LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

There's an interesting development in the "culture war" that's been raging in the media for the last few decades. It seems as if the liberal side is losing public support faster than ever before. The NY Times is threatening to shut down the Boston Globe, and may bite the dust itself by the end of the year. It's not surprising that they have reached out to a failing cable channeL/website, MSNBC.com, to share their content. What's happening here is that News Corp is kicking their butts, soundly. The NY Post, a lowly "tabloid" paper, is weathering the winds of cultural (and financial) change much better than the NY Times, and the Fox News channel routinely dominates in the ratings over MSNBC's "prime time" lineup. In fact, Fox's top host, Bill O'Reilly, has been directly taking on the General Electric and NBC leadership. O'Reilly's latest stunt was to send the intrepid producer Jesse Waters into a GE shareholders' meeti...

Wasn't this the exact the kind of thing that Obama was railing against in his campaign? Chrysler has a month to complete the sale of their company to Fiat, an Italian car company. I've never been to Italy, but I know something about their cars, and roads, from friends. If President Obama thinks that Chrysler is going to actually sell anything like the cars driven in Europe, he's got another thing comin'. Fiat tried to crack the American market, but they're not "popular" cars here. Branding them "Chrysler" won't change that. Of course, Fiat may not look to change the models that sell well. Once they take ownership of the company, the government will have somewhat less leverage to pressure them. They will probably end up lobbying to keep the CAFE standards where they are. It's still a free market, and people will determine what sells, not the government. I'm sure the Fiat executives will try to earn a profit on their investment. On an e...