"Take the Limbaugh Challenge" -- Startling LAT Headline

The Los Angeles Times opinion page today looked like something the guys at Hot Air might write. (Not Allahpundit but the good looking one, Ed.) The LAT telling the truth right out loud and in public has caused a lot of cognitive dissonance among conservatives. It is as if they were trying to throw us off just before a major attack. Though some people think this only happened because the Times has been losing money faster than Obama can print it.
It was by a conservative named Andrew Klavan. And it said some things that just never get said in the LAT. For instance:
“You're not a moderate or you wouldn't be reading this newspaper. You're not tolerant of a wide range of views; you are tolerant of a narrow spectrum of variations on your views. And, whatever you claim, you still haven't listened to Rush Limbaugh.
. . . . . . . .
“Now let me tell you the real answer: You're a lowdown, yellow-bellied, lily-livered intellectual coward. You're terrified of finding out he makes more sense than you do.”
But its main focus was on the intellectual dishonesty in recent liberal attacks on Rush Limbaugh. Here area couple of good quotes from the piece:
“Whenever I interrupt a liberal's anti-Limbaugh rant to point out that the ranter has never actually listened to the man, he always says the same thing: "I've heard him!"

“On further questioning, it always turns out that by "heard him," he means he's heard the selected excerpts spoon-fed him by the distortion-mongers of the mainstream media. These excerpts are specifically designed to accomplish one thing: to make sure you never actually listen to Limbaugh's show, never actually give him a fair chance to speak his piece to you directly.

“By lifting some typically Rushian piece of outrageous hilarity completely out of context, the distortion gang knows full well it can get you to widen your eyes and open your mouth in the universal sign of Liberal Outrage. Your scrawny chest swelling with a warm sense of completely unearned righteousness, you will turn to your second spouse and say, "I'm not a liberal, I'm a moderate, and I'm tolerant of a wide range of differing views -- but this goes too far!"“

Ht/NewsBusted

Beware the L. A. Times

There is an old saying that, "Figures don't lie but liars can figure." Case in point is the Los Angeles Times. Patterico says, "deceptive headline designed to scare people: “Job losses at highest level since 1945.” Problem is, “it isn’t until well past the jump that we are told that this is in absolute numbers in a country with double the population that it had in 1945.”"
So the problem is about one half as bad as the LAT says. A term I picked up from Da Techguy's Blog describes this perfectly. They are 'reality challenged.'

Hat Tip/Patterico's Pontifications

Patterico on the L A Times

"How much did the paper love Obama? Well, one story began, in a quote I am not making up, “Words helped get Barack Obama where he is today. Elegant words. Inspiring words. Words that swoop and words that soar.” This stuff mocks itself.

"When Obama blatantly broke his pledge to accept public financing, the L.A. Times anticipated the decision by spinning it as a positive — just as I had predicted they would. After Obama’s rejection of public financing was official, I was briefly shocked when the initial L.A. Times story actually took Obama to task. But, true to form, the editors got their hands on the story and fuzzed it up for the print edition.

"After the Heller gun rights decision was announced, legal affairs reporter David Savage allowed Obama to pretend he had always supported the principles enunciated by the decision, when in fact, Obama’s campaign had supported the D.C. law struck down in that case."

Patterico's review of 2008 at the LAT is here.

Hat Tip/HotAir

Random Thoughts After the Fall

It is over. The curtain has come down on politics 2008. For the past few months I’ve spent two or three hours a day wandering around the net to find information about the election. I now feel empty. I don’t want to continue to spend that much time on politics. So there is a void in my life. What should I do with the time? My first thought was to read a massive 19th century novel. War and Peace, maybe. But I’m now considering Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed after first doing a recent historical novel called Pilate’s Wife.

The L A Times says 82% voted in L. A. County. Wow, do I ever find that impossible to believe. I think you need two outside sources to confirm anything the Times says.

I was happy to see that Al Franken lost. I was thinking that he would just make the senate look like a bunch of moronic clowns. But today I realize that I’ve thought for years that they are a bunch of moronic clowns. Moronic, bribe taking, selfish, greedy, dishonest, sell out clowns. But most Americans think little about them. Maybe a Franken victory would be good if it got people to pay attention to the thieving, clownish crimes going on in Washington.

LA Times Too Busy with Layoffs to Report News

Neither Protest Nor Petition Nor Bribe Nor Barrage Of Email Stays These Journalists From the Swift Suppression of Newsworthy Material

That seems to be the L.A. Times' new creed.
The above word for word from http://suitablyflip.blogs.com/suitably_flip/


Why buy the L. A. Times if you already know what they will say (and what they would never say)? Thus readership is down, thus ad revenue is down, thus they have to lay off staff. But, since there are so many stories they would never report on, they probably still have too many staff.