This links to a piece outlining the development of MSM and its nascent decline.

By the early 1970s, mass media had reached its zenith (if you’ll pardon the pun). Most Americans were getting their news from one of three TV networks’ half-hour nightly broadcasts. With the exception of New York, most big cities had only one or two primary newspapers. And no matter what a modern newspaper’s lineage, by and large its articles, except for local issues, came from global wire services like the Associated Press or Reuters; it took its editorial lead from the New York Times; and it claimed to be impartial (while usually failing miserably).

Up until the Reagan years, Love says, “definitely fewer than one hundred people, and maybe as few as twenty people, actually decided what constituted national news in the United States.” These individuals were principally concentrated within a few square blocks of midtown Manhattan, the middle of which was home to the offices of the New York Times. The aptly nicknamed “Gray Lady” largely shaped the editorial agendas not just of newspapers but of television, as well. As veteran TV news correspondent Bernard Goldberg wrote in his 2003 book Arrogance, “If the New York Times went on strike tomorrow morning, they’d have to cancel the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening newscasts tomorrow night.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad country of Iran has been accused of sneaking weaponry into Iraq to kill US soldiers.

Other advanced Iranian weaponry found in Iraq includes the RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade, 240 mm rockets and armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, Fox said.

Iran has denied U.S. allegations that it is smuggling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, a denial that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired Sunday.

“We don’t need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity,” said Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York Sunday to attend the U.N. General Assembly. “The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests.”

As I’m sure most of you are aware, the University of Columbia has given the okay for Ahmadinejad to give talk on campus. The ideology that leads to this outcome is rooted in tolerance and multiculturalism. The ideology that informs both of these concepts is the notion that all people are basically the same and that if we just understand their perspective we can gain insight that might lead to resolution. Such childish thinking leads to asinine outcomes like giving legitimacy to a holocaust denier thats administration is actively giving support to the killing of our troops.

While the child administrators at Columbia are progressive enough to invite the Iranian president they are not tolerate enough to entertain advocates of strong border control.

The Iranian president was to address students and faculty at a forum only days after Columbia retracted a speaking invitation to the president of the Minuteman Project, a controversial citizens’ group that seeks to secure America’s borders from illegal immigrants, even going so far as to try building a fence along the border with Mexico.

Minuteman founder and president Jim Gilchrist said he feels “sweet and sour” toward Columbia after an invitation to participate in an Oct. 4 talk was taken away last week. Gilchrist appeared at Columbia last year, but his speech was thwarted when students and other opponents stormed the stage as he took the podium.

I would fully support congressional legislation pulling all federal funding out of that university and if I lived in the state I would support state legislators pulling their funding as well.

Nietzsche would mock and deride democracies. For the most part i think he was wrong but on one dimension he would argue that democracy weakens the state is by giving voice to the weak. Its hard not to see a democracy as weak when it’s powerless to stop a childish ideology from bringing an enemy to our shores for the purpose of understanding and tolerance.

Someone vandalized the wikipedia entry on etch-a-sketch. Check out the mechanic section.

Here is his video response to Hillary Clinton’s universal health care.

6 Volt Battery Hack! You’ll Be Amazed! - A funny movie is a click away

I wonder if this is true?

More extensive coverage of the significant reduction in civilian casualties in Iraq. America succeeding in Iraq is just something Americans don’t want to read about it. They are only interested in US failure.

Don Surber makes an observation about returns on investments:

You bought Google at $100 and 3 years later is nearing $600 a share? Big deal. Microsoft has gone up 28-fold over the last 20 years? Yawn. You want to make the big bucks? Rent a congressman. Your return on your investment can be as high as $75 for every dollar invested.

Just ask the good folks at PMA Group, a lobbying firm. They sank $1,333,074 into the campaigns last year of 3 Democratic members of the House defense appropriations subcommittee and walked away with $100.5 million in defense earmarks for PMA clients, Roll Call reported.

Remember it’s the democrats that most often argue for taxes increases to put more money into the hands of legislators. Clearly they don’t intend for this kind of outcome but there is a naivety to think that money secured for infrastructure will not eventually be used for political gains.

To reduce this kind of abuse the most simplest solution is to reduce the money legislator have access to by reducing taxation. Democrats advocate developing a complex set of law regulation and controlling lobbyist behavior rather than simply nipping the problem in the bud.

This post goes into more detail about the turn around in Ramadi. Some argue that the reason MSM does not print much positive news on Iraq is because nobody will read it. I reject this explanation primarily because the reports I’m most likely to read are these posts. If more MSM press were to have positive stories on Iraq I would read them as made evident by the fact I always this guys posts. It’s not hard for me to imagine that many people would happily pay to read a couple of good stories on Iraq mixed in with the bad stories.

MSM reluctance to publish positively on Iraq is most certainly not a matter of turning off readers. Unless of course their readers only want to read…oh well you get the idea anyway.

By they way, this is what its all about.

The literacy class for women and girls may have been cancelled, but the local would-be students wanted me to take pictures of them at their desks. So the classroom was opened and they sat in their seats for staged photos. We had no language in common. It was just obvious, from their beckoning hand gestures, what they wanted me to do. They seemed to be proud that they were learning to read, and that women and girls were allowed to be schooled again now that Al Qaeda is gone.

In The Know: Are America’s Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

A cartoonist in Sweden is stepping up to Al Qaeda.

I have not been following the latest controversy closely but Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks pissed off al-Qaeda by drawing Mohammed as a dog. Hey, change it to a cross, put it in a urinal and you can get a grant from the U.S. government.

This week’s No. 1 in al-Qaeda in Iraq placed a £50,000 bounty on his head. The offer is £75,000 if his throat is cut. Vilks told the Times of London: “I suppose that this makes my art project a bit more serious. It is also good to know how much one is worth.”