That said, Rush Limbaugh’s worst day is better than Air America’s best, not just because I’m more likely to agree with the content, but because it doesn’t suck.

In announcing today on its website that it is going off the air and filing bankruptcy, Air America, good liberals — excuse me, progressives —  that they are, blame their demise on everything but themselves.

The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a “perfect storm” in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry’s long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.

Yep, must be why all those conservative talkers are going off the air, too.

Those companies that remain are facing audience fragmentation as a result of new media technologies, are often saddled with crushing debt, and have generally found it difficult to obtain operating or investment capital from traditional sources of funding. In this climate, our painstaking search for new investors has come close several times right up into this week, but ultimately fell short of success.

Translation: investors know we suck.

With radio industry ad revenues down for 10 consecutive quarters, and reportedly off 21% in 2009, signs of improvement have consisted of hoping things will be less bad. And though Internet/new media revenues are projected to grow, our expanding online efforts face the same monetization and profitability challenges in the short term confronting the Web operations of most media companies.

Does this mean that their web operations are going down, too? Looks like it. The bankruptcy announcement is the only thing on the home page.

Through some 100 radio outlets nationwide, Air America helped build a new sense of purpose and determination among American progressives. With this revival, the progressive movement made major gains in the 2006 mid-term elections and, more recently, in the election of President Barack Obama and a strongly Democratic Congress.

Laws have changed for the better thanks to this revival…..but all the same our company cannot escape the laws of economics.

Why would they make this concession? The policies they advocate regularly assume that the whole country can avoifd the laws of economics.

(H/T: HotAir.)

UPDATES (1//21/10): Michelle Malkin:

Sen. Franken hasn’t lobbied for a bailout, as far as we know. But don’t breath a sigh of relief yet. They’re still swinging the Fairness Doctrine noose. When they can’t compete in the marketplace, the Left will use the power of government to squash their competitors.

And no on can accuse Professor Jacobson of being understated. At least not here.

Navy’s awesome 23-21 victory over 19th-ranked Notre Dame last week gives me a great excuse to get active again in the Rule 5 community with this pic from the Navy Cheerleaders website:

Why is this the Rule 5 post I never would have expected to write? Women were still a novelty at USNA when I arrived. My class was only the third with women in it, and a lot of people weren’t happy that women were there at all, or at least were disturbed with what we saw as politically correct moves relating to specific female midshipmen.

In any event, we probably were more unkind than we should have been; in fact, my classmates and I were pretty damn crude, and let’s just say that we didn’t think good looks were plentiful among that early group of women who braved (and I do mean braved) the transition to a co-ed institution. We said some nasty things. Please accept my belated (and anonymous) apology, ladies from the classes of ‘80-’82.

Some “old-timers” I meet at alumni functions would still like to change the Academy back to an all-male institution. But I’m betting the young mid in the middle of this pic feels differently.

Happy birthday, Marines!

In 1993, the big problems of the voting cities and states – crime, disorder and excessive local taxation – could convincingly be laid at the doors of out-of-touch Democratic administrations. Republicans offered credible alternatives: welfare reform, broken windows policing, and reform of government spending.

Today’s big problem is the economy of course. Republicans and conservatives would like to blame the recession on the president. In time perhaps that accusation will gain greater credibility. For now, though, it’s still George Bush’s recession and we remain George Bush’s party.

Huh? Frum has been arguing a long time that we need to remain “moderate,” i.e., he wants us to be George Bush’s party, now and forever. So why does he point that out as a negative here?

Why does anyone listen to this guy? He expects us to follow his advice for the future, yet in his announcement of the conversion of New Majority to FrumForum, he admits to incredible short-sightedness (emphasis mine):

From the time we launched the New Majority site, we have had to cope with a problem with our name. Simply put, there are a lot of “New Majorities” out there. There’s one down the road in Virginia, another at the New World Foundation, a conservative 501c4 here, a liberal one there. All this generated serious confusion, but the worst was with the best known New Majority of them all, TheNewMajority in California, because their mission and ours so closely overlapped. That overlap was leading to very unnecessary conflict with people who wanted many of the same reforms that we did.

Ah, way to be forward-looking, Mr. Frum! Of course I will trust the future of conservatism to you! Why wouldn’t I?

“Deuce,” you say, “that’s a fluke!”

Oh, really?

This is the second year in a row Navy has won a game without a single pass attempt! Last year, also in week eight, also in a driving rainstorm, playing their third string quarterback (this year’s starter, Ricky Dobbs), the Midshipmen rolled up 34 points without a single pass attempt in their win against SMU.

This is five wins in a row for Navy. If they can win their sixth in a row in their home game against Temple next week, they’ll carry quite a bit of momentum into South Bend to face Notre Dame on November 7.

And no, it’s not because I want to see your breasts. I don’t. Really. Furthest thing from my mind.

It’s because I don’t want an Alex-Forrest brand psycho — OK an alleged an Alex-Forrest brand psycho — wearing a T-shirt emblematic of my alma mater.

H/T: Ace.

“A very calm and understated manner.”

Got that? That’s the new standard for political debate; whatever you say in a calm and understated manner must not be alarming, and thus people must not act as if they are alarmed, no matter what it is.

This notion of an overblown reaction to understated remarks merely continues the stupid emphasis (by both left and right) on means rather than ends, form rather than substance, and the idiotic principle of proportionate response.

While administration flacks may not be going over-the-top in the way that Democrats at large, and especially the lunatic left, did over the last eight years, the velvet fist is the perfectly predictable result of adding “the Chicago Way” to the mix by electing as president a total unknown with exceptionally thin skin from the nation’s most politically corrupt city. How is it understated to say, as David Axelrod did last Sunday, that Fox News is not even a news organization and should not be treated as such by other news organizations? It’s just another way of saying that the single television news organization that doesn’t regularly suck the president’s dick must be shut out for that reason. Is it somehow less offensive or threatening because he said it calmly?

Ah, Monique, how generous you are. McCain is even more clueless than you know. From the last paragraph of McCain’s column (my emphasis):

Of all the things I worry about in my life, my country’s national security is by far at the forefront. I am a daughter of a famous military hero and the sister of two soldiers.

When someone calls her marine and sailor brothers “soldiers,” you can pretty much stop listening to anything else she has to say about the military.

In two senses of the word: the ladies are conservative, and so are the photos. There’s no genuine cheesecake in the Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute’s 2010 wall calendar — not that you’d expect it.

But it does remind me of the not-so-long-ago blogburst about conservative women vs. liberal women. And for a good laugh, see how Doug Ross carries that theme a step further with a hypothetical face-off against a wall calendar featuring liberal women.