Obama in Nevada

Taking on an adversarial, obviously pro-McCain interviewer on the local teevee:

Clarion-Ledger To Cut 5% of Staff

Hard days for the newspaper business (in addition to so many others). Editor & Publisher's reporting that Jackson's hometown paper will be laying off 20 employees:

The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., has to eliminate 20 positions, Publisher Larry Whitaker wrote to staff in a memo posted on Romenseko. Whitaker cites the slowdown in print AND online advertising as the reason for the move.

"While you might have read about staff reductions at other newspapers, we have, up to this point, made tough business decisions to avoid having to take those actions here," wrote Whitaker. "I regret to inform you that we can no longer keep our name off the growing list of newspapers that have reduced staff or are in the process of doing so. The unstable market, higher fuel costs, big spikes in newsprint costs, and a challenging advertising climate have made that impossible."

The cut amounts to 5% of the workforce of the Gannett-owned newspaper. The memo did not address which positions are affected or if those employees will receive severance.

E&P goes on to print the contents of Whitaker's memo, if you're interested.

I Heart Rachel Maddow

As I've mentioned before. MSNBC would do well to give this woman her own show.

Good News

This is very welcome news indeed. Whenever Rachel Maddow is on the teevee, the wife and I race to see who'll be the first to say, "Now why don't they give her a show?" She's extremely intelligent, argues her points well, and has a sort of common sense inisght that's often sorely lacking among the cable talking heads.

According to the NY Times, looks like the day's coming soon when we won't have to ask anymore:

“At some point, I don’t know when, she should have a show,” said Phil Griffin, hours before he was promoted on Wednesday to president of MSNBC. “She’s on the short list. It’s a very short list. She’s at the top.” [...]

...For MSNBC, which has interpreted the success of Mr. Olbermann’s rants against the Bush administration and other Republican targets as cause to turn its evening programming further to the left, Ms. Maddow has been a relatively easy fit. Sitting in for Mr. Olbermann on July 7, for example, she opened “Countdown” by mocking Senator John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee, for suggesting that the economy was “slowing.”

“Slowing, senator?” she said. “Try grinding to a halt. But don’t worry, Senator McCain says he can balance the budget by saving all sorts of money when he wins the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”That same night she took the news media at large to task for suggesting that Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, had recently softened plans to withdraw American troops from Iraq.

But Ms. Maddow said that it would be a mistake to paint her broadly as pro-Obama and anti-McCain. “I’m not that much of a typecastable liberal,” she said over lunch. “I am not a fan of either candidate.”

She said, for example, that she disagreed with Mr. Obama’s plan to withdraw one to two combat brigades a month from Iraq. “I wouldn’t want to be serving in the last brigade left,” she said. “I almost think the best way would be to set a date by which you will leave, and let the Pentagon figure out the smartest way to do it.”

Which leads to yet another element of Ms. Maddow’s portfolio: the daughter of an Air Force captain who served stateside during the Vietnam War, she is an admitted defense-policy wonk. “I’m a national security liberal, which I tell people because it’s meant to sound absurd,” she said. “I’m all about counterterrorism. I’m all about the G.I. Bill.”

I love that woman.

Tables Turn Sometimes

Thought this would be good to post since O'Reilly's operation will obviously try to edit their footage of same encounter to remove all reference to Bill Moyers' having asked O'Reilly to be on his show, but, to borrow the words of the Fox News tool producer, O'Reilly simply "didn't have the courage to come on and face questions from a real journalist."

So, Bill, just exactly what type of "games" was Moyers trying to play by inviting you on his show? Was it, oh, I don't know, giving you rope enough to hang yourself on? That's an interview I'd pay to see.

Gotta love it when the tables turn. I know I do.

h/t: C&L