Sense of Events: Buh-bye, Current TV!

Sense of Events: Buh-bye, Current TV!

Now, all that remains is for the Obama Administration to bail it out via a back-door means such as an educational or 'investment' grant, and threaten Time-Warner with unshirted perdition if they drop the network.

After all, every banana republic regime needs its own official outlet, even if no one watches it.

Doctored Audio Files, NBC News, Treyvon, George Zimmerman...And OS's Friend Julie

NBC has just issued a non-apology/apology for having released a fatally doctored 911 conversation between Mr. Zimmerman and the 911 call center, shortly before the fatal shooting of Mr. Martin.

The tersely-worded statement admits to 'an error', but mainly projects the tone of someone who regrets getting caught in a nefarious act.

Conscience? Schmoncience! Conscience is for suckers like you, something to be manipulated by organizations like NBC News.

Outside The Beltway reported how NBC News was outed, but by that time, the damage had been done.
The Narrative (White America Seeks To Destroy Black America) was carried forward, the hysteria was ramped up, the race-and-fear mongers from all corners began to foam at the mouth once again.

Doug Mataconis offers sane words:

This episode is just the worst example of what we’ve been seeing, from both sides of the political world, with regard to this case. We’ve got people purporting to do frame-by-frame analysis of the video of Zimmerman arriving in the garage of the Sanford Police Department to either prove or disprove the assertion that he had been injured during a fight with Trayvon Martin prior to firing his gun. This morning, a Florida newspaper published a story about a “voice analysis expert” purporting to examine the screams heard on one of the 911 calls even though he has absolutely no exemplars of Trayvon Martin’s voice and only old, recorded exemplars of George Zimmerman’s voice. In all likelihood neither of these analyses would be admissible in Court because of the dubious science behind them. In the case of the jail video, there’s considerable doubt that it would be admissible for any purpose because it is generally considered that photographs of the Defendant in handcuffs or prison garb are prejudicial and not to be shown to the jury except under extraordinary circumstances (even if it is shown, the “analysis” would have to be a lot more scientifically rigorous than any of the nonsense I’ve seen in the blogosphere). This case is being tried in the court of public opinion and, for the most part, people are making judgments about George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence, or Trayvon Martin’s possible aggressiveness, based on their preconceived political notions and not on anything close to objective fact.

Radio personality Michael Baisden, on the other hand, has hitched his wagon to The Narrative. OS has been listening in over the past few days, and Baisden's language is emotional gasoline being poured upon the cultural fire.

What. A. Mess. This may not end well at all.

OS has two observations to offer:

1. OS has edited hundreds of audio files in his lifetime, beginning back in the day when he and his engineers would stay up until the wee hours with strong coffee, razor blades, a cutting block and non-magnetic blue tape and a wax marker to locate 'just the spot' to cut analog tape, to the present day with software, editing down to the specific wavelength for a clean edit.  The process is essentially unchanged, just a bit quicker these days.

There is no way that the edit of a sound file is a mistake. It is a most deliberate act, requiring expertise, equipment, and multiple reviews of the results of edits, in order to make certain they are clean. Noise floors and levels must match, timing must sound natural and in tempo. The edited version released was not a mistake, it was a deliberate fabrication, because it could not be anything but a fabrication. The release of the edited version was not a mistake, but rather a deliberate act to generate news. If it were perchance released by an editor who did not review the source of the sound file, that would be a grossly negligent act--a firing offense, demonstrating the editor held a callous view of factual reportage. It appears no one was, or will be, fired for this. But again, there is no way that the edit of a sound file is a mistake, simple physics being what it is.


2. A more personal side to this story lives in OS's world. He has a young friend, who shall be named Julie. A more delightful young lady would be hard to find. Brought up in humble circumstances, graduated a private university with high marks, with a great first job, cheerful, positive, she is a devout Protestant and a political conservative. She happens to be black. Julie has already let it be known that she does not appreciate the race-baiting by Revs. Sharpton and Jackson, as horrified as she is by young Mr. Martin's death. But now, the crazies on the Left will suspect her of 'collaboration' of 'being an Oreo', and the belligerent racists on the Right will assume she can't be trusted, because, after all, she's a black young woman, and we knooooow what they're like, etc...
Everyone is so eager to advance Their Narrative (They, whoever They are, are out to get Us), that people like Julie may easily end up in the crossfire. She knows how to find her way to Mr. and Mrs. Os's house, and OS has urged her to put his phone number on her speed-dial, just in case.

Please, everyone. Take a deep breath.

Horrified But Not Surprised Department: Helen Thomas Collects A Journalism Prize From The PLO

As mentioned before, OS is horrified, but not shocked.

The Jerusalem Post article linked above tells the immediate tale.

OS has other questions, along the lines of:

Didn't any of the Best and Brightest of the Washington/YewNorkCity press corps not have an inkling of this woman's virulently anti-Semitic views?

Wouldn't it be plausible to ask if she had acted as an agent of the PLO over the years, feeding Arafat and company the inside gossip and info from the White House? She was revered, treated with deference, a true insider's insider. She was tiny little lady who was traditionally called upon first at Presidential press conferences, harmless by all appearances.

Until she was 'outed' a couple of years ago, it would have been completely unthinkable to even raise the questions about her in public--wouldn't wish to appear sexist, you know. Or disrespectful to harmless little old ladies.

Why do the press get to ask all the questions of us, and we never get to ask questions of them?

Why do they presume to always occupy some mythical moral high ground, especially if they adhere to the dogma of the Left?

Why?

The Vilified Peter Hitchens Once Again Speaks With Moral Clarity

Perhaps moral clarity is what makes him a target?


In any case, a good example from today's column:

To avoid false accusations of ‘racism’ from the Thought Police, I have to make the following statement of the blindingly obvious: I think Liam Stacey, who made nasty comments about the collapse of a footballer, is a callous, foul-mouthed, drink-sodden moron. Is that clear?
Can I now go on to say that I don’t think much of a criminal justice system that sends him to prison for expressing his ‘views’ on the internet. The same system repeatedly leaves at liberty violent thieves and louts.

For example, Kazeem Kolawole, one of the gang who ruined the life of Thusha Kamaleswaran – the six-year-old girl shot in a shop in London – was free to do this evil only because he had been spared prison after  beating up a schoolgirl, and was on bail (of course) for carrying a knife. Now, if only Kolawole had made a racist remark he would have been safely locked up.

How many different things are wrong with  a country in which a little girl’s happy life is transformed in an instant into misery by a bullet flying through a suburban shop? How many of them are we even allowed to discuss in public without being howled down? Thusha’s ordeal has only just begun. As long as we have the sort of Government we now have, there will be more of these horrors.

Hitchens refuses to act the partisan, this party or that, because he knows that the issue before the West is not some disagreement on approach regarding governance of free society, but the survival of the idea of free society. He correctly sees that many in positions of leadership in the culture are morally blind and historically ignorant. He knows what awaits us, should we continue this course.

The quote taken from his column today is found at the very end. The truly sobering words precede it, as he makes his observations about Peter Cruddas' charming practice of selling access to power for cold hard cash.

Keith Olbermann Canned. Again. (This Time By AlGore)

From the Daily Beast (seems a fitting name for the situation...)

It’s hard to know whom to root for in the coming legal showdown between Keith Olbermann and Al Gore, the former a widely reviled liberal polemicist who cannot hold a job in cable TV and the latter a failed presidential candidate who launched a cable network in 2005 seemingly just for the fun of running it into the ground.

The ground got a lot closer on Thursday when Gore canned Olbermann, at once his worst nightmare and his foundering Current TV’s last real shot at success. The former vice president and his partner Joel Hyatt put out a statement “to viewers” in the pre-weekend news hole of Friday afternoon accusing Olbermann of breach of contract, meaning they have no plans to pay out the $50 million they reportedly owe him. A source suggests the figure is actually much lower, and in any event, it includes an equity stake in a television network no one watches.


But the real punchline comes at the end of the third paragraph--wait for it, wait for it...

Well, not no one: Around 177,000 viewers tuned in to watch Olbermann’s 8 p.m. “Countdown” broadcast at Current on the nights he turned up to work to host it. (Gore and Hyatt accuse him of breach for refusing to anchor many nights, including such important ones as the Iowa caucuses.) By contrast, Olbermann was pulling in around a million viewers from his old perch at MSNBC, from which he departed acrimoniously just 14 months ago. According to a statement from Current, Olbermann will be replaced by prostitute-aficionado Eliot Spitzer, who was fired in July from CNN.

 Eliot (caught banging teenaged hooker while Governor of New York) Spitzer! Yeah, baby, yeah!

On the one hand it is great fun to see the wheels come off the Al Gore clown car. On the other hand, it's pretty sobering to realize just how close we came to having this man as President of the United States.

ObamaCare Under The Gaze Of The Supreme Court

OS has been traveling--a lot.  Moh', latuh on all that.

It was good to come home and find Doug Mataconis' coverage and insights on the case now being argued before the Supremes.

So many millions of words are now spewed to us daily, on any subject. Mataconis does have the gift of sorting through it all. In general, he does not have a particular political axe to grind, which is admirable.

Therefore, OS refrains from any words on the subject for now, and refers his patient readers to the link above.

OS does wish to note that we as a nation, as inheritors of the great Common Law tradition of England, are blessed to still have a Supreme Court where these great controversies can be argued, instead of having them settled by royal fiat and/or blood running through the streets.

We need always take care that this great inheritance remain healthily in place.

Bloomberg Report On Corzine And MF Global: Corzine Ordered The Use Of Customer Funds To Cover The Firm's Shortfalls

Ruh. Roh.

Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd. (MFGLQ)’s chief executive officer, gave “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million from a customer fund account to meet an overdraft in a brokerage account with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), according to a memo written by congressional investigators.
Edith O’Brien, a treasurer for the firm, said in an e-mail quoted in the memo that the transfer was “Per JC’s direct instructions,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The e-mail, dated Oct. 28, was sent three days before the company collapsed, the memo says. The memo does not indicate whether that phrase was the full text of the e-mail or an excerpt. 

Corzine's earlier testimony before Congress was the Ricky Ricardo Defense: 'I don' know nuthin'! It disappeared itself! Ay Caramba, Loooocy what have you done now?'

Hmm....

Now, if any of OS's intrepid readers have any illusions whatsoever that Mr. Corzine will ever see a day in jail over this, they need to put them to rest right now. Not. Gunna. Happen.

Given his imbedded position in both the Democrat party and Wall Street, he will never be touched by this. Of course, 'normal' people with 'normal' 'pedestrian' ethical views will never trust the man, but that won't matter, given the character of the group that does embrace him.

But he does give insight into the particular cabal now in charge of our government, which knowledge will be helpful this fall.

See Bach City: Bachanalia 2012

It is always a happy occasion to celebrate the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, who toiled in obscurity for most of his life in Leipzig, and utterly changed the face of western culture. It's to the point that the music of the West is divided into two broad periods: pre-1750/post 1750, marking the date of the master's passing.

Nashville, Tennessee celebrates with Bachanalia, a six-hour marathon of Bach's music, presented at Christ Church Cathedral, 901 Broadway,  37203. Admission is free, and the music begins at 5:00.
Ya'll come!

Greg Smith Isn't The Only One Who Testifies To The Rot At Goldman-Sachs

Wallace Turbeville, whose tenure as a VP at G-S predates Smith, gives testimony as well.

From The American Spectator:

Having spent 12 years at Goldman prior to 1997, I sympathize with Smith’s feelings of loss and betrayal. I left just at the beginning of the institution’s evolution into its current form and have observed the process with despair—not only for the organization but for the loss suffered by the nation.

He speaks with respect and fondness of his earlier days there, and with despair at what followed.

The world shifted. Trading exploded, largely fueled by information technology. It seemed that every number on earth could be divided by every other number, all in real time. Everything could be priced, and, once priced, could be traded. Markets were deregulated and carved into pieces, each representing a trading opportunity. The Wall Street firms, and Goldman in particular, with their enormous capital resources, could dominate more and more of the price points in the American economy, extracting value from the producers and consumers. Software programs could be written to access electronic trading platforms so that the enormous force of the trading houses could be brought to bear without the inefficiency of human intervention. It seemed that a business model relying on dispassionate exploitation of immediate opportunity had been perfected.

The golden rule kicked in—“He who has the gold makes the rules.” The predominance of trading profits reversed the balance of influence in favor of the traders. Clients were no longer just clients; instead, they were counterparties to be dealt with at arm’s length. In the end, the traders achieved Nirvana—using asset pools, they were able to synthesize their own clients as sources of securities to trade. The business of trading, focused on short-term profits, became dominant at Goldman Sachs, and every firm on Wall Street tried to emulate it.

There is more here, much more. It presents a problem for G-S, because it affirms what they loudly deny: They have been playing the ends against the middle, shamelessly.

Our culture has been gutted, not only because of these people, but they certainly have encouraged the process along.

Our Saviour's haunting question lingers in the air:  

What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

And, in that loss of the soul, what happens to the world you attempt to gain? Will it be worth the energy spent in the acquisition?

This story is just beginning to ramp up, ya'll. Don't listen to the noise the PR shills will be creating. Look at what has happened in your own homes and businesses and in the places you live, to your friends and family, your city and county, and your country.

Christopher Tappin Update

He was denied bail--surprise, surprise.

All that evidence the US Justice Department should have been required to disclose to a British judge in order to obtain a legal extradition was presented in court in El Paso, complete with much bluster from the prosecutor--who knows he damned well better win if he doesn't wish to spend the rest of his career defending DUI's in some county in New Mexico.

He is considered a dangerous man, a flight risk, an evil-doer. Therefore, he is in jail, being slowly broken down in the attempt to extort a guilty plea.

Really? Perhaps the US government does not want this man on the street because he has a story to relate about the behavior of the US government--the one that used him as an informant (a reliable, upstanding informant) in order to obtain a conviction in another case. 

So, boyz--which is it?  This from the Forbes article listed above:

Simultaneously, the U.S. government is citing Tappin for his valuable cooperation in a federal crime (Sky), while at the same time claiming that he is involved in activities of shipping military goods to Iran. So which is Tappin, friend or foe?...or both?

Again, OS won't judge one way or another regarding Mr. Tappin's guilt or innocence--who can say from this distance?

But we know this about the US federal government: It sold missile batteries to the Iranians, then later set up a dummy company to see if it couldn't entrap people supposedly aiming to sell electric batteries for the missiles it had sold the Iranians. (Following this so far?) It managed to entrap a UK citizen, and force him to roll over, which he did not do--likely because he may well be innocent. Remember the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty'? Then it decided to make him An Object Lesson, and trampled on both UK law, treaty law, and US law to haul him out retirement, stick his ass in a south Texas jail, where he had to request solitary confinement for his own safety. He's not allowed even a book, and the light never goes off. Once he becomes borderline suicidal, they'll offer him a 'deal'. Otherwise, they'll just let him die in jail, forever silenced.

OS does not care whether Mr. Tappin is guilty or innocent of the charges. He is no threat to our safety whatsoever, compared to a US government that has decided it is the law, and our lives are subject to being ground up in its maw at any moment.

David Cameron's complicity with the US government is tragically shameful. Words fail to describe a man who happily scarfs down hot dogs at a basketball game in Ohio (which event, by the way, set the taxpayers back several million borrowed dollars) and lets his countryman rot in a Texas jail. By the way, Obama still plans to throw the people of the Falklands to the Argentine wolves. Enjoy that hot dog, Dave--that picture will circulate and circulate and circulate at your next election.

People such as this are capable of anything.