I spent most of my adult life – from the age of 19 to the year 2000 – working in professional newsrooms. Not at NBC or ABC, not at the NYT or the WaPo, but in far more proletarian surroundings: the kind of workingman’s newsrooms populated by overworked, underpaid grunts with a soft core of idealism buried beneath many inches of crispy crust, accumulated over many years of near-constant exposure to political and corporate lies – lies propagated by official sources, and their own employers.

I hear and read a lot of criticism of Traditional Media journalists, here and in many other places – on the Web, in print, in person. I won’t deny that some of it is valid; when applied to the ego-besotted careerists preening in New York and inside the Beltway, very valid indeed.

But neither will I deny the essential truth that I wrote to my colleagues as I walked out of the newsroom of The Kansas City Star   for the last time as a professional journalist, eight years ago. I said I was leaving behind a room full of heroes. And I was.

And today, that species of hero is facing extinction. That’s my fucking problem tonight.

As always, the idea here is definitely not to come off as some kind of expert, but rather to stimulate discussion and sharing on some pretty-much non-poilitical topics (although more political tonight than ever before).

Wine: La Vieille Ferme, Cotes du Ventoux Rouge, 2005

As always, the idea here is definitely not to come off as some kind of expert, but rather to stimulate discussion and sharing on some pretty-much (but not entirely) non-poilitical topics.

Wine: B.R. Cohn North Coast silver label Cabernet Sauvignon, 2005

Last Tuesday: Another splurge night. Increased the time and resistance level on my stationary bike workout. And the local Whole Foods Market was contributing 5% of total revenues for the day to Bridging the Gap, a local environmental organization I value and respect. So I bought some top sirloin, served it with some wheat-barley tagliatelle with garlic, olive oil and chives, and some steamed sugar snap peas. And the Cohn.

One day short of a month ago, I decided to launch a weekly diary series. A lot has happened during that month, some of which I have shared with the WYFP community, and see no need to get into again tonight.

Anyway, the second weekly installment is now posted. Again, as I said last time, The idea here is definitely not to come off as some kind of expert, but rather to stimulate discussion and sharing on some pretty-much (but not entirely) non-poilitical topics. If you want to play along, follow to the jump.

 

The people of Kansas City are ready to celebrate. A Canadian company is proposing to build a $375 million aircraft assembly plant in the city that will bring 2,100 good-paying manufacturing jobs.

What's not to like? Well, for starters, it is the weakness of the U.S. dollar that is driving the deal. The manufacturer, Bombardier Aerospace, has a deal in place with the British and Canadian governments to build the plane in Quebec and Northern Ireland. Now Bomardier wants to break that deal and run for a cheaper business climate south of the border. (Yes, that's exactly what Kansas City, Mo. is in this situation -- south of the border. Think about that for a minute.)

But that's just the surface issue. What this development really represents is a milestone on the road to economic Nirvana for multinational corporations: a global labor market in which the cost of labor is essentially equalized and employers can shop globally for the biggest and best taxpayer-funded bribes, with no regard for national borders.

OK, so tonight I celebrated just a bit -- finished a two-day cardiac testing regimen that included taking an IV shot of radioactive isotope and brisk (shall we say) ambling on a treadmill until my heart rate topped 144. All of this coming after two months of almost-daily exercise, almost-daily salads for lunch and other forms of denial and ascetisism following a scan that found "mild to moderate" plaque buildup in my coronary arteries.

So I splurged. Opened a bottle of better-than-jug wine. Grilled some chops and made a (whole-wheat) pasta dish with tomatoes, broccoli, sheep's milk romano and more than a little olive oil and garlic. Listened to one of my iPod playlists as I finsihed off the wine after dinner, and decided to start playing around with a diary series.

The idea here is definitely not to come off as some kind of expert, but rather to stimulate discussion and sharing on some pretty-much (but not entirely) non-poilitical topics. If you want to play along, follow to the jump.

Winger extraordinaire Tony Blankley is leaving his "journalistic" gig as editorial page editor of The Washington Times to become a paid promoter of client interests as an employee of the PR firm Edelman International.

Now that he will be dropping all pretenses of objectivity, as a paid advocate for clients, what is going to happen to his other "journalist" gigs, such as cohosting NPR's "Left, Right and Center" and participating in "The McLaughlin Group"?

Nothing.  

The current issue of Newsweek includes a column by Robert J. Samuelson that aids and abets the commission of a crime. The crime is assault and the victim is Science.

This is not an exercise in clever wordplay. Science plays a fundamental role in modern society. Our lives literally depend on it. To discredit Science is to endanger the practice of medicine, the safety of our food and water, and the technological progress that took us from the Dark Ages to the Space Age in half a millenium.

Sadly, we have come to expect theocrats, religiofascists and political hucksters to play this dangerous game. When nationally recognized award-winning journalists with prominent positions in the Traditional Media do the same, it gives me shudders.

 

They can't run a war, they can't fix a levee, can't evacuate a city with a hurricane bearing down on it with three days' notice; can't build a functional embassy building for $20 billion, even with slave labor.

Now, it seems, the Bush Administration can't even build a federal court house with a functional roof. Even when the building is named for . . .  well, this is just too good NOT to save for the jump . . .

Here he comes chopping and reaping
Hear him laugh at their cheating
And time waits for no one
And it won't wait for me
             -- Jagger/Richards

There was always going to be time.

At the end, when they found the cancer, his sons conferred. "He has to fight this," we agreed. "We need to keep his spirits up. We can’t let him quit."

And so the last time I spoke with him, on the telephone across 1,500 miles, I cracked jokes. They had started him on steroid therapy to prep him for the radiation and/or chemotherapy that everyone, even his doctors, thought he would soon undergo. They’d have to run scans first, see how extensive it was. At 81, they probably wouldn’t cure him, but maybe they’d buy him some time.

A county judge in Missouri, in an unprecedented ruling, has blocked two Kansas City newspapers from publishing revelations that a Kansas-based power utility had failed to comply with Clean Air Act pollution-control regulations.

The judge's order even compelled The Kansas City Star and the alternative weekly The Pitch to remove articles about the violation from their Web sites. An attorney for The Star called the order to take down the web articles a clear constitutional violation, but the newspaper complied.

As of 8:25 a.m. CST today, there was still a version of the article on The Pitch web site. Here is a portion of the Pitch article:

Today, in his farewell speech as Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan reached over the heads of the Bush Administration and spoke directly to us.

To us, as Americans. And even, yes, to this community. Not by name, but by definition.

Kofi Annan called us out. He challenged us to live up to the ideals that are in theory the foundation of our democracy, instead of merely paying lip service to them. He said Americans must do what this American government, left to its own devices, won't do. I am paraphrasing here, not quoting (quotes are below), but he made it plain that in his view, global peace and justice are within our grasp -- but only if we demand it, insist on it, and take the necessary actions to realize it.  

"I see a lot of Democrats out there ... and ... a lot of wannabe Democrats!"

With those words, early in her victory speech last night, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius summed up why last night's election results in the Sunflower State were so meaningful.

Out here in the West -- in Kansas, Montana, Idaho, Colorado and more -- the Republican Party is losing the mainstream voter. It is increasingly becoming identified as the party of extremists, religious zealots, gay-haters and immigrant-loathing xenophobes. People who want government to do the things it is supposed to do -- pave highways, educate kids, maintain public safety -- but otherwise stay out of people's lives -- particularly their bedrooms and their doctors' offices -- are steadily realizing that the Democratic Party is the only party that shares their values.

The TODAY Show had an interesting news report today on gasoline prices -- and as usual, they missed the real point.

The story pointed out that gas prices have been dropping steadily since a mid-July peak. But despite coming immediately after an interview with Timmeh on the tight race to control the House and Senate coming up in mere weeks, the gas price report made no reference to politics or the oil industry's historic support of, and by, the GOP.

The real revelation, though, came from a state-by-state comparison of average gasoline prices. More on the flip.

I own a handful of shares of Disney Co. stock, thanks to a brief tenure as a company employee a few years back when Disney purchased Capital Cities/ABC. The network company owned a handful of newspapers, which it sold within a year's time to the Knight Ridder chain. Anyway, my former Cap Cities employee stock plan holdings were converted to Disney stock.

I never really cared or paid that much attention to my status as one of Disney's "owners." Until now.

The Kansas City Star is reporting today that Big Oil has, for decades, been using a combination of simple physics and political muscle to rip off every American who buys gasoline, or any product that depends on gasoline for production.

Yes, gasoline is a ripoff is so many ways already. But this is one that most people never considered -- and one that costs U.S. consumers and enriches Big Oil to the tune of $2.3 billion a year.

Think about it: heat expands, cold contracts. Everyday physics. But when the volume of gasoline expands when it gets warmer, the amount of energy it contains does not. Thus, a gallon of gasoline at 90 degrees F. yields less energy than a gallon at 60 degrees. Significantly, measurably less. Hot fuel gives you fewer miles per gallon than cool fuel does. On the flip: How Big Oil combines that basic physics with politics to screw you and me.

My arthritic, 50-year-old knees ache.

My left achilles tendon is throbbing. (Why just the left? I have no idea. Could this be a karma thing?)

My back aches. My feet hurt. I'm at that point of "tired" where I don't even want to get up from the chair and go up the steps to bed.

Man, this feels good!!!

By now, you've probably heard about Kosmos: You Are Here, the new e-book featuring terrific material from DarkSyde, Devilstower and other DK favorites.

What you may not realize is what it represents in terms of democratizing communications. Just as the internet and the rise of the blogosphere has brought fundamental change to the practice of both politics and journalism, the publication of Kosmos has demonstrated that book publishing is about to enter an entirely new era.

Call it the rise of 21st century Samizdat. Samiz what? More on the flip.