P.J. Gladnick's blog

You want to know what caused all those earthquake deaths in Haiti as compared to Chile? A Tea Party mental disorder. That is the laughable premise put forward by Joe Conason in a supreme stretch.

If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life — while right-wing ideology may kill you someday.

For those of us unfamiliar with geological terminology, it may come as a shock that the Chilean quake, rated 8.8 on the Richter scale, was roughly 500 times more powerful than the Haitian quake in January, which rated 7.0. Yet in Haiti, probably more than 200,000 lives were lost; in Chile, the number of dead is estimated at about 800. While that is still a terrible tragedy, the Chilean death toll is far less than 1 percent of that in Haiti.

Surprise! Surprise!

It turns out that the "grassroots" organizer of the "progressive alternative" to the Tea Parties, the Coffee Party, has been exposed as an Obama political operative. If you had read the profiles of the Coffee Party founder Annabel Park (photo) in the Washington Post or New York Times you wouldn't have had a hint as to her extensive political activity in the 2008 Obama campaign. So how did William A. Jacobson of Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion discover this "deep secret" that the two major newspapers with their vast resources were unable to find? Well, it required the "tremendous effort" of tapping a few keys and a whole mouse click to find this subject matter as Jacobson explains:

In fact, a simple internet search (which the NY Times apparently is not capable of doing) reveals that Park organized the Coffee Party for the specific purpose of undermining the Tea Party movement.

Park is a former Strategy Analyst at the NY Times who was one of organizers and operators of the United for Obama video channel at YouTube:

Wow!

It's like Christoper Joyce of National Public Radio is completely unaware of ClimateGate. Phil Jones?  Never heard of him. Oh, he is the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit who now admits manipulating data? No matter. You see, we have our minds made up and the reason people are becoming increasingly skeptical about "climate change" aka global warming is that they have a narrow worldview. Such is the laughable premise put out there by NPR's Joyce:

Over the past few months, polls show that fewer Americans say they believe humans are making the planet dangerously warmer, despite a raft of scientific reports that say otherwise.

This puzzles many climate scientists — but not some social scientists, whose research suggests that facts may not be as important as one's beliefs.

It appears that The New Republic senior editor, Jonathan Chait, is a bit irked at your humble correspondent for pointing out that he seems a to have gone off the deep end on the subject of ObamaCare:

Some of us realized all along that there was no rational reason that the Massachusetts election had to kill health care reform. Fundamentally, the main barrier -- getting sixty votes in the Senate -- had already been crossed. The remaining obstacles are puny. All the Democrats needed to do was have the House pass the Senate bill. If they insisted on changes, most of those could easily be made through reconciliation, which only requires a majority vote in the Senate. Most conservatives paid no attention to this basic reality, though they did indulge in some gloating mockery of those of us who pointed it out. (I've "gone off the deep end." "It is all rather pathetic." Etc.)

It is still pretty much under the radar but the leftwing nutroots now want to replace the Senate version of ObamaCare with a public option bill to be passed via reconciliation. The completely unrealistic push for public option, currently opposed by President Obama, is now all the rage in the leftwing blogosphere as you can see in yesterday's Daily Kos thread. So before we find out the hard reality of why their reconciliation efforts for public option are going nowhere, break out the popcorn and enjoy the comedy entertainment provided by their fantasies:

It's been a great day on the front lines! We've now got public support from over 20 senators and plenty that are "still considering." Let's give them plenty to consider. Keep calling. And call the president at at 202-456-1111 and tell him to get on board. Leadership for a Change! 

The former CEO of Air America, Danny Goldberg, has been kind enough to provide us with some comedy entertainment in an article, Air America Radio, RIP -- It Didn't Have to Be This Way. Actually, Danny, it did have to be that way due to those market forces at work that you castigate. However, we all owe you a vote of thanks for coming up with several incredibly lame but laughable excuses to explain away the failure of Air America in particular and "progressive talk radio" in general.

First the donor quality excuse:

Democracy Radio folded in 2006 as a result of a lack of financial support from progressive donors.

Some blame bad management for the failure of both Air America and Democracy Radio, and since I spent one unhappy year midway through Air America's life as its CEO I suppose I am one of a dozen or so who are in that category. But if progressives really wanted to address talk radio they could have started competing companies with different management. Instead, most of the monied progressive community did the opposite of their conservative counterparts and bought into the notion that media should stand or fall based on media market forces.

There are no second acts in American lives. ---F. Scott Fitzgerald

Apparently writers Nicole Allan and Niraj Chokshi of Atlantic Magazine wish to hold open the possibility of a second act for disgraced John Edwards as they speculate about Is John Edwards Done Forever?  Yes, all Sarah Palin has to do is read a few notes from the palm of her hand and this is enough to set off MSM liberals into a group hate rant about the former vice-presidential candidate. However, if you are a liberal the door is always open to you for a possible political comeback even if you cheat on your wife while she suffers from a deadly disease, make a sex tape with a mistress, lie about the paternity of your own child, initiate an elaborate coverup plan involving an aide falsely claiming paternity of the child, oh, and generally lie over a plethora of other issues while piously lecturing the country about "two Americas" as John Edwards has done.

So interested is the inadvertent comedy team of Allan and Chokshi in finding the possibities for a John Edwards comeback that they interviewed several experts on this subject. Stifle your bellylaughs as you read their findings:

Go on Oprah: "This whole notion of whether you're damaged goods or not has really changed in the last four or five years," said Peter Mirijanian of Mirijanian PR. " The public used to count people out and you wouldn't hear from them again. That's not the case anymore. There are so many ways to rehabilitate yourself ... The American public likes a feel-good story, they like a story of redemption." Five years ago, the well-trod path was to go on Larry King; today, it begins on Oprah. Edwards has "got to do the one interview. And I think it has to be a visual medium. I don't think the full-page story in the New York Times cuts it."

We've all seen weathermen at one time or another act flat out crazy or at least a bit eccentric. So how much of the craziness is real and how much is merely performance shtick to attract attention? The latest prominent example of on-air weather craziness comes to us courtesy of AccuWeather.Com's Jim Kosek. Here is a Business Insider report (including a strange shot at Bill O'Reilly) on Kosek's bizarre reaction to the big snowstorm which blanketed the mid-Atlantic region yesterday:

Early this morning, Jim Kosek Accuweather.com weatherman went on another tear during his weather forecast.

Kosek, a kind of Bill O'Reilly for the weather world, got really excited about this weekend's big storm in Baltimore. "Oh boy, 14-22 inches of snow," he starts out, quiet calmly... Then comes his verbal storm, screaming lines like:

There are some stories that make you cover your eyes with your hand and groan. And this column by Susan Estrich about what she thinks is the poorly named Apple iPad is definitely one of those. Here is Estrich putting on her feminist cap and making a very long stretch on blaming the name "iPad" on a "lack of diversity" at Apple:

Is there a woman in America who did not laugh, or at least roll her eyes, the minute she heard that the newest, hottest tablet computer from one of America's most ingenuous companies was going to sound like a feminine hygiene product? The iKotex is what most people I know are calling it, with apologies to Kotex.

So where were those women? The short answer is that, plainly, they were not in the room. Go to Apple's home page and look at the pictures and bios of key executives. I'll tell you who you'll find: Steve, Timothy, Scott, Jonathan, Ron, Bob, Peter, Mark, Philip, Bertrand and Bruce. All white, all men. If there is a "top" woman at Apple, at best she's No. 12.

Just how little confidence is there in the ability of the Barack Obama administration to fight terrorism? So little that even liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is now mocking the pathetic efforts of this administration in his latest column:

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up? 

The liberal meltdown as a result of the last week's election in Massachusetts continues apace.

And the latest victims of the Bay State choosing Republican #41 for a Senate seat are the editorial staff of The New Republic. Anybody who follows The New Republic, such as your humble correspondent who has kept the NewsBusters Eye of Sauron focused on that liberal outpost knows they are a bunch of policy wonks who have spent the better part of the past year obsessed over every arcane detail of ObamaCare as well as closely following its passage in its various versions through the House and Senate. In fact the two New Republic Jonathans, Chait and Cohn, are so emotionally invested in the fate of ObamaCare, that I fear for their mental health should that legislation, as now appears likely, fails to pass.

You want an example of how depressed The New Republic has become on the topic of the Obama presidency? Well, just check out this meltdown money quote from their latest editorial:

How does this president handle a crisis? Thus far, the answer is not at all encouraging. The current crisis is the election in Massachusetts of Scott Brown, now the forty-first Republican senator. His arrival in Washington has sent Democrats into panic mode--fearful that they too will be swallowed by a seething electorate--and caused many of them to flee in the other direction from health care reform. In short, Barack Obama faces a moment where his presidency just might collapse or, rather, risks heading into a wilderness where it would accomplish next to none of its ambitious goals.

It seems that few if any events in political history has caused such a rapid meltdown among the media and the Democrats as last week's election of Scott Brown as senator from Massachusetts. And a prime example of the many meltdowns now happening is an off-camera exchange between Ed Schultz of MSNBC and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs in which Big Ed told the latter that he was "full of sh*t." Here is Schultz describing the encounter in this video:

I know it’s being recorded, but I wasn’t told it was off the record but Mr. Gibbs and I had quite the conversation off the air the other night. And I’m gonna tell ya, I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him. I mean I did. And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb the same way Sen. Leahy got it on the Senate floor. So I told Robert Gibbs, I said, and I’m sorry you’re swearing at me but I’m just trying to help you out. I’m telling you you’re losing your base. Do you understand that you’re losing your base? And that the American people, they don't want public option. The American people want single payer.

It is no suprise that conservatives have been highly critical of Barack Obama. However, a new development has set in recently: leftwing disgust with The One especially since it now appears that ObamaCare is DOA. And perhaps the absolute funniest of the leftwing critiques of Obama comes from the pen of David Michael Green, a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.

Here is just one nugget of pure comedy gold that Green wrote in his latest essay at CommonDreams.Org:

Another great trick for crashing a presidency is to pick all the wrong priorities to ‘fight' for. Imagine, for example, if FDR had substituted for his ‘Day of Infamy' speech right after Pearl Harbor a ringing call for an American revolution in cobbler technology! Yes, that's right, in response to the devastating surprise attack by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan, what if the president urgently called upon us all to start making really amazing shoes?! Before it's too late, and we all get blisters on our feet! Similarly, Mr. Obama, your spending the last year on (jive) health care and jetting around the world dipping your toes into foreign policy problems while Americans are losing their jobs and their houses is a fine way to kill your presidency. Guaranteed to work every time.

Sometimes you can get a better feel of the political mood in the country by reading small town newspapers than you can by following the mainstream media. And if Democrats think that by jumping ship on Obamacare in the wake of Scott Brown's election as senator from Massachusetts they can spare themselves the political consequences of their earlier support, they should read the comments from the readers of this Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder article. It is about local Democrat Congressman Zack Space suddenly displaying a profile in no courage by announcing yesterday his opposition to the Senate health care bill...after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces she didn't have the votes to pass it:

U.S. Rep. Zack Space said Thursday he plans to oppose the health care bill passed by the U.S. Senate.

He made the announcement shortly after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the national media she didn't think she had the votes to pass the bill.

Few liberals have been more insistent on the inevitability of ObamaCare than The New Republic editor Jonathan Chait (along with his TNR colleague Jonathan Cohn). He is stubbornly clinging to the notion that ObamaCare can be a done deal despite the results of yesterday's election in Massachussets giving Republicans the 41st vote to block it in the Senate. To give you an idea of how far Chait has gone off the deep end, take a look at his money quote on the topic of liberal Democrats who consider the Mass. election a referendum on ObamaCare in his ironically titled column, Mass Hysteria:

Still, it's fairly amazing to me to see the Democrats reacting with such hysteria. It's not just moderates trying to position themselves to the center. Barney Frank and Anthony Weiner are acting like pathetic, emotional cowards. They seem to think that one very attractive candidate beating a hapless foe amounts to a national referendum to which every other member of Congress is bound.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again.

Break out the hankies! Andrew Sullivan has gone into deep melodrama mode over at The Atlantic and is now mourning the "looming landslide for Brown." For the gloomy Sullivan tomorrow could signal not only the loss of an election but also the loss of health care and, ultimately, the loss of socialist America itself. Enjoy the act from the Sullivan Theater as Andrew presents his version of The End:

Boston Globe writer Lisa Wangsness can't be blamed too much for assuming that appointed senator Paul Kirk's term ends when the winner of tomorrow's election in Massachusetts, Scott Brown (photo) or Martha Coakley, is seated. Wrong. Mass. law is very specific on that term limit as Fred Barnes has noted in the Weekly Standard. The reason why Wangsness can be forgiven for her error is that it is the same assumption made by most of the rest of the mainstream media. Here is the relevant section of her article about the effect of tomorrow's election on the health care bill:

Another possibility would be for Democrats to hurry and pass a compromise bill before Brown were seated.

It is not clear how much time Democrats would have in that case. Before the new Massachusetts senator takes office, Secretary of State William F. Galvin must certify the vote, and town clerks have to wait 10 days after the election to allow time for the ballots of military members serving overseas to arrive, then they have another five days to deliver the final results to Galvin, according to state election law. After that, the new senator can be sworn in.

You've just won a tough Democrat primary fight. You are now in the general election campaign for the "Ted Kennedy" senate seat in "Massachusettes." So what do you do? Why, go to Disney World!

Okay, so maybe Democrat candidate Martha Coakley didn't go to Disney World but she did take a 6 day vacation in the middle of her campaign for the U.S. Senate on December 23. Why would a candidate do something so foolish? Perhaps because she actually believed the reports in the mainstream media that she was already in possession of the "Ted Kennedy" seat and that the general election on January 19 against her Republican opponent, Scott Brown, was just a mere formality. Here is Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe declaring Coakley the "winner" on December 3:

MARTHA COAKLEY will be the state’s next US senator. Michael Capuano handed her the keys to the late Ted Kennedy’s office by getting caught up in one last dumb shouting match with the sure loser in the race, Stephen Pagliuca. One can only imagine the smile inside Coakley’s head as Capuano and Pagliuca descended into a banter so banal that Pagliuca tried to nail Capuano as the Sarah Palin of the Democratic Party.

Are you putting me on, Jim?

Yeah, I'm talking to you, James Rainey, of the Los Angeles Times.

It seems that the Times columnist just can't figure out how the MSM missed out on reporting the John Edwards scandal story despite the fact that the L.A. Times was Gound Zero for media refusal to report on this matter even after the National Enquirer broke an important aspect of the story in Rainey's own backyard at the Beverly Hilton. First the entertaining money quote from Rainey in today's column:

After reading "Game Change," a sweeping new account of campaign 2008 by veteran journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, a reader might wonder: How could the schmucks on the bus miss the operatic disintegration of Edwards' once widely admired partnership with his wife, Elizabeth?

Hee! Hee! Hee!

I'm cracking up every time I look at New York Magazine's terrific Nathan Fox artwork used to illustrate a chapter of the John Heilemann and Mark Halperin book, "Game Change," chronicling the 2008 presidential race. The chapter excerpted in that periodical, "Saint Elizabeth and the Ego Monster," is about the complete self-destruction of John Edwards along with his campaign and marriage. Never has a candidate fallen so far and so quickly as you can see in both the the story and the illustrations. And what illustrations! The picture of Elizabeth Edwards ripping off her blouse on the upper right is explained by the authors which presents a picture of something less than the wedded bliss which John and Elizabeth Edwards portrayed to the public:

At the terminal, the couple fought in the passenger waiting area. They fought outside in the parking lot. Elizabeth was sobbing, out of control, incoherent. As their aides tried to avert their eyes, she tore off her blouse, exposing herself. “Look at me!” she wailed at John and then staggered, nearly falling to the ground.

Brrrrrr!

Ignore the record shattering freezing weather surrounding you. Global Warming is happening. Please believe me. Oh, pretty please!

That is pretty much the theme of an article by Michael McCarthy, the U.K. Independent environment writer. With this cold weather it must be tough to plead the case for global warming but McCarthy takes a desperate stab at it:

You might think the current weather conditions are almost Siberian – and you'd be right. Britain's most prolonged spell of freezing weather since 1981 is being caused by a huge mass of intensely cold air over north-east Russia, with easterly winds sweeping its glacial temperatures across northern Europe to the UK.

And just as in the 20th century's coldest ever winter in Britain, of 1962-63 – although not on such a severe scale – the cold is being held in place over the British Isles by what is known as a "blocking anti-cyclone", a static area of high pressure over Greenland which is preventing the usual warmer, damper westerly winds from reaching us across the Atlantic.

It's New Year's Eve and you have the choice of ringing in 2010 by partying or watching Larry King. Most normal people would choose the former option but for the very few who watched Larry King that evening, they were treated to quite a surprise as they watched the show which was guest hosted by Candy Crowley (Was Larry ringing in the New Year at Nate 'n' Al's?).

The surprise came in the form of Liberal Marc Lamont Hill gaving a rather harsh political assessment of President Obama.  Here is just a taste of what Hill had to say about Obama, followed by more criticism in the transcript below the fold:

He's absolutely overplayed his hand. He kind of came in arriving the -- riding the wave of his own awesomeness. ...The fact that he had done 110 interviews and 110 talks on health care and the American people weren't persuaded, it showed that people like him, but they didn't find his argument persuasive. It was almost as if he said if they just see my face one more time and listen to me one more time, they'll be convinced...

Remember when dissent was supposed to be patriotic? Well, it seems that only applies when a Republican is president. Now that Barack Obama is in the White House, criticism of him is "un-American" and "traitorous." This new "tolerant" view of dissent comes from Joan Walsh of Salon.Com as you can see in this Hardball video from Wednesday. Below is the Walsh money quote but please be sure to also watch the video since it is important to watch as she drops any facade of liberal tolerance and lets her true dogmatic soul reveal itself in both her face and voice which seems to border on dementia:

The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this president. And it‘s actually un-American. It‘s traitorous, in my opinion. Do you want to give aid and comfort to our enemies? Continue to treat this president like he wasn‘t elected and he doesn‘t know what he‘s doing! He knows what he did. He knows what he‘s doing. I‘m proud of him. I believe that he has the stalwart, resolute nature to get this done...

For some strange reason, the Daily Kos has gained the reputation in the mainstream media for somehow being composed of "reasonable progressives" in stark contrast to their Democratic Underground cousins whom even many in the MSM will admit are flat out loons. However, certain events prove that the Kossacks are every bit as crazed and full of hate as the DUers. And one such event that has proved this to be true is the reaction of the two sites to the news that Rush Limbaugh has been hospitalized in Hawaii.

Of course there was a DU thread full of hate towards Rush but as you can see in this Kossack thread, they are every bit as hateful as the DUers. Some sanity-challenged sample comments from the Kossacks on the subject of Rush Limbaugh's hospitalization:

He does NOT have a f---ing right to make up s--t and present it as fact to incite his millions of so-called ditto heads to hatred and violence. 

i hope that this piece of human excrement that has lied and lied his way to a fortune is silenced for a long time...eternity

Ouch!

This video of Russian ex-President (now Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin's response to a question about terrorism at a G-8 summit press conference was posted in early 2008. However, his answer is worth noting now in light of  Barack Obama's rather dispassionate first response to the Nigerian Christmas Day bomb plot terrorist which came off as sounding like a tepid legalistic statement from a deputy district attorney. Here is a transcipt of the question from a French journalist and the blunt response from Putin which stunned  the press conference to silence:

FRENCH JOURNALIST:  ...Don't you think that by trying to eradicate terrorism in Chechnya you are going to eradicate the civilian population of Chechnya?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: If you want to become an Islamic fundamentalist and be circumcised, come to Moscow. We are multiconfessional. We have very good specialists. I can recommend one for the operation. He'll make sure nothing grows back.

Whenever Time magazine praises a Republican, you can almost always be sure it is because of an ulterior motive. And, sure enough, the motive for Time magazine to praise Florida Republican governor Charlie Crist is to slam his much more conservative senate primary opponent, former state House speaker Marco Rubio. Note the sympathy for Crist in this Time story by Tim Padgett coupled with criticism of Rubio:

Ever since a conservative tent revival began sweeping America last summer, sparked by angry misgivings about health care reform and other harbingers of big government, Republican purists have targeted Crist's moderate, bipartisan style. Seizing on his embrace of President Obama's $787 billion economic-stimulus plan, they've treated him as a whipping boy...

...Along the way they've anointed Rubio, a 38-year-old Cuban American, as the right wing's new boy wonder, a genuinely conservative David who can slay Crist's Goliath RINO (Republican in Name Only) in the primary next August.

(UPDATE: Politico is now covering this with reference to this very NewsBusters story. Politico's Patrick Gavin claims that Baucus's office was sent an e-mail for an explanation of his strange behavior and will update later with the reply. Come on, Patrick. Do you really expect a candid response? And who in the Baucus Senate office will reply? His military affairs aide, Captain Morgan?)

How can one explain this incredibly bizarre performance by Max Baucus on the Senate floor? Was Baucus so intoxicated by the sound of his own voice that he went off the deep end? Or perhaps he was so drunk with power over shaping the Senate health care bill that it explains his strange rant. In any event, if a conservative such as Jim DeMint or Jeff Sessions had acted this way in the Senate, the mainstream media would have featured the video over and over and over again. Instead, since this was Democrat Max Baucus, this video was almost completely ignored by the MSM.

 Since the MSM has provided no information on the Baucus performance, your humble correspondent has searched the blogosphere for answers. Here is an observation from Susan Flowers at Examiner.Com:

Is this acceptable, NO. Is this behavior and lack of leadership acceptable to U.S. Citizens who are paying his salary?

Have all rules established over hundreds of years being thrown out and disregarded by the Democrat party?  He should be brought before his peers and punished, if they don't, should Voters, as employers, write him up for inappropriate behavior and disorderly conduct?

Americans are paying taxes to support his career. If you disapprove, call and write the other Senators and request he be charged with disorderly conduct.  No one in the Congress or Senate should be allowed to be intoxicated when officially representing the Citizens of the USA.

Remember how outraged the left became when Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, showed President George W. Bush not issuing a public statement on the Twin Tower attacks for several minutes until after the school children finished reading the Pet Goat story? Well, it is now almost two days since the Nigerian terrorist working at the behest of Al Qaeda attempted to blow up a passenger jet and still no public response from the current president, Barack Obama.

According to the associate editor of The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder, the reason for Obama's lack of response is that it is part of some sort of brilliant strategy:

There is a reason why Obama hasn't given a public statement. It's strategy.

Are we having fun yet?

Perhaps the most unpopular story your humble correspondent ever wrote for NewsBusters was probably the one about Zippy the Pinhead. Most readers found it impossible to interpret Zippy into any form of reasonable thought. The main complaint being that Zippy was indecipherably confusing. Here are a few of the complaints from the previous Zippy story:

Sorry, this one Zipped right by me, over my head

that strip makes no sense at all...

Aren’t comic strips supposed to stand alone in their message and humor? Or is it just so abstract that it’s rendered ineffectual? The official site of the strip gives credit to my charge, as it actually has a tutorial to help people understand the strip. 

The only true way to understand Zippy is to become as severely impaired cognitively as Zippy.  No way I'm trying that!  

Okay, I think I understand the complaints. However, since today is Christmas I hope, Dear Reader, that in the spirit of the day you will cut me some slack as I once again present another Zippy the Pinhead comic strip (below the fold).  I found this one to be quite interesting because not only does Zippy's family bemoan the rapid decline of newspapers but Zippy the Pinhead also mocks the Huffington Post as a news source.

(Andrew Revkin has responded to this NewsBusters story which you can read in the Update below.)

The New York Times environmental writer, Andrew Revkin, has left that newspaper this week. What made Revkin's departure interesting is that in his long farewell story published on Monday, he never once mentions global warming or climate change.

First a little background on Revkin's departure from the Times via the Columbia Journalism Review:

Andrew C. Revkin, one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment, will take a buyout from The New York Times as part of the paper’s current round of budget cuts. His departure, after nearly fifteen years at the Times, is sure to leave a big hole in the publication’s coverage of climate change at a time when this controversial issue—and what to do about it—is at the top of the American and international agenda as never before. Revkin is currently on assignment covering the Copenhagen climate change summit and will step down from his staff reporting post next Monday after returning to New York.

Hmm... So if "climate change" (Newspeak for "global warming")  is so important then why did Andrew Revkin NOT once mention it in his extended farewell? Let us analyze what he did talk about since it makes the absence of any mention of global warming all that much more glaring: