WingRight

Is this the last presidential election that the major newspapers and broadcast networks can swing a big part of the electorate one way or the other? I think so.

Major newspapers and the formerly big-three broadcast news programs are experiencing a rapidly-accelerating decline in readers and viewers. Since the early 1990s, the proportion of Americans saying they read a newspaper on a typical day has declined by about 40%; the proportion that regularly watches nightly network news has fallen by half.

Newspapers

• During the six months ending on March 31, 2008, The New York Times Sunday edition is lost 9.2% of its circulation, declining to 1,476,400.  Daily circulation was down 3.8% to 1,077,256.
• During the same six month period, Washington Post daily circulation decreased 3.5 percent to 673,180 and Sunday dropped 4.3 percent to 890,163.
• For that six months, the LA Times lost more than 40,000 daily copies.  Daily circulation there was down 5.1 percent to 773,884.  Sunday declined 6.0 percent to 1,101,981.
• In Boston, the Globe’s daily circulation fell 8.3 percent to 350,605. Sunday declined 6.4 percent to 525,959.
• Advertising revenue at The New York Times, Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune and other Times newspapers slipped 16 percent combined in August 2008 compared with August 2007, according to the company’s most recent financial reports.    June and July showed 18% year over year declines.
• Classified ads for the Times group newspapers fell 30 percent overall in August, 2008, led by a 45 percent drop in help wanted ads and a 30 percent decline in real estate. Retail ads fell 8.1 percent and national ads dropped 13 percent.
• In the last five years, the New York Times’ stock price has declined from $46 to about $15 per share
• By way of comparison, today The Drudge Report claims 33,505,741 visits in the past 24 hours, 768,368,013 visits in the past 31 dsys and and 6,611,832,432 visits in the past year.

Broadcast Networks

• Substantially more people regularly get news online than regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts (37% vs. 29%)
• The big nightly news shows on ABC, NBC and CBS have a collective audience of more than 23 million viewers.
• Rush Limbaugh alone has 22 milion listeners.
• Audiences for ABC’s “World News” and NBC’s “Nightly News” average 7.6 million and 8.29 million viewers, respectively.  “CBS Evening News” brings up the rear with about 5.8 million viewers a night.
• The network news audience is half of what it was 40 years ago and in 2007 dropped 5 percent from the previous year.
• There’s a reason for all those denture cream commercials on the network news.  The average age of the viewers of the three networks is 61.

If the US economy goes into a recession, the MSM is going to get hit badly.  The newspapers and network news staffs, already reduced in numbers, will be hacked even more.  Quality of all types of coverage will decline.

On the other hand, by 2012, internet-based news will have grown in scope and quality.  Many more people will have high-speed access and the speed of that high-speed access will also increase.  High-quality internet video will be accessible to 90% of the population.  All video screens in many homes will be networked, so watching HD-quality YouTube videos or vlogs on the big-screen television will be routine.

Today’s leading bloggers will be established brand names, trusted by their audiences.  Rush will have an online and over-the-air audience that is 3-4 times larger than the network news broadcasts (which will be viewed primarily in nursing homes by people who drool a lot).

I think we will look back at this election and the cocooning of Obama by the MSM as the last time that the media elite had any real influence on the outcome.

Tags: Liberal Media by Publius
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UPDATE - This video has gotten a of attention across the web. I can’t figure out where it started. See:

Hot Air
Kim Jong Il of North Korea would be proud, Obama now has indoctrinated kids singing for hope and change
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Hyscience

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Sheer Creepiness « Obi’s Sister

Tags: Climate Change, Obama by Publius
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Very Interesting.

More and more documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an organization founded by William Ayers, serious and unrepentant terrorist bomber, show that Barack Obama was Ayers’ hand-picked president and board chairman.

Obama has denied any serious relationship with Ayers and has expressly denied that Ayers chose him for the Chicago Annenberg post.

Steve Diamond has more documents today - Global Labor and Politics: Obama/Ayers Update: Letters Show Bill Ayers’ Role in Annenberg Challenge Board Appointments

Tags: Obama Problems by Publius
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Following is a video of a 2004 congressional hearing focused on warnings by OHEA, the regulator of Fannie Mae, that the practices of Fannie Mae are setting the entity up for a giant crash. Additionally, OHEA warns about fraudulent accounting practices at Fannie Mae under the leadership of Franklin Raines.

The Democrats on the committee repeatedly say that Fannie is just fine and that the regulator is imagining problems where none exist. Franklin Raines was, of course, forced out of Fannie because of accounting fraud in the millions of dollars.

The Fannie/Freddie push for sub-prime mortgages is the single biggest cause of the current credit meltdown. Of course, the Democrats are blaming a failure of regulation when, as the video clearly demonstrates, they were trying to crucify the regulator who was warning them of serious problems with Fannie.

Tags: Credit Meltdown, Liberal Hypocrisy by Publius
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Excellent article entitled Subversives for Obama at The Spectator today.

The conclusion:

Barack Obama appears to sit on a nexus between Marxist revolutionary activists, unreprentant former terrorists, Black Power racists, Chicago mobsters – oh, and a Saudi who is trying to buy up America. If you were to turn up at US immigration control with a background of such associates, it’s a fair bet they wouldn’t let you off the air-bridge. Yet this man may well become President of the US! If any other candidate had had merely a fleeting relationship with William Ayers, his candidacy would have been terminated before it was even articulated — let alone what we now know about Obama’s key role in Ayers’s CAC and its funding of radical groups; let alone the fact that Obama had been mentored during his formative years by a Communist Party plant; let alone his work for organisations modelled on the seditious philosophy of Saul Alinsky; let alone his two-decade membership of a Black Power church; let alone his relationship with fraudster Tony Reszko.

And yet despite all of this, virtually no-one in the mainstream media is asking any questions. Has there ever been a more staggering, surreal and scary race to the White House?

Tags: Liberal Fascism, Obama Problems by Publius
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FOB - Friends of Barack - Part 2

Here’s a prediction, the relationship that Barack Obama had with 60’s domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is going to swamp the Obama campaign between now and the election.

Obama and the campaign have assiduously attempted to minimize the Ayers connection, most notably with Obama’s “a guy in my neighborhood” characterization of his relationship with Ayers.

First, a little background on Ayers. He was a founder of the Weather Undgerground (not completely unbiased description here), an anti-war, anti-capitalism group. The Weather Underground was an extremely violent, most notably successfully bombing the United States Capital (something Al Quaeda tried, but couldn’t pull off), conducting an armed robbery of a Brinks armored truck in which the driver and two policement were killed and blowing up a Greenwich Village townhouse that it had converted into a bomb facory. Several members of the Weather Underground are still in prison for charges related to the Brinks case. Rudy Guilani was the US Attorney in charge of many of these prosecutions.

[Read more →]

Tags: Ayers, Liberal Fascism, Obama Problems by Publius
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By their tax returns ye shall know them.

When it comes to managing their money, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are two peas in a pod.

Neither has any savings or investments other than their home and each is a tightwad when it comes to charitable giving.

Obama’s 2004 joint tax return shows $207,647 in income and not a cent in interest, capital gain or dividend income. His 2004 U.S. Senate disclosures reported not a single family bank or checking account with a balance of $1000 or more.

Biden’s 2004 joint return shows $234,271 in income and an impressive $129 in interest income with no dividends or capital gains.

Lest you think that this is an odd year, both Obama and Biden reported income of more than $220,000 per year in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

So these two guys are going to skillfully manage the US economy out of a serious financial crisis, dealing with issues involving complex credit instruments when they lived paycheck to paycheck and didn’t managed to accumulate any significant savings or investments when they were earning over 5 times the income of the average American household? (Median household income in 2004 was $43,389)

Maybe Obama and Biden didn’t have money for savings or investment because, being good liberals, they were dedicating a lot of their income to helping the poor. Forget that. In 2004, Obama’s tax return shows $2500 in charitable contributions (about 1%) and Biden shows $380 in charitable contributions.

HT to Hank Adler for an excellent analysis of the tax returns.

Tags: Biden, Liberal Hypocrisy, Obama, Taxes by Publius
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In psychology, psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism in which one attributes one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions to others. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.

See Psychological Projection for more detail.

In today’s New York Times, Roger Cohen has an op-ed entitled Palin’s American Exception which is a classic example of liberal psychological projection.

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Tags: Liberal Hysteria, Palin by Publius
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Following a series of cuts in the marginal tax rate that began in the Reagan era, tax rates were further decreased when the Republicans took over congress in 1994 and still further decreased with the Bush II cuts. The result of these cuts is that a very small portion of Americans pay a very large portion of the total income taxes. Unacknowledged by most Democrats, the Bush tax cuts removed millions of people from the income tax rolls.

In 2006, the top 1% of all taxpayers (those who earn above $388,806) paid 40% of all income taxes. This top 1% earned 22% of all reported income, so, even with lower top rates, the income tax system is strongly progressive.

The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71% of all income taxes. It is clear that a small group of people support the large majority of all federal government expenditures.

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Tags: Economy, Liberal "Solutions", Taxes by Publius
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Here is a look at the Crystal Ball at 2:00 PM EDT:

Brain Drain

Over the weekend, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley negotiated a deal with the Fed to be converted to bank holding companies. While this may have been a necessary step to continue the existence of the two organizations, it will have some significant long-term impacts on the financial industry.

Big banks are necessary and beneficial institutions, but your typical I-banker is not going to be happy working in such an organization. For one thing, Goldman the bank won’t pay bonuses like Goldman the I-bank. Secondly, because of significant regulatory drag, a bank can’t rock and roll like an I-bank. One more factor is that a high percentage of recently-minted MBA’s go to work for I-banks with the intention of generating a couple of lines for their résumé, then heading elsewhere, so a lot of young talent was primed to leave even before things got touch.

[Read more →]

Tags: Economy, Politics, Taxes by Publius
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