La Quinta, California

It's only fitting that a new Ice Age, albeit a political one, should begin in Alaska.  And a Republican Ice Age is precisely what California GOP strategist Mike Murphy predicted a few weeks ago.  And it didn't start with Sarah Palin's bizarre and sudden resignation on Friday.

Nope, it began last summer when the bizarre Sarah Palin was selected as the Vice-Presidential candidate by the equally bizarre John McCain.

After Friday's events, can you imagine if this gal had actually become VP?  With America still teetering on financial collapse, with Iran in turmoil, North Korea firing off missiles and Netanyahu bellowing in Israel, would you have wanted Palin one flatline away from the Oval Office?

Palin's resignation, coming as a bonus chapter in the Mark Sanford soap opera, is the kind of stuff you just can't make up. I don't even know what to say about it, other than the woman is clearly deranged. And she just can't take the heat (I plan to read the Vanity Fair piece Saturday as part of my own my private Independence Day celebration.  I'm out baking and basking in the desert this weekend with my daughter and we bought two VF's tonight so we don't have to wait for one or another of us to finish the piece before the other one can start).

Palin's political career is clearly over. Her resignation makes no sense from any angle, except that of political suicide. But that shouldn't stop her from running for President. Hell, if a political zombie like Newt Gingrich can still amble across the stage, there must be some room still left for one more of the walking dead. No doubt Palin will write a book first (that will be remaindered before the publicity tour is over). Then she can firmly stake out the fundamentalist loon wing of the Republican Party.  The more of these corpses that crowd the Republican field, the better. Let a hundred loons bloom to divvy up the 30% of the electorate that still identifies as Republican.  It will only help accelerate the deep freeze now settling in over the Party of No. Given the ineptitude and general fecklessness of the Democrats, the implosion of the GOP is literally a Godsend.

P.S.  I read a really great book today. I'm on break this weekend, but will try to write a few words about it tomorrow or the next day.

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You can listen here.

I'll also be reprising this act this weekend on the CBS Sunday Morning show (the one with Charlie Osgood).

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Right. What a scary thought.

Just imagine:

If bloggers ran the world we'd be hearing about Michael Jackson's doctor instead of learning about the opposition in Iran.

If bloggers ran the world we'd be hearing about the custody fight over Michael Jackson's kids instead of learning the details of the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraqi cities.

If bloggers ran the world we'd be bombarded with the latest blather from Michael Jackson's demented father instead of having been briefed on what led to the first coup in Central America in 16 years.

If bloggers rather the world we'd be swimming in the build-up to the viewing of Michael Jackson's body instead of pondering the administration's approval of indefinite detention.

We'd probably also be awash with "news" about Farah Fawcett and Billy Mays (unless of course Michael Jackson's corpse passed gas that day).

Fortunately, we don't have to fret over such exaggerated scenarios of rule by brainless bloggers. We don't have to worry because that job is already taken.

As my colleague Jon Taplin points out, a new study by the  Pew Center for Media reveals that 93% of all coverage on the cable networks last Thursday and Friday was about Michael Jackson.

Once excerpt of the report:

From the time it was announced Jackson had died through the end of the day Friday—a little more than 28 hours—60% of the news coverage studied across 55 different news outlets was devoted to Jackson’s death. And that does not include the broadcast network prime time specials devoted to the singer’s demise—two of them for two hours Thursday night and one for a single—the extra hours of morning news and more.

All media sectors covered Jackson heavily, but it was cable news channels that led the way. Fully 93% of cable coverage studied on the Thursday and Friday following his death was about the King of Pop. On the front pages of Friday morning newspapers, 37% of their coverage was Jackson-related compared to 55% of the leading online coverage.

If anyone needed proof of how much the media culture has changed it might be this. When Elvis Presley died in 1977, CBS News was criticized for choosing not to lead its newscast with it.

Who needs bloggers anyway?  Not only cable channels, but the MSM networks did a much better job burying us in Michael Jackson than did the New Media.

And it ain't over yet.

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President Obama has done just that and so has every other hemispheric leader.

Even when I was spending most of my time in Central  America during the 1980's I could barely fathom Honduran politics. There weren't much, frankly.  But I even understand it less today than 20 years ago.

The deposed president is described as a leftist which has always been a rare breed in Honduras.  And the tensions between him and the military mounted in the past few days as he pushed for a referendum that would have allowed him another term in office (not that great a surprise from a big friend of Hugo Chavez).  The Supreme Court had ruled the vote illegal. The congress, led by his own party, also opposed the questionable referendum which was to take place Sunday.  But the President pushed ahead with it and then fired the top military commander who refused to implement the balloting.  Then the military fired the Prez, so to speak.

Those who defend the President say the Supreme Court represents the oligarchy. Quite possibly and quite likely. But they, and the congress,  are also a duly legal constitutional branches of the democratic government which Zelaya was defying. What we had, then, was a constitutional  power struggle resolved in a brutish way by the military.

There's pressure now from the OAS and from the region in general to reverse the coup and restore the democratically elected president.  We can hope that happens. We should also be aware of presidents who want to extend their legal mandates outside the bounds of the constitution they are to defend.

Speaking of Chavez, he seems to be speaking through his culo, so to speak. He's alleging that the Obama administration egged on the coup. It's a patently absurd and unfounded notion. And it isn't going to help Zelaya's cause to make Chavez his principal defender.

This is NOT a justification for the coup. Far from it,  Just an observation that Zelaya may have pushed things too far too recklessly with some bad role models.

Randy is doing a great job of keeping up with it all.

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I spent the entire day on jury duty and then drove out to the desert, so I was spared the CNN/Cable TV marathon eulogy for deceased pedophile Michael Jackson.  Thank God.

OK, Andrew Sullivan has a decent but if somewhat overwrought take on the sudden death of Jackson.

I would agree tht there's a certain tragic element to his entire life.  But in life, and in death, Michael Jackson rates a very low priority on my personal list of victims I grieve over.

R.I.P.

What can one possibly add to such a sordid little drama? You can't make this stuff up?

Only two quck thoughts:

This joker ought ot be IMMEDIATELY tossed out on his butt.  Not because he was fooling around in Argentina. But because he effectively abandoned his office, leaving his state and even his staff in the lurch. He was AWOL pure and simple. Out in the real world, when you don't show up for your job you get fired.  He can weep and plead all he wants.  Let him beg forgiveness from his good pal, Jesus. We mortals should just dispose of him.

Second, at least we know why he was a staunch opponent of the federal stimulus package. Didn't need it. The Governor had his own way to stimulate his package,

If he's not out of office by Friday, his state will join him as a laughing stock.

*** Tony Rap Says No

Our recently re-elected Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced today he was NOT going to run for Governor next year.  Glad he took the gratuitous advice I offered him a few months back in an L.A. Times opinion piece. Now that the decision is in, I suppose I am free to reveal that the day the piece was published, Hizzoner gave me a personal phone call to chuckle over what I wrote and claimed not to be pissed. He sounded genuinely conflicted, barely let me get a word in edgewise and all on his own argued with himself back and forth whether he should run and then clicked off.  Recent polling and a new hubub about his personal life would have pretty much made it a suicide mission in any case (as Steve Lopez also wrote immediately after today's announcement was made).  I'm pleased Antonio is sticking with the city for the next four years (even if he has no other choice). I hope he can help make some sort of lemonade out of such a sour past couple of years.

*** Weak Weekly

After some repeated razzing from this here blog of mine, after a full three years of sustained crisis and downward spiral, and AFTER the editor-in-chief of the L.A. Weekly was fired last month, the L.A. Times media critic Jim Rainey finally got around to writing a piece about the place last week. (I think, given the circumstances, my waiting ten days to mention the piece is only fair).  All in all, it was a pretty mediocre piece about the overwhelming mediocrity that the Weekly has become.  Rainey's a nice guy and means well, but there isn't what you call a lot of reporting in his account. His take on the injurious role of News Editor Jill Stewart is right on the money. But, as you can see, the piece lacks all historical context and is very much inside baseball. Unless you're a former employee (like yours truly) you get no idea at all about how this situation came to pass, what it meant when the New Times chain took over the paper,  etc. etc.  You'd think that the paper of record in Los Angeles would do, um, a more comprehensive job of documenting the slow, agonizing death of what was the largest and most successful metro weekly in the country. But the Times doesn't do much that kind of reporting any more. we'll give Rainey a B minus for his efforts (which is better than the Incomplete he had to date). I'll let y'all grade his actual work. P.S. Rainey indirectly quotes me in his piece so, obviosuly, he interviewed me for it.  No one else he spoke to would go on the record because when they were tossed from the Weekly, they had to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements to get their severance. I refused the insult and collected my severance in any case.  Anyway, Rainey couldn;t help but mention to me on the phone the business about me having repeatedly chided him over the last year for not writing about the Weekly. "You assume everyone reads your blog," he told me. "I didn't really see what you had written about me until someone said something to me a few days ago."  I felt like saying: "Well, I'm not your editor. And, more importantly,  I wouldn't think that the media writer for the L.A. Times would really need any green light from me to write about the collapse of the next biggest paper in his own city. It's a story he might think up on hios own." I didn't say it, though. But I did just write it, not that anybody will read it.

*** KPFK-Pacifica: End Times Radio

Speaking of inside baseball, let's go right into the dugout. Or in this case, into the locker room toilet. I was driving a different car this week and didn't have my usual XM Radio so got stuck listening to what is now quaintly called Terrestrial Radio. My smugness quotient was usually breached within 7 minutes of listening to any NPR program (how DO they teach all those folks to talk the same way? I've tried to imitate the style but can't figure out the right doze of Thorezene to make it come out right).  So out of pure masochism and boredom I found myself (quite to my own horror) tuning in  several times to the ongoing train wreck known as listener-sponsored KPFK Pacifica Radio.  Well, without George Bush and Dick Cheney to conspirasize about and with pocket change dried up by the recession, it ain't easy coming up with effective pitches for the currnt fund drive. Anyway, there's a supposed new "reform" administration in power at KPFK -- replacing the shrill loonie-tunes self-styled revolutionaries that dominated the network for most of the last decade (and still do to a great degree).  Problem is, that under the loons, the center of gravity shifted so deep into insanity (constant pitching in favor of 9/11 Truth) that the new, relatively more sane format is only relatively so and, in fact, is still basically insane. The pitch this week has not been about at all about what is should be: it should always be focused on the intrinsic value of a non-commercial station with thank-you gifts as a sweetener). Oh no. Instead it has been an almost unbroken infomercial (complete with personal testomonies) hawking a DVD that is no less than a miracle cure for cancer. No, I'm not making this up. I find this, in fact, more repugnant than the pushing of 9/11 conspiracy theories, by the way. And no accident that the same staffer who was most enthusiastic in past years about proving the GW Bush blew up the Twin Towers is the same staffer now swearing to the audience that, with a modest pledge to the station, acquisition of a DVD and avoidance of most modern medicine and science, cancer can be prevented -- or reversed (and Global Warming could be reduced too if such hot air was expunged from the radio dial).  This is quite a sad commentarhy on "alternative media" and the general state of the Left. The silence on the decline and irrelevance of this $500 million network by the rest of the left tells us a lot -- about the left. Enough, now. Time to go drink my carrot juice and swalloy my silver supplements.

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As much as anyone, I've been trying to make sense of what is actually happening in Iran.  I very much like what Jeff Weintraub has been aggregating on his stie.

But I don't think we can know much with any certainty from afar.  There persists what is now being politely called a "tense calm" on the streets of the Iranian capital after a Saturday that was, to an unknown degree, marked by violent confrontation and armed repression.

I suppose we can, however, draw some obvious preliminary conclusions:

-- Serious cracks have surfaced among Iran's ruling elite and the Islamic Republic as we know it now faces, at a minimum, a period of instability and transformation. No way Iran can back to the status quo ante.

-- The mullahs could very well retain power for some time to come but the political and moral authority of both of the so-called Supreme Leader as well  as President Ahmadinejad has been forever eroded.

-- This can only be good news as --whatever one thinks of the more misguided aspects of U.S. foreign policy  in the Middle East-- the policies and influence of Iran has been MORE misguided, dangerous and destabilizing.  The Iranian Revolution replaced one evil with another. The heavy-handed monarchy of the Shah was erased but the revolution became the cradle of Islamic Radicalism which is in itself a dangerous evil.

-- The Iranian people have demonstrated an enormous degree of political maturation and, rather ironically, Iran could wind up becoming a major force for regional democratization rather than Islamic radicalization.

-- Pushing off that last point, you can only imagine what sort of nightmare visions have been haunting the sleep of autocratic elites in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other regional dictatorships.  They have all been fearful of Iran's massive influence and they hold no love for the Islamic regime. But even more threatening is the notion of millions of common people coming out into the streets to demand some form of human rights and reform.

-- Barack Obama must be given credit on two fronts in the midst of this crisis. Only the most ignorant would continue to demand he more forcefully insert the U.S. directly into the fray. If you need me to explain why, you're hopeless. He's walked this tightrope rather masterfully (much better, I might say, than the U.S. Congress which cannot resist the impulse to posture and feint).  It has also become clear that much of what motivates the Iranian domestic resistance is a yearning by this proud and accomplished nation to re-assimilate into the world community. The growing isolation of Iran as a result of the unhinged policies of its ruling Thugocracy has offended millions of Iranians who are now willing to risk repression, arrest and gunfire.  The election of Obama, his stated desire to dialog with Iran, and his recent speech in Cairo reaching out to the Islamic world can only have served as a catalyst for those Iranians who week a more meaningful and dignified global rule for their nation. They no longer have to imagine a rational interlocutor in the West. They can actually seee him sitting in the Oval Office.

(And, finally, I would hope what has happened this week will put to rest what has been the absurd "debate" over the relative journalistic value of social networks and blogs. As I said, I can hope, even though I am sure it will not be the case).

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The latest reports coming out of Iran say that all social network communication remains shut down and that the regime has deployed its fascist armed militias quite prominently.

This does, indeed, seem like a tipping point moment.  If the demos go ahead as planned it could mean a massive and bloody crackdown or... can we dream... the beginning of the collapse of the theocratic dictatorship?  I, of course, am hoping for the latter. But like Jeff Weintraub, I fear the former.

We might be only a few hours away from a truly historic moment. It doesn't seem that either side is going to back down. The student movement of ten years ago was intimidated off the streets. That seems more unlikely this time around...and this is not just a student movement. It's a broad-based civil insurgency.

I can't think of much anything that would please more than watching the obscurantists who run Iran chased from power.  Too much to hope for?

I'm going to bed and wishing with all my heart that I awake to some really good news and not a bloody nightmare.

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Now, she publishes her second installment, reflecting on her friendship with the victim, Nick Markowitz as well as on the oddities of a jury trial. It's worth your time and attention.  Here's the link. Here's the lede:

SANTA BARBARA—The last time I saw Nick Markowitz was at a West Hills house party in the summer of 2000. We were both about to be high school juniors. By that time most of us had gained credentials to be granted access to this sort of party—lost our virginities, gained our driver's licenses. The parents of whomever were away, and bongs were dutifully on display to advertise the nature of the get together. In spite of the video games, shitty beer and backwards caps, it all felt very adult. Read on.

In all the coverage of the recent uptick in shootings carried out by right-wing fringe lunatics in the past few weeks, the blood curdling dual murder carried out in the Arizona borderland town of Arivaca two weeks ago has gotten little notice in the press.

Raul Flores, 29, and his 9 year-old daughter were shot in cold blood during a home invasion conducted by self-proclaimed members of the "Minuteman American Defense" who had vowed to cleanse the area of what they said were Mexican drug dealers. This particular shooting, apparently, was carried out as a robbery to help finance their patriotic goals. Here are the details on the suspects who have been charged with first degree murder.  Don't you love how CBS News puts the word "extremists" in quotes? Courageous journalism, no?

Today, the Pima County Sheriff's Department has released the audio of the 911 call that took place during the shooting. It's not for those of weak stomach, but it's worth listening to. It's a stark reminder of what you get when you mix firearms with deranged people and deranged ideologies.

It's also a direct chilling, bloody manifestation of the sort of extremist violence that was predicted at the beginning of the year by a DHS report -- a report withdrawn under protest from conservatives.

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P.S. As threatened, we will soon be relaunching a souped-up and redesigned blog site.

My mood is also somewhat darkened by the torrent of hate mail I got today after my piece on Newt Gingrich (linked into the post below this one) was picked up and slammed by some right-wing web sites.  Don't misunderstand. I can take the heat and the abuse. But it IS depressing to see how many Americans --convinced that Obama is Stalin, that our universities and congress are dominated by Commie Jews and Bitter Liberals, that Newt is a genius and so and so on-- would fit so seamlessly into the irrational and fundamentalist crowds below.  UPDATE: Hugo Chavez hails great revolutionary victory by his best bud in Tehran.

Check out my latest opinion column in the L.A. Times.   It begins:

At this point in the recession, you've probably become familiar with the term "zombie bank," a financial institution that can continue operating, thanks to government support, even though its debts outweigh its assets. Now it's time to add a related descriptor to our public discourse: "zombie politician." The term describes a political figure whose electoral worth is less than zero and whose ideas are totally bankrupt, but who can continue to offer up political guidance because he's kept on life-support by media-generated oxygen. Or if you prefer a shorter definition of a zombie pol, try this one: Newt Gingrich.

Read the rest of it here.

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I also declare that I am delighted that he won -- whatever his politics. I am delighted for a simple reason.  Creigh Deeds is not Terry McAuliffe. And that's good enough for me.  Apparently, also for the Democratic voters in Virginia.

McAuliffe is the closest any politician I know comes to being an out and out gangster. Ok, maybe that's a little too harsh. How about an out and out sleazeball?

The number one bag man and former DNC chair for theBill  Clinton White House, he became one of the chief operatives of the Hillary campaign in '08.  He had two basic roles: raise as much money as possible from wealthy special interests. And help spread as many dirty tricks rumours as he could about Hillary's opponents. In other words, a sleazeball.

With typical Clinton hubris, he thought he could use his deep pockets and party connections to carpetbag and barnstorm Virginia and basically buy the nomination. He was wrong. For the second time in two years.

Cool. A real come-uppance for someone deeply deserving of the humiliation just handed to him.

As the Obama admin begins its full court press on national health care, key congressional Republicans are already lining up to oppose any so-called "public option."

Makes no difference to them that the largest, most successful and I might say most popular health care programs in America -- medicare and medicaid-- are precisely public options.

The GOP scare campaign has also begun on the airwaves, warning Americans that it would be tragic if the government somehow came between them and their doctor.  That is, of course, allowing for the 50 million Americans who presently do not have a doctor.

I love this because it so stinks of rank hypocrisy.  What the Republicans are really worried about is that a so-called public option for medical coverage, some basic subsidized plan open to all, would undercut the monopoly now held by shameless bandits, er, I mean private health insurers.  In other words, the dyed-in-the-wool free marketeers are afraid of serious competition that could undercut Big Pharma's obscene profitability. Geez, we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

I gave up mind reading a long time ago but...my sense is that this is a moment in our collective history in which the American people actively desire intervention by the government to help them out.  If you're a couple making 50 grand a year and the $12,000 price tag for some half-arsed family health plan makes it unobtainable, somehow I don't think you're going to be offended if you can get a government plan for half that price.

Everything in me tells me that the Republicans are seriously misjudging the mood of the electorate.  I hope so.

That said, it's no surprise that when the rubber actually hits the road on the issue, the GOP puts the interests of private insurance companies above the welfare of millions of Americans.

It's also no surprise that there's already some waffling on this issue from what are politely but inaccurately called "centrist" Democrats who would be better described as Right-Wing Democrats.

National health care reform will be completely hollow and ultimately a hoax if there is no public option.

The Republicans are hardly my worry on this. They can be ignored. We have to worry that Obama will not buckle. And then we have to worry that if he doesn't he can buck up the spineless creatures who inhabit the Democratic side of the aisle. That's a lot to worry about.

P.S.  I have been doing little blogging because:

A) I have been working hard.

B) I have been playing hard when I am not working (it's summer).

C) I will soon re-launch a redesigned blog.

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The fetching Lu Parker holds down the evening newscast on KTLA, the station owned by the Tribune Company (aka The Los Angeles Times). As if the Times didn't have enough trouble on its hands.

And as if the Mayor -- who is openly contemplating a run for the State House next year-- didn't get his tootsies burned enough the last time he started fooling around with a TV Twinkie.

Anyway, mostly because I'm teaching a summer fellowship, I'm one of the few journalism profs who's dumb enough to be in town and have, therefore, gotten about a half-dozen media calls in the last two days.  Each time I'm asked to provide the soundbite answer to "is this ethical?" behavior on the part of the Tribune Company (which says it knew about the affair and isn't worried about it because they've asked Ms. Parker to recuse herself from reporting on her new beau).

Not that this is much of a demand, as it seems Ms. Parker -- a former Miss South Carolina, a former Miss USA, a former model, actress, "avid golfer" and amateur skeet-shooter has petty much spent all of her adult life recusing herself from reporting seriously on anything. I base this harsh judgment on her official station bio and not from any personal knowledge.

Let's get real folks. She's a great-looking, emmy-winning  READER of news and I congratulate my friend the Mayor for his fine taste in fine-looking women. But what's the big ethical issue here? I, for one, am absolutely confident that Ms. Parker has never done any real reporting on the Mayor and never will. She very well migh read or introduce the stories that others do on him, but that's about it.

More to the point, troubled local news organizations -- like the one she works for-- ought to be asking themselves why, in a time of disappearing resources, they continue to blow big bucks on beauty queen anchors rather than spending what dough they have left on mote gnarly-looking real-life reporters?

Bottom line: I couldn't care less if Parker continues to carry on with the Mayor while continuing to read stories about him. It's not a newscast I have watched in about 20 years and doubt I will ever again during whatever life span it still has left.

Buen ojo, Antonio!

Ochoa and Gold Toasting His Pulitzer

The official statement from "corporate" is that she and the paper will now "part ways."

It's rather obvious that Laurie was pushed out by chain owner Mike Lacey who showed up in the office today, took her to lunch and returned to tell an editors' meeting that Laurie is gone now. (Hat tip to Goodfellas).

The miracle is that she lasted the nearly four years since the Weekly was taken over by the New Times chain which since changed its name to Village Voice Media.  It's been pretty nuch a non-stop massacre of the paper ever since  the "merger" (I was cut in November, thank God and wrote this lengthy obituary for a paper that was no longer).

A lot of us scratched our heads for a couple of years wondering why they hadn't axed Ochoa. Whenever you catch Lacey in a sober moment, you might ask him. My theory is rather simple: the L.A. Weekly was the one property that had the potential to rebel against Lacey's takeover. Laurie, to her credit, tried to protect as many people as she could from the constant downsizing and trashing of the product.  To accomplish that end, she avoided any open conflict with her bosses.

This was, of course, a double-edged sword. Ochoa's effort to salvage what she could from the fiasco also allowed her to keep the peace for the company while the paper continued to make money for the chain. But now with profits down and virtually everyone from the Old Guard axed out of the paper, Ochoa's time (and serviceability) had expired.

Her exit pretty much forecloses any possibility of anybody "slipping in" any truly worthy copy into the Weekly. The search for her replacement is now supposedly open, but everyone knows that real power at the Weekly is now in the hands of the dubious Jill Stewart (about whose egregious non-talents you can read in my obit linked above).  The paper is merely a wrapper, patiently awaiting its final edition (which can't be more than a year or two from now -- on the outside).

Ochoa is a friend. She's a fine and compassionate and wholly decent person with a great passion for good writing and she richly deserves this liberation from New Times Hell. She will be fine. The city will be a little worse off.

What does continue to amaze if not slightly nauseate me is the continuing silence of the L.A. Times on the slow and marked decline, and effective death, of L.A. Weekly.  Media writer James Rainey has not touched the subject even though there has been one upheaval after another at the Weekly for the last 4 years.  I have constantly prodded him to do so...to no avail. And while he has publicly twisted his knickers several times over the future of print journalism, it doesn't seem to occur to him that the Weekly just might have something to do with that subject!  As late as last Friday, just hours after the top editor and the top three writers of Los Angeles Magazine had "parted ways" with their own respective management, Rainey published a school--marmish rule book on when it's OK (with him) for media to out gay politicians (yawn).

So with the two most important outlets for L.A. writers and journalists (beyond the LATimes) decapitated in the same week, does anyone want to bet that the Times will get around to noting any of this?  Maybe it will. But talk about late to the party!  If the Times had given any sort of fair report to the butchering going down at the Weekly, it might have roused some public pushback against VVM managment. But that's if you believe the Times had any interest in helping to secure the life of any print pubnlication except its wilting self.

Good luck, Laurie. And congrats on being sprung from that hell hole. Anything will be better,

P.S. The only suspense left in the Weekly story (apart from its final pub date) is the fate of Ochoa's husband, Pulitzer-Prize winning food writer Jonathan Gold. There's been some speculation that Jonathan is headed for the NYTimes but without any confimation. There's always been those who thought that Lacey kept Ochoa around, precisely, to retain Gold on staff.  But I don't think so. Because I don't think that Lacey's crew gives a damn about anybody -- Pulitzers or otherwise.

P.P.S.  There's one more dangling piece of suspense I forgot to mention. Namely, what will Jill Stewart's NEXT job be after the Weekly formally folds. A betting pool anybody? Here's the earlu line direct from the Palms Sports Book:

1) a corproate henchman for the company, flying from state to state to terrorize the newbie hires replcing the revilved Christine Brennan. Odds 6 to 5.

2) A hired flack for some sad sack local reactionary pol...Dennis Zine? Odds 2 to 1.

Jil Stewart Pseudo Editor

3) A bag lady   4 to 1

4) A regularly published columnist and journalist   175 to 1.

It feels great to watch my own daughter progress as a writer. To have someone in the family doing such excellent writing relieves me of any guilt about not working as hard as I used to. Don't have to with talent like this around.

Take a gander at Natasha's report on the opening week of the murder trial of the notorious Jesse James Hollywood -- the so-called "Alpha Dog."  His 15 year old victim was a close chum of hers.  It's a good read.

When I lived in Chile in the pre-Pinochet days it was always a treat to go see folksinger Victor Jara ... to call him the Bob Dylan of Chile is an understatement.

I can't say that I knew him but my wife went to the university where he was a beloved teacher, singer, poet and activist.

Captured by the Pinochet junta in the first days of military rule, he was brutally murdered and his mutilated body was soon found dumped on a roadside.  Now, we finally know the details of his final hours and learn exactly who was responsible for his murder. Jara was shot 44 times by a Chilean army crew who was last seen, quite recently and  without sanction, blithely playing a round of golf.

Thanks to Tomas Dinges for summarizing a translation of the new report from the Santiago-based investigative site, CIPER.

Let's hope that as a result of this groundbreaking piece of journalism some more of these torturers and murderers that still walk free and smugly mug from the links will be playing their next round behind iron bars.

In even greater peril is the future of the Republican Party.  In opposing such a supremely qualified and relatively moderate nominee as Sonia Sotomayor, the GOP has a real opportunity to cut its current 22% identification level among the electorate down to somewhere in the single digits.  Move over Ralph Nader, here come the Cheney=Gingrich-Rove Republicans ready to displace you as leader of America's third party.

Within minutes of Sotomayor getting tapped, a chorus of Republicans fired the first partisan shots in what will be her prolonged confimation process. She's too empathetic. She's an affirmative action hire. She hates white firemen. She hates men. She's a "reverse racist" (per straightforward racist Rush Limbaugh). She's not that smart (this last canard launched against the top Yale student in her class by none other than Karl Rove -- the man who brought us the genius Harriet Miers).

You and I both know the real reason behind opposition to Sotomayor. It's simple. She's Democrat Obama's nominee. Period. Doesn't realy matter who she is or how she has ruled.

Now, if the GOP critics play their cards right, they have a golden opportunity in front of them to lblow off the slender remains of the electorate that is Latino, that is female, and that is moderate.

Bring it on.

What's the over-under on what the final Senate confirmation vote will bw? I say 71.

In the meantime, the Republicans will have oodles of time to further rend their tattered battle flag.

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