This was being handed out on the streets of Manhattan this morning, (HT Albany Project), and it has a corresponding spoof website:

…headlines such as “Iraq War Ends - Troops to Return Immediately”, “Nation Sets Sights on Building Sane Economy and “Ex-Secretary Apologizes for W.M.D. Scare”.

Some other favorites include “Nationalized Oil To Fund Climate Change Efforts”, “High-Speed Internet Hits Fast Track to Appalachia” and “Torture, Rendition “Not Such Good Ideas After All”.

I remember something similar taking place in the late 70s, and the Times confirms that it was in 1978. I think my dad might still have that somewhere, because we went out of our way to get it.

I’d love to have the sense of humor, wherewithal, and cash-money to do something similar spoofing the Buffalo News.

The title of this post is the gag tagline selected in place of the Times’ traditional motto.

Given this silly hobby of mine, Artvoice’s Geoff Kelly is my hero. I only wish I had his patience, investigative, and reporting skills, but if I did, I still couldn’t look into and write about the Steve Pigeon / Responsible New York controversy like he has.

First, I want to point out this post he did, examining information provided about Pigeon and RNY by Hoyt ally Jeremy Toth to the relevant District Attorneys. It’s become a somewhat-regular series now, “Chasing Pigeon”.

Here, Kelly reports about the Republican BOE Commissioner’s entry into the Pigeon chase. The upshot of all of this seems to be that Pigeon plays really, really fast and loose with NYS Election Law, and some of his nonsense is now getting some strict scrutiny now because of the opponents it’s affecting, and the vast sums at play.

Now, I am a firm believer in the notion that karma is a bitch. We can all remember when Bob McCarthy wrote up Jack Davis’ half-truths about Jon Powers’ War Kids Relief. In his curious, inexplicable hatred of Powers, Niagara Falls Reporter editor Mike Hudson vouched for McCarthy as a “fine reporter“.

Hudson also said McCarthy was “legit news media“, and therefore accurate until some other “legit news” source somehow reported differently.

To date, I have yet to see any non-biased “legit news” source rebut the charges made in McCarthy’s article about Hudson’s Pigeon connection, so I am concluding - based on Hudson’s own criteria with War Kids Relief - that it must be true. Hudson also vouched for McCarthy’s accuracy here, and here, even going so far as to praise McCarthy’s “fine piece of journalism”.

Yet now, all of a sudden, Hudson has reserved a special ire for McCarthy, criticizing the News’ political reporter for not doing a story about Golisano’s big donation to Niagara U. Artvoice asks,

I wonder why Hudson thinks a political reporter like McCarthy should write about a donation to a university? What was wrong with Jay Rey’s front-page, above-the-fold Buffalo News story on October 8? Was that insufficient coverage of the gift?

Heh.

We all know that a recent Bob McCarthy article accused the Niagara Falls Reporter of being a new addition to Pigeon’s payroll. Specifically, the charge was made that Pigeon and RNY paid not just for ads, but for editorial content. It’s all very Illuzziesque indeed. Evidently, the story doesn’t end there, and Artvoice picks it up:

At the shareholders meeting in which Battaglia was fired, Hudson acknowledged that Pigeon had in fact paid for an extra press run and expanded distribution of an edition sporting a cover story about Hoyt’s affairs with interns. (At least, that was the cover in Buffalo—the papers distributed in Niagara Falls that week had a Mayor Paul Dyster on the cover. Hudson claimed Pigeon had not paid for the extra expense for printing separate covers.) Responsible New York, the committee funded by Golisano and directed by Pigeon, supports Mesi and opposed Hoyt in his primary against Barbra Kavanaugh. So Pigeon’s motive in picking up the tab is clear.

I’m no professional newsman, but is it normal for a political operative of an unauthorized committee to buy a customized, extra run of a periodical?

Leave aside whatever petty cash Pigeon has thrown Hudson’s way for advertisements, extra papers, and extended distribution. There’s no crime there except against journalistic sensibilities.

But that provision of the election law suggests that Responsible New York should itemize and reports payouts over $10,000 by limited liability corporations like Landen Associates (a consulting firm controlled by Pigeon), which spent $93,103 of Golisano’s money on print ads in the last month alone. And what about New York Media Strategies (controlled by Pigeon associate Jack O’Donnell), which has spent $1,286,000 of Golisano’s money in the last month on TV advertising? Certainly some of those expenditures exceeded $10,000.

The law allows Responsible New York to file itemized breakdowns of its consultants’ spending on behalf of candidates after the election, but don’t count on that happening: This section of New York election law is routinely ignored. (A source at the local board of elections said Eliot Spitzer was the only candidate to have complied in recent years.) And Responsible New York did not file such reports after the September’s primary election, as the law requires.

If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.

There is probably no bigger, wider asshole than Dale Volker.

This interview conducted by local Orlando news anchor Barbara West is hilarious in its wingnuttery.

The Orlando Sentinel calls it “embarrassing” for the station, and “ham-handed”. Ben Smith calls it “entertaining” and “hostile”.

I think it’s stunningly unprofessional - it’s as if someone let a wingnut blogger anchor the news and ask questions of the opposing candidate. But given what local news has become throughout the country lately, I’m hardly surprised. Local news should stick to weather, sports, traffic, human interest, sweeps-month-investigating, and local headlines. Any time they delve into national or international affairs, it’s either a canned time-filler, or astonishingly semi-informed amateur hour.

Dave Staba sends along his latest Artvoice piece, which is a response to a typically ignorant and offhanded comment about Buffalo and Buffalonians in the national media - in this instance the Wall Street Journal. A “journamalist” came to Orchard Park, saw some people behaving like idiots, and therefore concluded that the Bills were…

a team that has struggled to control some of the worst-behaving fans in all of sports,

Staba, using the same anecdotal methodology as the Wall Street Journal’s reporter, walked around the Ralph and concludes,

• The Bills have some of the most Dutch-sounding fans in all of sports;

• those same fans have an unhealthy obsession with Will Ferrell (Hans was wearing a T-shirt promoting the actor-comedian’s 2004 tour de force Anchorman);

• they favor very big hats.

Read the whole thing.

Photo via Flickr user zorankaltenbaugh

Everyone knows you’ve got people tracking Kryzan, videotaping her every move and word. Hopefully Kryzan’s doing the same, except that no one seems to be able to get a hold of where Lee’s going to be.

But when asked, at least be honest about it, rather than coming up with some kind of bullshit “we’re students doing research” line.

It’s happened twice in two days. While claiming to be from UB, doing a “research” project, Chris Lee operatives have been seen in the crowd during two seperate Kryzan events.This picture was taken today at a press conference while interviewing Chairman Len Lenihan

As we were leaving the event, a different Lee supporter pulled out of the parking lot in his Jaguar with Mike Ranzenhofer and Chris Lee bumper stickers plastered to the back of the car. He drove away before we could turn the camera back on.

Jaguar? Really?

Love, BP

It’s more magazine-y, and makes somewhat more sense, although I don’t like having to scroll through the breaking news headlines, and the blogs have pretty much effectively wiped off the front page. I don’t think last week’s site was broken, so I fail to see the urgent need to fix it. The way that the paper’s sections are now broken down into boxes does, however, makes sense.

Also, Heaney’s back, and he’s been working on a story about how many millions our state delegation spends each year. Hu-effing-zzah.

Glenn Gramigna posted this on his site, and I had heard very similar charges but hadn’t had the time to look into them. Dennis Delano may have a public image of being a mavericky hero cop, but some of his colleagues are challenging that perception, wondering where he gets off taking all the credit for something that was not only done by a team of people, but also a very long time in coming.

“Dennis is a nice guy and I am not going to say that he didn’t do some good work in the Capozzi and DeJac cases,” says one officer who asked that his name not be used. “But, the fact is that he was part of a team who did the investigating on those cases, as he himself admits from time to time. He got most of the credit with the public because Dennis was the one who ran to the tv cameras first and the media really fell in love with him…But, this whole image of Dennis as one of the great heroes of our time who did all these things all by himself is just not true.”

According to the less than wild about Delano faction, it was others who did the lion’s share of the work.

“The difference is that there were other detectives in the cold case unit of the Buffalo Police Department who went out there and did the grunt work,” adds another “and then, it seemed like, all of a sudden, it was Dennis who got the credit.”

A lot of it, in these folks view, had to do with the image Delano projects of a tuogh, street wise guy from the streets who was never the smartest kid in class but was definitely the most honest.

“Dennis looks the part, but so much of this is hype,” says one. “He isn’t even Italian, he’s Dutch. The truth is that Dennis has done some good things but he’s also made a lot of mistakes. What he did, giving that video to Ch. 2 is a prime example. With all due respect, he should have been suspended for that. No detective in the department would have done that and there is simply no defense for it. You just can’t have official evidence in a case being compromised by giving it to the media.”

Of course, the Dennis faction contends that the search for truth, if it is uncompromising enough, is not always neat and tidy, that sometimes rules have to be broken to get reluctant higher ups to do what ’s right.

On the other hand…

“The truth is that what Dennis did was wrong and irresponsible,” adds one of the hero cop’s detractors. “If solving the Capozzi and DeJac cases entitles a person to be elected to public office, then there should be a half dozen detectives and other investigators running. So that’s a big part of the reason why Delano isn’t getting all of those police union endorsements. Many cops think he’s a credit grabber or that he was irresponsible for releasing evidence to the media or they simply remember all the good things Senator Stachowski has done for first responders in this area. ”

Fervent Stachowski backers are even more spirited in their criticisms of Delano.

“Look, the guy says he’s a hero cop, but most police officers don’t like him,” one contends. “He’s a State Senate candidate who won’t debate or appear at forums or take questions from the media. The whole thing is a myth which I’m only hoping the voters will catch on to by election day.”

It’s always so nice when the fascistic blowhard Sean Hannity gets taken to school.

The bad guy in this is LIN Television, the owner of Channels 4 and 23. LIN could - but hasn’t - given Time Warner express permission to retransmit its free over-the-air signal.

WIVB and WNLO make millions each year from the sale of advertising. It is free TV that you can watch with a pair of rabbit ears. In order for those two signals to go out over cable, neither WIVB nor WNLO has to lift a finger. All they have to do is send their signal out, Time Warner picks it up and sends it out over its wires. While you may pay for cable service, you’re paying for not only local stations that are static-free, but for other services, as well.

Here - from WIVB’s own FAQ on the issue - is the best they can do:

Here is a basic analogy: If you were to get a drink of water at a public drinking fountain, it is free, but once the water is placed in a package, it is no longer free. The same holds true for local television programming delivered through a subscription-based provider.

Right, because the packaging, shipment, and marketing cost money. I’m paying for the convenience of drinking that water from a package anywhere I want, rather than being stuck going to that water fountain or drinking it out of my cupped hands. I pay Time Warner for a service they provide, end of story.

Time Warner adds value to the WNLO and WIVB signals by eliminating issues of reception that cable subscribers pay not to deal with. WNLO and WIVB add nothing. That retransmission guarantees that over 300,000 people can see WNLO’s and WIVB’s commercials with crystal clarity.

Yet they want to be paid less than a penny per subscriber per day by Time Warner to permit its 300,000+ local subscribers to watch their programming and advertising. Time Warner refuses to pay for something that’s available for free, and won’t pass the cost on to us. Good for Time Warner.

And LIN Television has gone to extraordinary lengths to try and get people to leave Time Warner en masse, pimping dish services (complete with $50 coupon for the privilege of signing a contract), and Verizon FIOS, which isn’t available yet in most of Erie County. So, you’re left with rabbit ears - I don’t even have any in my house, and don’t plan on getting them.

Jeff Simmermon, the director of digital communications at Time Warner Cable, left a comment directing me to an interview he did with the Austinist, a market where LIN has forced NBC programming off Time Warner:

We’ve heard KXAN/LIN-TV’s side of the story. So what’s TWC’s position on this? Is LIN-TV asking for too much money?

Absolutely. Broadcast signals have been free for the past 6 decades — LIN TV is taking a free signal and charging for it without performing the enhanced clarity and distribution that we do.

If it is indeed a matter of money, why was LIN-TV able to negotiate retransmission contracts with the other telecomms?

That assertion from LIN is patently ridiculous. No deal is permanent. We’ve reached an agreement with every other broadcaster in our entire cable footprint, and LIN’s the only holdout…

…Please explain why TWC believes that KXAN’s programming is free and therefore not worth the “less than a penny per day per subscriber” that has been asked for.

Anyone with an antenna can plug it into their TV and see KXAN without spending a single red cent. We’re the ones who take that signal, clarify it to make the picture reliable and amplify it to reach many, many more people than KXAN could reach without us. Furthermore, Hulu.com and NBC.com show NBC’s must-see programming like 30 Rock and The Office for free online. It’s Bizarro-world economics to charge money for something that’s available for free. Not unlike setting up a tent in one’s backyard, charging admission and calling it an “oxygen booth.”

Will TWC take KXAN’s feed off of TWC’s broadcast service tonight, as everyone has stated? If so, who is (physically) initiating the actual break?

By now this question has partially answered itself. But make no mistake: we did not take KXAN off the air. That was LIN’s decision, not ours. Last night, we were negotiating pretty well with LIN TV. Or so we thought. We offered to work through the night to reach an agreement and they refused, despite acknowledging progress in the negotiations. All we wanted was a short extension so we could complete the negotiations, but LIN TV preferred to pull the signal off the air in a blatant disregard for their own viewers and advertisers.

What does this potential breakup mean for Time Warner customers who want to tune in to NBC programming?

As I mentioned before, you can view NBC programming for free with a regular broadcast antenna. We’re giving away broadcast antenna kits for free at our local offices (12012 N. MoPac Expressway, Austin, Texas 78758) — customers without antennas can pick those up during business hours. Furthermore, we’ve prepared an instructional video to show our customers how to hook their computers right up to their television sets so they can watch all the free NBC programming available online on TV: http://tinyurl.com/cpu2tv

When the Bills game is unavailable on your Time Warner-fed TV tomorrow, you can blame LIN Television, which is demanding that Time Warner pay a fee to retransmit and enhance a free signal that LIN already gets paid to send through advertising. LIN could have - but didn’t - permit Time Warner to keep the local signals while the companies continued to negotiate, but LIN pulled it over Time Warner’s objections. That’s idiotic.

The only CBS shows I watch regularly are Survivor and the Amazing Race. Full episodes of Survivor are available - for free - online.

What a boneheaded move. Channel 4’s ratings just plummeted by what - 80, 90%? This lasts at most 4 days.

UPDATE: LIN, Channel 4’s parent corporation, wants Time Warner to pay to carry the local signal. But Channel 4 makes its money off of advertising. Those ads aren’t being seen by Time Warner subscribers right now. If I was an advertiser on WNLO or WIVB, I’d be screaming bloody murder right now. I have to side with the cable company on this one, and simply cannot fathom what Channel 4’s problem is.

This Thursday, join WNYMedia.net at W.J. Morrissey’s Pub at 30 Mississippi Street in Buffalo’s Cobblestone District, to watch the Vice Presidential debate between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Delaware Senator Joe Biden, live from Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

The festivities begin at 8pm.

This may come as a shock to some, but even journalists have personal lives and hold political opinions. Their job is to set those opinions aside and be objective when reporting on an issue. No one has ever impugned Gwen Ifill’s integrity in any serious way, mostly because her most recent position is with the uber-wonky Lehrer Report, which is quite literally the antithesis of the garbage available on the more popular cable news nets.

The fact that Gwen Ifill is penning a book about modern-day African-American candidates and politicians is no surprise, as I’m sure PBS doesn’t pay megabucks and Ifill is looking to supplement her income with a scholarly book about a topic of interest to her. The book isn’t an Obama love letter, but is called “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” It’s a legitimate topic, and Ifill is a professional.

It takes idiot troglodytes such as Matt Drudge and Michelle Malkin to allege that this is somehow evidence of Ifill’s bias in favor of Obama, and that she is a biased individual who shouldn’t moderate tonight’s VP debate - a debate in which Obama isn’t participating. The book itself? It’s been known about since July, and Ifill was agreed-to as the moderator on August 6th.

Obviously, if this was - let’s say - Kerry vs. Bush, the Con media would be going ballistic with calls for Ifill to step down, and chances are that Kerry would have tried to appease the Cons by trying to get Ifill to do just that. The only win in that scenario would have been Bush and the Cons.

Obama, to his credit, doesn’t ask “how high” when the Con media cries “jump”, and is benefiting from that. By ignoring a controversy that doesn’t exist, it comes back around to McCain, who is forced not to look like a petty whiner and says Ifill is just fine, thanks very much.

No one has suggested that Ifill will be tougher on Palin than Biden, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that there is even the appearance of impropriety with respect to her selection as a moderator, and the issue of her book.

The Republicans are to be commended for doing their best to pre-emptively diminish expectations for Palin, right down to working the refs. At this point, all Palin has to do is show up and not crumble.

I suspect that the debate tonight, as eager as everyone is to rubberneck the car wreck, will be anticlimactic, with no clear winner and no big gaffes. Palin will do just fine giving unchallenged, non-responsive answers to questions and repeating the talking points she’s been cramming for weeks. Biden will do just fine because he knows a lot about a lot of stuff and he’ll be respectful and not demeaning towards Palin.

Channel 4 is spending a solid 5 minutes of its newscast calling out the whaaaaambulance about the fact that Time Warner may drop LIN programming from local cable.

What happened to ‘must carry’? I don’t believe for a moment that Time Warner will drop Channel 4 from its lineup, because it’s in neither entity’s self-interest to have that happen. A deal will most likely be struck at the last minute, just like a lot of lawsuits get settled on the courthouse steps.

The question was a simple one from one of the least-respected journalists in America. What media do you read in order to keep up on important issues of the day?

If asked that question, any one of you would have a simple answer - Buffalo News, local TV news, CNN/FNC/MSNBC/CNBC, BBC World News, Time/Newsweek, WSJ, NYT, the Economist - pick a couple and wait for Katie’s next question.

But someone who doesn’t listen, doesn’t think, and just answers for the sake of giving an answer would get defensive and say “all of ‘em”. Every. Single. Media. Source. It’s like my 8 year-old in mid-Jonas-Brothers distraction.

Of course, she also unwittingly makes Obama’s case for him:

Here is the Bob McCarthy article I referenced sort of in passing the other day. I take no pleasure in its content, as I don’t like to see any media venture fail - especially one that has a track record of good work such as the Niagara Falls Reporter.

One accuses the other of overdipping in the till, and there are counteraccusations of Golisano/Pigeon payoffs. This is why lawyers and lawsuits and contracts and judges exist, and there are two sides to every story, so somewhere betwixt the two is where the truth lies.

Hudson is, as always, welcome to post, as is anyone else - involved or not.

If it’s true that Pigeon paid someone off to try and affect an election, and the fact that he did so wasn’t disclosed, I’d find that to be sleaze of Illuzzian proportions. If it’s true that the publisher was stealing from the company, that’s sleazy, too, although the only people affected are those with a stake in the paper; the former is a macro concern while the latter is a micro-issue.

I do, however, ask that comments avoid ad hominem attacks on people. That’s not directed at Hudson, but at those who might rip into him.

Anyone interested in why the Reporter hasn’t published this week or updated its website might want to keep an eye out for Friday’s Buffalo News.

UPDATE: As is evident, it didn’t make Friday’s News - the bailout took up its space. There is an article in the works, and I notice that the Reporter updated its website sometime between yesterday evening and this morning. Nevertheless, there is no print version this week and speculation runs rampant as to what, precisely, is going on.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Sarah Palin keeps an eye on Vladimir Putin?

When Russian aircraft come into US airspace, the jets that are scrambled to intercept come from Alaska? She has nothing to do with it.

Alaska borders Canada? She’s defending those points as being evidence of her foreign policy experience? No wonder McCain wants to push tomorrow’s debate off to October 2nd and push the Veep debate off to an undisclosed location at an indeterminate time.

Palin’s star is fading as fast as she can speak, and the “suspension” of the campaign, (which involves ads running throughout the country, McCain surrogates bashing Obama on TV, Palin posing at Ground Zero) is almost universally mocked as a gimmick and a joke. This rabbit McCain pulled out of his hat was a dud. McCain is running out of time, and out of rabbits.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is in New York today to meet with a handful of world leaders and foreign policy experts like Henry Kissinger at the UN. But all is not going as smoothly as she’d like. One might chalk it up to the fact that she’s been the veep contender for about 4 weeks now, and has yet to hold a press conference. The only thing we have to go on is her stump speech, and her Charlie Gibson interview. The interview with Sean Hannity? That’s like Pravda interviewing Leonid Brezhnev.

So, comrade, aside from crushing the reactionary forces of bourgeois capitalism, what other amazing strides do you anticipate from the glorious Soviet workers over the course of the next 5 year plan?

Today, the McCain campaign stumbled into what can only be called a genuine, bona fide press revolt.

Last night, the campaign provided locations for Palin’s scheduled meetings with two world leaders and Henry Kissinger to a network TV producer, who was assigned to provide editorial content on the meetings for the five television networkers. The reporter was never going to be allowed to sit in on the private meetings but would be permitted to be on hand for as still and video journalists took pictures at the beginning of each meeting.

But just a little more than an hour before Palin’s first meeting was set to begin, the pool producer was notified that he would not be allowed in to the photo spray. This means that the McCain/Palin campaign would get the benefit of free pictures of Palin’s meeting with world leaders without having to face the possibility that the candidate might have to answer a question from the media.

Television networks, including CBS News maintain a policy that if they are prevented from having an editorial presence at an event, they will not allow cameras to shoot

In other words, the press isn’t there to do a photo shoot for the McCain campaign. It’s there to report and record news.

The AP is even less kind:

Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has not held a press conference in nearly four weeks of campaigning, on Tuesday banned reporters from her first meetings with world leaders, allowing access only to photographers and a television crew.

CNN, which was providing the television coverage for news organizations, decided to pull its TV crew, effectively denying Palin the high visibility she had sought. …

The campaign told the TV producer, print and wire reporters in the press pool that follows the Alaska governor that they would not be admitted with the photographers and camera crew taken in to photograph the meetings. At least two news organizations, including The Associated Press, objected and were told that the decision was not subject to discussion.

While the press’ reaction is too little, too late, and amounts to a hissy fit, the fact remains that this isn’t some banana republic, and we expect people running for elected office to be accessible to the public and media, and to answer questions. If you’re going to run a photo op at the UN, you should be prepared to answer some foreign policy questions. Instead, the McCain campaign is busy running more against the media than against Barack Obama, which is great because the media aren’t running for anything except ratings.

In any event, in the spirit of fun, a caption contest for each of these pics:

Today, New York State Democratic Party Chairperson June O’Neill was shown McCarthy’s story in today’s paper, which I already skewered here.

In that article, the following “fact” is asserted:

Sources close to Brown say they have informed State Democratic Chairwoman June O’Neill that City Hall will not work with Lenihan, which could prove a factor with new Gov. David A. Paterson as he works to build his own statewide organization.

O’Neil was surprised. After all, she said no one from Byron Brown’s camp called her to tell her that they wouldn’t work with Lenihan.

And to think those crazy blogs will just print any old thing.

This article in the Buffalo News about a murder on Kenmore Avenue a year or so ago references an unnamed “Internet blog”.

Not unexpectedly, I started getting cryptic emails from people about this case yesterday. I had no idea what they were emailing me about.

Now I found the “blog” referenced in the News’ article - it’s a message board on Topix.

And after reading a smattering of the posts there, I want nothing. to. do. with. this. Condolences go out to everybody involved.