It's Now Or Never, CNN

I slag the state of modern "journalism" with abandon most of the time, but I'll give a bit of credit to the AP for stepping up its game recently.

The take-away from this, though, has to be Ron Fournier's comment that the AP's new emphasis on fact-checking (what used to be known in media circles as "doing your god-damned job") has brought about an increase in traffic.

Campbell Brown is also leaving her CNN prime time show, and the network entirely, because she doesn't feel she can complete with her hyper-partisan competitors Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann. As she said:

I owe it to myself to get out of the way, so that CNN can try something else. CNN will have to figure out what that is.

Hmm. Think CNN will take the hint, ditch their pathetic attempt to claim a middle ground by appeasing both parties equally, and just try being journalists for a change?

Or will they just revive some bastard clone of Crossfire and continue perfecting their ability to parrot Dem and Pub talking points?

One of the Classic Blunders

You don't get involved in a land war in Asia, you don't go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, you don't put The Doctor in a trap, and you never underestimate a McMahon.

If Linda McMahon beats Blumenthal in the Connecticut GOP primary, she will win that Senate seat. Book it.

Throw 'Em In the Gulf

I'm serious. Every banker, hedge fund manager, and financial services whiz in the country needs to be rounded up, flown over the Gulf of Mexico and asked to justify their existence in one minute or less. Those who can't, should be dropped into the oily mess.

What prompted today's ire? Oh, just the systematic defrauding of municipal governments:

They rigged bids on auctions for so-called guaranteed investment contracts, known as GICs, according to a Justice Department list that was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24 and then put under seal. Those contracts hold tens of billions of taxpayer money.

The workings of the conspiracy -- which stretched from California to Pennsylvania and included more than 200 deals involving about 160 state agencies, local governments and non- profits -- can be pieced together from the Justice Department’s indictment of CDR, civil lawsuits by governments around the country, e-mails obtained by Bloomberg News and interviews with current and former bankers and public officials.

“The whole investment process was rigged across the board,” said Charlie Anderson, who retired in 2007 as head of field operations for the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt bond division. “It was so commonplace that people talked about it on the phones of their employers and ignored the fact that they were being recorded.”

Moody's In the SEC's Crosshairs

With any luck, something might actually come from this:

The Moody’s Corporation said in a regulatory filing that its credit rating unit could face enforcement action from the Securities and Exchange Commission for reportedly misleading regulators in a 2007 application to remain a nationally recognized rating agency.

...

According to Moody’s filing, the S.E.C. claimed the Moody’s description of its procedures for determining credit ratings was ”false and misleading” because of Moody’s own finding that a policy had been violated internally.

Shorter version: Moody's method of rating mortgage-backed securities was basically "ask Goldman Sachs what they wanted it to be", rather than the algorithms and models they claimed to use.

Kiss Louisiana Goodbye

BP is getting so desperate for ideas on how to stop oil from continuing to gush into the Gulf that they're resorting to stealing plot twists from Seinfeld episodes:

BP Plc plans to have a second dome in place within three days to try and contain oil that’s been leaking from a Gulf of Mexico well since last month, the company’s chief executive officer said.

The structure will be smaller than the containment system that failed to work last week, Tony Hayward told reporters at a press conference today in Houston. The second dome may be operating by the end of the week, Kent Wells, senior vice president of exploration and production, said during the press conference.

A first effort to capture oil near the seafloor and direct it to the surface failed on May 8. The company is also within two weeks of an attempt to shoot tire pieces, golf balls and other rubber items into the top of the well to plug it, Hayward said.

When that doesn't work, further backup plans include a giant wine cork, a device to create a 'counter-geyser' fueled by Diet Coke and Mentos, and breeding a new species of sea slug that eats oil and poops out gold.

Philosophical Question

If you play 11-dimensional chess in the woods, but no one is around to see it, can you ever really declare checkmate?

I ask this because the latest Obama appointment held up by a Republican Senator (in this case, Tom Coburn) is... Dana Perino.

Former Dubya press secretary Dana Perino.

Could anything more perfectly encapsulate the Party of No meme? The Pubs are so disinterested in governing, and so committed to pure obstruction for political gain, that they won't even allow a vote on the appointment of a prominent former member of the Bush administration to a relatively minor post.

Of course it won't matter, if no one hears about it. If only we had some sort of profession dedicated to informing the public about such things.

(h/t BJ)

God Dammit

I was going to title this post 'We Are All Easy-E Now', but Cole beat me to the damn reference.

The video in question, which has gone semi-viral already across the political blogosphere (and on all bands of the spectrum, thankfully), was originally posted by Radley Balko over at Reason as a follow-up to an earlier piece he did on the raid before the video was available.

And yeah, the remarkable thing is not that it happened -- it happens every day in America -- but that it was caught on video at all, and that the video made it out to the public.

And yeah, whenever I hear about something like this, it makes me want to hide inside David Baerwald's Triage album, specifically the song Nobody.

This is why, when Glenn Beck or some Tea Party speaker use the word tyranny with regard to something like health care reform, they are so transparently full of shit.

Los Suns

It being Cinco de Mayo and all, Phoenix will be busting out their rarely-seen 'Los Suns' jerseys for their Game 2 matchup against the Spurs. Suns owner Robert Sarver though explicitly ties the decision to Arizona's idiotic new law.

Sarver's no Commie either. He plays both sides with his donations, as you'd expect a rich guy who made his money in banking to do, but he did drop $70 grand on McCain for President in 2008, and tossed some money McConnell and Cantor's way too.

Football Season Already?

Just finished a mock NFL auction that will be used in the Rotowire season preview mag. $100 cap, 2 RB/3 WR/1 Flex, nothing tricky in the 'scoring' (not that we'll play it out). Here's the squad I ended up with:

QB - Eli Manning, NYG $3
RB - Maurice Jones-Drew, Jac $31
RB - LeSean McCoy, Phi $13
WR - DeSean Jackson, Phi $18
WR - Michael Crabtree, SF $11
WR - Dwayne Bowe, KC $6
R/W- LenDale White, Sea $1
TE - Dallas Clark, Ind $10
K - Nick Folk, NYJ $1
DEF- Dallas $1
RES- Donald Brown, Ind $3
RES- Mark Sanchez, NYJ $1
RES- Early Doucet, Ari $1

Some thoughts:

- tight end is ridiculously deep. The bottom dropped out of the market after the top few guys (Clark, Gates and Vernon Davis) and had I waited, I could have had a guy like Brent Celek for half the price. Oh well.
- normally I do a better job of staggering my bye weeks, but given that this was a mock I was more worried about price enforcement than a playable roster, given the limited bench spots.
- I got basically no one I was targeting in my head (Frank Gore, Shonn Greene, Jahvid Best, Calvin Johnson, Sidney Rice...) going into the auction.I could have had Kevin Kolb at the same price I got Eli for, but by that time I already had Jackson and McCoy, and buying another Eagle seemed silly. I'll assume that means I did a good job of being agnostic, and just took value when it presented itself.

I Declare It... Corny!

I can't believe how bad the ads for Robin Hood make it look.

The Sheriff is a wimp with no charisma. Russell Crowe looks not so much bad-ass as tired and grumpy. The ads make the conflict look like a series of pitched battles, rather than desperate guerrilla warfare. I mean, they've got Maid Marian done up in full armor, for pity's sake! And the dialogue... yikes. "For this, I declare them... outlaws!"

Gaah. Count me out.