You didn't think I'd forget, did you?

I recommended doing things like this back in 2005. Did anybody listen? Well, Comcast, obviously, but did anybody around here? (By the way, if you're not a fan of the The700Level,com by now, you should be.)

Yes, this is part of a trend:

In a possible sign of shifting industry dynamics, the New York Times launched regional supplements to its San Francisco and Chicago editions, drawing on the work of well-financed donor-sponsored startups.  Similarly, ESPN launched regional sites in Chicago, Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles, challenging papers there for dominance in sports reporting. The Wall Street Journal is rolling out regional supplements as well and increasing its local coverage of New York City.

But if this is, as it appears, a case of well-off national media lions (and some new media challengers) feasting on sickly antelopes, watch for many metros to fight back in 2010.  Already, for example, the Seattle Times has responded to the rich collection of neighborhood Web sites in that city by partnering with and aggregating 19 of them.

No reason why that couldn't happen here. Is there?

Yes, this is an open thread, so please ignore what I just wrote and scream "socialism!" and "it was all Bush's fault!" at each other for the rest of the day.

Theodore Olbermann was a noteworthy architect, but in this media age that we live in, he became best known during the very final act of his life. It was during those weeks that his son -- the MSNBC newscaster Keith Olbermann -- used his hospital travails as a teachable moment on the urgent need for a U.S. healthcare reform that would lead to better outcomes for all. Now, there's an excellent chance that legislation will win final approval pass this week, but Theodore Olbermann did not live to see it; he died Saturday at age 80 with his son and daughter at his side. My condolences to Keith (whom, as longtime readers know, I went to high school with) and the Olbermann family. He sent me this obituary that I'm reprinting here. At the bottom is Keith Olbermann's special comment about his dad's hospitalization and his plea for reform:

Theodore C. Olbermann died, in the city of his birth, New York, Saturday. He was 80 years old.

Though the financial constraints of his youth made college infeasible, he became an architect licensed in 40 states, and practiced for 40 years. Much of his work was commercial and there was a time in the 1970's when nearly all of the Baskin-Robbins outlets in the country had been built to his design, and under his direction. 

He was predeceased last year by his wife of nearly 60 years, Marie. He died peacefully after a long fight against the complications which ensued after successful colon surgery last September, with his daughter and son at his bedside, the latter reading aloud to him his favorite James Thurber short stories, as he passed.

"He was my inspiration, and will always remain so," said his son, Keith. "His bravery these last six months cannot be measured. He is as much my hero now, as he was when I was five years old."

Memorial services are pending. In lieu of flowers the family is encouraging donations to the National Association of Free Clinics.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?

For all of us who were pumped over the prospect of watching David Beckham compete against the United States in their massively huge World Cup match against England on June 12...uh, that's not going to happen. Maybe someday...is there a Senior World Cup?

I have to say that I'm surprised (I shouldn't have been, but I was) and outraged over the protests against this cartoon by the Inquirer's Tony Auth, which depicts the principal of South Philadelphia High School, whose name is LeGreta Brown. First of all, editorial cartoons are, um, metaphor, people. Just because Ms. Brown claims she spends 12 hours a day at the school doesn't mean that she -- and her bosses on up to the needs-to-be-fired Arlene Ackerman -- weren't totally asleep at the switch, figuratively, as racially motivated violence escalated over time into a day long festival of mayhem against Vietnamese students and other Asians. If you don't believe that Brown and Ackerman displayed horrible leadership and deserve to be held an accountable, then your head is buried in something deeper than the desk in that cartoon.

That's why I'm reprinting the cartoon here at Attytood, in solidarity with Tony Auth. In fact, I'm going to reprint it here a lot between now and the day I come back from my book vacation. There's no more liberal value than saying 'no' to racism like the violence that occurred in that high school, and so I'm proud to stand with Tony Auth in doing exactly that.

On that note, have a good weekend.

Stu Bykofsky weighs in on the inevitable implications of, in his words, "when terrorists look like us."

JIHADJANE has a message for racial-profiling fans: Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

JihadJane blew up the notion - never really widely held - that being a blue-eyed blonde should slide you through airport security like grease through a goose while everyone with a Middle Eastern name, a swarthy complexion or a turban should be strip-searched by Transportation Security Administration screeners.

Well, he certainly has a point about racial and ethnic profiling -- it will be interesting, if I get a chance, to hear Smercomish's take on this. But I think the broader point here is that Colleen LaRose was a woman with a world of problems before she discovered al-Qaeda. In all honesty I think it makes more sense to view her as Act III after the Austin IRS attack and the Pentagon shooting -- people who were deranged or narcissistic or both and who turned their demons toward something political. And I think that is a commentary on our times:

For too long in America we've had people committing random acts of violence -- usually toward their own family, unfortunately, and occasionally at crowded places like a McDonald's; in 2010, the focus is anti-government and anti-Americanism -- that's partly a reflection on the deep anxiety in U.S. society right now and partly because of the hypercharged media atmosphere (and yes, I mean on all sides) that we live in today. The Internet, in particular, enabled all three of these people -- to obsess on conspiracy theories or to post a death rant where millions could read it or, now, for a blonde, blue-eyed and deeply troubled woman from the Philadelphia exurbs to hook up with al-Qaeda. And if you believe in free speech and unfettered Internet access, as most of us do, there's no easy solution for that.

Some days you can turn on "Morning Joe" and just conclude there's no connection between our so-called grand political debate and the real slow drip-drip-drip that is killing the American economy -- and our kids' future in the process. Some days the slow drip is from gasoline:

Sunoco Inc., the Philadelphia-based oil company, says it's paying EquaTerra Inc., a Houston consulting firm, to recommend whether Sunoco should "outsource" information technology, accounting, personnel, and procurement jobs from its Center City headquarters, home to 750 of Sunoco's 10,000 employees.

"We have hired EquaTerra to advise us as we explore potentially outsourcing some functions," Sunoco spokesman Thomas Golembeski told me yesterday. Workers learned Friday of the possible job moves. EquaTerra didn't return calls for comment late yesterday.

Sunoco expects EquaTerra to report later this year on which jobs could be profitably outsourced to cheap labor markets in Asia or elsewhere. If Sunoco decides to outsource these jobs, it will seek proposals from contractors, Golembeski said.

First of all...uh, Sunoco, could you please explain to me what you've been doing with the wads of extra cash that I've been forced to dole out at your service stations these last few years? Surely you didn't lose that much on those discount cards from the Acme. And so now this is your gratitude for sevcral years of record profits -- inflicting a hurting on the Philadelphia economy, and not just the people who'll lose their office jobs in Center City but the guy who sold them coffee in the morning, and, yes, the service station owner who use to fuel up their morning commute to a job that's about to disappear forever.

Second of all, isn't this the real problem in America today, and one that no one in Washington -- or anywhere else -- has a clue on how to solve? Free-market solutions? Give me a break -- this is the free market in action. There's not a Republican tax break in the world that would stop Sunoco from shipping those jobs to India or China or wherever, given the huge disparity in wages. We could shut off the Internet -- we did pay for this microphone, after all -- and go back to a non-flat-world economy like we had in the prosperous 1950s, but that seems counterproductive and unpractical, doesn't it. I still think the best alternative would be to invest both more and more wisely in education as well as infrastructure -- what China is doing,

But the inevitable return of conservatives to power, at least until they screw things up for the fourth time in my lifetime, is probably going to lead to a new world order of ill-targeted austerity (money for tanks instead of classrooms) that will destroy my children's future in the name of saving it. God bless America. 

You knew it was a matter of time: Psychology Today is here to tell us what makes the Tea Party tick. I think the piece is both insightful and bizarre at the same time.

Insightful:

Psychologically speaking, however, it offers relief from helplessness and a sense that things are falling apart. It offers a sense of cohesion and identity based on certainty, a commonality of interests, innocence, and even martyrdom. While the world of the tea-party'ers is filled with danger, it is a danger mitigated by moral certainty, clarity of purpose, and a definable external enemy.

The "problem," then, is not the paranoid story line but the anxiety, helplessness, and pain that generate it. And that pain is not irrational or crazy. It's real. We all feel it. Most of us do feel helpless in relation to the most important aspects of our lives, from the nature of our work to its security, from our politicians who are on the corporate dole to those perpetuating gridlock through their narrow ideology, from the quality of our health care to its availability, and from the isolation and loneliness of everyday social life.

The piece by Michael Bader makes the point that I completely agree with, which is that people who've lost their job or who are frightened by conditions in America right now deserve empathy -- these are folks who in making cases are looking for answers and are turning to the simplistic ones oftered by the likes of manipulative folks like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. The only sane approach is to offer these people a better alternative, as opposed to heaping scorn, which is very bad politics but more importantly bad humanity. The "Teabagger" joke was funny for a day or two when some of the protesters naively called themselves that, but people who still call them "Teabaggers" now are hurting their own cause, greatly.

And so the thing I find bizarre about the article is a purported plea for empathy with such a condescending tone, especially this part: "I hate these folks but I also understand them." Huh? How can you empathize with someone and hate them at the same time? I do have tremendous contempt for the extent that racism is involved in the Tea Party movement (based on what I've seen, that would be a lot for a few and a little for some more) -- but at day's end individuals should be judged...as individuals.

I've also wondered if it's over-the-top to call the right-wing movement "The American Taliban," as Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos will do in a coming book. I would say generally, yes, it is over-the-top, but not when referring to this alarming group called Repent Amarillo:

An evangelical Christian hate group called “Repent Amarillo” is reportedly terrorizing the town of Amarillo, Texas. Repent fashions itself as a sort of militia and targets a wide range of community members they deem offensive to their theology: gays, liberal Christians, Muslims, environmentalists, breast cancer events that do not highlight abortion, Halloween, “spring break events,” and pornography shops. On its website, Repent has posted a “Warfare Map” of its enemies in town. Calling Repent an “American Taliban,” blogger Charles Johnson notes that the group’s moniker “Army of God” is a rough translation of “Hezbollah.”

The only thing I would add to this is, wow! The original piece on Repent Amarillo is here.