrorism. To the media this view is seen as of course 'racist.' ed. Sorry, this can't last.

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Cleveland Indians looking relaxed as Yankees appear bugged

Nick Swisher #33 watches as Curtis Granderson #14 misplays a fly ball in the outfield during the game against the Cleveland Indians on July 27, 2010. Cleveland wins 4-1.

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8 decapitated heads found in Mexico; prison guards gave guns to some killers

"Eight human heads have been found in four locations outside the northern Mexican city of Durango....
  • State prosecutors have accused officials at a prison in Gomez Palacio of releasing inmates to carry out drug-related killings.

Those included three massacres which left 35 dead this year in neighbouring Torreon, in Coahuila state.

The inmates then returned to their cells, said Ricardo Najera, a spokesman for the attorney-general's office....

The same group is suspected in two other massacres."...

Decapitated heads in Mexico, a common experience. photo via Giovanni. This photo is not from the above report, but another Mexican crime scene to show what is an everyday occurrence in Mexico. ed.

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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Joakim Soria has 6 teams on his no-trade list, one of which is NYY

7/27, ESPNNewYork.com, Andrew Marchand: "The Yankees are one of the six teams on Soria's no-trade list, a baseball official with knowledge of the contract tells ESPN New York."...This is said not to mean Soria wouldn't change his mind at some point. It remains true that the Royals would expect a great deal in return.

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Global warming mob latest: CO2 might someday cause illegal Mexicans to move a few miles away to southern US (to the same climate they left)

The US government has endless taxpayer money for organized crime infested global warming hysteria, now figures get the media to sell the rubes the carbon scam by telling them it will create Breathless headlines reflect desperation of billionaire carbon traders and organized crime networks: Monday's NAS report was edited by Stephen Schneider who recently published a blacklist of so-called climate skeptics, divided by country of origin and color coded in shades of pastel. Schneider is recently deceased. via Tom Nelson
  • So we’ll just call it something different.”"........
Guardian UK: ""The great achievement of the (Kyoto) protocol was not to reduce carbon emissions –
  • they actually rose at an increasing rate under its watch, three times faster in the early 2000s than during the 1990s –
but to create a market in emissions rights and notional emissions reductions from "Don't Let the Carbon Market Die," by Oliver Tickell, UK Guardian, 1/25/10 (paragraph 3 in article)...........
  • lives lost because of unnecessary reactions like biofuels affecting food supplies.
Stories appear about the corruption at the IPCC and others about the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Most people, including the media, don’t seem to realize the IPCC is the CRU."....

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Washington Post company re-hires Journolista Dave Weigel for online magazine

7/27, "Ex-Washington Post blogger David Weigel joins Slate," Upshot, Michael Calderone

Slate contacted Weigel shortly after he left the Post to discuss what he could do for the online magazine (which, oddly enough, owned by the Washington Post Co.) Plotz said that the Post Co. has been informed of the hire, but pointed out that Slate is "editorially independent from the newspaper.""...

  • via Poynter.org/Romenesko

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Certain news the NY Times can't keep to themselves

Bill Keller of course is executive editor of the NY Times. via slublog, via Michelle Malkin, 7/26 April 11 , 2003, "The News we kept to ourselves," by Eason Jordan, (then) CNN Chief News Executive, NY Times Op Ed. And, later: CNN executive Eason Jordan had reportedly claimed (at Davos) that US soldiers in Iraq deliberately killed journalists. He denied saying it, but ended up having to resign.

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Monday, July 26, 2010

Waiting for a pitching change

Top, Yankees in Cleveland, waiting for a pitching change in the 8th: Teixeira, Cano, Girardi, Jeter, Cervelli, Arod; 4th inning, Yankees trying to explain how Crowe's ball was trapped rather than caught (failing); last, Arod stretching before game. ap, ap, reuters

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'Half-breeds, hicks, neanderthals, sociopaths,' Journolist non-member sympathizer labels those outside his world view

7/26, "The Village Voice finally makes Journolist!" by Foster Kamer
  • A Journolist non-member notes he was incorrectly accused of being on the list. That was a mistake. It's just that his firmly held world view sees itself as the home base of tolerance, compassion, and an open society. His language and venom prove the opposite.
via Poynter.org/Romenesko
  • Update: I heard a famous Journolist member (not the one alleged above) say recently, he didn't "really have a world view," meaning this is starting to qualify as a new psychiatric disorder. That of "congenital viewing of oneself as objective."

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Recent Mexican massacre result of prison deliberately letting killers out, giving them guns and cars

7/25, BBC: "Gunmen who killed 17 people at a party in northern Mexico earlier this month
  • were let out of prison to carry out the attack, state prosecutors say.

Guards at a prison in Durango state are accused of lending the inmates weapons and vehicles to commit the murders in neighbouring Coahuila state before returning them to their cells."...

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Sunday, July 25, 2010

Global warmists lead with money but still lose argument

7/24/10, "Desperate days for the Warmists," Telegraph UK, Christopher Booker
  • "Warmists may be winning the big grants but they're not winning the argument."
"One familiar technique they use is to attribute to global warming almost any unusual weather event anywhere in the world. Last week, for instance, it was reported that Russia has recently been experiencing its hottest temperatures and longest drought for 130 years.
  • The head of the Russian branch of WWF, the environmental pressure group, was inevitably quick to cite this as evidence of climate change, claiming that in future
"such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent".

Meanwhile, notably little attention has been paid to the disastrous chill which has been sweeping South America thanks to an inrush of air from the Antarctic, killing hundreds in the continent's coldest winter for years.

In America, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been trumpeting that, according to its much-quoted worldwide temperature data, the first six months of this year were the hottest ever recorded. But expert analysis on Watts Up With That, the US science blog, shows that

  • In Greenland, for instance, two of the hottest spots, showing a startling five-degree rise in temperatures,

(continuing, Telegraph): "A second technique the warmists have used lately to keep their spirits up has been to repeat incessantly that the official inquiries into the "Climategate" scandal have cleared the top IPCC scientists involved of any wrongdoing, and that their science has been "vindicated".

But, as has been pointed out by critics like Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, this is hardly surprising, since the inquiries were

The perfunctory report of the Science Appraisal Panel, chaired by Lord Oxburgh,

none of them remotely connected to what the fuss was all about. Last week Andrew Montford, author of The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science, revealed on his blog (Bishop Hill – bishophill.squarespace.com) that the choice of these papers was approved for the inquiry by Sir Brian Hoskins,

  • of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College,
  • and by Phil Jones,
  • the CRU's former director – an appraisal of whose work
A third technique, most familiar of all, has been to fall back on the dog-eared claim that leading sceptics only question warmist orthodoxy because
  • they have been funded by "Big Oil" and the "fossil fuel industry".
Particularly bizarre was a story last week covering the front page and an inside page of one newspaper, headed "Oil giant gives £1 million to fund climate sceptics".
  • The essence of this tale was that Exxon Mobil, the oil giant that is the world's third biggest company, last year gave "almost £1 million" to four US think-tanks. These had gone on to dismiss the Climategate inquiries as "whitewashes".

It was hardly necessary to be given money by Exxon to see what was dubious about those inquiries. Not one of the knowledgeable sceptics who have torn them apart has received a cent from Big Oil. But what made this particularly laughable was that the penny-packets given to think-tanks that

  • have been largely irrelevant to the debate
  • are utterly dwarfed

Even the big oil companies have long been putting their real money into projects dedicated to showing how they are in favour of a "low-carbon economy".

  • In 2002 Exxon gave $100 million to Stanford University to fund research into energy sources needed to fight global warming.

BP, which rebranded itself in 2004 as "Beyond Petroleum",

The Grantham Institute provides another example. It was set up at the LSE and Imperial College with £24 million from Jeremy Grantham,

  • an investment fund billionaire,

to advise governments and firms on how to promote and invest in ways to "fight climate change", now one of

Compare the funding received by a handful of think-tanks to the hundreds of billions of dollars lavished on those who speak for the other side by governments, foundations, multinational corporations, even Big Oil, and the warmists are winning hands down.

  • Note: The UK Times article referenced above by Mr. Booker featured a photograph (below) of an area in the Himalayas meant to convey a scene of man-caused devastation. Using this photo was a bad idea:
Times caption, "The receding glacier in Sonamarg, near Srinagar, India". This is in the Himalayas, subject of the most famous lie in the UN climate report (object of the "voo-doo science" label). That is, the Himalayas are not abnormally melting, can't be compared to other ice formations, and only have "one automated weather station in the entire Himalayas to record climatic data." (11/10/09) ***

Another photo of Sonamarg in the Himalayas, from tourism website, kashmir houseboats

(information about hiking in Sonamarg area in the

summer) retrieved 7/23/10 by me.

Warnings of catastrophe in the Himalayas endured in other media such as

  • the NY Times and Time Magazine:

Leading up to Copenhagen, The NY Times elevated the stature of the false Himalaya data by reporting the Himalayas are melting due to man made climate change and threatening lives in Nepal and Maldives:

  • As did Time Magazine:
TIME Magazine advanced the IPCC catastrophic report on Himalayas: "and the 2007 global-warming assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change judged that glaciers in the Himalayas were "receding faster than at any other place in the world."...12/4/09, "The Tragedy of the Himalayas"********
  • (This is not to suggest the NY Times or Time Magazine had any idea about false data concerning the Himalayas). ed.
*** When asked to respond to this information, UN Climate Chief Pachauri termed it "magical science." (11/10/09, Times of India, "No proof of Himalayan ice melting due to climate change"
  • His "voo-doo science" remark was published by BBC News on 12/5/2009, "Himalayan glaciers melting deadline 'a mistake'"

(The survival of London has been said to be tied to carbon trading. In the US, one group, the EDF is said to have spent $100 million to try to sway congressmen to global warming financing)....

  • top photo of Chile herders in snow, reuters. via Climate Depot.

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Baseball fans from Montreal in Cooperstown to honor Andre Dawson

Fans at Clark center in Cooperstown for Andre Dawson's Hall of Fame induction, 7/25/10, getty

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Clouds lead to two and a half hour rain delay in the Bronx

I heard someone say today the Dodgers have played over 800 games without having a rain delay. getty photo, Yankee Stadium, v Royals. 7/25/10. Time of game 3:13 plus 2:32.

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Leading climate exchange hacked by anti cap and trade protesters

"In a protest against carbon trading as a method for acting on climate change, on Friday, July 23 at just before midnight, the public website of the European Climate Exchange (ECX), the

In a public act of digital direct action, the ECX website was taken offline and replaced with a message in an effort to try to raise awareness about carbon trading as a dangerous false solution to the climate crisis, in support of the grassroots activists aiming to oppose the power structures and

  • companies profiteering from the dysfunctional Cap & Trade scheme....

In 2009 Friends of the Earth UK released a report warning that carbon trading could trigger a second 'sub-prime' style financial collapse and fail to protect the world from global warming catastrophe. A copy of the full report, 'A Dangerous Obsession', is available at: http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/dangerous_obsession.pdf....

  • According to the hack message:
  • "The Cap and Trade system (as implemented in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme) has a whole range of issues:

* It's main purpose is not to reduce emissions, but to help polluters meet "reduction" targets in the cheapest way possible, in a business-as-usual scenario. * Leaves room for unverifiable manipulation. * Generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects, opportunist traders and new 'marketplaces' such as the European Climate Exchange. * It distracts attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken to tackle climate change and it's fundamental root causes.""

  • ****

"ECX website is unavailable due to technical reasons. We apologize for the incoveniency, and

  • expect to be online again soon."...

"The carbon markets themselves were designed by many of the same

and they adopt a similar logic."...2/1/09, Guardian UK, Reyes

  • via Tom Nelson
(Robert Redford, George Soros, and the NRDC shakedown crew have to be peeved). ed

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Saturday, July 24, 2010

"Call them racists"-unsurprising Journolist hate speech to silence opposing views. Updated with MUGSHOTS

"Respected and objective" manipulators of what Americans should and should not know, so far represent:
  • The New York Times, Washington Post,
  • Bloomberg News, Boston Globe,
  • Baltimore Sun, Time Magazine, Newsweek,
  • The Atlantic, Politico, CNN,
  • Columbia Journalism Review, Huffington Post, The Nation,
  • The New Republic, The Hill, Media Matters,
  • Guardian UK, Salon, 538, Grist,
  • Pew Economic Mobility Project, Center for American Progress,
  • MSNBC, Mother Jones, NPR, Wired
  • Talking Points Memo, Washington Independent
Above are some of the esteemed outlets represented on Journolist. UPDATE 7/25: MUGSHOTS OF KNOWN JOURNOLISTERS TO DATE

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Friday, July 23, 2010

Rain delay in the Bronx

Subsequently resumed in bottom of the 5th v Kansas City. 7/23, getty photo.

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Steve Phillips cites WFAN positive experience with recovering addicts as factor in his hiring

7/22/10, "Upcoming book about history of ESPN could produce fireworks," SI.com by Richard Deitsch
  • "SI.com (to Steve Phillips): Given your history, there is obviously a public relations aspect for any entity hiring you. Why did Sirius, WFAN and AOL take another shot on you?

Phillips: It's probably better for them to answer that but I would think I have a different perspective as a former general manager than mangers and former players.

The gratitude I have for Sirius, WFAN and AOL , I could not be more grateful. I understand that there is some part where people perceive they are taking a chance on me."...

  • SI.com article referenced by Neil Best

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Thursday, July 22, 2010

A person lucky enough not to be of interest to MLB

7/20/10, "(Victor) Conte's products remain the word for (Marlon) Byrd," Yahoo Sports, Steve Henson Major League Baseball officials had a hissy fit, summoning Byrd to their New York City offices, Officials said they’d talk to him over the phone,
  • but never even did that....
“I think they backed off because it was me,” he said matter-of-factly.
  • A year later, his performance speaks louder for Conte than any testimonial. Byrd, who played in his first All-Star Game last week, keeps getting better.

Power? Last year with the Texas Rangers he doubled his previous high in homers with 20, and this year his OPS is a career-best .864.

  • Stamina? The 32-year-old is batting .320, nearly 40 points higher than his career average, and hasn’t dipped below .297 since April 22.

Byrd, a reserve for most of his career, has played in 91 of 93 games this season.

  • Conte’s array of pills, powders and potions promises increased energy and faster recovery after workouts. He has his skeptics, but to Byrd it’s the word. Upon signing a free-agent contract with the Cubs last winter, Byrd contacted Conte to adjust the regimen to take into account the increased number of day games he’d be playing in Chicago....

Byrd also frequently submits to a comprehensive metabolic blood-testing panel that Conte uses to adjust the regimen. Cubs manager Lou Piniella doesn’t care about the particulars, but he does appreciate Byrd’s contribution....

  • Victor’s supplements have become so much a part of my routine, I can’t imagine not using them,” he said. “I think other guys are missing out.”...
Byrd is still the only MLB player known to use Conte’s supplements."
  • I make no inference from this article, I've always heard Marlon Byrd is a terrific person and team mate. It's just interesting the writer either didn't ask for the dates on which Byrd has been tested by MLB in the past year, knew the dates and chose not to put them in the article, or knew that Byrd hadn't been tested at all in the past year and didn't put that in the article. Saying that Byrd "broke no rules" and had good deportment doesn't necessarily cover the topic at hand. ed. photo above AP

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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

11,000 rally in Louisiana today for economic survival

  • Obama moratorium affects 100,000 jobs in Louisiana.
7/21/10, "Deepwater drilling moratorium targeted by rally in Lafayette (Louisiana)," AP
  • "The offshore petroleum industry and companies that serve it employ about
according to the LSU Center for Energy Studies." "To call this slanted, or at least incomplete, journalism would be charitable. As Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph mentioned in her speech, will be out of time and decisions will have to be made – and in lots of cases the decision will be to leave the Gulf in search of other opportunities. (AP's) Foster
  • each rig affects some 1,500 jobs, so the loss of four of them already means 6,000 Louisiana jobs vaporized.
And as Randolph also mentioned, no business can survive a six-month suspension. The rigs are only a small part of the equation. The marine service companies, the caterers, the industrial pipe manufacturers, the marine fabricators and all the countless other businesses which service an exploration rig will have nothing to do for the duration of the moratorium regardless of whether the rig owners manage to stick it out.

It’s a terrible article, and the Times-Picayune’s readers are very poorly served for the paper having run it." from The Hayride.com, Rally Recollections

  • photo of Cajundome rally today by Lafayette Daily Advertiser via AP.

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Journolist reveals deep hatreds and prejudice of left wing media insiders

Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, wrote on Journolist, a left wing media email group in operation from 2007 until a few weeks ago,

7/21/10, The Daily Caller: "In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

  • In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself.
  • “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.

  • In the summer of 2009, agitated citizens from across the country flocked to town hall meetings to berate lawmakers who had declared support for President Obama’s health care bill. For most people, the protests seemed like an exercise in participatory democracy, rowdy as some of them became.

On Journolist, the question was whether the protestors were garden-variety fascists

“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?

  • asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer.

“Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”

Richard Yeselson, a researcher for an organized labor group who also writes for liberal magazines, agreed. “They want a deficit driven militarist/heterosexist/herrenvolk state,” Yeselson wrote. “This is core of the Bush/Cheney base transmorgrified into an even more explicitly racialized/anti-cosmopolitan constituency. Why? Um,

But it’s all the same old nuts in the same old bins with some new labels: the gun nuts, the anti tax nuts, the religious nuts, the homophobes, the anti-feminists, the anti-abortion lunatics, the racist/confederate crackpots, the anti-immigration whackos (who feel Bush betrayed them) the pathological government haters (which subsumes some of the othercategories, like the gun nuts and the anti-tax nuts).”...

  • When the writer Victor Davis Hanson wrote an article about immigration for National Review, for example, blogger Ed Kilgore didn’t even bother to grapple with Hanson’s arguments. Instead Kilgore dismissed Hanson’s piece out of hand as “the kind of Old White Guy cultural reaction that is at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. It’s very close in spirit to the classic 1970s racist tome, The Camp of the Saints, where White Guys struggle to make up their minds whether to go out and murder brown people or just give up.”

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

  • “I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.

“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”"...

  • via John Batchelor Show

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