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12 Nov 2010 22:17

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Politics: Keith Olbermann, Pat Sajak have war of words, vowels, consonants

  • It’s not often we have Pat Sajak on the blog twice in a week – he’s a nice guy and all, but we’re not regular watchers of “Wheel of Fortune” by a long shot. But this clip right here is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it’s one of Keith Olbermann’s first network television appearances, and he’s on Pat Sajak’s, lost, lamented talk show with his ‘stache talking about sports. Second, Sajak (a conservative) pulled the clip out of the vault, apologizing for being the first to give Keith a wide audience. Keith, however, denies this, claiming that he had been on CNN years earlier, and had been the subject of segments on The Today Show and the CBS Evening News before that. Finally, no matter what happened, this clip is great. Keith was really funny back in the day, even though he was more wacky newscaster than second coming of Edward R. Murrow. (Pat Sajak’s show did give Rush Limbaugh his first wide audience on television.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 20:55

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Biz: Newsweek’s Daily Beast merger: Two money-losers, one with momentum

  • $10M the amount The Daily Beast is on track to lose this year; it’s relatively new, so that’s not bad
  • $20M the amount Newsweek is on track to lose; it’s been bleeding for a long freaking time
  • $1 the amount Sidney Harman spent to buy Newsweek; he also took on all its debt source
  • » Is this a deal just to get Tina Brown? It wouldn’t be unprecedented. See, Brown, a longtime magazine editor for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, has the chops to help make Newsweek a success again, and Barry Diller’s Daily Beast, while growing at a nice clip (5 million online readers a month, which means that nowadays, it’s probably read about as widely as Newsweek, which sells 1.6 million print copies – significantly down from just a year ago), probably needs a print component to anchor its Web efforts and ensure profitability. And plus, NBC Universal bought Barry Diller’s USA Network back in 2001 basically to get Diller.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 20:18

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Music: Protip to Microsoft: Don’t use bands to market your stuff, ever

  • marketing Gorillaz, Damon Albarn’s ultra-popular cartoon-meets-music collective, has a marketing campaign with Microsoft for Internet Explorer 9.
  • muse Despite this, Albarn himself has been singing the praises of the iPad, to the point where he says he recorded an album on the iPad. Not good for Microsoft. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 19:40

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U.S.: The U.S. Postal Service: We’re about to run out of money, guys

  • $8.5
    billion     the amount of money the Postal Service lost in its just-ended fiscal year, which is way too much
  • next
    year (!!!)     when the still-needed service will run out of money without an upswing or Congressional help (yikes) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 16:26

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U.S.: Protests growing against TSA’s ultra-invasive full-body scans

  • First off: Clever shirts, Despair. Second, are we finally reaching a point where regular people are starting to agree with our stance on the TSA? It appears that on November 24th, there’s going to be a protest against those super-invasive full-body scans. People will skip out on the process or not travel at all. That’s right, a TSA protest called “National Opt Out Day.” On the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the entire year. Which is brilliant, but will piss off thousands of travelers in the process by making lines longer. Because the TSA is useless. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 16:03

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Politics: HuffPo: Bush ganked “Decision Points” passages from other books

  • Not to pick on George W. Bush today, what with our whole death penalty thing in the previous post, but The Huffington Post is making some pretty crazy claims that George W. Bush has ripped off quotes and passages from other memoirs from Bush staffers, along with the books Bob Woodward wrote about the Bush presidency. Who knows if that’s true or not, or even if it’s a big deal (we think it’s hard to remember exact quotes with that many years of separation), but some of the quotes are awful close, to the point where it’d be weird for them to be remembered exactly the same way by multiple people. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 15:45

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U.S.: Did George W. Bush allow the execution of an innocent man?

  • I have no doubt that if President Bush had known about the request to do a DNA test of the hair he would have issued a 30-day stay in this case and Jones would not have been executed.
  • Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck • Arguing that George W. Bush, while still governor of Texas, let death row inmate Claude Jones face execution in 2000, despite the existence of DNA evidence which proved he was innocent. The Innocence Project revealed today that Jones’ DNA was not found at the crime scene of the liquor store where the 1989 murder of Allen Hilzendager. While hair at the crime scene was initially linked to Jones after the crime took place, it wasn’t actually his, and even though Jones asked for DNA testing on the strand of hair, it wasn’t enough to force a stay of execution. No other physical evidence linked Jones to the scene.  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

12 Nov 2010 15:25

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U.S.: Supreme Court: “Don’t ask” stays put in the military for now

  • sigh … “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was blocked in a lower court, only to be temporarily allowed again by a federal appeals court.
  • … sigh It was appealed to the Supreme Court, where they kept the ban intact while the lower courts duke it out. Wait it out, kids. source
  • » What happens next: The policy will stay in place until at least mid-March, when a federal appeals court decides what happens next. A lot suggests it won’t hold water – for example, a Defense Department panel recently found that the policy could be reversed with little to no negative effect on troops, which goes against most arguments being made by opponents of “don’t ask.”
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 12:02

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World: Post-elections, Myanmar might set Aung San Suu Kyi (sorta) free

Now that the election’s over and the power is firmly in the military junta’s hands, long-house-arrested Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi may finally get (some) freedom. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 Nov 2010 11:09

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Politics: LOL: Media Matters wins lunch with Rupert Murdoch in auction

  • $86,000 to ruin some rich guy’s meal source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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