InMuscatine

We are hoping we have this completely bass-ackwards - but it sure looks to us as if we have to pay ANOTHER $0.30 per song to rid ourselves of iTunes DRM once and for all. Quote :

Can I upgrade previously purchased music to iTunes Plus?

Yes. Any available upgrades will be shown on the Upgrade My Library page (Music received for free is not eligible for upgrade). You can upgrade all music at once by using the Buy button. This replaces all music you’ve bought previously on iTunes with available iTunes Plus versions of the same music. You cannot choose which songs, music videos, or albums to upgrade individually. Song upgrades are available for 30¢, upgrades for 60¢, and albums for 30% of the album price. iTunes Plus music will continually be added to iTunes, so check back often to find new music available for upgrading.

So… just to recap :

1. Be honest and use iTunes from day one.

2. Never get involved in illegal file sharing.

3. Get boned by the music industry anyway.

What fools everyone was to buy music legally through iTunes ! We can now completely understand the mind-set of every file sharing / music sharing boffin out there. SImply put, the greedy people of the music industry will find a way to screw you over even if you have been 100% legal and honest.

That is a heck of way to reward honesty.

Oh, this is rich! Lee Enterprises is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, but doesn’t want to talk about it :

Lee has a waiver from lenders giving it a reprieve from meeting the financial targets until at least Jan. 16. After that, a violation of the covenants could trigger an acceleration of principal payments, according to the Davenport-based company’s auditor, KPMG LLP.

The company’s debt problems “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern,” KPMG said in a report accompanying Lee’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Lee spokesman Dan Hayes declined to comment Friday.

[From Washington Times - Paper publisher struggles with debt ]

Well, cry us a river. How many stories has a Lee Enterprises-owned paper filed which damned with faint praise someone who declines to comment? We happen to believe what is sauce for the goose is especially tasty with the gander.

Still, we revel in the irony that now Lee Enterprises is the story, they don’t want to talk to anyone. But we are willing to bet a beer at the local pub nobody in the entire Lee Enterprises crumbling fiefdom has the cojones to go after Lee Enterprises and write the definitive story of why Lee imploded financially.

We just think the pack of cowards passing for reporters Lee hires these days just don’t have the guts to do the right thing and investigate themselves. Well, you took the job to change the world, how about starting with your own little corner of it and speaking truth to the power?

Yeah, we didn’t think you would do it.

We fail utterly to see how anyone can equate Israel and Hamas, and Alan Dershowitz does a great job of shedding light on the true differences :

In a recent incident related to me by the former head of the Israeli air force, Israeli intelligence learned that a family’s house in Gaza was being used to manufacture rockets. The Israeli military gave the residents 30 minutes to leave. Instead, the owner called Hamas, which sent mothers carrying babies to the house.

Hamas knew that Israel would never fire at a home with civilians in it. They also knew that if Israeli authorities did not learn there were civilians in the house and fired on it, Hamas would win a public relations victory by displaying the dead. Israel held its fire. The Hamas rockets that were protected by the human shields were then used against Israeli civilians.

These despicable tactics — targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians — can only work against moral democracies that care deeply about minimizing civilian casualties. They never work against amoral nations such as Russia, whose military has few inhibitions against killing civilians among whom enemy combatants are hiding.

The claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality — by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets — is absurd. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian.

[From Dershowitz: Israel Is ‘Proportionate’ - WSJ.com]

Which is why we hope Israel will not stop until all traces of Hamas are wiped from the Earth.

From Statiol of Norway, a commercial :

And you thought the lower gasoline prices were going to give your wallet a break? Ha!

Motorists are driving less and buying less gasoline, which means fuel taxes aren’t raising enough money to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge and transit programs.

That has the federal commission that oversees financing for transportation talking about increasing the federal fuel tax.

A 50 percent increase in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes is being urged by the commission to finance highway construction and repair until the government devises another way for motorists to pay for using public roads.

[From Motorists’ habits spur call for tax increases - Yahoo! News]

We have a radical idea so crazy, so off the wall it just may work :

SPEND THE MONEY YOU TAKE IN, AND DON’T LIVE BEYOND YOUR MEANS !

This call for increased taxes doesn’t make sense, given the fact we are driving less which means roads aren’t being destroyed at the same rate. If we are truly driving less, then the roads should last longer and there should be less need for funding of roads, not more.

Even so, the taxes raised now will never be reduced or refunded if they are no longer used down the road, so to speak. The reality is the government has an insatiable demand for our money, and we should cut off it’s supply as totally as possible.

In a report expected in late January, members of the infrastructure financing commission say they will urge Congress to raise the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon and the diesel tax by 12 cents to 15 cents a gallon. At the same time, the commission will recommend tying the fuel tax rates to inflation.

We think congress should do this the very second our income tax is tied to inflation and reduced accordingly.

The very notion is laughable, but Hamas is ordering a massive retaliation against Israel :

Israeli warplanes pounded militant targets including a mosque in Gaza on Friday as Hamas ordered a “day of wrath” against Israel over the killing of a senior commander.

[From Hamas orders ‘day of wrath’ over Israel blitz - Yahoo! News]

To be followed by “Another Week of Ass-kicking” from Israel. Hamas has leaders that are insane or just dumber than posts.

We can’t think of any way to sugar coat this : the AP is so far in the tank for Hamas sunlight may have to be piped in :

Gaza’s 1.5 million residents are facing an “alarming” humanitarian situation under constant Israeli bombardment, with the main power plant shut down, overcrowded hospitals struggling to cope and very limited food supplies, U.N. officials said.

The power plant shut down on Tuesday because Israel has blocked fuel delivery through the main pipeline since Dec. 26, U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said Wednesday. This has forced hospitals to use generators, which have limited fuel supplies, and left many of the 650,000 people in central and northern Gaza with power cuts of 16 hours a day or more, he said.

[From UN: Gaza faces ‘alarming’ humanitarian situation - Yahoo! News]

It sounds bad, doesn’t it? Well, not-so-much if one continues reading :

“We haven’t seen widespread hunger. We do see for the very first time … people going through the rubbish dumps looking for things, people begging, which is quite a new phenomenon as well,” she said.

So why doesn’t the AP press the UN on which is it - are people starving because of Israel’s blockade, or are they not? Come now, we all know the answer because it is blatantly obvious for which side the AP is chief cheerleader. But it keeps getting worse :

Holmes said the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel was open, with 55 trucks of food and medical supplies and five ambulances getting into Gaza on Tuesday, and about 60 trucks on Wednesday. That compares to 125 truckloads a day in October 2008 and 475 truckloads a day in May 2007, just before Hamas took control of Gaza, he said.

Well, we find it difficult to believe anyone can starve on 55 truckloads a day of food. But we have to take issue with the numbers. We are certain UN humanitarian chief John Holmes is getting his numbers from Hamas. That is problematic because we have history to tell us Hamas will use the media to score propaganda victories against Israel, and history shows us the media is only too happy to be used by Hamas, or any other terrorist organization for that matter.

Some medical supplies, ambulances and generators also got into Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing, he said.

At this point, any honest, unbiased professional journalist would have seen they were being used as a tool and killed the story. It’s too bad there are few, if any, honest, unbiased professional reporters feeding information to the AP. The story begins about this huge humanitarian crisis in Gaza, then we find more and more supplies flowing into Gaza the deeper into the story we read.

Abu Zayd stressed that her U.N. agency needs 100 trucks of flour a day to meet the needs of refugees. But she said Israel has closed down the Karni crossing, the main gateway for cargo into Gaza where it is normally delivered, for security reasons.

And the UN has given us serious reasons (see Oil for Food) to doubt their version of the story as well. If past behavior is any indicator at all, many of those trucks of flour will somehow be “lost” but in reality will fall to UN-sponsored graft and corruption.

Again, the ray of sunshine here is knowing the AP absolutely cannot be trusted to give an unbiased account of the Gaza conflict. If there is a humanitarian crisis, then one should be able to show some evidence of it or one should not be reporting it. That people in Gaza are kinda-sorta-but-not-really starving isn’t news, but being in the tank for Hamas by inaccurately reporting the fact certainly is big news.

Sneaky. Lee Enterprises filed their 10-K yesterday, 31 DEC 2009 -

The following discussion includes comments and analysis relating to the Company’s results of operations and financial condition as of, and for each of the three years ended, September 2008. This discussion should be read in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements and related Notes thereto, included herein.

[From 10-K: LEE ENTERPRISES, INC - MarketWatch ]

Here’s the nut of it :

Operating Cash Flow - $ 207,022,000

Less Depreciation - $ 91,078,000

Less impairment of Goodwill - $ 1,070,808,000

Plus equity in earnings - $ 10,211,000

Less investment reduction (TMI) - $ 104, 478,000

Operating income (LOSS) - $ (1,049,131,000)

Loss per common share - $ 19.83

And Lee Enterprises continues to believe the economy is at the heart of their problems, not the fact they are putting out a product their customers have a decreasing desire to consume :

The United States economy has been in a recession since December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and it is widely believed that certain elements of the economy, such as housing, were in decline before that time. 2008 revenue, operating results and cash flows were significantly impacted by the recession. The duration and depth of an economic recession in markets in which the Company operates may further reduce its future advertising and circulation revenue, operating results and cash flows.

Simply put, the notion the US economy has been in a recession for over a year is a lie. A recession is defined as two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth in Gross Domestic Product. This simply has not happened, nor did it happen in 2007. Lee Enterprises is looking for a scapegoat when the true cause of its problems can be found in the executive offices and boardroom in Davenport.

And Lee Enterprises has received its de-listing letter from the NYSE.

Bankruptcy is almost inevitable at this point, according to Lee Enterprises :

In its annual report, filed on Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Lee said it does not have enough cash flow to meet its requirements for 2009 operations.

[From UPDATE 1-Newspaper publisher Lee inches toward default | Markets | US Markets | Reuters]

The fault of this spectacular failure is to be blamed on the very poor judgment of CEO Mary Junck, the rest of the executive staff, and the board of directors of Lee Enterprises, Inc for allowing the Pulitzer acquisition to take place. That is the only reason Lee Enterprises is staring death in the face at this moment.

We guess we will be the first in 2009 to question the New York Times on their impartiality :

A dentist stood at the bed of a doctor, his good friend Ehab Madhoun, 32, who had just died, his shrapnel-pitted body wrapped in a white shroud.

The day before, Dr. Madhoun, a general practitioner, was in an ambulance responding to an Israeli strike at the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Another missile hit the ambulance. The driver, Muhammad Abu Hasira, died instantly. Dr. Madhoun lingered for a day, dying of his wounds on Wednesday in the intensive care unit of Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of people have been brought since Israel began its heaviest assault on Gaza in three decades.

The dentist cried.

“He was just doing his work,” said the dentist, who would not give his name. “He’s a doctor, and I can’t understand why Israel would hit an ambulance. They can tell from the cameras it’s an ambulance.”

[From In Dense Gaza, Civilians Suffer - NYTimes.com]

It is a pretty safe bet with a name like TAGHREED EL-KHODARY the writer wasn’t Jewish. That would have been bad enough, but given the NYT’s track record would it be out of line to question the impartiality of what appears to be an Arab writer covering the Hamas conflict? We don’t think so.