The crusade against BrickArms's tiny terror toy is all the rage in the Brit tabloids. Naturally, one of Rupert Murdoch's papers, the Sun, has the best headline: "Osama bin Lego."

But no news outlet is as consistently droll as the Brit techie Register, which for this story blares:

The Register story adds:

Everything is "disgusting" to Shaffiq. Remember those Danish cartoons? "Disgusting," Shaffiq said in March 2007. Or The Jewel of Medina? "I am disgusted at the novel," Shaffiq said in November 2008.

Meanwhile, BrickArms, a family business in Redmond, Washington, is molding plastic and young minds. Check out Will Chapman's charming history of his small company.

Running down the press:

After carving themselves another Ground Zero in Manhattan (without the actual deaths), Wall Street's bankers are frantically rebuilding.

Their jobs — and your jobs — are at stake.

I'm not trying to disrespect the 9/11 tragedy or minimize that day's deaths. But the New York Times's headline this morning does use a physical-space metaphor for a fiscal-space collapse: "Bids to Halt Crisis Reshape Wall St. Landscape."

Loading their aging cannons with adjectives and even a colorful verb, the Times team crafts this lede:

For my lack of money, I'll take the Wall Street Journal's tighter lede, headlined "Crisis on Wall Street as Lehman Totters, Merrill Is Sold, AIG Seeks to Raise Cash":

What about our mortgages and our shaky grip on our jobs and our real estate? I guess news about the impact of Wall Street's meltdown on us will just have to wait.

Anyway, at least the Times's third and fourth grafs give us a glimpse of the stress felt by those poor Wall Street bankers:

Meanwhile, the New York Post couldn't resist punning (who canned?) the scary threat to Wall Street's fairy-tale profit-taking: ' "DOOMED" LEHMAN NOW BROS. GRIM'

But you won't go wrong this morning if you stick to the Post (which, after all, is the WSJ's sister Murdoch paper). At least the Post's Mark DeCambre mentions us commoners in its lede:

And the Post mentions our jobs in its third graf, followed by a quick review of the tragedy by Ayn Rand acolyte Alan Greenspan (see the website run by Rand's own followers):

DeCambre is clearly the city's best journo this morning. His sidebar "Thain Plays It Sane" (that's his editors' headline, so don't blame him) is seriously excellent, and he plays that tune in only seven grafs. On this historically frightening day, I'm stealing the whole thing for you:

A fine analysis and he even followed Post style by using the word "funky" and squeezing "honcho," "pedigree," and "gussy" into the same sentence.

I'm not faulting him, but DeCambre didn't mention some relevant background concerning O'Neal. Four long years ago, on July 7, 2004, I noted, under the subhead "For Bush, Black Is Beautiful, if by 'Black' You Mean Stan O'Neal":

Go back and read the May 24, 2004, Washington Post story I mentioned above. Just its headline gives you some good background on the current slide toward a depression: "Wall Street Firms Funnel Millions to Bush: Finance Sector Produces Surge of Cash to President Who Cut Taxes on Dividends, Gains."

Back to the New York Post: DeCambre's not the only person on Wall Street who pulled an all-nighter, but he's one of the few whose stock is rising. In an item posted at 4:02 a.m., he strikes yet again with another brief but pungent morsel, "GOV'T FORCING GIANT TO SWALLOW BITTER PILL". His lede:

The Wall Street meltdown is bad timing for the Democrats — not to mention the grim future an Obama Administration would have to deal with. After all the puff pieces on Sarah Palin were widely disseminated in the first blush of her unvetted selection, now some real news is unfolding about her shenanigans — and a blatant lie from John McCain — and yet it's buried beneath the meltdown.

For example, the Wall Street Journal's intriguing piece this morning that got pushed back to page A5:

And the story gets better:

In other news, people were killed in a commuter train crash in L.A. (which didn't even have commuter trains until a few years ago), we're still losing the war in Afghanistan, stuff is happening in Zimbabwe, and, as the New York Post reports in a preview of a September 18 event, "Britney look-alikes show 'pieces' of the famous pop tart."

Running down the press:

Great news for Wall Streeters this morning! The public's going to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it's only going to cost you $100 billion or so, and you (and perhaps the Democrats) will be taking on an additional $6 trillion in debt.

When blacks were recently freed slaves and not presidential candidates, this financial system was referred to as sharecropping and owing your soul to the company store.

But the average American in the 21st century will be doing global investors a big favor, as the Wall Street Journal reports, amid the news of booming stock markets around the globe:

Ah, the world's a safer place. Bloomberg notes the huge gains for European banks, and the Times humanizes the frightening event by anthropomorphizing:

In other bailout news, MSNBC bailed out of news coverage of the presidential campaign by pulling the anchor chairs out from beneath Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

The cynic and yeller, respectively, added too much color to a campaign that already includes a black candidate. Republicans were enraged at Olbermann's sneering at Sarah Palin.

Brian Stelter at the Times broke the news yesterday, noting:

MSNBC's bailout was great news for Fox, whose screaming TV talking heads paved the way for MSNBC's attempt to grab a liberal audience by doing kinda the same thing.

Fox now stands alone, and its sister Murdoch property, the Post, celebrated by bannering its official endorsement of John McCain for president. There's a shocker, but that "enthusiastically urges" opinion is expected to have no effect on the paper's news coverage of the race.

The Post's Page Six — "Chris & Keith 'Left' Out" —has more on MSNBC's swift-boot maneuver, in addition to the gossip page's daily scoop about Britney Spears again being pissed off about too much publicity (this time it's about her mom's book).

Regarding the bailout of the less shapely Fannie, which Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson portrayed as a positive move for taxpayers that may even result in gains for them as well, today's New York Sun chips in with the most interesting take, editorializing that the move was, in effect, the nationalizing of the companies:

So if Paulson is wrong, the downside of that tighter regulation of, say, an oil company, as the Sun's analogy has it, would be . . .?

If you really want to cut through the bullshit, go to the BBC, which reports that the bailout staves off a "'30s style depression" in the U.S. Or see McClatchy, whose Kevin G. Hall had the guts to point out way high, in his fifth graf, that the seizure is akin to bankruptcy proceedings:

The words "depression," "bankruptcy," and "Chapter 11" didn't make their way into the Times's main story.

The BBC explains things better than most:

Post: 'NYPD (BIG) BLUE FLAP: COMMISH IN COMMERCIAL THAT HAILS IBM'

Veteran crimebuster Murray Weiss took time out to watch some golf on TV and produced this interesting piece:

Why would Kelly do this? Weiss notes:

Weiss doesn't mention it, but Kelly was paid plenty — in free publicity should he decide to run for mayor.

Post: 'HAMPTONS HOLY WAR'

The infidel Selim Algar's fine coverage of a Jew vs. Jew battle:

Clearly, Westhampton is more of an Irv or Sid hamlet than a Tony one.

L.A. Times: 'Sarah Palin's leadership style has admirers and critics'

A chickenshit cop-out headline on a pretty good story whose subhead foreshadows the meat of a real tale that, unfortunately, also steps gingerly into the debate over her lack of qualifications: "Some who have worked with the Alaska governor say her bold approach is lacking in follow-through, and that she punishes those who dare say 'no.' "

Der Spiegel: 'Trouble in the North Caucasus: Russia’s Restless Muslim Republics'

Ignored by papers on this side of the Atlantic is the troublemaking of McCain, who isn't even the U.S. president yet.

If you think that the Georgia-Russia war is bad news, a spread into full-scale conflict involving big bad Russia and the other crazy Caucasoid republics would be even worse, and guess who's lighting the match? The German site reports:

And we don't have the oil to spare, unless Palin and McCain tap Alaska's big butt.

Oh, yes, frequent flyer-by-the-seat-of-his-pants McCain, please thrust us into Chechnya. Talk about Vietnam all over again. How about sending some "advisers" over there? Then it would be the entire U.S., not just McCain, held hostage by an unwinnable war.

Running down the press:

As expected, Bristol mire was highly profitable this morning:

Daily News: 'Bristol Palin's pregnancy was an open secret back home'

Good adjectival application, except for the usual fuckin' bowdlerizing:

Der Spiegel: 'McCain's Bush-Style Campaign Worries the Center'

Before you settle in for yet another day of Jerry Springer-style Palin family drama, go to Germany for some other news about the Republicans:

And the German site doesn't neglect der kinder mutter; it simply treats it as political news:

Straight shooting from the Germans that cuts through the bullshit over here: "poorly disguised gambit to get the religious right behind McCain."

Yes, the Palin choice smells like a Rovian maneuver. Wonder if we'll ever find out whether he was the one behind it.

Daily News: 'Killer smiled as he bragged to dad about chilling student murder'

The morning's best creepshow stuff:

Nope, no problem, Jeromie. Listen, have a good day. Gotta run now.

Times: 'City Feels the Economic Pinch, but It’s Only a Pinch, So Far'

Doing its best to attach a smiley face to the situation, the paper dispatched Patrick McGeehan to find people who don't think the economy is rapidly sinking. In a city this big, you're bound to find some, and in a story that smacks of small-town reporting, he did:

Vague bullshit that's mostly stiff-upper-lip quotes from merchants and which includes zero from, say, the tens of thousands of people who have been laid off or fired. "To a surprising degree"? Not backed up.

The problem for readers: If you just read the headline, you're being misled. But then if you go on and read the story, you're wasting your time with boring misinformation. Misled or bored — you decide.

For a more realistic look at the economy — even for those of us who don't dine at hoity-toity restaurants — turn to the food section for Frank Bruni's 'As Belts Tighten, Lobsters Shrink and Bar Menus Grow.' That's a real story with real information about how we're being fricasseed.

Daily News: 'Online bookies taking bets on whether Sarah Palin will get dumped'

Already tired of the Republicans and their catering to the Good Book evangelicals? Go to Ireland:

I wrote about Intrade's political market in May 2007 ("Wolfie's Stock Soars"). Now you can keep track of Palin here.

By the way, as the story doesn't note, Obama appears to be the favorite over McCain, according to the Irish site's punters.

Post: 'THIS IS NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY: GOPERS STAND UP FOR SARAH'

Tired old headline style, not to mention the mixed-metaphoric lede:

Fred Thompson's name makes the first paragraph of your Palin story, you gotta problem.

Post: 'LINGERIE IS TOTALLY HOT: COPS'

Great head, supported by a cute lede:

L.A. Times: 'Palin hubbub leads Republican delegates to target "liberal media" '

James Rainey, the paper's "On the Media" reporter, paints a dramatic picture:

Then he continues with what has to be the worst idea for a lede in the history of political-convention coverage:

Huh? He's interviewing one of his colleagues? About something that happened 20 years ago? Rainey continues:

Yes, it could have, but it didn't.

In fact, another mediocre West Coast paper snared an anecdote that really did happen in St. Paul. Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times trolled the convention floor asking about George W. Bush and came up with this:

Times (U.K.): 'Obama support hits 50 per cent as Republicans look to Palin speech'

Rupert Murdoch's London paper is your better choice than Murdoch's New York City paper — or any other NYC paper — if you want political news. If you want to put the Palin news in perspective, here's part of how the Brit paper's Hannah Strange portrays it:

Yo, bitch, you ain't all that. "Jer-ry! Jer-ry! Jer-ry!"

Running down the press:

Times: 'G.O.P. Tries to Upstage Democrats'

Stop the servers! Atop the front page is this hard-hitting piece by Jim Rutenberg about how the Elephants are breaking "new ground" by trying to trample the Donkeys' un-sexy show. The paper that thinks it's the historical record once again ignores history:

This is not new ground; the paper doesn't even mention that shortly before the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC, the nation's security guard, Tom Ridge, raised the terror alert level to red in NYC, Newark, and D.C.

As I noted at the time ("The Attack Starts," August 2, 2004), Howard Dean opined a "political motivation for terror alert," as CNN put it, and he was shelled for it.

This morning's story by Rutenberg is a non-story. He quotes GOP political operatives about how pleased they are that their political-operative work is working. And that's it.

On a side note, Ridge's warning actually was prescient: He included a specific note of worry that Citigroup's NYC headquarters could be destroyed. Four years later, Citigroup's subprime performance — massive firings and a stock-market plummet — is indeed a disaster site. Self-imposed.

Post: 'TED GETS PARTY STARTED'

The Demo-hating Murdoch rag gets it right with a good lede on the Kennedy saga that all the papers covered:

Much more interesting than the Times version.

And the Post splashes a story about actual monkey-wrenching: the sore-loser Clintons' determination to upstage Obama ("ANGER AT HILL'S DEM PARTY FOULS").

That's more of a threat to the Democrats than the GOP's attempts — if you don't count the free publicity that Rutenberg gave the Republicans.

Hillary and Bill are unlikely to even budge the needle of the grace-o-meter this week.

Post: 'FISH-KILLING INDIAN PT. RULED AN ECO-DANGER'

In actual terror news, the tab gives good play — which the Times wouldn't do for a wire-service story — to Jim Fitzgerald's AP piece:

Post: 'DRUGLORD OF MANY FACES'

Here's a gangster moniker we haven't heard before:

But the paper's most e-mailed story this morning? Some real news from Saturday:

Daily News: 'Michelle Obama: My husband shares same beliefs you have'

Oh, brother. The Denver convention's non-news gets off to a great start:

Speaking of monkey-wrenching the Dems, the following item made the home page of Google News last night: 'McCain and Jay Leno Joke About His Age'

And you wonder why news orgs all over the world clamber to land a precious spot on Google's home page for news. That frenzied pandering by news org overseers is more of a threat to journalism than the increasingly useless printing presses that papers are stuck with.

The L.A. Times is one of those huge daily ailies, but at least it proclaims in a subhead that the Dems are seriously targeting McCain's turkey neck:

Good thing that Leno's show is taped early. By the time it aired, the elderly GOP nominee's innards were struggling to digest his early-bird meal and he was probably already in bed.

Still sleepless with worry, however, were millions of other Americans. Another piece in this morning's L.A. Times:

Wrongly slapping on an anecdotal lede about a renter named Ruth Cordoba, the paper tells an interesting story once you get past that:

Good thing there aren't many low-income renters here in New York City.

Start booking those tickets to Europe. From this morning's BBC:

Bad memories for those Denver conventioneers whose last names aren't Clinton. Drizzling on the parade — Denver typically experiences showers just about every summer afternoon — is Slate's Jack Shafer:

Red alert! Red alert! And this is no joke. From the Washington Post's front page:

Don't look for this on the Times's front page.

While the Times and others talk about how the Obamas and Ted Kennedy are rousing the faithful, Drudge points to an actual faith-based story out of Denver by the AP's Eric Gorski:

As usual, the smart, sober news source that is McClatchy's web wire service gets serious about real news at the convention, reporting Monday:

Giving equal time, McClatchy also carries this important tidbit, via the Miami Herald, about an always pivotal state where GOP operative Kathleen Harris chest-bumped the Dems in 2000:

Bad news for GOP? Fla.'s Hispanic voters no longer Cuban

After the seemingly obligatory anecdotal, "human-interest" lede, Casey Woods writes:

Another paper falls to journalism know-nothings.

Jim Dolan makes Rupert Murdoch seem like Jesus H. Christ. And that's why Cablevision's apparently successful attempt to swallow up Newsday is making us gag.

Blessed with the huge cash flow of a monopoly cable company (thanks only to cities long ago giving up a public utility to private companies), the Dolan family has enough gelt to spend $650 million to buy the behemoth Long Island newspaper. For a while, it looked as though Murdoch was going to land the whale, but call me Ishmael if the Dolans didn't sink their hooks in deeper.

No matter that the Dolans (Jim's rich daddy is Chuck) have no experience in the news business — Cablevision's News 12 operation doesn't count. At least Murdoch knows the business. When he owned the Voice years ago, he was too smart to turn it into a right-wing rag. The Dolans will further blandify Newsday.

Wall Street's not exactly enthusiastic about the match, which makes about as much sense as the Dolan-owned New York Knicks spending a fortune to hire as coach Mike D'Antoni, who can't coach defense and inherits a roster ill-suited to his run-and-gun style.

Jim Dolan is the slack-jawed yokel who has screwed up the Knicks with his meddling into things he doesn't know about. His only experience with journalism is to squelch it. Colleagues have reminded me that the Knicks' policy toward reporters is unusually repressive and controlling.

When there's bad news brewing in the bowels of Madison Square Garden, Jim Dolan and crew make sure to clamp down hard to keep any of it from leaking out. Sure, every company does that, even newspaper companies, but the Knicks' operation is particularly harsh toward journalists.

Yes, these are the hard-hitting, courageous people we want running our newspapers.

You have to feel sorry for Newsday editor John Mancini (whom I used to work for at a now-defunct paper) and the other fine journalists who still have jobs there. That's because the Dolans' operations are relentlessly mediocre.

As a I said before, Wall Street's not particularly gung-ho. A story earlier this month in Newsday noted:

No matter. The newspaper business may be ailing, as its owners all over America keep moaning, but the New York Times pointed out yesterday that Newsday produced more than $80 million last year in profits on $500 million in revenue.

The Dolans will now have two cash cows, even if one of them is relatively sickly from eating too much newsprint.

The question is: What changed aging Chuck Dolan's mind? As Newsday's own Thomas Maier wrote Saturday:

Son Jim apparently isn't smart enough. But that's no surprise.

One good thing about Rupert Murdoch's looking-good bid for the Wall Street Journal: He won't do much damage to the paper's editorial page.

The news pages, however, are a different matter. Looks as if the Dow Jones board didn't pay much attention to Slate's Jack Shafer, whose one-man campaign to stop this Caesar's seizure has made for entertaining/depressing reading. Last night, the board recommended to the Bancroft family that it accept the press barren's $5 billion offer. Those of us who admire, and depend upon, the Journal's dynamic news pages are left feeling a little barren ourselves.

Not all the Bancrofts are on board, but if the sale goes through, we'll be inundated pretty soon by the Fox Business Channel, which would be propped up by all that snazzy Dow Jones bidness info.

Don't expect this new cable business network to do any groundbreaking exposés of mighty China. Murdoch does more than just pour money into political campaigns of U.S. pols (most of it to Republicans). Shafer has pinned the tail on donkey Murdoch, who has repeatedly caved to Chinese authorities to protect his bidness interests.

The real concern, of course, is the Journal, which is the best daily paper in America. (Editorial pages don't count.) Some people at the Times (U.K.) say Murdoch's purchase didn't hurt their paper. And after all, it was that paper that broke the story of what became known as the Downing Street Memo. Others may point to the fact that, as many people say, Murdoch didn't directly interfere much with the Village Voice when he owned us. That may be true, but he was too savvy to destroy the Voice's lefty-rag rep, and thus its value, and we were small potatoes anyway.

The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, is a business-news behemoth, and business is Murdoch's main business.

Owners and publishers not only gripe at their editors about stories done or not done. They also set budgets. And they have other ways of getting over on their staffs. Citing a 1984 Journal story by Jane Mayer about Murdoch, Shafer makes a good point about the impact of publishers:

It's bad enough that Murdoch has changed the New York Post into a rabid right-wing rag that marched blindly into Cheney's War of Terror. Those things happen — you can't blame Murdoch, after all, for Judy Miller's war propaganda in the New York Times. WSJ reporters are less likely than most to practice the kind of self-censorship that Newfield alluded to, but the WSJ is all about business journalism, and that has a direct impact on Murdoch's global dealings. The Journal's daily revelations of foul bidness practices won't sit well with Murdoch, and the editors under him will feel his heat one way or another.

Shafer (full disclosure: I know him and like him.) dreams of a Wall Street Journal that is as independent of Murdoch as another Murdoch property: The Simpsons.

That won't happen. Murdoch's more of a homer than Homer.

Grabbing onto the coattails of the Washington Post's brilliant series, "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," Democratic party activists and consultants are wailing that "Dick Cheney is a war criminal."

I guess that makes the whole host of Democrats who went along with the regime's march to war during the crucial Congressional votes of October 2002 "war schlemiels."

The Post series is indeed explosive. As this morning's dispatch, "Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power," by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, shows, Cheney and other top officials personally brainstormed how to violate the Constitution and perfect the torture of Arabs captured during the War of Terror.

Basically, Cheney acts as if he were a sheikh, kind of a Dick of Arabia. No wonder Halliburton, which continues to take cues from ex-CEO Cheney and kept paying a salary to the vice president through at least the first six years of his reign at the White House, has fled to Dubai. The United Arab Emirates is one of the most repressive regimes on Earth. Our own State Department says:

Otherwise, Dubai, where the world's tallest building is being erected, is a great place. It's the dream of people like Cheney. Business and government are one and the same. Most of the workers are foreigners — only 5 percent of Emirati citizens work. Development has run amuck. An oligarchy controls everything.

Burdened by an intolerable climate (as hot as Phoenix and as humid as Houston), Dubai is bursting with outrageous resorts. It's a playpen for the rich — more like a sandbox.

D.C. isn't the greatest place, either, and it's also a playpen, as the Post series points out. From this morning's piece:

Hope there's a special section in the George W. Bush Presidential Libary on Cheney. Actually, that library should be only a wing to Dick Cheney's tome tomb.

Where were the Post and other U.S. media back in the spring of 2005 when the Times of London — one of Rupert Murdoch's papers — revealed what became known as the Downing Street Memo and other documents laying out the furtive plotting in 2002 behind the unjustified invasion of Iraq?