Y’all seem to enjoy these, so have at it.
Some possible topics:
- What’s happened to the photography standards at The State? They posted the above photo with a story about strippers complaining they don’t get paid an hourly wage, and I can’t really see anything.
- I’m all for protecting expectant mamas, but do we really need to specifically include pregnant women in our “stand-your-ground” law?
- What to say about Kathleen Sebelius resigning?
Or pick your own danged topics…
Related Posts
Re: Sebilius
Ever since she absolutely botched her interview by Jon Stewart on the early problems with the ACA website, I’ve expected her to be quietly ushered out. Stewart absolutely TRIED to give her every chance to offer up SOME kind of reasonable explanation for the debacle. But she just couldn’t seem to get her thoughts together and left Stewart nearly wordless in disbelief at her performance.
She didn’t do much better in other interview situations…but none that I saw gave her as much leeway to TRY to put a good face on an embarrassing situation as Stewart did.
“Protecting” pregnant shooters is the perfect nexus between guns & religion (or at least social doctrine cloaked as religion). What could possibly be wrong with that?
Since I often take a contrarian view of these pot-boilers, my second thought about this was potentially also opening a can of worms for the pregnant woman. If she can shoot to protect her fetus (as opposed to protecting herself from mortal harm), then can other people attack pregnant women who do something which some/many in society could perceive as being harmful to the fetus – like taking drugs, smoking, driving a car, etc.? The list could be endless really. Just remember not to shoot the woman in the belly as you fire to protect the unborn child…
Mark,
A local woman has been charged with murder because she used drugs during her pregnancy and as a result, the fetus died. This is not the first time a woman has been charged with child endangerment or neglect due to drug use during pregnancy. I suspect smoking will be next since there have been studies linking health problems in children when mom smoked during pregnancy. And, in one other incident that comes to mind, a driver who was dui hit a pregnant woman, she lost the child and the driver was charged with killing the unborn child.
The nexus you mention is not restricted to guns and religion but to anything that would endanger an unborn child, fetus, or whatever description of an unborn ??? one prefers.
Yup, that is a huge part of what the women’s bodies police want to do!
Thank you for the sloganeering.
Seriously, can you not tell the difference between a woman’s body and another body that is completely dependent on her body for nine months?
One of the most bizarre canards of the left is the assertion that people who focus on the welfare of the unborn child are obsessed with a woman’s body. It sounds good to the people who say it, but it’s absurd to me. Just one of the ways that emotion is used instead of reason in this highly emotional issue.
A fetus is not a person.
It’s a corporation!
Only if it’s twins.
When does a “fetus” become a person? The moment of egg fertilization, the moment when the fetus can survive outside the womb, or at the moment of birth? 24 weeks is the low end of the gestation period for survival outside the womb? Is that enough time to become a “person”?
Just wondering.
Birth, or viability, once it can survive on its own.
Sebilius resignation – inevitable. Someone must be thrown under the bus or do it voluntarily at this point. Each day, more and more comes out from a cross section of news sources reporting yet another “dropped shoe” of bad news for ACA. I cannot find fault with Sebilius for resigning. She did her best under very difficult circumstances.
What doesn’t make sense to me is, why now? Sure, maybe last fall when things were looking bad. But days after the president says Obamacare is a success and the debate is over? What this does is change the conversation back from success now to the huge problems of several months ago.
Not a good thing for the administration at this point, even with the president praising Sebelius on her way out. He can praise her all day; this is still going to play as an admission of failure.
I’m still watching “The West Wing” every night when I work out, and the timing of this would have C.J., Toby, Sam and Josh all tearing their hair out. JUST when they were getting the conversation going the right way…
My thinking was like Brad’s, why now, when the flak is down and victory (of sorts) has been proclaimed?
My guess is that between now and the election, some very bad ACA news is inevitable, the administration knows it, and the resignation was forced damage control. Time will tell us.
This was Obama’s “Mission Accomplished”… create whatever statistics are required to claim victory and then try and pretend it’s all going great.
There will be a steady drumbeat of bad news related to Obamcare through the midterms… revised numbers of enrollees, higher numbers of non-paying enrollees, people complaining about huge deductibles, people finding out their doctor isn’t available, long queues at doctors who accept Medicaid, higher costs next fall…
The one thing you can never fix with hardcopy news is that it is old news the moment it hits the doorstep.
Doug you are coming across as the fans of a losing football team. Just face it, Obamacare is signing up millions of people that were not ensured previously. The states that have accepted the Medicaid money have a huge percentage drop in the uninsured; Kentucky for one is down 40%. The Dems are going to go on the offensive this fall and could save the senate from the vile clutches of the Tea Party. And the nation will be saved in spite of the best efforts of the reactionary GOP.
There are still more uninsured today than there were 5 years ago..
How many net new insured are paying for insurance now versus last year? Let’s not include Medicaid recipients who are just getting something for nothing. And let’s also not forget that many of those who are receiving insurance only are doing so because of subsidies paid for by the “rich” who pay an extra tax. Are you thankful for those rich people bud who are able to carry the load for others?
Do you realize how many previously uninsured Americans owe their newly covered status to the Koch brothers? Easily thousands if you consider all the taxes they pay along with the taxes paid by executives of their company.
Why now? Abraham Lincoln waited for a battlefield victory before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. He didn’t want to come across as desperate. With the ACA showing clear signs of success Sebelius felt her exit would not come across as an act of desperation.
No need for a Lincoln distraction, Bud. Time WILL tell.
Yes, Bud, I think you’re right. I had the thought right after posting this — quitting back in the fall would REALLY have hurt the situation. Going out on a higher note is less damaging to the program. E.J. Dionne said much the same on the radio last night.
Probably true. You usually sack field commanders after the battle, not during it.
In the category of “a picture is worth a thousand words” check out the expression on President Obama’s face as he hugs outgoing Secretary Sebelius.
The confirmation hearing for the new HHS Secretary is going to be…interesting.
Noelle Phillips is leaving The State for the Denver Post. Adam Beam already left. Will the last good reporter please turn off the lights when s/he leaves?
If your job relies on creating, editing, distributing, or selling advertising for any media that is on printed paper, you should make sure your resume is up to date and you are also spending your spare time learning new skills.
The End Is Near!
Doug, it’s not about being on paper. Print ads are still more profitable than online, unless something really dramatic happened that I missed. You can tell by the fact that there’s no rush by papers to go paperless, which would save them 40-50 percent of their costs.
The problem is if you are a metro-sized daily news entity dependent on advertising — whether you’re print, TV or radio. Radio news staffs have been nonexistent for some time, TV newsrooms are skimpy, and filled with kids who work cheap.
It’s about the advertising going away, not the medium of delivery.
Noelle says papers are hiring again.
It’s also about scale.
The big metro or statewide daily just can’t muster the revenue to maintain the traditional big newsroom. National publications have a much bigger revenue base and bigger audiences to sell, and are hanging in there. So are weekly and niche papers, with small staffs and low overhead.
I just talked with Charlie Nutt, the new owner of Free Times, this morning. As usual, he’s upbeat; his business is doing well. And that’s been the trend. It’s the medium-sized papers that have been ravaged.
McClatchey (MNI) stock was $71.50 in Apr 2004. Ten years later, it’s at $6.21. which is less than it was four years ago (6.46). I’m guessing they will sell off piece by piece over the next decade to companies who will transition to web based delivery methods.
6,600 employees generate $1.2 billion in revenue. Facebook has 6,300 employees and generates $8 billion in revenue. Sirius XM has one third the employees and generates three times the revenue.
Every single day, fewer and fewer hardcopy newspapers will be sold.
McClatchy over-leveraged to buy lots of local dailies, and when the revenue dropped, it couldn’t meet its payments and remain profitable, hence the stock price being in the cellar.
This is not the cellar. $6.35 (where it’s trading today) is not the cellar.
I’ll tell you where the cellar was. I bought some McClatchy stock at the time of the sale of Knight Ridder. I had about $1,300 worth of KR stock sitting around, and I just sort of rolled it over.
I bought at $39, which I saw as a temporarily depressed price because analysts didn’t like the purchase deal. I was closely watching the way McClatchy was handling the sale, and I thought that in a year or so the analysts would have to admit that it came out OK, and the stock would go up.
The deal closed in June 2006, I believe. That summer, the bottom fell out of the advertising business. Newspapers have never recovered from the summer of 2006.
At one point, as I recall, the price hit 39 cents. Bringing the value of my stock down to $13. Now THAT was the cellar.
If only I had waited to buy then. I would now have more than 20 grand…
Rumor has it that “Mad Magazine”, A Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, is very interested in buying “The State” after Brad acquainted them with many of the zany news items South Carolinians perpetually generate. SC surpass California, New York and Illinois in incredible but true stories (second only to Florida whose papers have wider circulations).
“Mad Magazine” currently advertises and wishes to return to monthly publication. There are no plans to relocate HQ, if ‘The State’ were purchased, but the logo would change from a palmetto tree to the more recognizable A.E. Neuman.
‘The State’s’ former cartoonist, Robert Ariail, would, naturally, be offered Editor-in-chief once Lett goes.
Focus groups have indicated only a few subscribers would actually notice changes.
Nicely played
Had to go down and back to Charleston for a hearing today, so only now getting to point where I can comment.
1. Strippers: The strip club suit seems interesting, and there might be some merit to it, but my first instinct is unfavorable to the plaintiffs’ position.
2. SYG: To me, this is more of a way for pro-life people to get their foot in the door in granting rights to unborn children. If you grant rights of quasi-self defense, the next step is to push against abortion. It’s an pro-life bill, dressed up to look like a gun bill.
3. Sebelius Resignation: I’m confident she’ll get hired as a health insurance consultant/lobbyist and make zillions.
3. I’m sure she already has a golden parachute. We just haven’t seen it deploy yet…
B.C., as an attorney, you have professional insights such as pro-life people “getting their foot in the door in granting rights to unborn children”.
Please share any insights you may gather as to the fringe lobby trying to grant personhood to animals. What do you suppose their hidden agenda would be?
People who want to grant personhood to animals are just confused, bless their hearts.
Also, was that a positive comment about lawyers, or was that sarcasm? 🙂
No sarcasm was intended (by me), but I beleive I detect your robust sense of humor.
Hope you are enjoying this fabulous weekend!
I would like to re-propose Mark’s suggestion of a blog book club that reads Edgar’s South Carolina, A History…..
I’ve got that book lying around somewhere. I use it like a reference guide when I need to look up something SC History related.
I guess if we want to ensure Brad reads a comment, we have to put Steven Davis II in it.
Wow, even putting SDII (PBUH)’s full name in the comment itself apprently gets it modded…
I wonder what happened to my copy. I haven’t been able to find it for years.
That sounds like it could be fun. Maybe I could get Walter to join us for a session…
Awesome!
When I went to call up this comment by Kathryn, this picture came up as the header image. What are the odds?
Pretty good. That one haunts me a lot….
No Kindle version for the Edgar book?
Papers aren’t hiring reporters or editors. They’re hiring “content providers.”
BTW, I once did an interview with a famous stripper and our photog did a magnificent job of shooting her at her job without revealing anything prurient. Nonetheless, the papers managing editor reduced all the photos to mugshots and removed all references to her vocation from the story. Readers had no idea what she actually did for a living.
Wow. So… what was the ostensible point of the piece after that process?
Some editors are candidates for protective restraint.
By the way, I got that phrase — “candidates for protective restraint” — from Stranger in a Strange Land, which I read when Burl and I were seniors at Radford High School. Something Jubal Harshaw said.
Ever since then, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to use it…