Today's Cheap Shots

I check in with Bill Maher every once in a while - and pretty much every time, I'm reminded why it was a good decision to drop cable.

• This was the first time a Dem got re-elected NJ Gov in 45 years
• This was the first time since Reagan that the party in the White House didn't lose both VA & NJ in their 1st term
• Democrats picked up a seat in Ohio
• Democrats won pretty big in Georgia - again
• Democrats won at the county level in a lot of places, including Virginia
• A Democrat won NYC Mayor
• and and and

Politics is a brick fight, dressed up and pretending to be a covered dish supper at church.

And there's no doubt the Dems got their nose bloodied, but this knee-jerk doom-n-gloom is the standard formulaic junk that the Press Poodles barf up on a regular basis. It's disingenuous and intellectually lazy. But it sells lotsa dick pills and tactical flashlights, so hey - it's all about the eyeballs, right?

The bean-counters are driving this bus, and they don't care if it's true or not - they're busy worrying about the analytics.

Twitter Thread

Kurt Eichwald, WaPo:

Thread by @kurteichenwald: "1. Goddamn. Given how rapidly much of the press have allowed the Ukraine scandal to be "well, what about Biden," here is a quick and dirty p […]"

A Chart

It happens almost every time.  "Conventional wisdom" has it that the "liberal bias" is working against the noble "conservatives" and they never get a break because of course - Hillary's buddies own all the media and they'd never say anything bad about her.

But they talk shit about her all the time because fuck if I know.  False flag?

NYT

Please allow me to be the first to pat myself on the back. Obviously, my relentless criticism of (and the level of my contempt for) The Press Poodles in USAmerica Inc's media biz is paying dividends. 

Here's the letter NYT published in response to Trump's threat to sue them for libel:

At great personal expense, I've enlisted the smart and capable Kristen Bell to translate in a way even Trump (and a few of his devoted rubes) can understand. Take it away, Ms Bell:

Way to go, guys - build on that, OK?

Today's Poodling

Jason Chaffetz (R-is-for-rocks-in-head):

"Why not have the surgeon general head this up?" Chaffetz asked in a Wednesday appearance on Fox News. "I think that's a very legitimate question. At least you have somebody who has a medical background whose been confirmed by the United States Senate...It begs the question, what does the surgeon general do? Why aren't we empowering that person?"

The basic dig against Chaffetz of course is that his guys have blocked Obama's nominee for SG, so he sounds pretty stoopid - not that that's gonna matter to the rubes.  OK, maybe he was referring to the "Acting SG"?  No way of knowing because of course the DumFux News Poodle managed not to mention any of that.  Which kinda reinforces the basic point that DumFux News is not a news thing.  It's a GOP thing.

Today's Self-Parody

Not that long ago, DumFux News was busy slagging Obama for his propensity for the PhotoOp - I seem to recall somebody using language along the lines of "Obama's addiction to the PhotoOp".  Here, of course, the Fluxxy Friends need to run in the opposite direction to slag the Prez for his dislike of the PhotoOp.

2nd - as everybody's been pointing out - these guys give us a good look at another example of just saying whatever the fuck they need to say to get the rubes to start flingin' shit - the fact that we don't have an Ebola Czar, even tho' their guys have blocked Obama's choice for Surgeon General; and if we wanna go back just a bit further - these are the guys who were voicing great disgruntlement over Obama's "appointment of all those darned czars"; plus something else that everybody's pointing out - the simple fact that their guys have done nothing but cut the funding to the bureaus and agencies that they now say are letting us down.

Wanna see how Gubmint works when it's run like a bidness?  Your wait is over.

Listen To Charlie

Logical fallacy is the bread-n-butter of American Media.  Almost everything that goes out on TV & Radio, or into what's left of the Dead Tree Publications business is going to include some level of "Yeah but the Democrats" and "Both sides do it" and "It has to be all and only this way or all and only that other way".  

Wanna know where all that False Equivalence and False Dichotomy shit gets us?

Here's Charlie Pierce to 'splain some of it to us:

What we had in the AIDS epidemic was political opportunism married to what became obvious ignorance. What we are seeing now, promulgated by a conservative bubble machine that has built a self-sustaining universe around itself, is political opportunism married to an active campaign of disinformation. This is a terrible thing. The people making a profit out of it are people who are too lazy to mug old ladies or swindle the blind. The people making a profit out of it are people without consciences, people who are as free of patriotism as they are free of the inconveniences of having a soul. These are dangerous people, and it's far past time for the honorable people in my profession to stop treating them like the worthless hacks they are. They are no longer cute. They are no longer funny. They are no longer the respectable "other side" of some fanciful imaginary political debate. They are dangerous propagandists. They are peddling poisonous lies and putting people's lives at risk. Every journalist who treats them as anything else, and every politician who treats them as anything else, are actively abetting evil.

Take, for example, Laura Ingraham, who cashes a very nice check from ABC News in addition to her day job as a radio flamethrower. Ingraham has begun to traffic in "alternative" theories about Ebola, treating a virus as though it were another vote to suppress or immigrant to bash, and lending her microphone to fringe nitwits because panic is profitable, and because almost everything, even a rare disease, is worth throwing at a president you don't like.

Like the man said - the earth is a roughly spherical body that turns on its axis about once per day and orbits the local mid-sized star about once every 365 days, and while you're entitled to believe otherwise, your opinions to the contrary don't mean diddly-shit.

--and--

The country simply cannot go on this way, with one of our two political parties completely insane, and with a counter-cultural universe that claims the right to promulgate its own science as equal to the science produced by actual scientists, and with this dangerous lunacy treated as legitimate by powerful people who ought to know better. As I once wrote, it doesn't matter how many people vote for the anti-gravity party, you still can't flap your arms and fly to the moon. A dangerous disease is not a matter of debate. Your profitable fantasy and the reality of the disease do not deserve an equal place in the discussion of what we as a society will do about the disease. The response is going to have to be precise and empirical. It is going to have to be impatient with cant, and immune to the delusions on which demented ideology feeds.

It's kinda important to believe as many true things as possible, and to not believe as many false things as possible; and so it's really really really important to be able to tell the difference.

Listen to driftglass and BlueGal every Friday, and almost every time, you'll get a decent reminder on how to spot the "both sides" crap.

The Mustache Of Understanding

Tom Friedman used to be a pretty decent writer who had decent ideas and a decent regard for what goes in the world.  The only decent thing about him these days is that he's still a decent writer - or more accurately: he can put words together in a way that makes a point and makes it fairly easy to understand the point.

Here he is trying desperately to keep us from realizing how culpable he is for having contributed mightily to the steaming pile of crap that is Centrism, while not working nearly hard enough to keep the Repubs from losing their minds completely.

HARD-LINE conservatives have gone to new extremes lately in opposing abortion. Last week, Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, declared during a debate that he was against abortion even in the event of rape because after much thought he “came to realize that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” That came on the heels of the Tea Party-backed Republican Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois saying after a recent debate that he opposed abortion even in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which a woman would not survive without an abortion. “Health of the mother has become a tool for abortions anytime, for any reason,” Walsh said.

He goes on with some pretty cookie-cutter verbiage (that most middle schoolers could come up with), pointing out that wearing the "pro-life" badge is inconsistent with a position that isn't also in favor of gun control (eg), etc.

So it's nice to see Friedman with his head somewhere other than up his own ass for a change, but I have to wonder why he waited until now to start writing about the extreme positions being staked out by an increasing number of Repubs.

Maybe he finally senses a certain change in how most Americans think about such things. Or maybe he senses a certain change in how more and more of his readers are getting hip to the fact that he's a billionaire know-nothing who tripped and fell into a river of cash, and who now needs us to forget he's actually a douche bag shill for Corporate Media.

I dunno - but he's doing nothing so much as he's playing the very old game of "discovering" an issue and standing in front of it, hoping we'll be fooled into thinking he's leading us in some way.

Fuck him - don't get stupid and hit him; and don't throw shit at his head, but if you see this dick in a bar somewhere, do us all a solid and spit in his drink.

A Day Late

I wanted to post something that connected the recent murder sprees with the quasi-investigation of Right Wing Extremism from a few years ago, but of course, better bloggers beat me to it.

The Agonist

Crooks and Liars

You probably remember the earsplitting wingnut screeching that greeted this man's analysis of the threat posed to the country by right-wing extremism - a report, incidentally, commissioned by the Bush administration. (Dave Neiwert was, of course, on the case.) If only our politicians had enough spine to stand up to the predictable rantings of the armchair experts, Daryl Johnson's important work would have continued and maybe even expanded to the point where the Wisconsin shooting could have been prevented.

Even The Daily Beast is on it.

The report triggered a political firestorm. “The piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives,” thundered right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin. Rep. Peter King, a past and current chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in Congress, demanded an investigation. Another congressman, Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida, pronounced himself “very offended and really disturbed that they would even say our military veterans, our returning war heroes would be capable of committing any terrorist acts.”

--and--

“Since Obama took office, there have been nearly 20 extremist right-wing attacks and plots, including the killing of almost a dozen police officers in six separate attacks,” Johnson said in an interview last year. Among them was an attempt in 2011—foiled at the last minute—to plant a homemade backpack bomb at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day march in Spokane, Wash. The suspect in that case, Kevin Harpham, is an Army veteran trained in artillery.

I don't like the idea that DHS would get beefed up and start looking like a National Police Force, because eventually they'll get used as just another internal political weapon - and start acting like The Stasi or some damned thing.  And it REALLY gripes my ass when it seems like I'm lining up with the GOP on anything.  So I'm not really - I just want an honest assessment of real and potential threats.

Unfortunately, until we figure out how to free our dysfunctional Press Poodles from their choke chains so they can keep an eye out for the shit politicians love to shovel over us, we're not gonna get anything but more of the same and/or worse.

And BTW (at the risk of perpetuating the evil of centrism and false equivalence): Politicians only bitch about "the power" when they're not the ones who own the power.

Makes Me Wonder

The main question is exactly what Olbermann asks: In a media environment that desperately needs content to fill a 24/7 airspace, where's the coverage for this? I can see how CurrentTV would use the lack of coverage by others to pump up their own cred, but that doesn't explain how practically every other outlet is avoiding the story of a days-long protest aimed at the heart of American economic power.

Tabloid Politics

Or maybe we could call it Pin-up Politicians; or Political Porn.  Whatever it is, it is not a development that I can call serious.

Here's a look at what Newsweek thinks is journalism.

 

Duly Noted

It's completely slipped by the attention of the Press Poodles, but at least WisconsinWatch and Crooks & Liars are alert enough to catch it for us.

“Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”

Obviously, it's good that a putz like Carlos Lam is pushed out.  But his 'resignation' was a quiet thing, so I have to suspect his ouster was more a result of his being so open about his suggestion than it was about the dirty trick itself.

When assholes like Mr Lam are brought down loudly and publicly, then maybe we'll start to see a change in the way we do things.  Until then, we can probably expect more of the same.

Hmmm

Click on the image to see larger

Healthcare Reform Summit

I didn't watch it on C-SPAN because I'm trying to be a little less obsessed with this shit, but of course, I caught a couple of reports on NPR and MSNBC in which (again, of course) the reporters drew false equivalencies, saying both Obama and Alexander "essentially had their facts right" when they made claims about what the CBO predicts concerning insurance premiums.  Claims that can't be more opposite from one another.

What the fuck?  Oh yeah - it's in the best interests of our Media Poodles to keep the fires stoked.  Controversy is important when the real point of the exercise is to sell ad time.

Bring The Stupid

Politicians say and do some pretty dumb things.  I think it's usually just a function of having to walk a really thin line in an attempt to keep some voting faction or another happy while at the same time trying not to cause some other faction to back away.  Maybe it's always been that way, and maybe we're just becoming more aware of it.  Anyway, Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Dumbass) is in a lot of trouble (petition demanding his resignation) for saying what was on his mind - (see story in Gainseville Times). He claims his comments were  "misconstrued", but reading the direct quotes, I'm thinkin' he really just let the truth about what he believes slip out.

And the truly unfortunate aspect is that the study he was citing may have had new info we should know about - but now it's all lost in the firestorm of protest.*  Don't get me wrong; I think the guy is at best borderline Taliban, and he oughta be thrown out on his ass.

I left a meesage for my delegate (Rob Bell) asking for comment - no reply as yet.
I tried to get somebody at VCU to comment and couldn't find anybody who's even heard about it.

*It doesn't appear to my highly untrained eye to make any real link to the kind of "Elective Abortion" the wingnuts love to rage about.  Here's the abstract for the VCU study.