It isn't just the daughter that's screwed up - the mother is too. Warren Farrell called her a "man-hater" in one of his books.

I have to echo that I'm not willing to bail-out the banks, auto industry, etc.

In fact, I add one that most don't -- trains. For the love of God, stop funding that archaic mode of transit called Amtrak and fund some of the mass transit that's really needed -- buses on city streets.

As far as papers go, they need to adjust to the times or die. So far, my local rag is surviving but this probably is, at least in part, because they are. They have an award winning website that I know I go to quite often. Don't know if I'd pay for it -- it would probably depend on how much and if you could per view/use (I wouldn't subscribe just as I don't the paper but I'd pay a nominal fee for certain uses just as I do the Sunday paper). I agree with the commenter that said we shouldn't bail out archaic technology. If the papers go, I'll miss a couple of features but it wouldn't be heartbreaking and I think the local one would be savy enough to put the features I'd want on their website.

God forbid, we should let dying businesses die. If people aren't willing to pay for them by being paying customers, force them by taxing them to death.

"and even worse, that she'll be doing it as 'an advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy.' "

I'm not surprised. I'm starting to hear horror stories coming out of the Pentagon. Obama is staffing the SecDef's office with left-wing syncophants who flatly refuse to listen to fact-based arguments, and routinely insult people in uniform. When they succeed in building a Carter-style hollow Army, don't let them throw you with their argument that they're doing it all "for the troops". That's not the reason.

It isn't just the daughter that's screwed up - the mother is too. Warren Farrell called her a "man-hater" in one of his books.

Here is an article by Warren Farrell regarding radical feminists such as Barbara Ehrenreich:

http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/f/farrell/farrell_6.htm

Having a man hater for a mother can't help Rosa's reasoning skills.

Dave -

Now you're starting to give my paranoia some legs. I started to worry a few years back when the military was scoring much higher in the "who do you trust" polls than Congress and the President.

Now we have an overtly anti-military president who is going to try to weaken this country.

Is a coup even possible in this country? If it happens, then what?

It doesn't help that newspapers typically alienate half of their potential subscribers by having an editorial position indistinguishable from that of the Democrat Party.

Great post Amy, but I would love to know what qualifications she is bringing to her post and steep the competition for that position was.

...never bothering to rub two brain cells together to figure out how this will all be paid for....

Heard a guy on the radio this morning who suggested that with 50% of the people paying no income taxes at all, there's no incentive for them to demand the government spend less.

Brooks' column was priceless ... and I don't mean that in a flattering way! The comments you posted were great but I encourage your many readers to read the others too - so many are brilliant!

It occurred to me that the one upside of licensing journalists is that then we'd officially know that they were employees of the Democrat Party ... errr, I mean "U.S. Government".

If you want to succeed in a free market economy, your product must be of high enough quality that other people, of their own free will, are actually willing to pay for it.

People like Ms. Brooks, who are asking for a bailout, are at the same time admitting that their work product does not meet that standard.

Government bailouts force us, as taxpayers, to overpay for inferior products we would not buy on our own. They reward shoddy performance, and what we reward is what we get.

...if we're willing to bail out banks and insurance companies and failing automakers...

Who says we're willing. Nobody asked me.

I did my part to help the auto industry by buying a car.

...we should be willing to part with some public funds to keep journalism alive too....

The public funds would be to keep newspapers alive. Journalism will thrive with or without newspapers. Ever see the evening news? Watch a Sunday morning talk show? Listen to news radio? Read a magazine without the word Us or People or Entertainment in the title? Ever hear of a little network called, CNN?

Is it just me or does America seem to be rapidly becoming a socialist nightmare. Socialism is a downward spiral.

I can't decide which is more extreme; my delight that Brooks' vapid, blathering, reflexively feminoid columns will cease, or my horror that she is making POLICY AT THE PENTAGON, FOR CHRISSAKES!!!??? (What crack are they smoking?!) I have never scanned one of her columns without thinking, "How in the hell does this dim bulb get published in a major metropolitan paper?!"

As for the LA Times, with a current editorial staff which apparently believes the Democrats' platform is much too conservative and reactionary, and which promotes radical feminism with all the unquestioning gusto of wild-eyed cultists, I would now be glad to see it fold. Yesterday's unprecedented front page "news" ad for NBC was the last straw for any pretense of integrity. If you can buy a front-page "newsvertisement," I assume you can buy a "real" story, as well.

I have been reading the Times for more than 40 years, and it is truly a sad, increasingly-worthless remnant of a once-proud enterprise.

MIOnline,

thanks for the excerpt on virulent man-hatred at the New York Times. Everyone should read the book referred to in the excerpt: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say by Warren Farrell. It is still just as applicable today, if not moreso, as when it first came out.

I guess the good news is that Andrea Dworkin committed suicide a few years back. Good riddance - a definite boon to society to be rid of her.

p.s. Amy,

I figured out the problem with the link - I was switching the 's' with the 'p' in the word 'blogspot'. Sorry to have accused you. What's interesting is that someone out there creates these faux-sites/links, or maybe even the url's for them are automatically generated when someone creates a blog.

Boy, who knew the LAT readership hated her so much! I'm a little surprised the site allowed comments. Now if her brother Ben can just get a good job with the government so his girlfriend can get health insurance....

Norman-- Andrea Dworkin didn't commit suicide. I didn't particularly like her, but that's a nasty comment. Don't you think before you hit "Submit"?

"Heard a guy on the radio this morning who suggested that with 50% of the people paying no income taxes at all, there's no incentive for them to demand the government spend less."

The bad-in-a-way thing is, nobody's taxes are being increased (except smokers') to pay for any of the increased spending. It's just being added to the giant debt tab.

I've made the comparison before, but it's like the person who loses his job but doesn't limit spending, just racks up credit card debt. Cash inflows from taxes have to be hurting, with so many people out of work. Yet the debt load keeps going up. What happens when the U.S. defaults on it? What is the collateral on this debt?

Government spending will have to drop, simply because there won't be any more credit available. Since most of what the government spends money on involves things the government shouldn't be meddling with anyway, I almost see it as a good thing. But who will be affected, and how?

Further to the downfall of the L.A. Times, they're now publishing advertisements that appear to be news stories, without any disclaimer. Read more here

KateC,

yes I did. Just like I would feel the same about a nazi leader. Also just like a lot of people who are for the death penalty (I am against it) in favor of execution of murderers. She was having far more deleterious influence on society than any murderer. She had blood on her hands. Same for MacKinnon, Gandy et. al.

How did she die?

untruths? Sorry, that is what I had read. I guess I am guilty of not knowing everything.

Many or most of those feminist ideologues effectively advocate genocide; some don't even try to hide it - e.g. Maureen Dowd.

And yet you say I made a "nasty comment"? Give me a break! Visit (all) the feminist sections in your local bookstore, and browse the books - then get back to me!!

Or visit a men's or father's rights board, such as Glenn Sacks, to find the truth about the terrible toll radical feminists are exacting on boys and men; and for that matter, women too.

"Government spending will have to drop, simply because there won't be any more credit available."

Actually, it doesn't really have to until there's an absolute disaster; that's part of the downward spiral: When a socialist government starts running out of money to spend, bureaucrats just look for other sources of income - and by definition, wealth is only generated by productive individuals and businesses, so they might just take more and more from the productive people until they are completely bled dry and the entire system caves on itself. This has happened in other countries. Socialism is like a parasite feeding off capitalism, and parasites can destroy their hosts if they run out of control. Part of the problem is that when socialism starts failing, people get scared, and try solve the problem by throwing more socialism at it - like what's happening now in the US. Bureaucrats feed off this, trumping up problems in order to scare people even more in order to justify taking even more of whatever money is still in the system - because that's how they make their living.

... problem is, most people buy into the government's line that *it* is the (only) solution to the problems (never mind that government usually created those problems in the first place, or that the "solutions" are going to create more problems - it just makes people feel less scared when 'daddy government' is doing 'something').

WTF? Advisor to Defense policy? Kee-ripes! Help.

The comments on the article are *ahem* priceless.

I don't think that subsidizing newspapers is a solution, but I recently read a far better article (no comparison, really) about the idea, here.

Federal govt. cut newspapers slack during the country's founding, and also:

Meanwhile - and this strikes me as the most perverse of ironies - the prime cause of the newspaper industry's current woes is the Internet....and there would be no Internet today if not for the lavish government subsidies that made it possible. The Internet was birthed as a Defense Department program, and later nurtured by a federal agency, the National Science Foundation. All constitutional issues aside, maybe the government has a responsibility to help save the industry that it has (albeit inadvertently) helped to destroy.

True about the internet and Defense Dept., but I wonder if the internet is the "prime cause" of newspaper's woes.