They're a "news channel" whose brand isn't the news.

At a time of intensely high interest in news, MSNBCÂ’s ratings declined from the same period a year ago by about 20 percent. The explanation, in the networkÂ’s own analysis, comes down to this: breaking news is not really what MSNBC does.

“We’re not the place for that,” said Phil Griffin, the channel’s president, in reference to covering breaking events as CNN does. “Our brand is not that.”…

MSNBC’s viewers may have especially grown tired of politics because the news has been mostly negative recently toward President Obama, whom MSNBC’s hosts have championed. As another senior producer for news programs at multiple networks put it, “People will watch MSG when the Knicks are hot, and not watch when they aren’t.”…

Call this vindication for Mediaite's Noah Rothman, who suggested the reason for MSNBC's fall is its partisan determination to tell its liberal viewers that there is no news -- no news of scandals -- when there manifestly is news.

I had observed:

Because of the Full Partisan Tilt of MSNBC, the alleged "news" network must tell its customers, night after night, that there stockrooms are bare, and they have nothing at all to vend.

I remember this happening with Keith Olbermann on, I think, MSNBC. I think that was his first time he got fired from the network, but don't hold me to that; I can never keep his firings straight. For that matter, neither can he.

Point is, he was a hardcore liberal partisan (of course), and his show debuted during or just before the Clinton Impeachment story.

And night after night... Keith Olbermann basically told people there was no story.

Same story, every night, that there was no story at all.

That didn't exactly light up the ratings.

However, the message has come down from MSNBC's real director -- Obama flack David Plouffe -- that there is now State-Approved News to report, to wit, Darryl Issa's 41-year-old erroneous arrest and suspicions about a 20 year old fire in which no charges were ever brought.

Rhetorical Question: If MSNBC's stock-in-trade is not news, what is it, then?

Posted by: Ace at 07:37 AM | Comments (211)
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Seeing it on the Washington Post home page (here's the story)

Before going all political, we should remember that he was a WWII vet and for all the political disagreements one might have had with him, he lived the American dream.

Frank Lautenberg was born Jan, 23, 1924 in Paterson, N.J. to Polish and Russian Jewish immigrants who had entered America through Ellis Island. As a child, Lautenberg moved often as his parents looked for work. His father Sam worked in silk mills, sold coal, farmed and ran a tavern. Sam died when Frank was in high school, so Frank began working nights to support the family.

After graduating from high school, Lautenberg joined the Army Signal Corps and served in Europe. After World War II, he attended Columbia University on the G.I. Bill and received a degree in economics in 1949.

In 1952, Lautenberg and two childhood friends founded the nation's first payroll services company, called Automatic Data Processing, where he was chairman and CEO. By the mid-1990s, ADP employed 30,000 people and processed payroll for almost 10 percent of private sector jobs in the United States. Thanks to ADP, Lautenberg's net worth is somewhere around $40 million.

Now, on to the political....Who is Christie going to name to replace him? I think (but have to confirm) the state will hold a special election this November (when they vote for Governor) to fill the remainder of the term.

Update: Here's the deal on replacements (pdf)-

Finally, California and New Jersey empower the governor to call a discretionary “quick special election,” depending on the amount of time remaining in the unexpired senatorial term, while also empowering both officers to make interim appointments.

So yeah, it seems likely that Christie will name someone in a few days and then add the Senate race to this November's ballot. The winner will then have to defend the seat in next year's general election for a regular 6 year term.

Prediction on Christie's pick: He wants to pick a Democrat to get the love in NJ but can't annoy national GOP that much. But....if Lautenberg has a son or a daughter he could name to fill the next 5 months or so, Christie can name a Democrat and no one can really complain about it.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:12 AM | Comments (263)
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One day of bidding left. For the veteran's service organization GallantFew.

Veterans of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, actors who portrayed them in the HBO series "Band of Brothers" along with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg all signed this poster which will be auctioned off on eBay starting June 6th. The proceeds will be donated to GallantFew, a veteran's service organization that offers mentoring services and coaching to veterans who have left the service and are starting their civilian careers.

One of our AoS moron ladies Stacia asked me if I'd help get the word out (which I am very happy to do), and tells me the project was initiated by actor (and former Marine) Michael Broderick.

June 6 is the 69th anniversary of D-Day (which you knew, just wanted to mention).

UPDATE: Michael Broderick (who is now a close, personal friend of mine) asked me to include this link to the Poster Project web page.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:22 PM | Comments (101)
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• Gutfeld: The Grounding Of Big Government
  
• IRS Targeted Donors To GOP Groups Too
  
• Tony Blair: It's Time To Be Honest, There Is A Problem With Islam And It's Not Just A Few Extremists
  
• Head Of Anti-Violence Group And Huffposter Arrested For Beating His Wife
  
• Boy Scouts Likely To Lose A Lot Of Members And Funding
  
• A Message For The Class Of 2013
  
• Michael Douglas Claims He Got Cancer From Oral Sex
  
• Awesome Obit
  
• Issa: IRS Targeting Coordinated In DC
  
• Daivd Plouffe: That Issa Sure Has Some Nerve Investigating Obama And The IRS
  
• France Shows The US What Not To Do On Tax Policy
  
• Photos From The Turkish Protests
  
• Black Louisiana State Senator Switches To The Republican Party
  
• 3-D Printing Goes From Sci-Fi To Reality
  
• England Continues To Crack Down On The Wrong People
  
• The Zero Tolerance War On Kindergarteners
  
• FL Dem's Chief Of Staff Resigns After Admitting To Absentee Ballot Fraud Plan
  
• Republicans Land Good Candidate For Open Michigan Senate Seat
  
• Apparently Madonna Suffers From The Same Puffy Face Syndrome That Afflicts Ashley Judd
  
• What A Difference The Sex Of The Sex Perp Makes
  
• English Pop Star That Looks Like A Tranny Will Appear In New Star Wars Franchise
  

[Update] It is being reported that Senator Frank Lautenberg has died. Gov. Chris Christie will be tasked with appointing his replacement. Undoubtedly a liberal Democrat will be picked by Christie. I think Christie should name one of Menendez's underage prostitutes. That would be hilarious.

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:30 AM | Comments (168)
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Organizations large and small develop unique cultures over time. You see this in companies like IBM, Apple, and GM. Employees who stay in these companies over the long term, those who move up the ladder into the executive suite, tend to personify these corporate cultures to a great degree. Employees marry each other, socialize with each other, attend the same events. In company towns, this corporate culture can characterize the entirety of the town itself.

Which is why the current IRS scandal has left me completely unsurprised.

What kind of person goes to work for the IRS? People who like numbers, sure. Accountants. Tax attorneys. Clerks. Secretaries. For a lot of people, a job at the IRS is just that...a job. It pays the bills. It's not a calling, it's a paycheck. But there are many careerists in the IRS for whom the job is an avenue to power over their fellow men -- the power to tax is the power to destroy, after all, and many people find this power intoxicating. Few other government institutions have such presence and power in an individual citizen's life.

It's also true that to move up at the IRS, you must embrace the corporate culture of the place. The culture has been formed in the byzantine twists and turns of the US tax code, in the landscape of rules that govern the IRS itself, and in the office environment common to so many public sector bureaucracies. To succeed in the IRS, an employee must do things the proper way. Entrepreneurs may be appreciated in the private sector, but they are specifically discouraged in the public sector. If you want to get along in government service, you go along. If you can convince yourself that going along is not only the smart thing to do but the right thing, so much the better.

The IRS is not supposed to be a partisan agency. The federal bureaucracy was explicitly designed to be non-partisan so that it would impartially enforce the tax laws and regulations passed by the Congress and approved by the Executive. But the IRS like many other federal bureaucracies tends to be staffed by people -- especially at the management level -- who believe in robust, activist government. In other words: it is staffed mainly by Democrats. And however nonpartisan the organization is supposed to be, it cannot help but reflect the culture of the people who comprise it. The IRS, being led by and staffed with activist-minded Democrats, cannot help but reflect that worldview. The culture reinforces itself because adherence to the culture is the only way to move up. Dissenters and contrarians do not last long in an organization like the IRS (any more than they do at the FBI or EPA or DoJ).

It's no surprise to hear that Lois Lerner's husband is a high-priced lawyer with an affinity for liberal activism. It's no surprise that Douglas Shulman's wife heads a liberal group dedicated to campaign finance reform. You'll find the same pattern repeated throughout the organization, no doubt. Like seeks out like. The culture reinforces itself. Everybody's kids go to the same schools, everybody knows everybody else's first name, and no one has to discuss politics because it's simply understood. The same thing happens at college campuses. Liberal politics, statism, the primacy of the regulatory state: it's just the water these people swim in.

This is the basic danger of a government that has grown too large. The federal machinery will trend Democrat no matter who happens to occupy the White House, Senate, or House of Representatives. And this is because the ideology that drives people to vote Democrat is also the ideology that makes them want to work for federal bureaucracies. The organizational culture in American federal service has become not just partisan but positively messianic during the age of Obama -- they're doing it for your own good, whether you know it or not! -- and the urge to suppress those with "wrong" opinions is becoming too strong to ignore. The tacit approval of Barack Obama and other powerful Democrat politicians removes any vestige of unease. It explains the near-complete lack of guilt or remorse shown so far by IRS management. In their minds, they are doing nothing wrong.

It's not a conspiracy because nothing actually has to be planned in secret. Nothing has to be commanded from on high. Nothing has to be written down, or even spoken in plain language. Lois Lerner and Douglas Schulman didn't need detailed marching orders. All the President had to do was muse sadly about how much he could accomplish if only these troublesome Tea Party types were out of the picture. Functionaries like Schulman and Lerner would immediately grasp the message and put it into action. (Even though no discussion along these lines was really necessary, Schulman and President Obama apparently did enjoy their little chats.)

Corporate culture in the private sector is moderated by two controlling forces: external competition, and the need to satisfy customers. A company must be aware of both, and be responsive, lest one go out of business. Ideology must take a back seat to survival. However, governmental organizations are bound by neither of these strictures and so the pathologies persist and harden into permanent features of the organizations. Instead of being a nonpartisan tax-collection and compliance agency, the IRS becomes an agent of Democrat Party ideology where tax compliance is the tool rather than the purpose of the agency.

This also illustrates why federal bureaucracies like the IRS will not reform from within. Employees of said agency will be asked to participate in their own extinction. Whatever else they may be, IRS employees do have this in common with everyone else: they have bills to pay. Mortgages, groceries, utilities, tuition, car payments. If the IRS is to be abolished or even significantly shrunk, that means the end of a lot of careers. It means the upheaval of a lot of lives. It means, for IRS employees above a certain GS rating, the loss of a significant amount of power -- both organizational and political. Most of all, it means forcing people deeply invested into an organizational culture to admit that this culture is fundamentally wrong.

The solution to this scandal is not to fire the likes of Lois Lerner (though that would be a good start). The answer is to abolish the agency entirely, and to make a concerted effort to shrink the size and reach of the entire federal government apparatus. For the federal government apparatus is not nonpartisan; it is and will continue to be predominately Democrat in culture. The federal government bureaucracy has been captured by Democrats in almost exactly the same way college campuses were captured.

A partisan government apparatus is a recipe for the abuse of power. To limit a government's power, we must limit its size. The IRS is an excellent place to begin because it presents the closest and greatest danger -- not just to conservatives, but to the very underpinnings of our system of government. An abuse of power this flagrant and egregious cannot be allowed to go unanswered.

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." -- James Madison, Federalist #51

What that means then is not that this or that elected politician is corrupt but that the government of the United States is corrupt. -- Mark Steyn

Posted by: Monty at 04:00 AM | Comments (242)
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If you want some good entertainment this morning, go read Phil Kerpen's Twitter timeline from last night. He's gone through former IRS commissioner Doug Shulman's leftist activist wife's tweets and found some real gems.

Posted by: andy at 02:57 AM | Comments (152)
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New Civility Update

National Journal's Michael Hirsh calls for gun metaphors to be banned from all political speech:

National Journal's Michael Hirsh wants to raise the bar on decorum to an entirely new level. On Thursday's MSNBC airing of "Hardball," Hirsh told host Chris Matthews certain "gun" terms should be stricken from political discourse and referred to instances where Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Republican Nevada senatorial candidate Sharon Angle used such off-limits language.

...That's the kind of language I think we got to have a hard think about now," Hirsh said. "Do we really want to continue to use that kind of language at these levels? Or, should there be kind of a social sanction, not a legal one, but a moral sanction in the way that we've stopped using certain epithets like the 'n'-word public forums. Stop using that kind of language, those kinds of metaphors."

And Marshall University professor of Journalism Christopher Swindell calls for the killing of all NRA members. Remember this man trains future journalists.

We put the president in the White House. To support the new NRA president's agenda of arming the populace for confrontation with the government is bloody treason. And many invite it gladly as if the African-American president we voted for is somehow infringing on their Constitutional rights.

Normally, I am a peaceable man, but in this case, I am willing to answer the call to defend the country. From them.

...To turn the song lyric they so love to quote back on them, "We'll put a boot in your -, it's the American way."

Except it won't be a boot. It'll be an M1A Abrams tank, supported by an F22 Raptor squadron with Hellfire missiles. Try treason on for size. See how that suits. And their assault arsenal and RPGs won't do them any good

And more liberal civility here:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:15 PM | Comments (669)
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... my ass!

The agent in the Cincinnati office, in which the targeting took place, told congressional investigators that he or she was told in March 2010 by a supervisor to search for Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status and that “Washington, D.C., wanted some cases.”

The agent said that by April the office had held up roughly 40 cases and at least seven were sent to Washington. In addition, the agent said, a second IRS employee asked for information on two other specific applicants in which Washington was interested.

When asked by congressional investigators about allegations and press reports about two agents in Cincinnati essentially being responsible for the targeting, the agent responded:

“It's impossible. As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen. … They were basically throwing us underneath the bus.”

At this point, I want to know the details of each and every meeting Shulman had in the White House. For the ones they "can't recall", I'm going to infer that those were the ones at which they were hatching this plan to target conservatives. Seems fair.

On Sunday, California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Affair Committee, accused Carney of being untruthful about the scandal.

“Their paid liar, their spokesperson … he’s still making up things about what happened and calling this a local rogue,” Issa said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The congressman also provided the network with a copy of the transcript in which the agent said he or she followed directions from Washington. However, when asked if the Tea Party scrutiny came directly from Washington the agency said “I believe so.”

At least one guy gets it.

Posted by: andy at 02:02 PM | Comments (180)
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In our ongoing effort to provide you the best content on Algore's Internets, we're launching a weekly podcast.

In this first episode, Gabe, Drew M., John E. and I discuss comprehensive immigration reform and @DanielFosterNRO's piece on Mitch McConnell.

Also mentioned in the immigration reform segment is this piece from Victor Davis Hanson.

Download the MP3

Give it a listen and provide feedback in the comments here (also, Open Thread).

Subscribe:

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iTunes

Posted by: andy at 12:57 PM | Comments (191)
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Some very serious protests against Islamist PM Ergodan have occurred the last two days, but you wouldn't know it from CNN Turkey's coverage.

CNN Turkey is blacking out the protests in favor of cooking shows and documentaries about adorable penguins.

They should demand gay marriage rights, too. That'll interest CNN.

No seriously these news organizations are corrupt. CNN notoriously censored its coverage of Iraq in order to keep its Baghdad bureau open. And they're still doing the same thing.

via the @realrosenrosen.

Posted by: Ace at 04:49 PM | Comments (368)
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