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[ In a recent interview with Tommy Christopher from Mediaite, NBC’s Chuck Todd was asked, “To what degree do you think the opinion media influence the questions that are asked here?” “Here” refers to the White House press room.

Todd replies that “there is no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge links to it.] Pam Meister

Soooooo, Mr Todd, is it also a crime that so many people have dumped the MSM and went over to Drudge, sda, hotair and many many other blogs?

[ But a funny thing happened on the way to the media forum. A little thing called the Internet became available to the public and within just a few short years, the narrative began to shift. Regular people started asking critical questions and expressing their opinions on the news of the day on things called blogs, calling attention to stories that they thought were important for one reason or another. Other people started reading and commenting on these blog posts. News aggregator sites such as the Drudge Report, which Chuck Todd views with such derision, also started popping up, posting headlines (sometimes raided from the MSM’s spike files) and allowing the people to choose which ones they wanted to read. The advent of e-mail and social networking like Facebook and Twitter added to the public’s ability to disseminate the news.] Pam Meister

Pam Meister , Breitbart

Here's a good article from Rosie DiManno of the Star about the shoe bomber. He got 80 years and she directly quotes the judge who doesn't have time for terrorists who think they are soldiers and deserve a soldiers trial.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/776394--dimanno-you-hate-freedom-judge-tells-shoe-bomber

Play Misty for me! Hey, that sounds familiar! Thanks Vit! Hope you've cooled down a tad from last nite. Ciao!

actually new "Kate", (and I really think you should use a different commenting name as that one's taken already by the blog owner)

Sarah Palin mentions that access from Skagway to an american doctor is the reason her parents took the son in this instance to Whitehorse, and it should be mentioned in the news outlets trying to paste Mrs. Palin with this brush, that state run medicare didn't exist in the Yukon at that time. So healthcare rationing hadn't begun yet, and regardless of that she would have had to pay for services rendered.

That may be the reason she didn't mention having to wait for a day in the hospital emerg.

I may not comment very often Vitruvius but I just want to say that I look forward to your inspired nightly musical selections.

Thank you.

Didn't Earl have a talented brother too, and they would sometimes play together, or am I thinking of another?

Make that Erroll, I'm likely thinking of Earl Grant.

Herrow U Hess A. from Kim.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,588342,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r5:c0.000000:b0:z5

All articles that I have read on the Palin/Whitehorse hospital visit have lacked serious information on accessibility from Skagway. The options in Skagway at that time were a 6.5 hour ferry ride to Juneau, and depending on the time of year, either once or twice a week. Or a 3.5 hour train ride to Whitehorse at about twice the frequency as the highway was not completed until the late 70s. In any case, to this day Skagway has no more than a nursing station.

I can say though that to this day the Whitehorse Hospital has a sign that demands money from anyone from outside of the Yukon before they will even think of looking at you, where as my experiences with medical in Alaska has been, fix now worry about money later. This followed by a good experience on the money end rather than some stories I've heard in Whitehorse.

From a lifelong Whitehorse Resident, with a boat in Skagway!

Right you are marc in Calgary, 'new Kate' and her geographically challenged pals in the press probably have never looked at the location of Skagway, Alaska, on a map. Skagway is a town that was built around the Klondike Gold Rush starting in 1897. Skagway is a port and the overland route to Dawson City needed a drop off centre, Skagway and Dyea supplied that need. The White Pass Railroad finished a railroad from Skagway to Whitehorse in 1899 making the journey to Dawson City a rail and riverboat journey - Skagway was a transportation hub to Dawson City, in the heady days of the Gold Rush - ships carried Gold and miners from Skagway to Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria. In the days that the Palins lived in Skagway the train still ran from Whitehorse to Skagway and from Skagway to Whitehorse once or twice a day. Many Americans lived in the Yukon working in mines and doing business - when I came to the Yukon in 1973 Yukoners were tied to Alaskans in business and friendship - Yukoners went to University in Alaska as Alaskans, we worked in Alaska whenever we felt like changing residences and the Alaskans worked here. There really was not a border except for the presence of Customs at border crossings and if a person was a Yukoner or an Alaskan they always knew the guy at Customs. Back then there was a big push for a Yukon/Alaska/B.C. country - everybody liked that idea! The train to Whitehorse was a much better option for Skagway residents since it was reliable and much closer than Juneau; they knew the hospital staff as well as we did and they had friends to stay with while they were here. It was a much different North then; a friendlier, much nicer north - it was all free enterprise thus, it was always interesting and exciting.

We did not have medi care here then but the hospital was fairly well equipped since the construction of the Alaska highway in 1945 had left a good infrastructure (big Military camps needed good medical equipment; Whitehorse was 1000 miles from any major city) there were lots of mines and military goings on - the USA had major bases in Alaska because the Soviet Union is so close and Military planes stopped here to refuel; also all travel to Alaska overland passed through Whitehorse. People from Skagway came to Whitehorse to meet people who drove up the highway en route to Anchorage or Fairbanks. We were at home in Alaska and Alaskans were at home in the Yukon. Most old time Yukoners still have many friends in Alaska.

Thanks, Vit, for Erroll Garner, one of my -- and my grandmother's (RIP) -- favourites. A lot of her favourites have been passed down to me: Fats, Bing, Jane Froman, Coward. I liked them all when I was six and still do.

"EU climate chief delivers treaty blow

The world will almost certainly fail to draw up a new treaty on climate change this year, the minister in charge of last year’s Copenhagen summit has admitted, delivering a heavy blow to the barely flickering hopes for a swift global ­settlement.

Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister who masterminded the summit of world leaders on global warming last year and is now the European commissioner for climate change, told the Financial Times negotiations were not progressing fast enough for a treaty to be signed soon.

She also gave warning that pushing too hard for a treaty this year could be counterproductive.

“To get every detail set in the next nine months looks very difficult,” she said. “Europe would love that to happen, and I would love that to happen ... but my feeling is that it is going to be very difficult to get a treaty.”

Her pessimism echoed that of the outgoing United Nations climate change chief, Yvo de Boer. He told the FT as he resigned last month after four years of seeking an agreement that he could not see a treaty being signed this year."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2466962/posts

The Red-Green Show: “causing environmentalists to see red.”
…-

“Mike Haseler (02:26:59) :

Even Hollywood snubs Global Warming

“HOLLYWOOD, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The month of Avatar versus Hurt Locker Oscar predictions came to a close on March 7th with the Hurt Locker overtaking Avatar for Best Picture and Kathryn Bigelow trumping James Cameron for Best Director, causing environmentalists to see red. If you are one of the dozen people who haven’t seen Avatar yet, the environmental message shines through the jaw-dropping special effects – the dangers of global warming, respecting Mother Nature, and environmental resource management.”

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oscars-avatar-snub-sparks-voting-frenzy-at-green-globe-film-awards-87099587.html

I heard the news and it didn’t twig until afterwards – particularly as I’ve not seen Avatar. But when it gets pointed out: environment versus war movie, and the war movie won!! There’s even a book out with some maniac climate scientists as the baddy. What next? A film of climategate whereby some weatherman saves the world from the clutches of man and evil scientist hell-bent on taking over the world?”

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/nsidc-reports-that-antarctica-is-cooling-and-sea-ice-is-increasing/#comment-339567

cconn, thanks for the link to the judge's statement to the shoe bomber.

About says it all.

Re Health and Hospital Insurance in the Yukon in the 60s

http://www.tc.gov.yk.ca/pdf/finding_aids/YRG_1_Series_12.pdf

"The Yukon Health Insurance Service (Y.H.I.S.) came into existence on July 1, 1961 to provide hospital insurance for all residents of the Yukon Territory."

The fuss about all this is silly and partisan. Palin was born in 1964 - what her parents had to do for health care in 60s has nothing to do with her views on how health care should be managed. To call her story an "admission" as this article does in the Vancouver Sun is ridiculous.

http://tinyurl.com/yaqlmb8

Via Weekly Standard, computer scientist (and Unabomber target) David Gelernter:

Time to Start Taking the Internet Seriously

1. No moment in technology history has ever been more exciting or dangerous than now. The Internet is like a new computer running a flashy, exciting demo. We have been entranced by this demo for fifteen years. But now it is time to get to work, and make the Internet do what we want it to.

2. One symptom of current problems is the fundamental puzzle of the Internet. (Algebra and calculus have fundamental theorems; the Internet has a fundamental puzzle.) If this is the information age, what are we so well-informed about? What do our children know that our parents didn't? (Yes they know how to work their computers, but that's easy compared to — say — driving a car.) I'll return to this puzzle...

How AGW/Carbon crisis BS will be used to rob the middle class.

We need look no further than the UK to see the failure of COP15 means nothing to the corporate/banking forces behind defrauding green economics. It's now obvious, in observing Europe go full throttle on green economic defrauding and plundering consumer markets, that Kyoto was never about the environment, it was about the legitimate environmental movement being hijacked by the corporate-bureaucratic-banking cabals and used to justify a new scam "green" economic order after these greed heads collapsed traditiuonal investment markets.

Look at the UK as a model market the green robber barons are setting up:

The IMF bankers are at the center of this coup - http://tinyurl.com/ycltj4d

Polluting corporate community cashes in - http://tinyurl.com/yh48vgg

Governments indebted to IMF loans will be forced into the green economy con game regardless of how fraudulent the science/justification - http://tinyurl.com/y9no4p7

mean while critical social services will be neglected to reallocate resouces to green economics - http://tinyurl.com/yg265vw

maz2, wondering why environmentalists would see red over the Oscars - their choice for best documentary proved Hollywood thinks a few dolphins getting eaten in Japan is worse than Latin American children being separated from their parents, stranded and left to fend for themselves for years. That should have made them quite happy.

O'fear.

"This is his sole legacy: a massive post-traumatic stress disorder."
(global politician)

"There is no point a nation's having the audacity of hope unless it also has the sophistication and the will to turn it into action."
...-

"The end of the road for Barack Obama?

Barack Obama seems unable to face up to America's problems, writes Simon Heffer in New York.

It is a universal political truth that administrations do not begin to fragment when things are going well: it only happens when they go badly, and those who think they know better begin to attack those who manifestly do not. The descent of Barack Obama's regime, characterised now by factionalism in the Democratic Party and talk of his being set to emulate Jimmy Carter as a one-term president, has been swift and precipitate. It was just 16 months ago that weeping men and women celebrated his victory over John McCain in the American presidential election. If they weep now, a year and six weeks into his rule, it is for different reasons.

Despite the efforts of some sections of opinion to talk the place up, America is mired in unhappiness, all the worse for the height from which Obamania has fallen. The economy remains troublesome. There is growth – a good last quarter suggested an annual rate of as high as six per cent, but that figure is probably not reliable – and the latest unemployment figures, last Friday, showed a levelling off. Yet 15 million Americans, or 9.7 per cent of the workforce, have no job. Many millions more are reduced to working part-time. Whole areas of the country, notably in the north and on the eastern seaboard, are industrial wastelands. The once mighty motor city of Detroit appears slowly to be being abandoned, becoming a Jurassic Park of the mid-20th century; unemployment among black people in Mr Obama's own city of Chicago is estimated at between 20 and 25 per cent. One senior black politician – a Democrat and a supporter of the President – told me of the wrath in his community that a black president appeared to be unable to solve the economic problem among his own people. Cities in the east such as Newark and Baltimore now have drug-dealing as their principal commercial activity: The Wire is only just fictional."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7396358/The-end-of-the-road-for-Barack-Obama.html

"Former Apartheid Spy Appointed to Head UN Climate Change Effort
9 03 2010

From the You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up Department.

Former Apartheid Spy Appointed to Head UN Climate Change Effort"

"From BIGGOVERNMENT.com

This week, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s tourism minister, was nominated to head the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC). Van Schalkwyk is a former apartheid operative who bartered his way into the black majority government by helping it smear its democratic opposition. He is a statist bureaucrat who is one of the most unpopular political figures in the new South Africa. He is just right for the job.

There is no one better to put in charge of the entire political enterprise of climate change as it is collapsing amidst failed negotiations and accusations of fraud. Van Schalkwyk will be sure to hasten the end. He did the same when he took over the rump of South Africa’s National Party, the party of apartheid, and led it to crushing defeat. He gave up and joined the African National Congress (ANC) government in return for his ministry."

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/09/former-apartheid-spy-appointed-to-head-un-climate-change-effort/#more-17179

Ww what have you been drinking??? The federal government of Lester B. Pearson, pressured by the New Democratic Party (NDP) who held the balance of power, introduced the Medical Care Act in 1966 that extended the HIDS Act cost-sharing to allow each province to establish a universal health care plan. It also set up the Medicare system. In 1984, the Canada Health Act was passed, which prohibited user fees and extra billing by doctors. In 1999, the prime minister and most premiers reaffirmed in the Social Union Framework Agreement that they are committed to health care that has "comprehensiveness, universality, portability, public administration and accessibility."[31]

The Yukon is a territory, not a province. We don't say 'how high' until the Feds say "jump".

Mark Levin - Reagan Library-1 of 7 March /05/10

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=K-psVZ_wHFU&feature=related