The New York Times Admits It: MoveOn Got That Discount

That’s one thing, that you can say about the New York Times; you only have to hit the gray lady upside the head with a 2*4, five or six hundred times over the period of a couple of weeks to get her attention… and that’s being kind. But you’ll never get her to really admit her own biases.

The public editor, Clark Hoyt, now has a column up suggesting that the ad running, as such, was against the written policy of the New York Times.  In other words, he’s saying that the paper broke its own standards to play political favorites. See the kid of fire we’ve got to hold your feet to to get you to admit what everyone else already knew?

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”

Ignoring, of course, that what he calls the cottage industry, is the American people, and that the Times has in fact established that reputation of being a bastion of the liberal media all by its lonesome…. Hoyt goes on to whitewash the whole affair, blaming lower echelon, again.

Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications for The Times, said, “We made a mistake.” She said the advertising representative failed to make it clear that for that rate The Times could not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the understanding that the ad would run then. She added, “That was contrary to our policies.”

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times and chairman of its parent company, declined to name the salesperson or to say whether disciplinary action would be taken.

The kind of denials that we’re seeing here, strikes me as being of the kind with that of Dan rather and CBS, as regards the falsified documents that CBS tried to steal the election for the Democrats with.  It strikes me is the same kind of dissembling that occurs when officials from Columbia university were pressed on the question of why they allow the Iranian president to come on their stage and spew his particular brand of hatred, and yet they won’t allow ROTC on campus.  And so on.

Sorry, New York Times, your excuses have been noted and are herewith summarily dismissed.  They don’t wash with the facts, including that of your long history of left-leaning. Funny how you don’t seem to remember an incident which was reported in your own paper. Was it really so long ago?

Your constantly quoted edict of how news organizations shouldn’t choose sides, is something else where you’ve broken policy.  Repeatedly.  You’ve chosen sides.  America was not the side you chose to be on. As such, don’t expect Americans to be sympathetic to your plight.

Addendum: (Bit)

He who doesn’t need the links goes for the throat:

 “This also leaves some of those who defended the Times’ discounted rate by claiming that the critics didn’t understand the ad business in an awkward position.” But of course, we’re all part of that “cottage industry that loves to bash The Times.”

Heh.

Looking through my mailbox this morning, it has become clear to me why the internet is slower than it should be…

• Dear Bank of America Customer…. (I’m not, now, nor have I ever been a Bank of America customer)
• A big Dick is no longer a dream (Well, I’ve never had a problem, there)
• Number # Canadian pills (Don’t need any, thanks)
• Are You Confident in Bed? (I dunno, I’m not sure…ask my wife)
• Slots, Roulette, Poker, Blackjack...(Hmmm… maybe I can win enough to pay for better spam filters?)
• Buy this stock! (Can’t afford it, my money’s being spent on spam filters)
• Interested Products! (What are they interested IN, past my wallet?)
• Confirm your online banking information. (Do people still fall for that one?)
• Longer, harder….(What, my work day?)
• Wells Fargo Security Measures! (With an address of course that comes up on a server in Hong Kong.)
• Right Behind you! (Selling Viagara… I’m not going to ask what they were thinking tying that phrase to this subject)
• Please, do it for the children…(No, thanks… doing it was how we GOT the children)
• My name is Edward Moore QC.Principal partner Edward Moore & AssociatesLondon UK and i was compelled by my late client’s request to contact you on a matter of great financial reward.My client late Hassan zahrul(Malaysian by Birth) ,an Industrialist and Real Estate Guru died recentlyleaving a vast wealth in your name as his “Next of Kin”. (Ya know, it’s good when people value the classics)

Now, personally, I’m using Thunderbird, behind my mail servers, each of which has spam control running… and these are just a small sample of the 200 or so mail notes I get from obvious spammers each day. (One of the drawbacks to running a website, I suppose). Thunderbird, it should be noted, has some of the best and most adaptable spam filtering in the business.

Just for laughs, let’s assume that I’m only getting half of the spam that is sent me, because of the filtering and running both the server level, and at my client level.  That would mean, that just the addresses within the two domains that I receive mail from, are pulling something on the order of 400 mail messages per day, which are Spam related.  Since I receive perhaps four or five mail messages a day that I really care about, including feedback from BitsBlog readers, that puts the signal/noise ratio at about 1/100.

Forget that I have the expense of running a seperate box that is specifically designed to eliminate all of this nonsense, and for what it is, it does a fair job.  Can you imagine the poor buzzards who are not running such utils?

Obviously, I’m not the only one receiving that kind of ratio.  Some have a better signal to noise ratio, some do not.  But regardless of whether or not the spam filters at the receiving end are picking up the problems and deleting them, the Internet backbone is carrying all that crap.  I can’t imagine, but that’s not become a serious problem in terms of overall Internet performance.
Look at it this way; to achieve a set level of performance, Internet designers have to over design by a certain level, to accommodate the spam noise level on the net. Can you imagine how that isn’t costing us money?

The legalities involved, are long, and complex, and in the end, inconsequential.  So too are the many commercial attempts to stop spammers by way of software, and whatnot. Despite many laws, we are still stuck with it.  The reasons are simple enough; I am often enough said in this venue that actually solving a problem it is counterproductive for a politician.  Once the problem is actually solved, they don’t have that problem to run on as a platform anymore.  The problem with the commercial concerns is of a kind; they can’t make a buck off a problem that no longer exists.

And so it goes.

Some interesting reading.

http://spam.abuse.net/

Bloody vikings.

For quite a while, conservatives have embraced an annoying strategy — trawl through liberal comments sections in the hopes of finding intemperate remarks. The right then takes these comments to “prove” that the left is made up of unhinged radicals.

The practice has always been rather self-defeating. In fact, about a year ago, Kevin Drum came up with a sensible maxim: “If you’re forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you’ve pretty much made exactly the opposite point.” Eventually, the practice was even given a name: “Nutpicking.”

Actually, no, Steve Benen… It’s called Nut KICKING… And it’s made infinitely easier by virtue of how frequently the left lets its true nature slip through.   That Republican candidates are adopting the practice (A little late, in my view) makes you nervous seems obvious.  The reasons why are, as well.

You’re feeling exposed, huh?

I haven’t said much about this business in Jena, save taking Jesse Jackson to task for his response, and standing aghast once again at how quickly the black poverty  industry can spring into action when something like this pops up.

But since the occurrence has attained nationwide attention, I’ve had the opportunity to look at the situation very closely.  I’ve had the opportunity to come to some initial conclusions.

It turns out that there is a black U.S. attorney, a guy by the name of Don Washington, who has investigated this case and he’s concluded that the attack on Barker had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the “noose hanging ” incident of something like three months before.  That incident and two other off campus incidents were connected to the situation by people wanting to drum up some sympathy for the “Jena 6.”

There was in fact no “schoolyard fight” as Al Sharpton has sold wildly proclaimed this; the victim, Justin Barker, was called cocked from behind and knocked unconscious and then summarily stomped on by large six black athletes.

The person who is currently in the slam for this assault, was already on probation for assault when he was accused of participating in the attack on Barker.

Oh, there’s something else here too.  Until this incident, Michael Bell’s father was an absentee father, living in Dallas.  He suddenly appeared on the scene only after Bell faced attempted murder charges.  And who was it who supported Michael Belle, prior to that incident , and despite the earlier criminal charges allowed him to continue in his football career?  Why it was the same community, which the usual suspects are charging with “racism”, now.

In short, this was not Selma.  This was not the mid sixties.  This most certainly was not white on black racism.  Rather, it was the reverse.  It was a number of people looking for something other than the perpetrator to blame.  this was not even a racial issue, until it was made so, by people looking for a scapegoat to get Michael Bell out of problems that he caused himself with his own actions.

One of the sources for all this information, is Jason Whitlock, who writes for the Kansas City Star. 

You will, of course, want to go there and RTWT.

• The day is already longer than usual… We’ve got another cat admitted at the vet… a serious respiratory infection.  After losing Ray just a few weeks ago, this I didn’t need… to say nothing of the bills involved. (Sigh)
• James Joyner points out that Microsoft has made an XP “Downgrade” available to people who wanna buy new machine but would rather keep XP rather than “upgrade” to Vista. James goes on to point out that some products aren’t better simply because their new, they’re merely different.  Different, in the world of machines, is often as not, not a good thing to be.  Personally, I’m still running a few 2000 machines along with a couple XP’s. I have no plans whatever to upgrade to vista, anytime soon.  Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of retooling my computer system every year in half, because some yahoo decides they need an income source.
• The approval rating for Congress, according to Zogby, stands at 11%.  the president has an approval rating at the moment of 30%.  An interesting way of looking at that would be that 2/3rds more American approve of the President, than they do of Congress…. and guess who’s running Congress?
• Boortz points out that there is a good deal of research that suggests we’ve had global warming for some time, now… 55 million years ago, in fact.  The cause? Methane from wetlands. Boortz observes that the simple solution would be to dry up the wetlands and build stuff there. I guess we know how that’s gonna go over, huh? It does seem to raise an interesting question, however; we have many studies that show we actually have more trees on the planet now than we did in the time of Christopher Columbus.  Assuming that’s true, would it also stand to reason that we also have more in the way of wetlands, which in turn leads to the methane production which in turn leads to global warming?
• Dizzy Girl is moving again.  Didn’t we just do this a while ago?
• Venlet is still missing. Perhaps he’s helping Genie and her hubby move, huh?
• Chuck Simmins has another article up on the Terrorist Death Watch
• Our forces in Iraq continue to kill and arrest Iranian forces, trying to overturn the Iraqi government.
• I’ve automated the Centcom News Releases… when Centcom sends ’em to me, you’ll see them here in 24hors or so.
• Speaking of things military, I see that despite pressure, Columbia isn’t going to cancel the Iranian president’s speech.  So there you have it, my friends; they will be an ROTC from campus, but will not a known terrorist, who is in part directly responsible for the deaths of many of our troops.  I guess that answers the question, whether are not they’re taking sides in the matter.  And, which.  The release sickening part of this, is the amount of tax money that goes into the place.

In a mind boggling move which defies common sense and all logic, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has ordered the state Department of Motor Vehicles to issue driver licenses to illegal aliens.

Nina Bernstien, New York Times, has the sordid detail:

New York State, home to more than 500,000 illegal immigrants, will issue driver’s licenses without regard to immigration status under a policy change announced yesterday by Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Evidently Spitzer forgot that illegal aliens are not New York State citizens and are not entitled to state services.

COALITION FORCES ARREST IRANIAN QUDS FORCE OFFICER

Posted: 20 Sep 2007 06:27 AM GMT-06:00

COALITION FORCES ARREST IRANIAN QUDS FORCE OFFICER

Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on “Bewitched” and Bernice on “Designing Women,” has died. She was 81.Ghostley died Friday at her home in Studio City after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, longtime friend Jim Pinkston said.

Hmm.  She did other things, too, of course. The Graduate, for one.  The Flim-Flam man, for another.  Grease, for another…  and so on.

McQ has a few pertinent thoughts about Al-Qaida. eight points to an article on the strategy page about how kind as possible problems, their leadership, and their future.  Perhaps it would be worth going and reading the article, before reading my comments.  This, because as usual, my comments take things in a slightly different direction from the way they were originally intended.

I wondered, how sound the tactics being suggested were. I figure that one measure of how sounds that tactics are, is to see if they apply someplace else without much modification.  Turns out they do.

I am struck by the similarities between the Democrat party, and al-Qaida, at least insofar as how we should be dealing with each. As an example, let’s try a passage from these suggestions from McQ:

That sort of purging and internal struggle for leadership is obviously destructive and something we’d want to encourage. Keeping them on the defensive in their self-declared “central front” is a good way of doing that. We’ve also seen polls which say that the Muslim world is less and less enamored of AQ and their tactics. That’s a good thing and indicates that somehow they’re seeing the side of AQ we want seen and have come to understand that they aren’t a group, regardless of their proclaimed religious affiliation, with which they wish to be associated.

Let’s try an edit, just for laughs, and see how well it fits:

That sort of purging and internal struggle for leadership is obviously destructive and something we’d want to encourage. Keeping them on the defensive in their self-declared “central front” is a good way of doing that. We’ve also seen polls which say that the Mainstream Democrat is less and less enamored of the far left and their tactics. That’s a good thing and indicates that somehow they’re seeing the side of the far left we want seen and have come to understand that they aren’t a group, regardless of their proclaimed religious affiliation, with which they wish to be associated.

Hmm.
Let’s try again and see if it holds up:

When things begin to go badly all organizations suffer from internal friction and fractures. And when the organization is mostly built on the cult of personality, it is especially problematic. Anyone who tries to argue that AQ is “winning” just hasn’t been paying attention. It was AQ that declared Iraq the central front in their war against the West (and specifically the US). That means, given their declaration, that they have to deliver a victory there. At the moment, they’re hard pressed to even pull off a decent ambush or car bombing. And it is public knowledge that the vast majority of Iraqis reject them explicitly and are working specifically for their defeat there.

and the edit:

When things begin to go badly all organizations suffer from internal friction and fractures. And when the organization is mostly built on the cult of personality, it is especially problematic. Anyone who tries to argue that the Democrats are “winning” just hasn’t been paying attention. It was the Democrats that declared Iraq the central front in their war against Bushy McHitler. That means, given their declaration, that they have to deliver a victory there. At the moment, they’re hard pressed to even pull off a decent ambush in COngress… and their polls are slipping badly as a result of those failures.. And it is public knowledge that the vast majority of Americans reject them explicitly and are working specifically for their defeat there.

Guess it still works.

Observation; Apparently, the tactics are sound, regardless of which situation they are applied to.
(Snicker)

Ken Blackwell at Townhall.com

Hillary Clinton has done the last thing I expected, and she’ll regret it in the end.In a previous column, I predicted that Senator Clinton would have a “Sister Souljah” moment. It would be similar to the politically defining moment that energized her husband’s first presidential campaign. In 1992, Bill Clinton attacked a young female rapper for her thoughtless and socially destructive comments.

This sent the message he was a moderate Southerner, not a creature of the far left. I thought Senator Clinton would create a similar episode and send the same message.

I was wrong. Last week was her perfect chance, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

MoveOn.org took out an ad that will go down in history as one of the most despicable and over-the-top ever. This full-page ad called General Petraeus, “General Betray Us.”

Both Rudy Giuliani and John McCain were out in front condemning the ad, with Mr. Giuliani even taking out his own ad to defend General Petraeus. Both men seized the opportunity to stand up for the decorated combat soldier now leading our troops in war.

Encouragingly, the condemnation from many Democrats was almost as strong as from Republicans. On the left, General Wesley Clark said that General Petraeus would never give a report he did not truly believe. Senator John Kerry, and even San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi, criticized the ad.

But Senator Clinton refused to condemn the ad. Instead, she said on camera to General Petraeus that his sworn testimony called for “the willing suspension of disbelief.”

Well, can you imagine why that might be?

Look, regardless of the idea that she slips into a southern accent at need, she’s not a southerner.  She was born and raised in Chicago .   (Which may also explain her corrupt brand of fundraising, no?)

Now, Ken, in light of that distinction,  can you imagine why the left is making so much noise about trying to win the presidency without winning the south?  Given the quality of the individuals that are running, they know they can’t do WIN in the south.  Particularly, as regards the current frontrunner for the Democrat nod.  So, to have any chance at all, they’ve GOT to try to concoct some way of winning without the south.

McQ, (who really has to start putting up Project Hero stuff, again, ) passes along a story of heroism from Bill’s excellent INDC Journal.

Bill Ardolino, who blogs at INDC Journal and is presently embedded in Iraq, doesn’t ask for much in the way of links. But he has asked that his story about Marine 1LT Travis Manion be linked if possible. Of course it’s possible. And it is a story well worth reading.

Indeed; Go RTWT.

The Hsu scandal coninues to show itself to be as deep and as wide as I expected it to be.

 Suitably Flip points out that the current Dean of the New School, and former Clinton administration hack Fred Hochberg is hip deep in this scandal.

Yes, Fred Hochberg, a dean at the school where Hsu served as a trustee, one of Hsu’s fellow HillRaisers, CEO of the company that officially bundled at least one of Hsu’s direct contributions as recently as this summer, and the apparent architect of Hsu’s favored candidate slate, was installed as one of the country’s senior-most federal policymakers by Bill Clinton.

Hochberg was tapped to become the SBA’s deputy adminstrator in 1998 and some time thereafter became the acting administrator.  The SBA administrator is not a current Cabinet-level position.  Clinton elevated the position to Cabinet rank, a move Bush has undone.  Not long before his executive appointment, Hochberg had enjoyed another kind of Presidential access, as a member of Clinton’s bescandaled “White House Coffee” guest list.

Personally, my reading is that the mechanisms which are now being revealed by way of the Hsu scandal, have been in place for many years prior to Hsu’s being involved with them.  Like, about the time of the Clinton’s ascending to power.  No shock, then that their names should be associated with current efforts to make Bill Clinton the First Lady.

“We don’t choose to lose“

John McCain

We do get caught up in the day to day… Far more than is good for us, I think.  Both Martin, and Billy, send us reminders of that, today.  Personally, I owe thanks to both of them, for the reminder.

This has been a bastard of a summer for us on several fronts.  Frankly, financially speaking, this summer has been more of a problem than we anticipated.  The camping schedule has been Blotto, we had a favorite cat up and die from cancer on us, the others have had health concerns, my younger kid now suffers from diabetes, and so on and so on and so on.  After a while, you get to the point where you want a lookup of the sky and say what in the world did I ever do to you?

So wrapped up in all of this BIG stuff that happened… or didn’t… have I have become , over the last several months, that I have neglected the small things. Like the flowers, this year. Because we spent more time at home, they really came out.

The camping trips we did take, were far too short, but we still had special times. The lakeshore is always special to us.

The railfanning trip we took, that ended up being a balloon chase, instead. It wasn’t what we came out for, but we had a good time, anyway.

There’s more, of course… MUCH more. I won’t get into more of them here, just now, though I may share some added photos later.

The reason’s simple: I am reminded of some of the early lessons I had during my radio years, which was never to intrude on someone else’s memories of the song you’re intro-ing. I figure you have your own small memories of this summer drawing to a close.  And the point of the Ramble , tonight, is to get you to remember them.

Hillary Clinton claims she’s not homosexual.

Heh… Not that there’s anything WRONG with that….

During an interview with The Advocate to be published next week, Sean Kennedy, the gay magazine’s news and features editor, asked the presidential candidate, “How do you respond to the occasional rumor that you’re a lesbian?”

“People say a lot of things about me, so I really don’t pay any attention to it,” Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) replied.
“It’s not true, but it is something that I have no control over. People will say what they want to say.”

McQ notes the story and says:

American politics. At least he didn’t ask “boxers or briefs”?

I keep hearing two rumors. One is, the answer is boxers.

The other answer I keep hearing is “commando” and I don’t think it has anything to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Joyner, meanwhile:

For what it’s worth, I guess. I’ve always presumed she was straight but her denial doesn’t provide any meaningful additional evidence. As Larry Craig and others have shown, it’s possible for a high profile public figure to be gay, pretend to be straight, and even to deny being gay despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Countdown to condemnation from gay activist groups for not loudly proclaiming that she’d be proud to be gay 5, 4, 3 . . .

They’re both correct, of course. I expect that she knows, and the interviewer does, as well, that such an admission would be a kiss of death for both her presidential possibilities, and for her erstwhile husband’s legacy. Which in turn would also hurt her own chances.

Addendum: (David L ) Well this story solves one question, is Mrs. Clinton smart.  The Clinton are well renowned as liars, by both the left and the right.  Thus, Mrs. Clinton’s denial has no credibility.  The Clintons simply do not tell the truth when it comes to sex.

Mrs. Clinton’s denial does make her sexuality, or lack thereof, an open issue for discussion.  Would the MSM ever ask, Fred, Rudy or Mitt about their sexuality?