interesting things
Private-equity firm Carlyle and Getty Images management have formed a partnership to acquire stock-photo agency Getty Images from Hellman & Friedman for $3.3 billion.
via WSJ.com: What's News US http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444375104577590812532175058.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us
Critics are too mean. Except when they’re too nice. They stand in the way of art. Except when they’re irrelevant. A critic makes the case for the critic.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/magazine/a-critic-makes-the-case-for-critics.html
Back in November of 2003, the White House was worried. So were House Republican leaders.
At issue: President George W. Bush had to use all of his political clout to get enough House Republicans to pass his proposed Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Many House Republicans balked at the cost, and some had to be confronted on the floor to get them to vote for the largest entitlement expansion since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. One House member said she hid out, avoiding making contact with House leaders. At one point, the vote was stopped, and the clock and even the C-SPAN cameras were frozen for three hours so GOP leaders could round up the votes. One of the votes for the package was Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Despite a shaky start, the benefit, also called Medicare Part D, proved immensely popular—and expensive. According to a report by the then-Comptroller General David Walker, the benefit contained $8 trillion in unfunded liabilities. (Current estimates have it more in the $7 trillion range.)
The prescription-drug benefit may be the most pertinent example, because so many Republicans balked at its price tag and its expansion of the federal role in health care. (Many Democrats liked the idea of a drug benefit for seniors but did not like the restrictions on the federal government negotiating prices for pharmaceuticals that might have kept the cost of drugs down, as it has for, say, Veterans Affairs.) Any number of notable Republicans bucked the president, including some who ran for president this year, such as Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Rick Santorum, then the junior senator from Pennsylvania.
via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/is-ryan-really-a-fiscal-hawk–20120815
They make up only a sliver of the electorate, roughly 4 to 7 percent. We’re talking 1 million to 2 million people at the most, in just a handful of critical states. They tend to be younger, female, and clueless about politics.
They are the undecided. Better yet, they could be the deciders—the voters who pick the winner of the presidential election in an increasingly polarized environment. Some polls suggest there are fewer fence-sitters in 2012 than in recent elections, yet this race will see record-setting spending of at least $2.5 billion by the campaigns, national parties, and other political groups. Â
Much of what the campaigns do is geared toward getting the attention of these indifferent and far-flung individuals. Obama and soon-to-be Republican nominee Mitt Romney will spend nearly all of their time in less than a dozen states that are truly up for grabs. Their television ads are carefully designed to win over the wishy-washy and the disengaged. Watch Obama calmly appealing to undecided voters in one oft-running ad: “Sometimes politics can seem very small. But the choice you face couldn’t be bigger.”
Facebook executive Carolyn Everson has set in motion plans to convince the world’s biggest brands that ads on the social network can indeed work—and to quantify how so.
via WSJ.com: What's News US http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444246904577575351814047494.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us
Though President Obama frequently cites his role in overseeing the operation that killed Osama bin Laden as one of his biggest successes, he usually makes it clear that he didn’t pull an Air Force One and take out the terrorist leader on his own. However, Reuters reports that a group of former U.S. intelligence and Special Forces operatives is launching a media campaign attacking President Obama for taking credit for bin Laden’s death and allegedly leaking classified information. “Mr. President, you did not kill Osama bin Laden, America did. The work that the American military has done killed Osama bin Laden. You did not,” says Navy SEAL Ben Smith in a short film set to be released on Wednesday. “As a citizen, it is my civic duty to tell the president to stop leaking information to the enemy … It will get Americans killed.”
A spokesman for the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc. says the group has about $1 million and is hoping to raise more with the release of its 22-minute documentary about the Obama administration’s alleged leaks (which Reuters describes as “spy-movie style”). It’s also planning to air TV ads in several swing states.
Like the group behind the swift boat ads that criticized John Kerry, the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund Inc. claims it’s nonpartisan, though it seems singularly focused on criticizing President Obama. (The FEC eventually fined Swift Boat Veterans for Truth after finding it was mainly working against Kerry.) Scott Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, said the group is merely a “watchdog organization,” but added that the Obama administration “has certainly leaked more than others.” Another spokesman, former CIA case officer Fred Rustmann, said the White House has been leaking classified information “to help this guy get re-elected, at the expense of peoples’ lives…. We want to see that they don’t do this again.” The White House insists that it didn’t leak any information, and two federal prosecutors are currently investigating.
The Obama campaign responded that no one in the group has the authority to comment on these national security issues, and highlighted recent comments from Admiral Bill McRaven, commander of the raid, about Obama’s close involvement in the operation. The campaign added, “it’s clear they’ve resorted to making things up for purely political reasons.” Conveniently, there’s no way of knowing exactly who “they” are. The group has set itself up as a 501(c)(4) — a group that’s supposed to be aimed at educating the public rather than getting candidates elected or defeated — and thus it isn’t required to disclose the names of its donors.
Read more posts by Margaret Hartmann
Filed Under:
campaign 2012
,attack ads
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,osama bin killed
via Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/08/group-says-obama-exaggerated-bin-laden-role.html
Mixed martial arts fighter and reality TV show host Jason “Mayhem” Miller was arrested Monday on suspicion of burglary after deputies found him dozing naked on a couch in an Orange County church.
via L.A. Times – California | Local News http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/08/mma-fighter-jason-mayhem-miller-found-naked-in-oc-church-arrested.html
Obama Buys Beers for state fair voters; Refuses guy with Romney sign…
via DrudgeSiren.com – All Stories http://www.drudgesiren.com/allhl.php?id=146597&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+drudgesiren%2FoGpG+%28DrudgeSiren.com+-+All+Stories%29#h146597
At the Republican National Convention, he’ll introduce him before his speech accepting the nomination.
via POLITICO – TOP Stories http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79700.html
The Times-Picayune reporter who shared with Romenesko readers the letter she wrote to her bosses in early July (“I can’t just keep my mouth shut and pretend everything is okay or that it doesn’t matterâ€) has left the paper.
“Today was my last day,†Kari Dequine Harden writes in an email sent late Sunday. “Gonna try to move forward and find something to believe in again. Not that he gives a rat’s ass, but I decided I would let Steve Newhouse know my reasons for an early departure.â€
Her letter to the Times-Picayune owner is after the jump.
Dear Mr. Newhouse,
Today is the day I jump off of your sinking ship once known proudly as The Times-Picayune.
I thought I’d be able to go down with it, but I don’t even recognize the ship anymore. Without being held hostage by severance, benefits, or much of a paycheck, I’m drowning for no good reason.
I have no desire to work for bosses who treat their hardworking, dedicated, and irreplaceable employees in the unforgivable manner I have witnessed firsthand over the past three months.
You have betrayed my most esteemed colleagues, my city, my belief in journalism, and my belief in people.
No numbers, statistical trends, academic theories, or self-serving editorials and articles will make me buy the argument that this is the inevitable way of the future. Not here. Not now. Not in this way.
Need I remind you we were profitable? This paper had good years left in it. Great years. Adjustments may have been necessary, I realize, but I will never believe this is all happening because The Times-Picayune could not have survived if you left us alone just as you had done for decades prior.
We would have found a way. And made you a profit the entire time.
Or, there were serious buyers with serious cash who would have taken over. You could have just sold us. But again and again, you refuse. Why? Are you planning on writing us off as a loss? Would that serve your unbridled greed in some sort of inheritance tax scheme? Is our website intentionally horrid?
To have a once respectable, reliable news source taken away so that billionaires can try to squeeze out a few more millions at the expense of a city’s well-being is criminal.
If you do not know what you are taking away, allow me to remind you.
From New Orleans, a city already with odds against, you are taking our historical record. You are taking away a source of news that has been relied upon to document it all–magnificent and mundane–and to hold police and publicly elected officials accountable. This city is worse off for the loss. We will struggle, new sources will emerge and serve the city in positive ways–but do not for a second think that this isn’t a devastating blow to everyone. Competition included.
Some of things we covered were tedious, painful, and marginalized–but important. The present, history, and future of our city are at stake. And in a city facing significant challenges–from ingrained corruption and the highest per-capita murder rate in the country, to environmental armageddon and crumbling infrastructure–we need to read every detail. Every dollar of taxpayer money spent. Every issue. Every day. And to hear it from people who are experienced and have the best interests of the city at heart.
From us, you are not just taking away jobs, you are taking away identities. Purpose. Role in community.
This is not a job that you can leave at the office. We gave up our name, our neck. And we loved our jobs because we believed we genuinely contributed to a more informed, educated, and enlightened society.
From journalism as an industry, you are taking a gem of a newspaper that was respected, read–in print!–and, yes, profitable. Changes may have been in our future, but nothing like this. This paper had soul and heart and traditions and devotion. We were not perfect, and I believe fully in healthy competition, but we were usually decent, often good, and sometimes great. It was a newsroom of an era past, full of characters and quirks and curiosity and gray-haired grouches. There was passion. And humor. Ego, for the most part, was checked at the door.
You have made it abundantly clear that you do not care about quality in journalism. You have made it abundantly clear that you do not care about New Orleans.
But remember that respect from the community–especially ours–is not something you can buy back. (Not that being respected concerns you, as made clear with the single verbal valuation of “noise.â€)
You have made it most definitely clear that you do not care about quality journalism in New Orleans. I predict that within two to three years, three days of print will turn into zero days of print and there will be another massive round of back-stabbing layoffs.
I, for one, will not be buying any more newspapers from you. I will not be visiting your atrocious website.
I am eternally grateful for the experience I have gained in my time with your company, but the company I worked for no longer exists.
Signing out,
Kari Dequine
The Times-Picayune
via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2012/08/13/times-picayune-reporter-jumps-off-the-sinking-ship/
