Saturday, June 24, 2006

Bring Me The Head of Alberto Gonzales

Clarice Feldman provides an excellent rationale in support of William Lalor's call for AG Gonzales to indict the New York Times.

I support the call for indictment but I do have reservations concerning doing so prior to the elections. Not so much in that it might hurt Republican's chances to retain control, for I do not consider that issue in doubt, but that it might improve the financial well being of the NYT prior to years end by generating additional readership. Junior Sulzberger's incompetence in business management is destroying the Times at a very good clip and it would be a shame to do anything to slow down the destruction.

34 comments:

Kelvin said...

ANYTHING to get more readers for the NYT !!! If he has done wrong, let the indictment go ahead. Even a krazy monkey down under in NEW ZEALAND knows that.

buddy larsen said...

I dunno--I almost hate to give NYTimes the satisfaction of a "NYTimes Law" going on the books. Far better to ostracize the low-down dirty dogs and let 'em go bust in the American marketplace.

Unknown said...

I was talking to a friend about this earlier today and he said the Times is doing this so that they can blame Bush when they go broke.

I don't know if it is the right thing to do or not, it almost seems as if that is what they want.

buddy larsen said...

It's just a crying shame for Pinch and his current bunch of pathologically oblivious nowhere-men to so sully a magnificent old American brand. Even if it does have a checkered record (Duranty, et al), the typeface is nice, and the venue in America's City is priceless.

cf said...

To indict, you must first have a grand jury and there's no time like the present to start..If they bitch we can remind them that they folded for Fitz and they in affect created the precedent..Then we can put Miller on Oprah talking about how the NYT which is mewling for sympathy jettisoned her..etc etc..(Is her Book out yet? Maybe she can call it Victim of the Press Patriarchy )

Rick Ballard said...

Clarice,

Can the DoJ empanel a special grand jury specifically dedicated to the matter without also appointing a special prosecutor? If they do go after the NYT I really don't want to see another special prosecutor - just a nice run of the mill regular prosecutor coming to the end of his career.

ambisinistral said...

Dragging them into court allows them to wrap themselves in the first Amendment and the american Flag. I think a boycott of NY Times advertisers is a much better strategy.

This is something I would like to see start picking up steam in the blogsphere. We need to track down their main advertisers and start pressuring them to remove ads from the NYTs.

buddy larsen said...

I like that. I'll participate.

cf said...

Rick, any prosecutor can empanel a gj..typically it is how all federal criminal cases begin.No special prosecutors again, puh-leeze.

In fact, with so many incidents, the AG might want to set up a special DoJ task force to deal with these matters..

truepeers said...

I met a woman from Oregon today while demonstrating against the World "Peace" Forum and she swore, by golly, that the NYT is a mouthpiece of the Bush admin - they held back on some story about WMD - and she would not allow any notion to the contrary to sully her steadfast ears. We're living in crazy years.

buddy larsen said...

'Peers, she's probably convening the coven right now to tell them about you, the fascist hitlerite robot she met today, who complained about the NYTimes being an organ of the hard left, can ya bleeve it.

I'm beginning to long for the pre-telegraph days, when news moved at a horse's pace--and only someone who could tell one end of the horse from the other had the ability to transmit it.

Anonymous said...

Buddy:

Hey, I used to know my dots and dashes. Dad and I built a working telegraph when I was maybe 10 or so that would actually communicate clear across the house. Not quite the transatlantic cable, but good enough.

When I got my Lionel train, I had a dream (which I still remember in great detail) that we rigged up outdoor track connecting all the houses in the neighborhood to send things back and forth.

I think Morse code combined with model railroad package deliveries is the way to go.

buddy larsen said...

you may be right--it sure worked fine for Toyota, they never have YET had to bring out the Real Ota.

truepeers said...

One end of a horse, and the right end of whatever you needed to get past the highwaymen!

Dag got called a fascisti but maybe I was all-too confusing to get the knee-jerk response. It may be, in any case, that New York is like a wild card: all things NYC can be made to fit your personal myth. One English lady who couldn't figure for the life of her why people were picketing a "Peace!" forum cried out at me: "but I love Jewish people! I lived in New York for ten years!" (Hell I probably couldn't last ten weeks there!) Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the people who stopped to talk with me were American Jews and I don't think I convinced any that they were in bad company, what with the shockingly biased program and the Palestinian group using a rock-throwing child as their emblem and all... It makes you wonder if the NYT is in the lead making so many American Jews into devout brothers and sisters of their enemies or rather if the NYT is simply following the crowd deep into its delusion.

chuck said...

...and only someone who could tell one end of the horse from the other had the ability to transmit it.

Dunno. Some horses are plenty smart and can find their own way even when the rider is dressed in motley, sitting bass ackwards, and waving a bladder on a stick. Which is to say there is no way to keep a Times reporter from spreading the news.

Anonymous said...

truepeers:

I met a woman from Oregon today...

Well, see, there you go.

However, once you cross the Ecotopian border at the summit of the Cascades, things become quite rational.

Rick Ballard said...

So Cantwell is finished?

Luther said...

"if the NYT is simply following the crowd deep into its delusion"

Personally, I think that the most likely scenario. Despicable as it is, I think the NYT and its reporters believe that they are meeting the needs of, what they think, the majority of this country desires. And when placed against the results of the last Presidential election, they are not far off. Treason and sedition never enter into their mind. It is all a "I coulda been a contender" mindset. They just do not understand the concept of "lose", "lost" or better luck next time. "Almost" is good enough for them to cast themselves as Saviour's of America.

Anonymous said...

Rick:

Don't know yet. The Seattleites who reflexively vote for her will keep on doing so. But I hear little anecdotal things, straws in the wind, liberal types saying things like "Mike McGavick does make sense". And the polls show him gaining bit by bit. Of course all the MSM is entirely in the Cantwell camp. But the poll differences keep narrowing. So it is too early to tell, but the portents look good.

And certainly the long-term demographics favor the conservatives, since Seattle itself (kind of like San Francisco) has experienced only very moderate population growth, while the redder portions of the state are boooming.

And Dino Rossi has very good numbers over Gregoire. In February Strategic Vision conducted a poll including the following question:

If the Election for Governor in 2008 was between the Democrat Christine Gregoire and the Republican, Dino Rossi, whom would you vote for?
Dino Rossi 55%
Christine Gregoire 35%
Undecided 10%

Anonymous said...

buddy:

It is to laugh.

Actually, some of their buses (the Coaster?) a model not imported here are decent sized. And I think they are planning some big fuel cell jobbies in cooperation with Hino, for use in Tokyo. And Nissan builds some topheavy monsters that only need a pagoda bridge and a few Hinomarus floating from the yardarm to look rather like some other large objects from that nation's past . . .

/pedantry

buddy larsen said...

The biggest thing they ever built was the monster WWII battleship Yamato, almost as big as our Nimitz class carriers, the largest ships ever. With the US invasion fleet off Okinawa in 1945, the Yamato was sent against it with only enough fuel to get there, not back. She was new, only a few years old. Our carriers planes sank her before she could engage the landings. The Japanese knew the mission was suicde, but sent Yamato out anyway. Sure glad those folks are on our side now.

Anonymous said...

Buddy:

You gotta read a new book about the battle of Midway - Shattered Sword by Johnathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. Lengthy chapters about differences in Japanese versus American carrier design and damage control. The typical Japanese flight deck was a pit with elevators positioned on the centerline of the ship. British-inspired. Among other things, it meant that you didn't have the elevators on the sides like the American ships, with a large open space leading in to the hangar deck, which meant you didn't have a way for an accompanying destroyer to pour in water and foam to fight a fire, or any way for the crew to push bombs and aircraft over the side when things got hot. And the Japanese armored decks meant they were topheavy, which accounts for the unique profiles - the tiny islands and the latticework struts supporting the flight decks at the bows and sterns, where buoyancy is less. And only a few officers were trained in damage control, which was universal on our ships.

So they were handicapped from the start.

Still, some aspects of the stylistic design continuity are interesting. You look at the profiles of the Kongo and the other Aegis cruisers of the JMSDF and in the bridge they are still building them high and narrow, just like the old days. You can always tell a Brit or a French - or an Italian ("la bella figura" - always) and it seems a Japanese ship, too.

buddy larsen said...

I never get enough of reading about the Battle of Midway. The way that series of actions unfolded, the sublime sacrificial courage of those fliers out over that open ocean, the luck of the Dauntless squadron arriving on the heels of the sacrifice of Torpedo 8 (the lone survivor of Torpedo 8 watching it all while bobbing in the sea amid the enemy fleet), the winning the battle--and turning the war--by flaming the enemy carriers in a 4 minute dive-bombing attack...well, if you made it up, wrote it in a novel, not a soul would buy it, it's literally too fantastic, too otherworldly.

And I agree--you can see a national character in the sillouettes of its warships (Italians esp).

Anonymous said...

Buddy:

Another wonderful story in the book is of perhaps a machinist's mate on I believe the Yorktown, anyway, some enlisted guy, who figured out a way to purge the hangar deck fuel lines of aviation gasoline and then fill them with inert CO2. And he just walked up to the captain and explained his brainstorm and they implemented it that very day.

Impossible to imagine in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Anyway, it is a great book, telling the story mainly from the Japanese side.

buddy larsen said...

Oh, I wrote it down--it's on my list. Here's one I'm reading now, a big 700 pg detail monster, "Fire in the Sky--the Air War in the South Pacific" by Eric M. Bergerud (Westview Press). Lots of research. How things looked and felt in 1942-43 at the time--that is, before anyone knew what '44 and '45 held in store. Tough hombres out there at the end of a mighty slim string! USN actually had no right to expect to win in Guadalcanal and the huge sea battles fought in support of it. But they went in anyway, the crazy bastids.

Anonymous said...

Buddy:

And I wrote down yours too.

At some point soon, I'll have to crawl beneath the house to add some floor joists under the bookcases . . .

buddy larsen said...

There's a whole section down at Barnes & Noble on the best way to do that!

Anonymous said...

So in the end it comes down to concrete with lots of rebar.

But then, there is a section on that, too, prolly.

buddy larsen said...

I need to find a good book on how to stop buying books.

Anonymous said...

OK, you and me. We co-author a series of ten how-to books.

With accompanying workbooks, full of exercises.

buddy larsen said...

LOL--I volunteer to write the first one: "How to Get Someone Else to Write Nine Books"--

Anonymous said...

No way. Your title is a ten volume work in itself which must be written by the person who was hit by the inspiration.

After your ten comes my ten, which I'm splitting with you. I'll draw the pictures. You do the writing.

Here is the next on the list by the way:

Sea of Gray : The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah

buddy larsen said...

Arrrgh! Anudder book!

MeaninglessHotAir said...

I put 'em all on my Amazon list, and Terrye's two recommendations too.

Thanks.