Nightly Ramble Tuesday

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere…. The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• CNN: THE NEW ERR AMERICA: Bill Carter at the New York Times:
  

  CNN continued what has become a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010, with its main hosts losing almost half their viewers in a year.

  The trend in news ratings for the first three months of this year is all up for one network, the Fox News Channel, which enjoyed its best quarter ever in ratings, and down for both MSNBC and CNN.

  CNN, for its part, has made no indication whatever that it plans on changing it’s leftward lean… which, like Err America… is precisely the reason for its impending demise. I find it interesting that such a report should come from the new who is suffering for precisely the same reason as CNN, MSNBC, and the rest.  Do I expect CNN to keel over anytime soon? Oh, they’ll remain on the air… their foreign services are the big deal right now and are making more than the domestic. They’ll likely stay afloat for a bit longer than Err America did…. but barring a course correction, they’ll end up folding, eventually.  One cannot continue forever without making money, after all.  I should point out that one could hardly qualify for “the most rusted name and news” when those that supposedly trust them are running away to other networks, particularly Fox, in droves.

• DID I CALL IT? I suggested when Candidate Obama was  saying:
  

  Instead of retreating from the world, I will personally lead a new chapter of American engagement. It is time to offer the world a message of hope to counter the prophets of hate. My experience has brought me to the hopeless places. As a boy, I lived in Indonesia and played barefoot with children who could not dream the same dreams that I did.

  Well, along comes a wire story reportedly in in this morning’s WaPo, and the SanFran Chron:

  Amid cries of “God is Great,” the former chief of staff of the Indonesian army joined hard-line Muslim activists in a Jakarta ballroom last week to denounce the United States — and praise China as a model of how to stand up to Washington.

  “We should do what China has done; America must follow our rules,” declared retired Gen. Tyasno Sudarto. Veiled women and bearded men, seated separately to avoid mingling of the sexes, shouted praise for Allah and jabbed their fists in the air. Another speaker hailed China for defying Washington’s “neo-liberal” economic creed.

  I suggest that my original point has been verified; Just because we’re kissing their asses doesn’t mean they’re going to like us. And Obama’s foreign policy has been shown to be flawed at it’s foundation, as I suggested it would be. Can we get a real leader, now?

• RICKY MARTIN COMES OUT: In other news, huge light in sky reported in east this morning.
• STACY GETS INTERVIEWED: A good interview of Stacy McCain.