My Kitchen Table

It's only just starting financially ...

This is an entirely sobering look -- and a pretty accurate one I think -- at the financial crisis. Even pro-business sites like CNBC are carrying articles predicting that within a year, EVERY financial institution in the U.S. will be nationalized.

And as John Quiggin points out at Crooked Timber, it's going to be a long, bumpy, scary ride ...

If even part of this plays out as it seems likely to, the financial system that emerges from the crisis will be radically different from the one that went in: massively smaller, with far fewer institutions and products, and tightly regulated where it isn’t under outright public ownership.

Old Town News and my adventures in online media

It was a cold late September day in Harvard Square in 1991, and I was feeling pretty frustrated. I had just come out of Out of Town News after a frustrated search for Canadian news. While I was in Boston for a year on a Nieman fellowship, my country was locked in yet another constitutional crisis. (I think it was the Charlottetown Accords this time.) We use to call them "neverendums." But could I find any news about it in any American or international paper? Not a chance. There were a few copies of the Globe and Mail and the Montral Gazette, but they were all several days old and I wanted to know what was happening NOW.

I have a very clear memory of standing outside the building and thinking to myself "I wish I could just read it on my computer."

A few months later I returned to Canada, was introduced to the Internet by my sister, got my first account (Halifax Nova Scotia has the country's first commercial ISP), tooled around on Gopher for a few months and lynx, and then in early 2003 dowbloaded my first copy of the Mosiac browser and I knew that nothing would ever be the same for journalism. By early in 2004 I had convinced my boss to let me put my paper, the Halifax Daily News, on the web - the first online newspaper in Canada.

But whenever I think about how I got lead to the Internet, I always think of that day outside Out of Town News.

The Economist labels the GOP "the stupid party"

The Economist lays into the Republican party, accusing it of a lack of meaningful ideas about how to deal with domestic and global problems, and labelling it "the stupid party."

Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda ...

Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders. They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin’s apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.

And it's only going to get worse if the Limbaughs and Hannitys continue to push the party in a this "stupid" direction.

Out of Town News out of time

If you want a clear sign that the age of print is over, than you'll find it in this bit of news. Out of Town News, long a symbol of Harvard Square is going out of business. The Boston Globe reports that the chain owners of the store that has been selling news in the Square since the 50s says no one wants to read crushed ink on dead trees anymore.

The owner, now a chain vendor, has notified Cambridge officials that it does not plan to renew its lease Jan. 31, saying the public appetite for printed news has all but vanished.

"It is not the profitable location for us that it once was," said Laura Samuels, spokeswoman for the owner, Hudson News of East Rutherford, N.J.

For years you could pick up a copy of almost every important newspaper in the world in Out of Town News. These days you just turn on your computer and surf there on the web. The Christian Science Monitor, PC Mag, now Out of Town News ... the writing, as they say, is on the wall for printed newspapers and magazines.

Sarah Palin explains it all

Here is Sarah with Matt Lauer.

Why right-wing talk show hosts are in trouble

Rush Limbaugh is in trouble. So is Laura Ingraham. Ditto Michael Savage. And Hugh Hewitt. And on TV, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. And a whole host of other right-wing talk show hosts.

But it's not because of anything to do with the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting and conservative fears that an Obama administration will require equal time for opposing views.

Don't get me wrong. Rush Limbaugh will always have a large audience. Michael Savage will be on the radio for a while yet, spewing his hatred, homophobia and misogyny. Bill O'Reilly will continue to confound logic by totally ignoring or twisting facts in order to make a point. Same with the others. They'll be making millions for decades. So they'll be happy.

No, right-wing radio is in trouble because it lost the center. Instead of creating opinion leaders, it will be more like voices off in the distance trying to get you to pay attention, when in fact they are just annoying you.

They will still have large audiences comprised of dittoheads. But the real reason these shows had so much power at one time was that they reached beyond these ideological adherents to pull independents and white, center-right Democrats from the center towards their view point. But if this last election showed anything, it's that bombast, wild charges and innuendo don't seem to pack the punch they once did. Right-wing talk radio threw every bogeyman and trumped-up charge it could at Obama -- some even accused him of being the anti-Christ -- and the folks in the center ignored it. Instead, they decided to give Obama a chance. (Perhaps they remembered that these right-wing talk show hosts were the same people who backed President Bush, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, weapons of mass destruction, a precipitous decline in America's image around the world, just to name a few things.)

People didn't listen.

The decline of the right-wing talk radio host is just one symptom of the swing in the pendulum of American politics. The long conservative era is coming to a close. The hot new names in pundit broadcasting are Keith Obermann and Rachel Meadows. Their turn to dominate the spotlight now.

Now, this doesn't mean that all conservative voices are going to disappear, or lose all influence. Far from it. We'll need thoughtful conservative voices to remind us that Obama is, after all, just a human being and one that makes mistakes. But their criticisms are going to have to have substance, because Americans have shown that flinging crap like monkeys in a zoo won't get the job done.

And here's a point that shows how things have changed. During a stop in Greensboro, North Carolina Sarah Palin made her controversial remarks about being with "real Americans" in "pro-America areas of this great nation." And what she mean of course was white, religious, conservative America. Talk radio used her remark, and other similar remarks made by a variety of conservative politicians and pundits, to attack Obama as not being a "real" American.

Didn't work.

Greensboro, where Palin made her "real American" remarks, went for Obama.

The Far-right's real nightmare

I have friends out here in rural Virginia who think this is really going to happen:

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

The God gap in the GOP

Interesting piece from The New York Daily News on the God gap in the GOP:

The Republican rift over Palin is hardly the first sign that the party's religious and establishment wings are drifting further apart. President Bush's 2005 nomination of evangelical White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court thrilled the Christian Right - Focus on the Family's James Dobson devoted a handful of his radio shows to promoting her - before many of the same establishment figures now lamenting Palin torpedoed Miers' nomination.

Many less fanatical religious conservatives are also aware of the problem created by zealots like Dobson. The future of religious conservatism in the GOP needs to be in the hands of guys like Rick Warren, not James Dobson.

The real Sarah Palin

Well, it's started. And on Fox News of all places.

She didn't know what countries were in NAFTA.

She didn't know that Africa was a continent. (She thought it was a country.)

She refused to prepare for her interview with Katie Couric.

She had repeated temper tantrums.

Again, this is all coming from Fox News. Not CNN, not MSNBC.

And they say that even more is coming out over the next few days.

What did McCain think he was doing?

Home, at last

I wasn't born in this country. I spent my first 38 years in Canada. I became a citizen in 2000 because I can't live somewhere and not vote. But I've never felt like an "American." I've always felt more like a member of a club that I could leave anytime I wanted to. I've always believed in America and what it could be, but I always felt disappointed. American never matched up to my personal image of "the shining city on the hill." It was just easier to consider myself a Canadian who became an American for legal reasons.

Last night was the first time since I lived in the U.S. that I actually felt like an American, like a part of something really important. That I was really proud of MY country. That this country is my home. Last night was a joining of all the things that I've always believe make America exceptional.

Americans don't understand how much people around the world want America to be something special. That's why so many of them often express anger and frustration at us. They know that we are capable of so much more. And that when America that is true to its principles, it really is a beacon of hope to the world.

I'm a 52-year old white male and I can't wait for the next few years. I know I sound like a Pollyanna. But to tell you the truth, I wouldn't trade this feeling for a million bucks.