Mark Bossingham

Good doggie/Michael Ramirez

THE BRILLIANT Michael Ramirez at IBD

A boring World Series mercifully is over

WOW DID you get the feeling that neither one of these two (good) teams played their best, or even close to it? God, what a dull spectacle. The rain in game four was the coolest part. Never seen a game played in that kind of downpour. The last good Series I can remember was the Diamondbacks and the Yankees and that was more than a few years ago.

Going, going ... gone

GOOD RIDDANCE. A major Liberal rag bites the dust.

The Christian Science Monitor plans major changes in April 2009 that are expected to make it the first newspaper with a national audience to shift from a daily print format to an online publication that is updated continuously each day.

A boring World Series

UNLESS YOU are a Philly fan, this Wrold Series has so far been the least entertaining in my memory. Lousy weather and the Rays seem to left it all on the field at the end of the ALCS. Right now in the midst of a rain delay, score tied 2-2 and Philadelphia on the verge of a 4-1 Series win.

Going, going ...

ANOTHER ONE  is in trouble.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Newsroom staffing at the Los Angeles Times is shrinking again.
Newspaper spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said Monday that 75 staffers are being laid off in the latest round of cuts.
She declined further comment and would not disclose how many journalists will remain at the paper.
The Times, which is owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co., reduced its overall staff by 250 people last summer, including 150 from the newsroom.

Military's overwhelming support for McCain

A GROUP I actually respect pulls the lever for McCain.

McCain, R-Ariz., handily defeated Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., 68 percent to 23 percent in a voluntary survey of 4,293 active-duty, National Guard and reserve subscribers and former subscribers to Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times and Air Force Times.

Mark Steyn and the 'capricious eccentrics'

MARK STEYN isn't buying it.

Even now Mister Maverick is still boasting that he's better than Obama at "reaching across the aisle". If the livelier polls are correct, Obama won't need to be good at "reaching across the aisle" because there'll be hardly anyone over there.

If McCain loses and he's back in the Senate with Arlen and the Maine ladies and the rest of the gang, it will be a club of bipartisan accommodationists and capricious eccentrics. The idea that these guys will be any kind of "engine of our renewal" strikes me as far more ludicrous than the possibility of Mister Maverick getting to 270 next Tuesday.

Job cuts exacerbate media bias?

I HAVE been pretty hard on journalists, or more accurately, people who work at newspapers or for the wires. With good reason, throughout the Bush administration they have been incrementally shredding their credibility (and mine) with the public. Now, they face flat out hostility from a large segment of the public. I have worked in this sector for decades. It didn't used to be this way. While the media has tilted left at least since the days of Roosevelt, there was always a perception that the truth was the ultimate "decider."
    There have been thousands of columns and blog posts written about how the universities are churning out little leftists, and of course that is true, but it isn't new--I was a proud 21-year-old self-identified "liberal." That's what youth is all about.
    I believe there is another dynamic here, and it could very well be fear. Newspapers are dying and with them jobs. Not a few here and there, but thousands. Maybe a little compassion is in order. It is hard to be objective when your livelihood is endangered. Anger is not an irrational response under the circumstances.
    Some say that the media is in the tank for The Messiah because they believe he will somehow save them. He may well try to toss the New York Time a lifeline, but most newspaper people don't work in the Big Apple. They are not going to get any help. That is not to say the Democrats won't try to crush the Internet and talk radio, I just don't think they will be successful. Regardless, newspapers are dead and their employees are not going quietly. I am sympathetic--I have seen our newsroom reduced to a shell of what it once was.
    For many, this is their last election. Where will they be next time around? I have no idea. Maybe serving up the latte with a side of political commentary at your local Starbucks. Better that than the bile, however understandable, dished up at the local newspaper.
    What brought this on? The story below and dozens just like it.

NEW YORK (AP) - The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., will reduce its newsroom staff by nearly half through voluntary buyouts as New Jersey's largest newspaper seeks to return to profitability.
Jim Willse, the Star-Ledger's editor, said Friday that the newspaper accepted 151 buyout offers from its news staff, or about 45 percent of its 334 editorial employees. He said 17 buyout applications were rejected.

Some staffers already have left, and others are leaving by year's end, many after the elections.

Charles Krauthammer makes his choice

KRAUTHAMMER REFUSES to join the "wet-finger conservatives" and jump ship. He makes a compelling case why he is voting for John McCain.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.
Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who's been cramming on these issues for the last year, who's never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world?
A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of "a world that stands as one"), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as "the tragedy of 9/11," a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Today's economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I'm for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

Daniel Henninger and the atrocious Peggy Noonan

IN HIS Wonderland column Daniel Henninger takes a pretty good shot at fellow WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan. Noonan has her nose out of joint over Sarah Palin, and more importantly, is still embarrassed after being caught on an open mic trashing Republicans Enough about Noonan; her puffery isn't even worth a link. However, Henninger's column surrounds the best line about the campaign I've seen yet:

"For voters, this election is a national Hail Mary."