Due to his lack of Internet access, Patterico has asked me to post this for him:

Folks: I have had almost no internet access for about a week, and this condition will probably persist for another week. I have been posting items during my lunch hour at work, or during rare periods where the connection goes up for a few precious moments. I haven’t given up blogging, but this has made regular posting impossible. Thought I’d let you know.

For some reason, my limited access to the internet allows me to send and receive e-mail (occasionally and slowly), but I can’t post items to my blog. I have asked my friend Xrlq to post the following observations about today’s L.A. Times. Unfortunately, I can’t give you the links to the articles or other citations, but if you read the paper today, you’ll remember these stories. [I found most of the links, and have added them. -Ed.]

• The paper’s lead article is about a DNA analysis that has linked a California inmate to 12 murders. But we don’t need more DNA
  databanks, as might be provided by Proposition 69 — which is not mentioned anywhere in the story.
• A story about soldiers’ positions on the presidential candidates bears an internal headline (on page A7) which reads: “Soldiers Mixed on Bush, Kerry.” But no mention is made of recent polls showing that soldiers overwhelmingly support Bush.
• A front-page story calls Arizona’s Proposition 200 — a scaled-back version of California’s Proposition 187 — “divisive.” And the last time the Times called a left-wing proposal “divisive” was . . . when?
• A shocking article on page A20 breaks the revelation that women prefer Kerry, while men prefer Bush.

  I should have asked you to sit down before telling you that.

• There is a surprisingly good article (dang it, I keep forgetting to tell you to sit down before breaking shocking news) on the front page by staff writer Stephen Braun, about John Kerry and his ad-libs. The
  theme of the article: Kerry ad-libs a lot. It’s often effective, and it’s often boring. I love this line:

  With the ominous words “Let me tell you a few facts,” Kerry
  launched into a meandering pastiche of figures that droned on more than
  five minutes before reaching an applause line.

  And I especially love this passage:

  [A]fter [Kerry] larded an extended passage on his healthcare
  proposals with long, tortured minutes of eye-glazing figures, Kerry arrived at a climactic applause line.

  In his prepared text, Kerry was supposed to snipe at the president’s stance on healthcare by mocking his advice to Americans: “Don’t get sick.”

  Instead, he blurted out: “And don’t get sick, just pray, stand up and hope — wait — whatever. We are all left wondering and hoping — that’s it.

  Only the instant prompting of campaign staffers, clapping furiously around the room, sparked enough applause to rescue the candidate from dead air.

  Heh. You can almost hear the crickets chirping. Great stuff.

  In unrelated news, the paper has announced the firing of staff writer
  Stephen Braun, effective immediately. (Just kidding — as far as I
  know.)

All in all, another typical day for the Times: mostly partisan garbage mixed in with a small portion of quality reporting.

Thanks to Xrlq for being willing to post this.