the TOWN HALL weblog

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy

In this issue:

1. McClatchy

2. Wildlife Refuges

3. Gregoire

4. AP

5. Danzig

6. Race Card

1. McClatchy. Fresh on the heels of their in your face series in defense of the outrageous SCOTUS Boumedine decision, the McClatchy Corporation, owner of our local fishwrapper announced layoffs of 35 people, or about 9% of their workforce here in Anchorage. Nationwide, McClatchy is laying off about 10% of all employees, over 1,400 paid propagandists. McClatchy owns newspapers nationwide and has swung hard left in their reporting and editorials over the last couple of decades. Their stock prices have dropped over 80% in the last few years and they are hemorrhaging money nationwide. McClatchy has long practiced the art of preemptive assassination of political careers here in Alaska, going after young, photogenic conservatives who have dared poke their necks out into the public arena. They have taken very good care of local leftists, democrats, greens, union droids and the like. Their financial difficulties are all self-inflicted and not surprising. When you get confused about which part of the newspaper the news goes and which part of the paper the editorials go, it is difficult to put a daily newspaper together. While I am normally sympathetic with people who lose their jobs, I am not particularly sympathetic with McClatchy’s financial difficulties, for they have chosen sides in the political wars; pretended they have not; and self-righteously hold others up to standards they are not fit to even consider. ADN, Tues.

2. Wildlife Refuges. I ran across a story about oil and natural gas exploration in the national Wildlife Refuge system last week and came up with some interesting numbers. To put this in perspective, we have a National Wildlife Refuge here in Alaska that sits on the coastal plain next to the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean). It has been the subject of an intense food fight over opening it for oil and natural gas exploration since Jimmy Carter and a lame duck session of congress stole it from the people of Alaska in December 1980. Most recently, Bill Clinton vetoed legislation to open it for exploration, development and production in the mid-1990s, noting that it would take a decade to get anything out of it. Well, it is now 13 years later, and it is now time to drill, drill, drill. One of the arguments against opening ANWR is that you simply can’t do that sort of thing in wildlife refuges. Imagine my surprise when I found that oil and natural gas exploration and development is not all that uncommon in the national wildlife refuge system, has been going on for a long time, and is a nice way to fun them. According to a CNN article from 2001 (interesting how this information gets buried these days), there are over 500 national wildlife refuges nationwide. There is oil and gas production in over two dozen of them. The article goes on to discuss the standard environmentalist claptrap yammering about drilling and production in a pair of refuges in Louisiana, Delta and D’Arbonne. On the other hand, the refuge manager is grateful over the revenue the production brings into his refuges. Given the recent yammering from the Department of the Interior about needing more funding for support of the refuge system, perhaps it would be a good idea to open a bunch of them for drilling and production so that they could also pay their own way. Bottom line here is that oil and gas exploration and production is not incompatible with the national wildlife system, as it has been going on for decades. ANWR? Drill here. Drill now. Drill early. Drill often.

3. Gregoire. Democrat Christine Gregoire, who was elected four years ago as Washington state governor via massive voter fraud in King County is up for reelection this year. As with most democrats who have benefited from voter fraud to get elected, she has been busy in other shady areas as well. The Seattle Post Intelligencer reported last week that she has received over $650,000 in campaign donations from a number of tribes since 2005. And what did she do in 2005? She blocked legislation and an agreement that would have regulated native gaming and taxed casino gambling in Washington State, making it the only state in the union with tribal casinos that was not making any money from them. The legislation would have brought in around $140 million yearly. Appears the natives bought themselves a governor, and have spent their money well doing so. We will hope that Dino Rossi, the Republican candidate for governor in 2008 who lost the election in 2004 makes note of this purchase and campaigns accordingly. Seattle Post Intelligencer, June 14.

4. AP. The Associated Press (AP) decided to defend their sagging business model by going after the bloggers, and attempting to charge them for cross-posting content, linking, and other forms of information transfer. The bloggers responded by declaring war on the AP. Much like the RIAA and MPAA, the AP is attempting to use the force of law to defend a failing business model. And like the recording and motion picture business associations, they are going to be aggravating their customers to the point of encouraging their customers and competitors to actively seek to destroy them in the marketplace for information flow. The AP has long been known as a chop shop – an organization that produces little original content. Rather, they have a long history of lifting significant portions of what goes out over the AP wire from the original writers, none of whom they ever credit for writing the original content. Contrast that with the current rules of engagement for information flow by the bloggers, who lift entire sections, credit the source, and normal offer trackback links. AP claims that anyone who lifts 33-79 words from one of their articles is breaking the copyright laws and has sent letters demanding compensation. According to Allahpundit in Hot Air Weds., the AP wants as much as $2.50 per word from anyone excerpting their stuff. Michelle Malkin found an extensive lift of comments from her blog regarding the Absolut vodka Aztlan ad last April, ran the numbers and announced that the AP owed her over $135,000. Other bloggers have found extensive blog entries lifted by the AP and transmitted without permission or attribution. Apparently AP figures they can do it whenever they want to whomever they want, but nobody can do the same to their stuff. I don’t know who is running the AP’s legal operation, but I think they need to talk with the business people, as they are about to get themselves run out of business by the people they are now going after in court.

5. Danzig. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Navy, Richard Danzig, who distinguished himself as one of the worst navy Secretaries in history since James Webb (D, VA) is now advising Barack Obama on national security issues. Danzig was best known during his time as Navy Secretary for giving the feminists free run of the Navy. Last week, Danzig, who is one of Barack Obama’s national security advisors used the children’s books about Winnie the Pooh as the foundation for his discussion of our actions in the Middle East. Surely there are better texts on the Middle East than Pooh. Then again, this may be the change that we can believe in. While it certainly may be change, I really don’t want to believe it.

6. Race Card. Barack Obama, fresh out of airspeed and ideas, tossed out the race card last weekend, warning his supporters of racial smears and attacks from his opponents on the right. Well, that didn’t take very long. We have long expected that he would hide behind his color for the duration of the campaign. Few expected that it would start so early and so often. The basic message seems to be that if you don’t vote for Obama, you are a racist. If you criticize him or any of his ideas, you are a racist. If you question the radicals he has been hanging around for the last few decades, you are a racist. If you question the motives of his pastor, his wife, or any of his supporters, you are a racist. An aside: This is a pretty good rant. Someone ought to do a version of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You must be a redneck” string of jokes on this. The only way to fight this sort of thing is to laugh at it – and a series of “you must be a racist” jokes would be a hoot and an incredibly powerful way to ridicule Obama’s attempt to shield himself and his cronies from criticism. Of course if the only thing you can do regarding Obama is sing his praises, sing hosannas, and vote for him, things are going to get pretty boring on the campaign trail. I think he started this too early. He needed to wait until September to play this card. It is only June and we are going to get really tired of this garbage by say the Fourth of July.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.