Because they've been doing this story since September 2000.

Alexis Boehmler is a junior studying English at Davidson College. At 20, she is bright and well versed, with strong views on the abortion issue and other political matters. Occasionally, friends tease her about her passion for literature; she recalls with some embarrassment speaking in class once about Don DeLillo's novel "White Noise" and being moved nearly to tears. Her opinions do not betray a hint of apathy or intellectual lethargy, and she has every intention of voting in November. And her primary news source — often, her only news source — is "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," a parody.

Just to make sure the story still holds up, we put a call into Alexis, who now works at BOMB Magazine. Turns out she still gets her news from the Daily Show. "Maybe because he covers a variety of topics and personalities, as opposed to the same thing over and over," she said.

Is Jon Stewart The Most Trusted Man In America? [NYT]
Much, much earlier: The Stiff Guy Vs. The Dumb Guy [NYT]
Related: Colbert, Stewart Viewers More Well-Informed Than Those Watching O'Reilly, Dobbs [ThinkProgress]
Which also isn't exactly news: Daily Show Viewers Smarter Than O'Reilly Viewers [BoingBoing, 2004]

First off, there is no better place for Lou Dobbs to rule than New Jersey, the blighted industrial wasteland split between hellish suburbs of New York and Philadelpia (and some beaches). Also: did you know that New Jersey has the fifth largest percent change in its Mexican immigrant population since 2000? It's up 86.9 percent! This will be perfect for Lou, who will finally have the authority to carry out the mass Ethnic Cleansing plans he formulates on his entertaining television show.

Also he'll be able to patrol New Jersey's border personally, keeping it safe from the boatloads of illegal immigrants coming in from the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe he could put a wall up between Jersey and its neighboring states? Then we all win!

(And when you run for office, especially one so high as governor, often times you are actually held accountable for the hateful bullshit you say. There are even occasionally times when the targets of your many attacks have a chance to respond on terms not set by you! So hey, Run, Lou, Run!)

"Prepress staff at papers in Sussex and Wiltshire, who design ads and check editorial pages before they are sent to the printers, have been told their positions are at risk. Newsquest Sussex, publisher of Brighton's Argus newspaper, announced that 21 jobs will go as work is outsourced to a third-party supplier, Express KCS, an American company with operations in India. Staff were told of the move last week and there is now a four-week consultation period before the notice of termination of contracts."

Tune in tonight to watch Lou Dobbs bleed from his eyeballs. [Guardian]

[EBay]

Via ThinkProgress

For a decent grounding in the myths and realities of the NAFTA Superhighway story, here's the Washington Post's Fact Checker taking on the crazy musings of Republican presidential candidate and Emperor Of World Of Warcraft Ron Paul. For a more entertaining look at the issue, consult respected internet publications of record like World Net Daily and TownHall.

According to World Net Daily, the fact that money was allocated to build a portion of an interstate in Tennessee is incontrovertible proof that the battle against Mexicanadamerica has already been lost. (And did you know that Giuliani is involved??)

Take a look at this stirring letter from Ron Paul:

The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union—complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.

Your children will be spending Ameros on disgusting Mexican candy on their way to drug cartel meetings. Also some Canadian stereotypes will be involved. (Sklar?) Even Red China will oppress us on the Hell Highway! Unless hero of the working man Lou Dobbs has anything to say about it!

Dobbs has been fighting the NAFTA Superhighway since whenever one of his producers found it on an anti-immigration message board (probably), railing repeatedly against the Unconstitutionality of this terrible road. Even avuncular loon Pat Buchanan takes cues from Lou regarding this menace to our freedoms.

The highway is especially dangerous, as Pat notes, because the Mexicans commit lots of crimes, shoot guns at children, and probably lust after white women.

Lou's role in exposing this injustice-in-the-making is so key that he's the star of this insane and awesome YouTube clip we found:

Eager to discuss what we learned about the Fox-Bush Autobahn, we clicked over to our favorite message board ever, the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC forum. In the thread called WATCH LOU DOBBS ON NAFTA SUPERHIGHWAY TUESDAY, we eagerly read the words of our fellow patriots.

In the immortal words of poster butterbean: "POOR LOU - HE IS JUST 1 MAN, WITH JUST 1 HOUR, AND SO MUCH NEWS TO COVER."

And, as GeorgiaPeach writes:

I got the impression that he was really serious about keeping the public informed about the NAFTA Superhighway. On YOUTUBE there are several videos of the segments done on Lou Dobbs in regards to the Nafta Superhighway if someone has not viewed them yet.

Ephesians 4:32
_________________
http://www.wethepeopleofamerica.org

It's true! Lou is very serious about "keeping the public informed about the NAFTA Superhighway," which is crazy code for "dazzling the rubes with imaginary threats." Lou Dobbs, friend of the little guy, is surely personally outraged that longshoreman and truckers will maybe end up out of work a dozen years from now, theoretically, once the upgrade of the existing interstate system leads to the middle of the nation becoming the continent's center of commerce. It keeps him up nights! He can barely stand to listen to his daughter talk about her horses anymore! (Please click that link. Harvard sophomore Hillary Dobbs: "my horses are jumping the best they have ever jumped.")

Yes, Lou truly cares about the fate of the working man, where the working man is defined as the white working man, and where all the threats to his livelihood involve Mexicans.

Here's more clips of Lou on the NAFTA Superhighway to Hell:

• 1. Katie Couric, at the extreme left of our chart, is so heavily disliked by Republican viewers that the new CBS anchor might as well be a communist.
• 2. By calculating the balance of Democratic and Republican opinion, we arrayed the anchors across the political spectrum: nearly two-thirds of the anchors slant left, at least in respondents minds; but the right-wing anchors of Fox News are the most polarizing.
• 3. Viewers are surprisingly indifferent to Lou Dobbs: I would have thought the CNN anchor's anti-immigration stance would have won him more conservative fans.
• 4. Disliked by all political tribes: CNN's diaper-wearing Larry King; oh-so-serious Wolf Blitzer; Fox's token liberal, Alan Colmes; CNN's graceless Nancy Grace and Scientologist Greta Van Susteren.
• 5. All things to all people: ABC nightly news anchor Charlie Gibson; NBC's Brian Williams; and, surprisingly, CNN's silver fox, Anderson Cooper. (Better not let the social conservatives know that he likes Latin men!)

Methodology: Harris asked respondents for the three most liked and disliked TV personalities; we took the net totals for survey participants who also gave a political affiliation. For instance, 42% of Republicans liked Bill O'Reilly, and 10% disliked him, giving him a net approval rating among Republicans of 32%, indicated by the substantial red bar under his name. Only 11% of Democrats said they liked the controversial Fox News anchor, and 34% named him one of their least favorite news figures, giving him a net approval rating among Democrats of negative 23%, marked by the blue bar stretching below the x-axis.

Take Riches' suit against CNN hairmonger Lou Dobbs (Filed Oct. 07, closed Oct. 07). Dobbs stood accused of promoting racism against immigrants, defamation of character, treason, and generally "Gestapo Nazi SS" tactics that caused irreparable harm to Riches. Kind of true? Sure! Good for $200 million from a federal judge? Sorry, no. We called Dobbs' rep to see if he was recovering from the stress of this suit, but she hasn't gotten back to us yet, strangely.

Riches doesn't win cases ever, as far as we can tell. But plenty of suits are still pending! Like the one he filed this week against David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, for working as X-files agents to "illegally incarcerate me under Bookes and fanfan." Or the other one he filed earlier this week against Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria for giving his fingerprints to neoconservative Interpol agents to set him up on bogus fraud charges. Or the other one he filed this week against drab media mogul Mort Zuckerman for his contributions to Riches' "24 hour abuse/ torture/ beatings." Mercy!

Riches hasn't sued Nick Denton yet, but it's only a matter of time now. Or maybe he'll be thankful to us for helping him blow the cover off the Katie Couric-rat poop-Jewish Mossad connection. The evidence is all here:

Dobbs speaks in a jargon-heavy coded language reminiscent of a Scientology training video. Campaigning for the Latino vote is "pandering to socio-ethno-centric special interests" (that is a close-to-direct quote of some nonsense he said last night). Your house was foreclosed on because of "faith-based economics." You have to be a dedicated fan to understand the shorthand for his special crusades.

Today, Lou's weekly commentary went up at CNN.com. The subject is his usual pox-casting on both political parties for not being zealous enough in their protectionism or xenophobia.

But at least the ugly spectacle that Clinton and Obama created should serve as a reminder to all of us that group and identity politics have outlived their effectiveness and that pandering to socio-ethnocentric interest groups and special interests, whether as large as corporate America or as small as the construction company in a congressman's district, has no rightful place in 21st century American politics.

Yes! When will our politicians learn that they must stop pandering to brown people and start pandering exclusively to enraged middle class white men!

Addendum: We meant to tell you about this but then we got too depressed about the state of the nation and also the closing of the best restaurant in New York.

Campaign A Lot of Partisan Nonsense [CNN]
Earlier: Lou Dobbs, Scumbag

You probably know the basics of Dobbs' populist schtick. Immigration: bad! Borders: broken! You might not know how far he goes with those themes. For example: did you know that Mexicans want not only to cross our broken borders and steal our jobs, but also to reconquer the Southwestern United States and rename it Aztlan? It's true, according to a graphic Dobbs showed provided by SPLC-identified hate group "The Council of Conservative Citizens"!

On Dobbs' nightly show he and his correspondents provide viewers with the sort of insane, old people-terrifying conspiracy theories—your leaders are in collusion with Mexico to turn all of North America into one country and we'll all have to spend Ameros and also fight to the death in the Thunderdome!—formerly found only on late-night AM radio and the weirder far-right reaches of the internet. He generally falls just short of 9/11 Truther levels of evidence-manipulating and Occam's Razor-ignoring, all gussied up with the professional production pizazz and respectable cachet of the most "serious" cable news network. And Lou Dobbs Tonight is CNN's second most watched program!

The bloated modern-day Father Coughlin got his start as a staid and boring economics expert at the staid and boring early CNN. His Moneyline program was, as described by The New Yorker, "a sort of video clubhouse for corporate America." Harvard grad Dobbs soon became CNN's executive vice president, founded CNN fn, and then, when CNN becan covering President Bill Clinton too much for his liking, Dobbs went off to start a website about astronomy called Space.com. It was 1999!

Dobbs returned to CNN in 2001, just in time for 9/11 to change everything. Specifically, it changed Dobbs from a harmless old jackass who loved sucking up to the ruling classes into a man who'd milk every last bit of jingoistic fervor that tragedy stirred up into a highly profitable career as a mouthpiece for the sort of nativist bullshit that went out of style with the John Birch Society. Proving conclusively that it was decency and not irony that died that year, it paid off:

"In December 2003, the show was reaching an average of 463,000 households a night; by August 2006, it was reaching 646,000 families, according to Nielsen Media Research." Dobbs' rising ratings and influence allow him the freedom—not shared by any other marquee CNN anchor—to express his toxic opinions at will, in the context of a nightly news report. Even Brit Hume hides behind a farcical sliver of "objectivity."

With miraculously color-shifting hair and bitter, jowled face atop his 6+ foot frame, Dobbs is reportedly as petty, cruel, and vindictive to his little guy staffers (take a couple guesses) as he is emphatically on the side of the imaginary "little guys" in his audience, each watching religiously for further tips on how best to beat back the coming wetback menace. (Did you know that the President of Mexico "demanded the United States surrender its sovereignty, abandon the rule of law and accede to Mexico's inherent supremacy"? Ignore him at your peril! They'll steal your job, replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" with that polka bullshit the cholos blast at all hours, infect you with comically archaic diseases, and force your kids to wear sombreros while pledging allegiance in Spanish to a chimichanga!)

(It's not just the Mexicans who want to enslave us, by the way—the filthy red Chinese have declared war on the American consumer and are sending us lead-filled toys and poison dog food on purpose. See: "Dangerous Imports" at the Lou Dobbs Tonight website. Every insane crusade has a little logo and catchy title, yes.)

So: is Dobbs a Nazi? Not really. Because Mexicans aren't Jews! And because he's not calling for their extermination. Just calling for them to be relocated, by force, out of our motherland! But the question posed up top is whether he'd turn Nazi when it become the expedient thing to do in suburban Jersey (it could happen here!). Using populist "concern" for der Mittelstand to rile up the folks about an imagined, darker-skinned threat is a pretty good indicator of the direction he'd fall.

Now Lou wants to run for President! Or, at least, he's not ruling it out. Anything's possible, and anyone who can so effectively split the difference between the most despicable and craven aspects of both major parties would surely gain more popular nationwide support than Michael Bloomberg. But Dobbs ain't a Hitler, he's a Goebbels—an educated gentleman used to the finer things in life pretending at solidarity with the workers in order to fatten his coffers and improve his standing.

Who goes Nazi? [Harper's]
Mad As Hell [New Yorker]
Photo illustrations: Josh Abraham

• This anchor farts a lot!
• "This person has been nicknamed 'Cranky Pants' by his caretakers."
• "This person's caretaker has had to remove carrot shreds from his lunch because he 'hates orange food - no orange food!'"
• "This person turns beet-red, balls up his fists and screams when he is read something he doesn't like."
• "This person just up and ran away from his caretakers, leaving them terrified and heartbroken."

To be honest, we're guessing Lou Dobbs for pretty much all of them. He just seems like a "cranky pants." Though the last one might have a better answer—which CNN (or Bloomberg, why not!) anchor made a habit of disappearing "without warning, not showing up or calling in for days, weeks, never to return"?

Toddler Or Anchor? I Report, You Decide [HuffPo]

"She won! We're very excited, but now she has to decide her major as she enters into her sophomore year at Harvard."

God, it kind of makes you feel bad for anyone who watches CNN. "Stay tuned. After this short commercial break, I'll rail against immigrants and my daughter, who is going to Harvard, will decide her major. This is Lou Dobbs (Class of '67) for CNN."

Does he have some product placement deal or something?

Sadly, the interests listed on daughter Dobb's MySpace page ("5' 7" / More to love!") don't seem to offer any clues as to in what subject she might major. "Riding, singing, shopping, listening to music, driving with the windows down" aren't listed as majors in Harvard's coursebook. Yet.

The network issued the following statement:

NYT columnist David Leonhardt today devotes a full column insisting that CNN correct inaccuracies in two of Lou Dobbs’ past reports. However, it appears that it is Mr. Leonhardt who has the responsibility to set the record straight.

Leonhardt veers from the facts when he inaccurately suggests that a 2003 report on Lou Dobbs Tonight which states that “one-third of the people in federal prisons are not United States citizens” is wildly off base. In fact, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the percentage of non citizens in federal prisons was 29 percent at the time of the Dobbs report. Leonhardt claims in his column today that the figure was only 6 percent, which is grossly inaccurate and misleading.

Leonhardt also criticizes Dobbs for not correcting a claim made on his show in 2005 about the number of cases of leprosy in the U.S. In fact, Lou Dobbs took the initiative to set the record straight in a full report on the subject two weeks ago.

Leonhardt further criticizes the use of Dr. Madeline Cosman as a source for the initial leprosy reference, yet he fails to note that Dobbs told him that had he known of her controversial views he would never have quoted her. Leonhardt also omits that his own newspaper was no better informed a year later when they wrote a glowing obituary of Cosman in 2006, calling her a "prominent writer, scholar, and lecturer."

As a network, CNN is determined to set the record straight if there is ever an inaccuracy in our reporting, as we have done in this case. Earnest journalists do err from time to time, and when we do we correct the record. We call upon the New York Times to do the same.

¶The share of state prison inmates who are noncitizens is much lower. (This is largely because immigration violations themselves are federal crimes.) In 2000, 4.6 percent of inmates in state prisons were noncitizens. This number remained quite steady over the next five years, right around 4.6 percent.

¶Over all — combining federal and state prisons — 6.4 percent of the nation's prisoners were noncitizens in 2005. This is down from 6.8 percent in 2000.

¶By comparison, 6.9 percent of the total United States population were noncitizens in 2003, according to the Census Bureau.

Immigrants and Prison [NYT]
Related: This Radar piece on Dobbs, which has the month's best kicker.

Now, the résumés are flooding in — and the process is turning out to be every bit as unconventional as the billionaire investor himself. Among the 600 or so applicants so far: a Talmudic scholar who picks stocks from home, a Canadian economist with an intense yoga practice and even a four-year-old.

"We're going to run this like 'American Idol' in the end," the 76-year-old Mr. Buffett quipped in an interview.

There'd be early-round ritual humiliation:

What [a trial period] isn't, however, is a mentorship program, something many applicants have misinterpreted. He says he isn't looking for someone to teach, but for "someone who already knows how to do it."

The misunderstanding is reflected in dozens of letters from students, profession investors and a surprising number of engineers and lawyers hoping to be apprenticed [natch!] to the master. "I assure you," wrote one 20-year-old college student, "although I may be short on experience, I am very long on potential." [Ed: Sure you are, Aleksey] A lawyer in Oregon recommended his four-year-old son, characterizing the toddler as a "great negotiator" on issues such as "bedtime, chores, allowance, baths, etc."

In Ottawa, economist Klaus Kostenbauer takes a more spiritual approach. As manager of Prosperous Yogi Investments, he regularly practices a rigorous form of yoga call kundalini, and mediates several hours a week.

"My yoga makes me a better investor," says Mr. Kostenbauer, 40. "It helps with discipline, mastery of your emotions, and mastery of greed, fear and patience."

Please read the whole article. Political economy is fake. —Jon

Want to be Next Warren Buffett? A Line Forms in Nebraska [WSJ]

Last night [H]ipsters pressed Bird to explain how CNN anchor Lou Dobb's made it into one of his new songs, "Fiery Crash."

"He was part of my daily life and he just ended up in a song," Bird said. "I can't help it."

Some in the audience seemed unimpressed by the explanation. Shouts of "television kills" and a reference to Dobbs' so-called "war on the middle class" met Bird in response.

Dobbs: Whatever happened to the War on Dugs? [CNN]

• How long will Sumner Redstone hold on to Midway games? Hopefully, long enough to give us a few more Photoshopped pieces like the one above. [NYT]
  
• Lou Dobbs is sort of a dick. Also, there's an article about him in the New Yorker. [NYer]
  
• Not that you care, but the government is pretty much at war with the idea of an independent press, and the government is winning. Oh, look, Britney's hanging out with Paris Hilton! Sorry, what were we saying? [NYT]
  
• Rupert Murdoch v. Silvio Berlusconi: whose ticker will give out first? [NYT]
  
• James Murdoch: Just as canny as his dad? [Economist]
  
• Observer to go tabloid in attempt to appeal to women and their diminutive limbs. [NYM]
  
• Slate's Jacob Weisberg would rather be online than anywhere else. So, you know, don't try and tempt him away with a real job, print people. [Guardian]
  
• Don't be alarmed, but some people think Fox News may be biased. Just gays and Democrats, though, so no worries. [NYS]
  
• Of interest only to British media junkies: Publisher Kimberly Quinn to leave the Spectator. Guess she ran through the roster of contributors. [Guardian]
  
• Tyler Br l has hired an editor for Monocle. Nothing earth-shattering, really... it's just the Tyler Br l thing. [WWD]
  

USA Today: NSA Building Massive Database of Phone Records [CNN.com]
Dobbs to President: Do You Take Us for Fools? [CNN.com]

ABC News Remembers Peter Jennings as It Moves on Without Him [NYT]

DOBBS:[...]But the fact that it has taken so long, with the principals all known, with the case sitting before, this — and the cost of millions and millions of dollars, and frankly I will not forgive Fitzgerald for what he did to you.

If you could find a question in that statement, we're quite sure it would be a very hard-hitting one! But he wasn't done — Dobbs continued to go for the jugular:

DOBBS: It's — first, the idea of 85 days in jail is something that most of us cannot comprehend. It is — give us your — the sense of what you had to endure?

MILLER: Well, it was the most soulless place I've ever been. I think we don't realize how much we take things for granted like color, silence, the right to take two aspirin when you feel you have a headache. It was demeaning. It was degrading. It was very lonely.

Yes, after a career spent traipsing around post-war Iraq and witnessing public hangings in Sudan, nothing prepared Judy Miller for the hell that is a city jail in Virginia.

Why, in the end, was poor Judy trapped in this soulless, colorless, and unconscionably loud place? For you, dear reader. For you.

MILLER: The public won't know. That's why I was sitting in jail. For the public's right to know.
[...]
MILLER: Thank you very much. And I hope we have a federal shield law that would protect all of us, so that no other journalist has to make the choice that I did.
DOBBS: And again, not for the benefit of the journalists, but the benefit of the public.
MILLER: No, it's not about us, it's about the public's right to know.

Yes, the public's right to know. What the public has a right to know was never made quite clear, but after the jump, we'll try to narrow it down.

What the public does not have a right to know:
Who Judy's confidential sources are
What was said in her meetings with those confidential sources
Why she was in jail a year after getting a waiver from Scooter Libby
Whether she's going to write about her involvement in the investigation
Any details of her testimony

What the public might have a right to know:
Times Managing Editor John Geddes knows 85 good jokes.

Lou Dobbs Tonight Transcript [CNN]

Dobbs will ask her just how many illegal immigrants she saw in prison, and what Miller's sources tell her about their plot to destroy the country and take our jobs.

Lou Dobbs Tonight [CNN]