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The Washington Times has this "end of transparency" headline up right now:

White House to cut access to half of federal websites

Which starts with:

As part of the Obama administration’s campaign to promote transparency, the White House announced today it intends to eliminate the public’s access to half of the federal government’s websites within the next year.

That's a great paragraph for those who can't handle reading whole articles, or those who might only see it in a feed reader. Of course once you get past that headline and first paragraph, you see something much different:

The White House said there are nearly 2,000 websites operated by the federal government, which it said confuses people.

“With so many separate sites, Americans often do not know where to turn for information,” the office of Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. said in a statement. “The administration will immediately put a halt to the creation of new websites. The administration will also shut down or consolidate 25% of the 2,000 sites over the next few months and set a goal of cutting the number of separate, standalone sites in half over the next year.”

It called the campaign of winnowing access to government web sites part of the president’s campaign “targeting duplication and waste.” The administration did not give an estimate of how much money it believes could be saved by halving the government’s Internet sites.

So the White House isn't going rogue and blocking the public from all kinds of government websites, but rather they are combining some of the over 2,000 federal websites to make things easier to find and to cut spending.

The New York Times has run a lengthy profile on Tucson Shooter Jared Loughner, but out of the seven pages there is one part that caught the eye of Matt Drudge:

This part of the complex puzzle of “who is Jared Loughner” appears on page 3 of the article:

He became intrigued by antigovernment conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the government and that the country’s central banking system was enslaving its citizens. His anger would well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government.

OK – so not only does he hate Bush, but he was also a truther. But apparently Drudge couldn’t read past that paragraph to notice this part:

“I think he feels the people should be able to govern themselves,” said Ms. Figueroa, his former girlfriend. “We didn’t need a higher authority.”

Looks like the network news is in some trouble:

“I just looked out at the next five years and was concerned that we could not sustain doing what we were doing,” said David Westin, the president of ABC News, as he explained the decision last week to jettison up to 400 staff members, a quarter of the news staff, in the coming months.

But what is causing the problem? Sure ABC has their website, but I doubt that has ever been a serious source of income for them, so they can’t go with a Murdoch excuse.

Perhaps the answer lies within that paragraph I posted above: “jettison up to 400 staff members, a quarter of the news staff”. 1,600 staff members for their news operation? This is to produce a 1/2 hour show 7 nights a week and things like “This Week”. It sounds like the company is failing because of piss-poor management. Every body doesn’t need an assistant, and those assistants don’t need assistants.

Then how about salaries? In 2005 it was reported that Diane Sawyer was receiving a salary of $12 million per year. That’s before taking the top job. I can’t even imagine what it is now. It’s funny how people complain about baseball salaries, yet we see the same kind of corporate giveaways happening in the news industry and no one seems to bat an eye. That really has to change.

George Stephanopoulos has “corrected” Rudy Giuliani’s statement that ‘no domestic terrorist attacks happened under Bush’.

The two key changes are as follows. First the title:

• Then:
  Rudy Giuliani: 'No Domestic Attacks Under Bush.... One Under Obama'
• Now:
  Rudy Giuliani Wrong in Saying ‘No Domestic Attacks Under Bush’

And then George added in a new paragraph.

Then:

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”

The former Republican presidential candidate is specifically taking issue with the fact that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is being tried in a civil court instead of a military tribunal.

Now:

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”

Giuliani seems to have forgotten about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and shoe bomber Richard Reid.

According to a new study just released, 80% of consumers would not be willing to pay for access to online content:

A similar study was done by the Boston Consulting Group and found only 48% of the respondents would pay for online access to news, and the average monthly price they would be willing to pay is only $3 per month.

So is “pay for content” the silver bullet the media is looking for? Going by these numbers, no it isn’t. A better cure for the media would be more openness – a willingness to work with bloggers to drive traffic to their sites.

Reading through the blog posts about the new FTC regulations on bloggers there is a definite split on it. The left seems to welcome the decision while the right is upset over it. For example, here is a post by tea bagger Dana Loesch:

Because Uncle Sam think the public is too stupid to make decisions alone or to recognize endorsements verses common reviews. So if a company sends you a dollar-store toy, you will be scrutinized by the government, regardless whether you were asked to post a review or not. The FTC was very clear in their repeated use of “case by case basis” in their report.

(emphasis added)

Now apparently Dana can’t even read what she quotes because she is referring to this, which appears right below the above paragraph:

Decisions about violations will be made on a case-by-case basis, but if someone receives cash or an in-kind payment to review a product, it’s considered an endorsement.

(emphasis added)

This made my head spin, and to add insult to injury Dana starts her post off with a quote from another article:

The Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

(emphasis added)

Gallup released a poll today that the right is in love with:

A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

So does that make us a pro-life nation? By reading that first paragraph you would sure think so, but let’s look at the next question:

Even with 51% saying they are “pro-life”, we still have less than 1/4 of this country who think abortion should be illegal. Doesn’t that actually make only 23% of the country pro-life?

But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not that the nation is moving towards pro-life at all. Let’s go deeper into this poll:

I posted the email last night that John McCain sent out stating he would be running for re-election in 2010. The email, as with all of these, was mainly for the purpose of fundraising. But let’s take a look at one key paragraph and what McCain is using to stimulate his fundraising:

The economic challenges currently confronting our nation are immense and unfortunately, the Democrats in Congress propose addressing these challenges through increased spending that wastes billions of taxpayers dollars and saddles our children and grandchildren with a staggering debt. Their proposals will not stimulate economic growth or create jobs. While the leader of the Democratic Party, President Obama, has pledged to change business as usual in Washington and spoken of bipartisanship, I have been saddened to watch as Congressional Democrats try to use their majority to advocate more of the same failed policies and wasteful spending of the past. With so much at stake, now is not the time to step away from my work in the Senate.

Now let’s put this in a little perspective. When it came to bailing out Wall Street, McCain was gung-ho to the point he suspended his presidential campaign. He even used his support for the bailout to raise money for his campaign.