Post-Gazette Buyout Update

From our friends at the Trib:

About two dozen newsroom employees at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette accepted buyouts on Friday from the newspaper, which floated the offer to cut costs.

Had fewer than 18 agreed to forfeit their jobs, management might have resorted to layoffs, a union official said.

The Post-Gazette offered to buy out about half the employees in its 200-person newsroom in mid-October. Workers who accept will receive one year of salary and one year of health care coverage, plus an option to buy two more years' coverage. Eligible are those whose age plus years of P-G service equal 70 or more.

The P-G has a shorter blurb that says roughly the same thing:

Twenty-three newsroom employees of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette accepted a voluntary severance package offered by the company as a cost-cutting move. The buyouts were offered in October to about 100 members of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, the union that represents about 200 writers, editors, photographers, artists and other newsroom personnel. Some of those who took buyouts may continue to do freelance work for the newspaper. "We are saying goodbye to some of our colleagues and friends, but we are also taking inspiration from them," said David Shribman, executive editor.

No word yet on who those 23 are.

Update: Smizik took the buyout.

In Case You Missed It

Yes, there was torture and no, it wasn't just a few "bad apples."

The path leads all the way back to Donald Rumsfeld.

From the NYTimes:

A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

Here's the report, by the way. The first conclusion (p. 16) says:

On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President’s determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.

Waterboarding, my friends, is torture.

Conclusion 19 (p. 19) says:

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at GTMO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.

Torture approved by Rumsfeld.

Tell me again how the Bush Administration made everything better?

panties in a bunch

Just a reminder that when trying to gauge via the blogosphere what progressive and liberal women think about, oh, this or that and who exactly are defining the issues, it helps to have some idea of the demographics of some of the marquee blogs.

This, for example, caught my eye:


(Click on graphic for larger version)
Granted it is a self-reporting poll and therefore not scientific, but the numbers are so overwhelming as to certainly have some significance:

76% of responders are male and a paltry 14% are female.
And speaking of DK, it also helps to be aware of the history there of pie fights and boycotts.
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Buyouts At The P-G

From Marty Levine at the City Paper:

Within the next several days, some of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's best-known correspondents -- including an award-winning investigative reporter -- will likely be disappearing from its pages.

Earlier this year, the P-G's parent company, Block Communications, announced sizable losses and negotiated a buyout offer with the paper's nine unions. The deadline for accepting the buyout -- which included severance pay and extended health-care benefits -- expired on Dec. 5. According to sources within the Post-Gazette, about two dozen reporters and copy editors signed up for the buyout, which was offered to senior staff.

Those who have accepted the buyout have until Dec. 12 to change their minds. Rumors are circulating about who has accepted the offer, and some of the candidates rank among the paper's best-known correspondents. Most have either declined comment or could not be reached by press time. However, at least one reporter, Bill Moushey, has confirmed accepting the buyout. Moushey, who would not otherwise speak about the situation, is best known for his work on prosecutorial misconduct and other highly regarded investigative reports.

Business reporter R.J. Hufnagel, head of the Newspaper Guild union representing newsroom employees, cautioned that "We won't know anything for sure until [Dec. 12], and nobody will really be able to speak intelligently about what it means for the future until then."

So far, P-G theatre critic Christopher Rawson confirms he's taken the buyout:

That's my way of saying that this is my final week as full-time Post-Gazette theater editor and critic. The paper has offered its veterans a generous buyout, and I've decided to take it, although with deeply conflicted feelings.

The Trib had the story back in September:

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette plans to buy out workers or lay them off in a broad cost-cutting move, barely two years after its Ohio parent threatened to sell the struggling newspaper if it didn't get concessions.

Management needs to "cut staff throughout the company," Executive Editor David Shribman said in a memo to employees. It blamed the newspaper's "revenue situation."

Shribman declined to comment. He referred questions to marketing director Tracey DeAngelo, who did not return phone calls.

For the record, I am not related to Tracey DeAngelo. Going on, it's obvious that things are tough all over for our friends in the newspaper biz:

The industry's year-over-year ad revenue declined 1.5 percent in second-quarter 2006; 8.6 percent a year later; and 15.1 percent last spring, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

For example, the McClatchy Co., which owns more than 30 newspapers, has reduced its work force by 30 percent and cut its shareholder dividend in half. Early this year, its chairman said staffing would again be cut to 10,000 from 14,000 at newspapers such as the Miami Herald.

The Post-Gazette is owned by Block Communications Inc. of Toledo, Ohio, which also owns The Blade there. Block said it lost $11 million from 2003 through 2005, then lost $12 million through August 2006, the last time figures were made publicly available.

I'll try to return to this story when more is known.

Found Object

From Salon.com:

Blagojaggoffevich

Maybe that 1970s hair on his head is growing into his brain or one of his many schemes for life after the governorship included getting a gig on the TV series Life on Mars.


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MSM

Which Came First?

In the December 5th edition of the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan opined that 'At Least Bush Kept Us Safe' after 9/11.

Yesterday, we learned that the Bush Administration had put out a two-page talking points memo to "Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials" that "offers a guide for discussing Bush's eight-year tenure during their public speeches" which contains a primary (false) point that Bush '"kept the American people safe" after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks...'

Did Noonan get the memo, or did her column help dictate it, or is this really all the Right has left?

Speaking of Right and Left

Chris Potter, editor of the Pittsburgh City Paper, slices and dices Ruth Ann Dailey's plea for something called "nonpartisan news" in the comments section of this Pittsburgh Comet post.
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Meanwhile...

From ABC News:

Military leaders knew the dangers posed by roadside bombs before the start of the Iraq war but did little to develop vehicles that were known to better protect forces from what proved to be the conflict's deadliest weapon, a report by the Pentagon inspector general says.

The Pentagon "was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) & and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003," says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.

So not only did they screw up the pre-war intelligence, they screwed up the pre-war preparation.

Heckuva job, Bushie!

I have this to say about that

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

December 9 - Merry Christmas to Y'inz

John, from a much different time:
And one from a few years later from his one time writing partner, Paul:


And the two together with their old band:

The Crazie Continues...

From Friday's Washington Times:

The Supreme Court plans to meet Friday to decide whether to hear a case that could determine whether President-elect Barack Obama ever becomes the nation's president.

Justice Clarence Thomas picked up the petition to hear New Jersey attorney Leo Donofrio's lawsuit after it was denied by Justice David H. Souter. Justice Thomas referred it to the full court, which decided to distribute the case for the judges' conference.

The decision to put the case on Friday's docket resulted from more than a dozen lawsuits challenging Mr. Obama's right to be president based on his citizenship at birth. The issue preoccupied many conservative bloggers in the weeks before the Nov. 4 election.

Some legal analysts say the lawsuits have little chance of success. The Supreme Court rarely grants the kind of court orders - or stays - sought by Mr. Donofrio.

From Friday's WorldNetDaily:

With protesters gathering and praying on the front steps, the U.S. Supreme Court met in conference today to discuss whether or not to hear a case challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be president.

"Obama was born a dual citizen," protester Roger Bredow told the Washington, D.C., local events blog, DCist. "British, and a citizen of the United States, at birth."

According to Bredow – and the case the Supreme Court reviewed today – dual citizenship makes Obama ineligible to take the oath of office.

This time it's NOT about the birth certificate (in fact Donofrio says that that issue is irrelevant). This time it's about President-elect Obama's citizenship at birth. From WorldNetDaily, again:

Unlike many of the lawsuits regarding Obama's "natural-born citizen" status, the Donofrio case makes no allegation that Obama was born on foreign soil. Instead, Donofrio contends Obama was a British citizen at birth, because of citizenship in a British colony, Kenya.

"Don't be distracted by the birth certificate and Indonesia issues," Donofrio writes on his Natural Born Citizen blog. "They are irrelevant to Senator Obama's ineligibility to be president. Since Barack Obama's father was a citizen of Kenya and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of Senator Obama's birth, then Senator Obama was a British citizen 'at birth.'"

So even though he was born in The State of Hawaii, he's still not eligible.

CRAZIE.

UPDATE: As if you didn't already know (see the comments) but:

The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth. The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the election.

Some reactions to the whole story:

The continuing efforts of a fringe group of conservatives to deny Obama his victory and to lay the basis for the claim that he is not a legitimate president is embarrassing and destructive. The fact that these efforts are being led by Alan Keyes, a demagogue who lost a Senate election to the then-unknown Obama by 42 points, should be a warning in itself.

Who wrote that? Well known liberal David Horowitz in the well-known liberal rag The National Review. There's more:

It is not conservatism; it is sore loserism and quite radical in its intent. Respect for election results is one of the most durable bulwarks of our unity as a nation. Conservatives need to accept the fact that we lost the election, and get over it; and get on with the important business of reviving our country’s economy and defending its citizens, and — by the way — its Constitution.

Hey, fringe conservatives! You lost the election. Get over it.

"At Least Bush Kept Us Safe"*

True!

*As long as you didn't die on 9/11, or from letters containing weaponized anthrax, or in the aftermath of Katrina, or as a soldier in Iraq, or . . .
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Don't tell me...

...That "boys will be boys" or to "lighten up" or any similar bullshit.


The man on the left is Jon Favreau who is President-elect Barack Obama's chief speechwriter and who has been recently appointed director of speechwriting for the White House.

The photo was posted on Facebook (not by Favreau).

It's reported that Favreau has "reached out" to Clinton and offered an apology.

If this was a major corporation -- instead of the White House -- and a photo like this got out to the public, the people who had posed for this picture would be fired (go run it by your HR Dept. or the Corporate Communications people if you doubt that).

As is to be expected, you won't find any condemnation or even any mention of this at Daily Kos*, Talking Points Memo or any of the other big boy lefty blogs even though the story can be found at The Huffington Post and The Washington Post.

A spokesperson for Sen. Clinton has responded with humor: "Senator Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon's obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application."

If she had responded any other way she would have been labeled (again) as a shrill, whiny bitch.

[sigh]

On a related note, Mackenzie Carpenter blogs at Early Returns about a recent poll on media sexism during campaign 2008:

According to a new poll out today, two-thirds of American women -- 64 percent, to be exact, from across the political spectrum -- think the media coverage of Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign was more negative than for other candidates running for office, while 31 percent felt that Hillary Clinton's coverage was more negative.

[snip]

Ms. Conway called the 64 percent figure "stunning," given that it cuts across all demographic groups. "It tells me that women were able to forge a consensus about Sarah Palin that doesn't otherwise exist about Sarah Palin," she said in a telephone news conference. "I think many women were saying, 'I just don't read the same stories about hair plugs and combovers, but we're obsessed with Hillary Clinton's hair.'"

The poll of 600 women found that 79 percent believed there was too much coverage of Ms. Palin's wardrobe, compared to 44 percent for Mrs. Clinton, while nearly half felt that there was too little reporting on the Alaska governor's policy positions. A plurality of women -- 49 percent -- thought Mrs. Clinton's views were adequately covered. The poll didn't address one key distinction, however -- that much media coverage over Ms. Palin's wardrobe focused on the fact that the Republican National Committee paid for it -- and that some RNC officials claimed to be unpleasantly surprised by the size of the bill.

What I found most interesting about the whole clothes controversy is that while the Republican party touted Palin as the patron saint of the Average Joe (the plumber), when they turned on her, they called her a "hillbilly." Elitist much?

That said, you didn't have to look hard to find many in the MSM who treated Sen. Clinton like the evil witch hag who would not die or Gov. Palin like their own personal blow-up doll -- and it was worse on umpteem blogs.

You know, there is a way to criticize a female opponent that doesn't involve calling her shrill, a bitch, witch, or a cunt; or reducing her to an inanimate object ("Caribou Barbie"); or posting Photoshopped naked pictures of her or illustrations of her masturbating with a rifle all over the Internet; or groping her photographic stand-in's breast in a picture while your buddy grabs her by the hair and shoves a beer bottle into her mouth.

But that would require actual thought instead of rank misogyny.

Pity.


*No, one single comment at Kos doesn't count.

(h/t to Shakesville)
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From The President-Elect

Good thing this didn't go out live on air or anything...

An MSNBC producer goes nuts during a show screaming and swearing when the camera changes aren't going as planned (not work safe):



(h/t to Spork)
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The Trib Spins. Again

Our conservative friends over on the editorial board at the Pittsburgh Tribune review have done it again. Through methods subtle and not-so-subtle, they've spun an passably interesting idea into a 7 (?) paragraph chicken-little jeremiad about a coming New World Order.

Preaching to their choir of climate change deniers and New World Order fetishists.

They begin:

Using the dubious threat of man-made global warming as an excuse, Stephen Hockman, a deputy High Court judge in Britain, is proposing a green version of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It would be, in his mind, the supreme legal authority on issues regarding the environment, reports The Telegraph of London.

The first phrase alone tells you everything you need to know about the scientific literacy of the Tribune Review's editorial board. But that's a tired argument - so let's move on.

Here's what it says in the Telegraph:

The first role of the new body would be to enforce international agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions set to be agreed next year.

But the court would also fine countries or companies that fail to protect endangered species or degrade the natural environment and enforce the "right to a healthy environment".

The innovative idea is being presented to an audience of politicians, scientists and public figures for the first time at a symposium at the British Library.

Notice how the Trib omits any mention of that first role: to enforce existing international agreements. That should tell you everything you need to know about their intellectual honesty (as if you didn't already know that).

What exactly did Hockman propose? If you think you know the whole story from what the Trib published, you haven't been reading this blog for very long. Here's his initial proposal. It's from last August, by the way. In it he wrote:

'It is a trite observation that environmental problems, although they closely affect municipal laws, are essentially international; and that the main structure of control can therefore be no other than that of international law." Thus wrote Robert Jennings QC, a former president of the international court of justice, in his foreword to the first edition of Philippe Sands's Principles of International Environmental Law, published in 1995 - years before the potential effects of climate change had transformed public perceptions. Yet even today, after all the millions of words that have been written on the subject of climate change, we seem no closer to establishing that "structure of control". Indeed, Jennings's observation that the problem is mainly to be solved by legal means might now seem not so much trite as unorthodox, bold or even eccentric.

The potential effects of climate change and the urgency of efforts to tackle it have been given a new focus by recent developments, including reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Nicholas Stern on behalf of the UK government. Although few deny the necessity of finding solutions, even fewer have any to hand. International summit statements only confirm the diplomatic efforts involved in attaining any kind of consensus.

The understandable reluctance of developing countries to sign up to carbon commitments - unless the developed world is prepared to make an equitable contribution - calls for more radical options. Those options must be realised at state, regional and international levels, and they will require political, economic and legal solutions.

And he describes the Court:

Ideally, such a court would be compulsory and would include a convention on the right to a healthy environment and deliver transparency in access to data and in its proceedings. It would include a scientific body to assess technical issues and a mechanism to avoid "forum shopping" - that is, litigants taking their pick of the most propitious court available.

Of course, regulations and sanctions alone cannot deliver a global solution to problems of climate change, but without such components the incentive for individual countries to address those problems - and to achieve solutions that are politically acceptable within their own jurisdictions - will be much reduced. [emphasis added]

And concludes:

Only an impartial adjudicating body is capable of providing the catalyst for a global consensus as to the fairest way to distribute the burdens that accompany solutions to the climate change problem. Whatever difficulties may lie in the path of such solutions, the benefits will be greater. [emphasis added]

It seems reasoned and there's more than enough room to agree or disagree. But of course, to the climate change deniers, merely believing that the climate has changed because of human pollution is evidence of a lack of scientific impartiality.

Hey, it's colder out this winter than it was last summer! "Global Warming" must be a hoax!

Jack Black is Jesus?

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Of course it would be Doogie Houser who has the solution.

But where did Margaret Cho get all those tattoos?

The War on Reason

Creationism: The Latest In Military Suicide Prevention

God is Kentucky's first line of defense against terrorism

City removes and destroys "Imagine No Religion" billboard

Another priest tells Obama supporters they must confess their sin of voting for him
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Whah?

Ok, so I was reading the Trib's editorial page this morning (don't laugh - it's always good to know where the next crazie is coming from) and I found this.

I thought I was reading the wrong paper when I read:

History will show that three years ago many prescient people in the banking world tried to warn regulators of the coming financial apocalypse.

But history also will show, as it should, that the Bush administration's banking watchdogs failed us by ignoring or delaying action on those warnings when they still had time to ameliorate some of the worst consequences of the housing meltdown.

As early as January 2006, as a recent Associated Press review of federal documents shows, some lenders were begging regulators to make it harder for banks to give risky mortgages to the patently unqualified home buyers who were inflating a dangerous housing bubble.

Did I really read that? The Tribune-Review is blaming the "financial apocalypse" (at least in part) on a lack of action by the Bush Administration's financial regulators? I would have expected to read such clear thinking coming from - well most any place other than DickieCougarMellonScaife's editorial board.

But then after all is said and done, the editorial ends with:

Socialists love to blame the financial meltdown on too little regulation. But as the AP's investigation shows, we had all the banking regulation we needed. It was just captured and kept from working as it should have by special-interest politics.

Whah? After pointing the finger at the Bush White House, (and citing the AP as a source along the way) they spin it to "special interest politics." But does the AP story actually say what they say it says?

Not really.

The AP story they site begins with:

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

And this a paragraph away:

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

So there were regulations proposed that didn't see the light of day. Not exactly what the Trib wrote. Close but no cigar.

By the by, does the AP offer up any sort of explanation for the Administration's regulatory inaction? Well, yes. Yes it does:

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy.

Ah - that's a bit different from what Scaife's gang said, huh?

Guess who's back?

President of the conservative Club for Growth and former US Rep., Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), talks to The Hill about Sen. Arlen Specter's chances in 2010:

“He’s significantly more vulnerable now than he was in 2004,” Toomey said in an interview.

He argued that Specter’s core constituency in the GOP, which he called “liberal and moderate Republicans,” have since left the party and will be unable to vote in Pennsylvania’s closed Republican primary. That will make it more difficult for Specter to prevail against a conservative opponent, Toomey said.

In 2004, President Bush and then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) supported Specter over Toomey, who said that was a key to Specter's triumph.

Toomey also said Specter’s age and health will be factors this time around.

Toomey only lost to Specter by 2 points in the 2004 Republican primary and isn't ruling out another challenge.

Chris Briem muses over a Toomey/Matthews contest here and Chris Potter has advice for Toomey here.
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