Toddlers and YouTube

When we have nothing to do, sometimes my toddler and I surf YouTube. Here are three of her favorite finds:

The Rhino Song
The Elephant Song
The Lion Sleeps Tonight

More Fox Hypocrisy

This 40-second video by by Robert Greenwald (via Fox Attacks) makes clear the real reason Fox censored Sally Field at the Emmys.

New York Times Removes Its Pay Wall

As of midnight tonight, the Gray Lady will do away with TimesSelect, the annoying "pay wall" behind which, for the last two years, the paper's website has been hiding its most popular columnists, as well as some of its special features and its archives of stories dating back to 1983. Online readers will once again be able to access the writings of influential establishment mouthpieces like David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Thomas Friedman without paying anything.

It seems the Times finally got the fact that 99.9% of information on the Internet is free, and that they were losing massive amounts of potential ad revenue by not allowing non-subscribers, directed to the Times' website through search engines like Google and Yahoo, to view this content. Less hits = less $$$. Whatever they were making from TimesSelect subscribers ($49.50 per subscription per year), simply didn't make up for this loss. By erecting a cash barrier around the aforementioned opinion leaders, the Times shot itself in the foot, essentially removing these same columnists and their opinions from the national conversation and, in effect, marginalizing them. It was a calculated yet uninspired move that seemed destined to fail from the beginning. You can read all about it here.

Apparently, one of the few large newspapers that still has a "pay wall" model in place is the Wall Street Journal, although brand-new WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch is already making noises about doing away with that and going back to an advertising model.

Family Cookery

Here is a nice solution to the challenge of cooking for a family of four, all with different tastes. I made this pizza and topped one-third of it with plain fresh mozzarella (for the kids), one-third with spicy sausage (for husband), and one-third with grilled veggies (for myself). Everyone was happily satisfied with this one creation. Success!

More Deja-Vu: Yet Another Resignation

My head is spinning (see last night's post about Alberto Gonzales and his Top Ten Moments of Ridiculousness). Yesterday was also Tony Snow's last day as White House spokesman. Who knew? Extreme Mortman has posted the Top Ten Tony Snow Exchanges With Helen Thomas.

Gone-zales Redux

This was so under the radar that I didn't even realize until now that today was Alberto Gonzales' last day as attorney general. To commemorate the occasion, check out the devastating compilation on Talking Points Memo of the Top 10 Moments of Alberto Gonzales Ridiculousness. It is such a pathetic display (rather like watching a wounded animal gnaw its own limb off in slow motion) I was barely able to stomach it.

Anyone want to place bets on a possible AG replacement? Chertoff? Poindexter? Ted Olsen? Can't imagine which of those three would be scarier, yet in the bizarro world we are living in, these are real possibilities.

Tragic Irony

On August 19, seven active-duty U.S. troops in Iraq coauthored an op-ed piece in the New York Times called "The War as We Saw It." In their essay they wrote that “In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are—an army of occupation—and force our withdrawal.”

Less than a month later, on Monday, September 10, after two 15-month tours there, two of those soldiers, Sgt. Omar Mora and Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, were killed in a vehicle accident in Iraq. A third was shot in the head before the essay was published; he is expected to recover.

Ron Paul at the Fox Republican Debate 9/05/07

As a side note: It is a surreal experience watching Chris Wallace and Brit Hume "moderate" this "debate." Their voices practically drip with sarcasm and condecension when addressing questions to Ron Paul. Also, you can't see who it is, but notice that some of the Fox questioners (or is it the other candidates?) begin snickering and cackling inanely into live microphones every time Rep. Paul is asked a question. Journalists, or propagandists? You decide.

War With Iran?

There seems to be an increasing amount of rumor and talking points surrounding this possibility in the past week. Has anyone seen this Times of London piece about the Pentagon's plan for a three-day blitz against Iran, designed to take out not just their alleged nuclear facilities but their entire military? And why is this being reported only in the UK press and not anywhere in the American mainstream media? So plans are drawn up. Whether this scenario or a similar version of events unfolds in the final eighteen months of this unmitigated nightmare called the Bush presidency, we should expect more sabre-rattling and drum-beating from all the usual suspects. But can anyone say this is not totally and criminally insane?

Day Into Night at the U.S. Open

The weeks before and after Labor Day were always my favorites in New York. Usually beatiful weather, gorgeous nights, the feeling of summer melting slowly into autumn, and the U.S. Open. We lived in Queens, along the same subway line you take to get to the Open, and friends and I would go every year, especially during the first week, when, with a single ticket you could watch 10 different matches in a day.

This year I have finally found something to love about having basic cable TV, which we've had for about three months now. I think we may be one of the last families in America to get cable, which I resisted for years. Yet here is the beauty of it: It's 9:20 at night and I've had tennis on since 11 in the morning. I watched live as Justine Henin blew Serena Williams off the court. And Nadal and Ferrer are still slugging it out in the third set as I type. The way the match is going they could easily be playing until 2 in the morning, New York time.

While it can't compare to being there in person, it feels like the next best thing. Needless to say, light blogging until next week...

Late update: The match continued until 1:50 a.m., EST. After three and a half hours of play, Ferrer prevailed in what was one of the most phenomenal, high-quality matches I've seen in ages, stunning the crowd and no. 2 seed Nadal. Final score: 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 6-2.