It’s pretty much nonsense through and through:

But for all the anti-tax swagger and the occasional stunts by personalities like KFI’s John and Ken, the reality is that conservative talk radio in California is on the wane. The economy’s downturn has depressed ad revenue at stations across the state, thinning the ranks of conservative broadcasters.

Ah, but liberal newspapers like the L.A. Times — now they’re doing great!!

Leading the charge against Proposition 1A are John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, whose afternoon drive-time show on Los Angeles’ KFI-AM (640) draws 670,000 listeners a week, according to the Arbitron ratings agency. That makes them the most popular conservative talk radio hosts in the state.

John and Ken say they have 1.1 million listeners, not 670,000. They say that number is for L.A. and Orange Counties — ignoring several other surrounding counties, including Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and others.

Day after day, they pound Schwarzenegger and the Republican lawmakers who joined Democrats in approving the tax increases. They are encouraging recall drives against the legislators. Their website features pictures of the governor and the lawmakers — with their severed heads on sticks.

“They’re all pretty shaken up by it,” said Nygren, who counts some of the lawmakers as clients.

Ah, jeez. “Severed” heads suggests that there is blood dripping from the necks — that there is some implicit threat. And that the lawmakers are scared because of an atmosphere of violence.

Ridiculous. It’s just heads on sticks. Here is an example:

Lawmakers are scared because John and Ken know how to mobilize people. They had a rally with 8000 – 15,000 people, and the L.A. Times can not cover it and pretend like it didn’t happen — but it did. People are upset — and it’s not just “older white Republicans” who “are a shrinking portion of the state’s voters,” as the article claims. Plenty of us younger people are plenty upset at lawmakers.

But what kind of tax revolts are they covering? This kind.

But look! Here’s a tea party they did cover!

The important kind: a celebrity toddler tea party planned by Katie Holmes and Angelina Jolie.

Thanks to Debbie L.

This guy did the analysis. It’s a 58% drop for liberal blogs, vs. a 36% drop for conservatives:

In the three months following the November 08 election, political blog traffic has dropped significantly. I surveyed the traffic stats of 20 major political blogs — split evenly between liberal and conservative — and compared the number of page views for the three months leading up to the election to the three months after. In that time period liberal blogs dropped from 302,711,611 total page views to 126,502,281 (58%) while conservative sites dropped from 233,950,986 to 149,744,909 (36%).

Curious, I ran my own numbers. In the same three-month periods, I fell from 1,989,843 page views (Aug.-Oct.) to 1,404,066 (Nov.-Jan.) — which is about a 30% drop, if my English-major math skills are holding up.

No fun, certainly — but it was predictable all along.

Thanks to Jon Henke.

From The Sun:

LONDONERS were treated to an eyeful today when 999 near naked revellers decended on the capital.

Wearing nothing but skimpy Shamrock style bikini’s the gang marched along the bank of the River Thames to the amusement of sight-seers.

Luckily for the group early spring sunshine accompanied them on their trip – to promopte an Air Lingus flight sale.

Link is probably not safe for work. (That ought to make you click.)

P.S. 57 words and only four obvious spelling errors! Nice job, Sun editors!

[Posted by Karl]

As Pres. Obama tries to lead the “outrage” over bonuses paid to execs at troubled insurance giant AIG — and AIG’s payments to foreign banks, etc. — with the taxpayers’ money, let’s take a moment to remember which taxpayer employees got paid by AIG:

Over time, AIG hasn’t shown an especially partisan streak, splitting evenly the $9.3 million it has contributed since 1989. In the last election cycle, though, 68 percent of contributions associated with the company went to Democrats. Two senators who chair committees charged with overseeing AIG and the insurance industry, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), are among the top recipients of AIG contributions. Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee and has collected more money from AIG in his congressional career than from any other company–$91,000. And with more than $280,000, AIG has been the fourth largest contributor to Dodd, who chairs the Senate’s banking committee. President Obama and his rival in last year’s election, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), are also high on the list of top recipients.

AIG has been a personal investment for lawmakers, too. Twenty-eight current members of Congress reported owning stock in AIG last year, worth between $2.5 million and $3.3 million. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), one of the richest members of Congress, was by far the biggest investor in AIG, with stock valued around $2 million.

The list also includes Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).  All of which is undoubtedly coincidental to strings not being attached to the AIG bailout in the first instance.

Granted, the populist “outrage” over the AIG bonuses may be misplaced, as populism so often is.  At least we can enjoy the prospect of those pols who fanned the populist flame looking impotent, hypocritical, disingenuous, or like the tools of their donors, instead of their constituents.

–Karl

Michael Goodwin:

Not long ago, after a string of especially bad days for the Obama administration, a veteran Democratic pol approached me with a pained look on his face and asked, “Do you think they know what they’re doing?”

The question caught me off guard because the man is a well-known Obama supporter. As we talked, I quickly realized his asking suggested his own considerable doubts.

Yes, it’s early, but an eerily familiar feeling is spreading across party lines and seeping into the national conversation. It’s a nagging doubt about the competency of the White House.

Some of us have doubts for quite some time — and they’re far from nagging.