Tags: david letterman, bill clinton, ann coulter, evil crazy bitches

All-around freak Matthew McConaughey uses his super yoga powers in an attempt to destroy the Death Star and free the galaxy from the cruel yoke of the Imperial Forces. (From a whole bunch of places, via Technorati.)

Tags: matthew mcconaughey, star wars, humor, animation

As I was reading the news about The New York Times on the wire services, The New York Times was reporting about another newspaper trend, front-page advertising, landing on the face of The Wall Street Journal. From Reuters:

The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper steeped in tradition and read by the rich and powerful, is selling advertising space on its front page for the first time in more than half a century.

Starting in the third quarter, the “jewel box” space in the lower right-hand corner of the U.S. newspaper’s front page will be available to advertisers Monday through Saturday, it said on Tuesday.

Jon Fine, of Business Week, had this to say:

I don’t like this idea, but not for anything church-and-state-ish. The Journal’s front page is one of the few places that makes large swaths of print look pretty. I hate to see elegant design get messed up.

Katharine Seeley and Julie Bosman of the Times — which itself runs ads on certain section fronts — got an obligatory tut-tutting quote:

“As a traditionalist, I’m not thrilled by the idea,” said Bob Steele, who specializes in ethics and values at the Poynter Institute, which studies journalism. Front pages, he said, should be reserved for what the collective community considers to be news.

It’s worth remembering whenever journos pull out the wayback machine and hint of longstanding noble traditions that they’re, um, wrong. Insert the usual stuff–yellow journalism and Citizen Hearst; the bare-knuckled tabloid approach that defined American newspapers for decades before a Times-ian ideal of objectivity took root in the mid-20th century.

Tags: newspaper, advertising, front page, hell in a handbasket

Just like so many other newspapers across the country, the venerable New York Times is slimming down its worforce and trimming its page size because of rising newspring prices and market shifting (from the BBC):

Following the lead of many other US dailies, the iconic paper is planning to lop 3 inches (7.5cm) off the width of each double-page spread.

The paper’s publisher, the New York Times Company, said it would also cut 250 jobs by 2008.

The announcement came as the firm reported profits up slightly to $61.3m (£33.5m) from $60.8m a year ago.

The company, which also publishes the Boston Globe, said that the changes would save it about $42m a year – although it would require investment of about $150m.

Papers across the US have switched to narrower pages in order to save money as newsprint costs have soared.

Tags: newspaper, new york times, layoffs

By Frank Rich / The New York Times

As American foreign policy lies in ruins from Pyongyang to Baghdad to Beirut, its epitaph is already being written in Washington.

Last week’s Time cover, “The End of Cowboy Diplomacy,” lays out the conventional wisdom: the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, upended by chaos in Iraq and the nuclear intransigence of North Korea and Iran, is now officially kaput.

In its stead, a sadder but more patient White House, under the sway of Condi Rice, is embracing the fine art of multilateral diplomacy and dumping the “bring ’em on” gun-slinging that got the world into this jam.

The only flaw in this narrative — a big one — is that it understates the administration’s failure by assuming that President Bush actually had a grand, if misguided, vision in the first place. Would that this were so.

(more…)

From the BBC:

US beer magnate Peter Coors has had his licence revoked for driving under the influence of alcohol in the western state of Colorado.

A hearing ruled that Mr. Coors had failed to heed a stop sign in May and was driving while intoxicated.

Mr Coors, 59, admitted driving after consuming beer at a wedding.

“I made a mistake,” Mr. Coors said in a statement. “For years, I’ve advocated the responsible use of our company’s products.”

He added: “That’s still my message, and our company’s message. I’m sorry I didn’t follow it myself.”

Tags: coors, drunk, driving, moron

(From The Boston Globe)

By John W. Dean

CONTEMPORARY CONSERVATISM and its influence on the Republican Party was, until recently, a mystery to me. The practitioners’ bludgeoning style of politics, their self-serving manipulation of the political processes, and their policies that focus narrowly on perceived self-interest — none of this struck me as based on anything related to traditional conservatism. Rather, truth be told, today’s so-called conservatives are quite radical.

For more than 40 years I have considered myself a “Goldwater conservative,” and am thoroughly familiar with the movement’s canon. But I can find nothing conservative about the Bush/Cheney White House, which has created a Nixon “imperial presidency” on steroids, while acting as if being tutored by the best and brightest of the Cosa Nostra.

What true conservative calls for packing the courts to politicize the federal judiciary to the degree that it is now possible to determine the outcome of cases by looking at the prior politics of judges? Where is the conservative precedent for the monocratic leadership style that conservative Republicans imposed on the US House when they took control in 1994, a style that seeks primarily to perfect fund-raising skills while outsourcing the writing of legislation to special interests and freezing Democrats out of the legislative process?

(more…)

Tags: korea, bush, nukes

From The Rocky Mountain News:

Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay, who was convicted of helping perpetuate one of the most sprawling business frauds in U.S. history, has died. He was 64.

Nicknamed ”Kenny Boy” by President Bush, Lay led Enron’s meteoric rise from a staid natural gas pipeline company formed by a 1985 merger to an energy and trading conglomerate that reached No. 7 on the Fortune 500 in 2000 and claimed $101 billion in annual revenues.

He was convicted May 25 along with former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling of defrauding investors and employees by repeatedly lying about Enron’s financial strength in the months before the company plummeted into bankruptcy protection in December 2001. Lay was also convicted in a separate non-jury trial of bank fraud and making false statements to banks, charges related to his personal finances. He was scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 11.

Tags: ken lay, enron, weasel, heart attack

A 160-pound wonder from Japan set a new record by devouring a sickening 53 3/4 frankfurters in 12 minutes to win the annual Independence Day hot dog eating competition on Coney Island.
The feat earned Takeru Kobayashi, 27, his sixth straight title in the event, held at the original Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand on Brooklyn’s seashore.

He broke his own record of 53 1/2 hot dogs, set at the same competition two years ago.

From Yahoo!

Tags: kobayashi, hot sog, frankfurter, competitive, eating