And speaking of Eason Jordan, that boy sure has issues!

Via a commenter at LGF we find some primo wingnuttery via the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in Thabo on Davos:

During Davos 2004, Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive, CNN News Group, USA, said news organisations face difficult decisions about which stories to cover. He said, "We don't do everything right. We make mistakes." He said that no matter what story a news organisation covers, its bias is reflected in its choice and in the language it uses. As such, he said he finds objectivity and impartiality to be outdated, tired terms.

Well there's a surprise. Of course, ole Thabo's no slouch in the the wingnut department himself, so he was eating this stuff up.

Davos transcript revealed!

The wusses at the World Economic Forum may not be releasing the transcript of Eason Jordan's delusional ravings, but Iowahawk has dug one up! What Happens In Davos, Stays In Davos:

Jordan: Thank you Arsenio, and thank you delegates. It’s a real pleasure to speak to you today. I originally intended to center my remarks around building global news market share, but as we have all seen, this is becoming increasingly difficult in our fragmented media world. On the one hand, we have see the welcome emergence of ethical competitors like Al-Jazeera [applause], but we have also seen an infestation of sleazy fly-by-night operators like Fox [boos] ...and unregulated blogs [boos] ...who have spoiled what once was a golden goose for many of us.

While it would certainly be wonderful to regain share, ultimately we need to focus on the bottom line. At CNN we have paid close attention to carefully containing costs, but in such a way that does not impact our news product. For example, we achieved significant cost savings by accelerated depreciation of Larry King’s suspenders, and outsourcing our teleprompter feed to the Democratic National Committee. And, while we certainly didn’t support the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it allowed us to cancel our bribe contract with Ba’athist officials — freeing up essential bribe budgets for our other stations in the Mideast. As they, say, every cloud has a silver lining.

But, I don’t want to be blithe about our the challenges we face. For example, if we don’t get some control on the US Military deliberately targeting and shooting our field reporters, we are certainly going to face some steep increases in health care premiums for our employees. Second... umm, yes? Congressman Frank?

US Congressman Barney Frank: With all due respect, Mr. Jordan, what the f-ck? I mean... what the f-cking f-ck!?

Jordan: Excuse me?

Much more by following the link including Arsenio's monologue.

He's BADD!

Matt Margolis:

Bill at INDC Journal proposes a pledge that while meant to [be] applied to ODub (who Bill appropriately labels “blogospheric version of Carrot Top") specifically, probably can be applied to almost any liberal blogger whose usual arguments boil down to cliche liberal talking points like “Bush is a moron,” “Republicans are racist,” “Halliburton,” “Enron,” mixed in with a nostalgia for the days when Bill Clinton was President.

Generally speaking, his idea appears to be a good one. While all bloggers, by the nature of their act of blogging, desire attention, however, ODub is one of the worst, suffering from delusions of grandeur during his constant struggle for relevancy in the blogosphere. One might say ODub suffers from Blogospheric Attention Deficit Disorder.

And from Bill's post:

Oliver loves links. He loves attention. These things give O-Dub a wee pelvic pup-tent quicker than a Redskins cheerleader skin-mag coated in delicious twinkie filling.

That's two more reasons besides resembling a snail without a shell that his keyboard is all sticky! Gosh, I must have taken the Ace pledge too. Of course, if you want real smackdown fun, leave it to Steve to trash ole "Like Kryptonite to Cupid" as well as a host of the usual suspects.

Howard Kurtz in "The Mutt That Did Not Bark"

The reviews are in on this pungent thriller!

Roger Simon:

Breaking a curious ten-day silence on the most important recent story on his beat, WaPo media analyst Howard Kurtz has written a carefully crafted, linguistically bland semi-defense of CNN News chief Eason Jordan against charges he accused US troops of "targeting" 12 journalists.

Mickey Kaus:

If you were worrying that WaPo's conflicted Howie Kurtz would bend over backwards to be tough on his own CNN bosses, you can stop now.

But the performance was better than the preview:

I find it unsatisfying. It's almost as bad as my parody.

Now it's ecoweenie angst!

From Felicity Barringer in the NY Times comes Paper Sets Off a Debate on Environmentalism's Future:

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - The leaders of the environmental movement were livid last fall when Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, two little-known, earnest environmentalists in their 30's, presented a 12,000-word thesis arguing that environmentalism was dead.

That'll put a crimp in the funding stream!

It did not help that the pair first distributed their paper, "The Death of Environmentalism," at the annual meeting of deep-pocketed foundation executives who underwrite the environmental establishment.

Even worse!

But few outside the movement's inner councils paid much attention at first.

Then came the November election, into which groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters poured at least $15 million, much of it to defeat President Bush, whose support for oil drilling and logging, and opposition to regulating greenhouse gases have made him anathema to environmental groups. Instead, Mr. Bush and Congressional champions of his agenda cemented their control in Washington at a time when battles loom over clean air and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now a debate about the future of environmentalism is ricocheting around the Internet about the authors' notion of, in Mr. Shellenberger's words, "abolishing the category" of environmentalism and embracing a wider spectrum of liberal issues to "release the power of progressivism."

Gosh! It wasn't about sucker fish after all!

Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, began things in the fall with a bristling 6,000-word denunciation of Mr. Shellenberger's and Mr. Nordhaus's paper. An online magazine, Grist.org, has started a forum to debate their ideas and their assertions that environmentalism has become "just another special interest."

One writer called the paper "ridiculous and self-serving." Another wrote simply, "I'm not dead."

Others have embraced the paper. "The article articulates exactly my feelings about the environmental movement," one enthusiast wrote.

No word on group counseling.

Mr. Nordhaus, 38, is a pollster, and Mr. Shellenberger, 33, is a strategist and the executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, a new organization that advocates putting progressive values to work to solve problems.

Ah, the fantasy-based community!

They are receiving an increasing number of speaking invitations like the one that brought them here to Middlebury College in central Vermont recently, where they spoke at a conference on rethinking the politics of climate.

The election results may not have been the only reason they have struck a nerve. Other nagging concerns abound, like worries about the effect of repeated defeats on morale and concerns about image; a recent survey conducted for the Nature Conservancy suggested that the group use the term "conservationist" rather than "environmentalist."

Bwhahaha! And Lurch spent Christmas in Cambodia and opposes gun control.

"To a large extent, most of us in the environmental movement think most people agree with us," said Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author of "The End of Nature," a 1989 book on global warming.

It's one of the tenets of the fantasy-based community.

But Mr. McKibben, who called Mr. Shellenberger and Mr. Nordhaus "the bad boys of American environmentalism," said their data showed that the kind of political support the movement had in the late 1970's had come and gone. "The political ecosystem is as real as the physical ecosystem so we might as well deal with it," he said.

Their paper asserts that the movement's senior leadership was blinded by its early successes and has become short-sighted and "just another special interest." Its gloomy warnings and geeky, technocentric policy prescriptions are profoundly out of step with the electorate, Mr. Shellenberger and Mr. Nordhaus say.

You can only claim the sky is falling so many times before you attract yawns.

"We have become convinced that modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live," they wrote. As proof, they cite the debate on global warming and the largely unsuccessful push for federal regulation of industrial and automobile emissions.

Why not just take up a hobby? Knitting is nice.

They avoided making tactical prescriptions, but they did chide the movement for its limited efforts to find common ground with other groups, like labor and urged their compatriots to tap into the country's optimism.

Mr. Nordhaus, who works at Evans/McDonough, an opinion research company, told the student-dominated conference at Middlebury College that environmentalists "have spent the last 25 or 30 years telling people what they cannot aspire to." Given the can-do spirit of the country, "that isn't going to get you very far," he said.

Ya think? Anyhow, the big ecolobbies and ecodonors aren't buying it:

The observations have rippled through the environmental movement to the anger of some of its leaders and foundation executives and to the applause of a scattering of younger or less visible environmentalists.
...
"The environmental movement is probably the strongest social movement we have in this country," said Joshua Reichert, director of the environment division of the Pew Charitable Trusts, a major source of financing for environmental causes.
...
Mr. Reichert, his counterparts at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and scores of other foundation members who support organized environmental activity were the intended audience of the paper. It was underwritten by Peter Teague, the environment director of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Perhaps the most scathing response came from Mr. Pope of the Sierra Club, who said the paper mischaracterized both the interviews with him and the state of the environmental movement.
...
Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said that the movement had been changing even before the paper was written. "I think what we are looking at is the rebirth of environmentalism, examining constituencies, messages and focus and going beyond what we've been comfortable with," Ms. Callahan said.

Bureaucratese is her native tongue.

But she agreed that success was not at hand as she and her colleagues confront "the most hostile federal government we've seen in the history of the environmental movement," she said.

Sniff!

The decision by Mr. Shellenberger and Mr. Nordhaus to pick global warming as Exhibit A of their argument, Mr. Pope said, was unfair. "Since global warming is our hardest problem, and we brought to bear our weakest tool, expertise, it's hardly surprising that we are getting our worst results," he said.

They don't call it expertise when they have to shovel it out of the stable.

Mr. Pope also took a dig at his adversaries' motives. "Given that the chosen audience of the paper was the funders," he wrote, "it will be hard for many readers to avoid the suspicion that the not-so-hidden message was, 'Fund us instead.' "

Ah, a feline fight over the cream. This could get nasty!

Today's Hoot!

Iowahawk takes us on a trip down memory lane in TV Classics: "Chutch":

Still reeling from Vietnam, and with Watergate and OPEC looming on the horizon, 1972 was a turbulent time for America. Nowhere was the zeitgeist more reflected than on ABC Thursday nights, with the debut of "Chutch." Starring Jan-Peter Bronston in the title role, the fast-paced action series centered on the adventures of a mystic, Indian-like professor at fictional Boulder University. Based on the rugged hippie anti-hero Bronston portrayed in a skein of popular low budget drive-in biker films (including 1968's "Tenured Losers" and 1970's "The Angry Ones"), Chutch battled against injustice and The Man with a lethal arsenal of martial arts, mystic dialog, dirt bikes and his faithful mountain lion, Zapata.

Ah, the good ole days!

EPISODE 106: BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED EGO

OPENING TITLE SEQUENCE

Mystic flute and chime music; soft focus lens shot of a young Chutch standing in candlelit sweat lodge of his Tribal Master, Marcuse

MARCUSE: Are you ready for your final test, Angry Turtleneck?

YOUNG CHUTCH: I am ready, master.

MARCUSE: Then try to snatch the grant proposal from my hand.

Chutch deftly grabs the binder from the wizened master.

MARCUSE: With this ankh medallion I now grant you the ultimate power, Angry Turtleneck -- a Master's degree from Sangamon State University. I pray you will use it wisely.

Of course, Ethnic Studies departments are a sad and silly story, but how did Churchill get hired in the first place? He makes most of the Ethnic Studies charlatans look like geniuses.

Today is Super Bowl day!

What are you gonna do for halftime this year, rip off SpongeBob's square pants?

Which reminds me - Registered has discovered proof that SpongeBob isn't gay.

Now if the media can only find someone who says he is. On the other hand, I'd watch him around banks.

It's a quagmire!

Pre-election guerrilla attacks kill three police officers, teenager

In Acapulco, Mexico.

They really do have a death wish

Deano as DNC chairman is a good start and now A cultural disconnect in Dixie:

DURHAM, N.C.--The hundred or so Democratic activists gathered in an auditorium at North Carolina Central University on a January weeknight to meet with state party bigwigs have each been given two paper flags--one green, one red. When someone says something they agree with, attendees are supposed to wave green flags; if they disagree, they wave the red. Plenty of the proposals elicit green flags, like withdrawing from Iraq. Then a member of the state party's executive committee suggests reaching out to NASCAR dads. "We have churches and values," she says, "and we have to make that clear." A wave of red flags ripples across the room. Grumbles activist Don Esterling, 62: "We don't need to be Republican light."

Right on, Don!

Speaking of North Carolina - Two vie for soul of party in N.C.:

Gov. Mike Easley, fresh off such a decisive re-election that he's being mentioned as a presidential candidate, may be in danger of losing control of his own party.

In an echo of the debate over the direction of the national party, North Carolina Democrats are in a donnybrook over who will be their state chairman.

The race has several potential implications. It could indicate whether pro-business moderates or progressives are the state party's dominant voice; whether Easley will be challenged on such issues as his opposition to a death penalty moratorium; and perhaps whether Easley will have a role in national politics.

Easley's candidate is Ed Turlington, a Raleigh lawyer and lobbyist, who has been a right-hand man for such party heavyweights as former Sen. John Edwards and former Gov. Jim Hunt. Most of the party establishment backs him.

He is fighting an insurgency by Jerry Meek, a Fayetteville lawyer, who lacks big-name endorsements but says he has commitments from a majority of the 560 members of the state Democratic Executive Committee who will elect a new chairman in three weeks.

Easley has prospered by being a moderate Democrat which is raw meat to the leftoids:

But Easley has been less engaged in party politics than most governors. He rose as an independent, corruption-busting prosecutor who never enjoyed traditional party politics. He rarely engages in patronage and has a reputation for not returning calls from key backers.

He declined to campaign last fall with the national ticket, which included Edwards as the vice presidential candidate, and he skipped the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Although Meek has been careful not to criticize the governor, he has tapped into discontent in the party -- those who want to send Easley a message, those who think the state party ignores local Democrats and liberals who think the party is too pro-business, too conservative and too tied to monied interests.

"You are seeing the beginning of an ideological divide," said Lorrin Freeman, 33, a Raleigh lawyer who is chairman of the Wake County Democratic Party and backs Turlington. "Some believe the Democratic Party needs to move back to its liberal roots. Others think we have espoused the moderate position and that is the route we need to stay on."

A lot of Meek's supporters in Wake, Freeman said, are backers of former presidential candidate Howard Dean who are playing an increasing role in party activities.
...
Some Easley supporters worry that if Meek, a trial lawyer, becomes chairman, business contributions to the party would dry up. And they are concerned that liberal party activists would press Easley to address hot-button cultural issues, such as a death penalty moratorium or gun control, that can be politically toxic in North Carolina.

Now we're talking! And don't forget gay marriage!

Ruh Oh!

N. Korea Wants Czech Ban of 'Team America'

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - North Korea's embassy in Prague has demanded that the film "Team America: World Police" be banned in the Czech Republic, saying the movie harms their country's reputation, a report said Saturday.

In the film by "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, a team of marionettes rushes to keep North Korean leader Kim Jong Il from destroying the world, reducing world capitals to rubble along the way.

"It harms the image of our country," the Lidove Noviny daily quoted a North Korean diplomat as saying. "Such behavior is not part of our country's political culture. Therefore, we want the film to be banned."

They're kidding, right? Truth is stranger than fiction.