Friday, September 12, 2008

MSNBC FAIL

David Gregory is a fucking moronic tool. His analysis of the forum on
service with Obama and McCain was at once vapid and completely off
point. Stating that he saw no discernable difference between the
positions of both candidates on the issue of service, I can only guess
that he must not have watched the same forum I watched.

If he had, Gregory would have observed McCain blathering incoherently,
spewing empty platitudes, and even dropping a few lies.

By contrast, Obama clearly enunciated actual policy plans and
discussed how these plans would be funded. Instead of espousing
bullshit like "I am confident Americans will come together to get
things done," Obama articulated how he would bring people together to
get specific things done.

No discernable difference? David Gregory is an idiot.

Stupid Distractions

This Modern World By Tom Tomorrow

Thank you, Tom Tomorrow - and Salon!

Animal Farm Friday - Wolves Rule

I'm way past being sick of Sarah Palin being in the news, and even writing about her makes me gnash my teeth, but this is important. I've been an advocate quietly - sometimes not so quietly - fighting for the wolves, in the lower 48, and especially arctic wolves up near the Huntress's current stomping grounds. With regards to her stance on wolves - and animals in general - she is my nemesis like no other. Where George W. Bush was indifferent, this savage beast of a woman is proactively evil. As the type of Christianist that she is, she embodies the belief that humans have dominion over animals, a belief that I strongly oppose from the depths of my being. Say what you want about her carrying her afflicted child to term, she has little to no regard for non-human life, and that is why she is evil incarnate.

I am even more sickened at how the McPalin campaign, and the gleefully compliant Corporate-Run Media, is playing off weaker people's archetypal - and unwarranted - fear of wolves, much the same way that W/Dick did with those disgusting ads back in 2004 (I won't link to it here. If you want to subject yourself to that kind of shit, do it by your own choice, and Google it). That was pure Rove, and here he is following up with Sarah the Wolf Slayer campaign.

I say with aplomb that if given the opportunity, Sarah Pain should be considered fair game, and so too, Karl "Dog Food" Rove. At this point, I'm not sure which animal would benefit the most in that pursuit; the American people, polar bears, or wolves. But I dedicated last Friday to polar bears, so this one goes out to the wolves. (People can fend for themselves.)

I chose this particular video because it shows the animals in a respectable light which they so deserve. Watch it in deference.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Unusually stupid, even for McCain

It looks like some in the Corporate-Run Media are waking up:


I'm afraid this is just embarrassingly incoherent. First, the notion that Palin's proximity to Russia counts as national security experience continues to be unusually stupid, even for McCain.

We need a tax on Stupid

If you are an American who supports McCain, you should have to pay a Stupid Tax of 75% of your income, which would go directly into a public education fund. Then we should pass a law making it legal to slap McCain supporters for being so stupid.

Some truth from the right

An op-ed in the WSJ particularly kind to big business. Equally surprising that it's coming from Thomas Frank.

He opens with this nugget:

It tells us something about Sarah Palin's homage to small-town America, delivered to an enthusiastic GOP convention last week, that she chose to fire it up with an unsourced quotation from the all-time champion of fake populism, the belligerent right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity,"


He continues:

Leave the fantasy land of convention rhetoric, and you will find that small-town America, this legendary place of honesty and sincerity and dignity, is not doing very well. If you drive west from Kansas City, Mo., you will find towns where Main Street is largely boarded up. You will see closed schools and hospitals. You will hear about depleted groundwater and massive depopulation.

And eventually you will ask yourself, how did this happen? Did Hollywood do this? Was it those "reporters and commentators" with their fancy college degrees who wrecked Main Street, U.S.A.?

No. For decades now we have been electing people like Sarah Palin who claimed to love and respect the folksy conservatism of small towns, and yet who have unfailingly enacted laws to aid the small town's mortal enemies.


Read the whole thing when you get a chance.

What we give up for Security

Cocky Pathological Liar and Neophyte

Honest, non-sexist words to describe Sarah Palin.

If Democrats were Republicans

Mitch and the Heckler

My favorite comedian in great form!

"We can't kill our way to victory..."

In what has to be one of the greatest quotes ever, and one which is an incredible smackdown to war mongers like George W. Bush and his evil twin John McCain, JCOS Chairman Mike Mullen had this to say about Afghanistan:

"We can't kill our way to victory, and no armed force anywhere -- no
matter how good -- can deliver these keys alone. It requires teamwork
and cooperation." Mullen said.

That's a line Obama should adopt immediately, and drive it down McPalin's throat.


Wednesday, September 10, 2008

get yours

Phil Donahue PWNS! Bill O'Reilly

"Lipstick" was deliberate and successful?

There is NO horse race

Check this blog and you will see this is something I've been saying all along - that there is NO horse race between Obama and McCain. Now this post at Daily Kos based on a ground-breaking article by Seth Colter Walls at HuffPo lends credence to my claim.

These fudged poll numbers are still no reason for Obama not gut-punching McCain for his disgusting and perverted ads. It's time someone teaches that old man a valuable lesson.

A bad Disney movie

indeed.

!!!ENOUGH!!!

Has the LHC destroyed the Earth?

So much for all that

I gleefully retract my earlier remarks about Andrew Sullivan and his "thing" for McCain. I'm glad to see Andrew come to his senses. Too bad it took so much to make it happen.

Whore!

http://mightywombat.com/toons/plugwhores.gif

This probably would have worked better if some of the sockets were actually being "used"...

Sarah Palin IS a pig with lipstick

There, I've said it. I'm proud of it too. I'll even go so far as to say that John McCain is a pig in makeup also (what's he using to hide his cancer sores?). But the only story here is how shamelessly complicit the Corporate-Run Media is in all this. Do you think this video footage will make it on CNN, ABC, NBC, or Fox? No way.


I.O.U.S.A. redux

A 75 trillion dollar fright fest.

So-called journalists

I have to weigh in on Glenn Greenwald's post today in reaction to the latest drivel to spewed forth from the bloviators at The Atlantic. Despite my reference to a recent post by Marc Ambinder (the only one that I have ever made), I canceled my subscription to that publication over a year ago because of their self-gratifying, borderline-Republican propaganda editorials, all so cleverly masked by peculiarly long-winded, drawn out articles that - as suggested by the title of their flagship publication, The Atlantic Monthly - has taken them a month to write, but actually come off as little more than late night blog posts. There may have been a time when The Atlantic was worth reading, but that time has long passed.

Per my perception of Glenn's post, Ambinder, and cohort Yglesias, split hairs over whether or not they should take their jobs seriously, or if they should enjoy all the benefits and rewards of tabloid journalists, which is to sit around glad-handing each other and congratulating themselves for being so much more pious and clever than everyone else, while convincing themselves that they are not in fact swimming in the same feces-filled puddles as the rest of the so-called journalists working for the Corporate-Run Media.

Them boys at The Atlantic pretend to give a shit about the American polity while espousing how great and noble their profession is and, at the same time, harbor the notion that they are in their profession purely out of self-interest.

Just like tabloid journalists.

See? The truth is out there, hitting you in the face every fucking day, waiting to be acknowledged.

Glenn's observation is far more astute than mine could be, and that is why he is a journalist, and I am just an angry American who is sick of assholes who pretend to be journalists, like those shitheads at The Atlantic. I'll give a slight pass to Andrew Sullivan, whose views I don't entirely share, but he at least has a modicum of self-respect and dignity, and a willingness to expose the truth, at least when those truths aren't clouded by strongly hidden desires (I have a non-professional observation about Sullivan and his "Daddy figure" obsession with McCain, but that is for another time).

As Glenn points out:
...journalists have the duty and obligation to serve the public interest, not merely their self-interest. If self-interest is their only concern, then what possible rationale exists for granting them any of those privileges [legal protection]? If they have no duties and obligations other than to themselves, then they should be questioned, subpoenaed, arrested, and forced to wait in line in exactly the same way everyone else is.

This perspective is more sound, and is a more reasonable argument than what I would have proffered. The point I want to make from the perspective of a ranting blogger is that for journalists who do not think they have a duty and obligation to serve the public, those journalists deserve no respect beyond that which bloggers get. In fact, they probably deserve less respect, since they are getting paid to say things that could be considered the same level of trash as this:

Marc Ambinder is a fat, corpulent, pus-filled gas-bag separated physically and genetically from Mark Penn by nothing more than a goatee, with the exception that he has less to say that is worth listening to.

I'm not a journalist, so I can say that about someone else who doesn't deserve to call himself a journalist.

I'll close by throwing out mad props to a real journalist, Glenn Greenwald, someone who actually has unimpeachable character and dignity, and is worth a million Ambinders/Sullivans/Fallows/Reihans/and insert-paid-so-called-journalist-name-here.

One last thought, this to the editor-in-chief at The Atlantic. How much more irrelevant and partisan can you get before the distinction between your publication and The National Review or The Washington Times or The New York Post becomes indistinguishable? Do you have plans to hire Bill Kristol any time soon?





Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Poll Madness: McCain Takes Lead Even As Democrats Out-Register Republicans?

I've been saying all along that the only reason this looks like a close race in the polls is because the polls need to make it look close, otherwise who cares about Gallup, or Zogby, or what have you? As for polls like RCP or Nate Silver (who actually does a better job than most), they are just aggregating poll data and averaging them. WSJ and other media channels have their own agendas.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Economics are different in Alaska, apparently.

Finally, a Corporate-Run Media story actually not afraid to use the word "LIE" when speaking about the crap that passes through Palin's lips.

Good stuff in there about how drilling in Alaska won't help any American who doesn't live in Alaska.

"These people."

I.O.U.S.A.

I've been writing about this for years now. It is hard to believe - and quite sickening - that it has taken so long for this issue to come to the forefront. But that is not nearly as sickening as the continued belief in the myth that Republicans are fiscally conservative. They are the ones who got us into this mess in the 80s with Reagan and Bush, and now even more so with that sorry excuse for a human being, George W. Bush.



Hey, remember way back when people joked about W's horrible business instincts, like how he wrecked his oil company, and made the dumbass decision to trade Sosa when he owned The Rangers? Remember how everyone thought that joke was funny, but didn't have anything to do with the presidency? Yeah, not so funny now is it?

Stealing America: Vote by Vote

It's going to happen again, unless we do something about it.

Actually, there's nothing logical about religion

logica

I want to see more of this!

When Obama gave his acceptance speech, he was being the man he needs to be for the rest of this campaign. Joe is being that man here.



We need more of this!!! (From Fallows)

More defense from Obama. Where's the offense?

Obama's new ad "No Mavericks" is pretty good, but it's a shame that it's launched from a defensive crouch. I would much rather have seen this come out before the McCain ad, and they definitely need to come out with ads that put McCain on the side of having to put out his defensive ads. McCain is still controlling the narrative of this campaign. Before anyone gets excited and wants to say that Obama is the one being cool-headed and level, and has control of the campaign narrative - that being "change" - just stop and think for a moment. It may seem like McCain abandoned his experience message in favor of the change message, but that's not the narrative. The narrative is that Obama is weak. It's that simple. McCain is showing everyone just how weak Obama is by punching him over and over, keeping him in the corner, or always on his back foot. He's doing it and Sarah Palin is doing it too. The McCain campaign is showing the country that Obama is getting beat up by an old man and a girl. If you don't think that's the message that is starting to sink into the minds of voters in the heartland, think again.

Monday, September 8, 2008

No free press

Adam McKay is right that we don't have a free press anymore - free in every meaning of the word. It is indeed bought and paid for. But he's not quite right about the ratings being the primary driver. If ratings had anything to do with it, MSNBC wouldn't be crapping on Olbermann, who is NBC's ratings cow right now. But he is absolutely right about it being because the major outlets are owned by massive corporations, and it is the shareholders and the executives - all mostly business-oriented Republicans - who hold the real power over who gets elected in this country, at least at the national level.

Adam is also right about the voter suppression tactics the Republiscums are rolling out. After that failed to get Von Spakovsky at the head of the FEC, they found another way to use his evil voter suppression powers. Right now he's working on ways to disenfranchise voters who vote by absentee ballot, and he was successful in helping Indiana get their voter identification law passed, which will disenfranchise thousands of voters, most of all who would be most likely to vote against the Republiscums.

Adam is right about another thing:

"...unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing."


It may seem to many that those of us on the "angry left" are just using the media as a whipping boy, even though not enough people where whipping it enough, but it is starting to seem as though many are waking up to just how dangerous - and useless - the press in our society is. Maybe it is because the Corporate-Run Media has shown its hand and the stacked deck with all things Palin.

Investigate Leaks on Palin

Things have reached the bottom when a political campaign violates OPSEC and endangers the lives of soldiers by politicizing deployments of troops. In this case, it involves leaked details about Track Palin's deployment.

Sign the Vote Vets petition to have the leaks investigated!

Not political Jiu Jitsu

I made a point recently (and a while back) about Obama practicing political jiu jitsu against McSame's clumsy boxing, but I am starting to think i was wrong about that metaphor. It now seems more like Obama is practicing aikido, which is more self-defense than anything, and I would argue strongly that it's a type of self defense that only works against people who don't know how to fight. Obama is looking more and more lately like he is the one who doesn't know how to fight.

Since the pugilist Republiscum advisor Steve Schmidt took over day to day communications for McSame, their campaign has been attacking Obama almost daily, and Obama's responses have been purely defensive, and not entirely effective. Obama has let McSame dictate the narrative every step of the way, and it does not appear that things will change anytime soon. Maybe Obama is worried about his brand, or is being too high-minded and determined to keep his word not to practice the same old politics. That's fine, and I'd agree with that. But as Josh Marshal aptly put it (many times), you don't have to be negative to make an attack successful. The problem is that Obama's famously creative campaign is showing a stunning lack of creativity in their recent marketing and advertising. They may be great on visuals, but they SUCK when it comes to message. Thankfully, the inimitable Nate Silver has some great ideas Obama can be inspired by.

Whatever Obama does next, he needs to do it in a way that shows he has a spine. Hell, Sarah Palin looks and sounds tougher than Obama right now, and that should scare the hell out of the Obama campaign. Because in the end, policy really doesn't matter all that much if the candidate looks weak. Even if the candidate might actually be tough in all the ways that matter in practice, looking and sounding tough is ultimately what matters to the voters.

Simply put, Americans don't vote for sissies. Period.

Main $tream Media

I was all set to start a thoroughly detailed rant about MSNBC's decision to [take a] dump on their biggest ratings assets, Keith Olbermann, and that ignorant blowhard, Tweety. (For personal reasons, I'd be happy to see Tweety go, but that is irrelevant to my rant.) Sadly, time does not permit me to go into the detail I want at this moment. However, you can read Glenn Greenwald's post on this very topic, and I highly recommend it. Glenn says a lot of what I wanted to say, and even more.

A key point I was going to make, which dovetails with Glenn's post, is that the reason the Main $tream Media panics whenever they are being called "liberal" is because they are dominated by a bunch of right-wingnuts who are terrified of appearing like anything but. It hasn't helped anyone by calling them the Mainstream Media, because doing to implies that their right-wingnut perspective is actually mainstream. I think it is more appropriate to refer to the dominant media outlets as Corporate-Run Media. That would pretty much sum it all up nicely, as most people rightly understand that corporations are inherently evil, and focused entirely on profit and shareholder interest.

That is what's truly behind MSNBC suckerpunching Olbermann. It should be painfully clear to anyone with common sense that a bunch of the GE shareholders - who are no doubt predominantly Republican - have taken their complaints to the top and demanded action against Olbermann. They added Tweety to the chopping block just to make it appear balanced (at least MSNBC recognizes that he's borderline expendable).

As for their decision to boost up David Gregory, that makes it even more clear that the puppetmasters are Republicans. This is the same David Gregory who sat in on countless White House press briefings asking pointless and useless questions, and was almost completely deferrential to the White House. The same David Gregory who was awarded Best White House Correspondent by the conservative Media Research Center. This is the same David Gregory who helped to make the Iraq invasion possible because of his deferrence to the Bush administration. He is the same David Gregory who is being considered to take over Meet the Press for the late Tim Russert, the same Tim Russert whose sole contribution to political discourse was coming up with "gotcha" questions, except when they would really have mattered (like all questions to any Bush loaylist).

It might have been helpful if Glenn - and others, including myself - work to make it clear by what it means when we say that the "Right controls the media". It is not that the right-wingnuts whine and complain and then the media caves. It is more accurate to point out that these complaints are coming from the shareholders of the parent corporation, and also likely from subsidiaries. This is where the power and influence truly lies.

It occurs to me that if there is going to be any hope of reclaiming this country from the right-wingnuts, it is not going to happen politically until it happens with the Corporate-Run Media. The revolution must begin by attacking the heads of the Corporate-Run Media first.


UPDATE:

When talking about the Corporate-Run Media being in the tank for the Right, one would be remiss to leave out discussion of Ron Fournier from the Associate Press. This is the guy who turned down a paid staff position as a senior advisory consultant for communications for the McCain campaign because he thought he would be a more effective foot soldier operating incognito as a so-called Impartial Journalist.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Sunday Not-So-Funny - McCain's real bio

I'm only posting this because finally someone else had the courage to talk about McCain's ineptitude, and penchant for crashing airplanes, and how his privileged circumstances have everything to do with how he got to where he is. Again, it takes a comedy show to do it.

Sunday Funny Too - McSame. Almost verbatim!

McSame/McBush/McFake/McCant, whatever you want to call him, was never original with anything, certainly not his acceptance speech. It's pretty pathetic that it takes a comedy show to point this out, but that's why Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are so frackin' awesome!

Sunday Funny - McCain gets Barack-roll'd

(Thanks to Shan for sharing this one!)