Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label political media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political media. Show all posts

Saturday, August 20, 2022

WaPo's Rankings

It still seems like it oughta be a bit of a stretch to try handicapping a political race almost 2 years down the road.

But then again, since Campaigning is big business, there's a boatload of slickers and drummers and pimps who need the work, so they'll always be pushing for some action.

And since Campaigning is big business, so is Campaign Media. Political Drama sells dick pills and panty liners by the metric fuck ton.


WaPo: (pay wall)

The front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination is Donald Trump. But he may no longer be the most likely nominee.

For as long as we’ve been doing our quarterly rankings of the Republicans most likely to be the party’s nominee in 2024, No. 1 has been an easy pick. Trump still commands extensive loyalty in the GOP, as evidenced by Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyo.) historically large primary defeat.

But commanding that loyalty and being the guy at the top of Republicans’ ballots for the third straight election aren’t quite the same thing. And for the first time, we’re giving the slight edge — and the top of our list — to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The reasons for this might not be what you think.

The search of Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago last week was momentous. Exactly how it breaks politically, though, we don’t yet know.

There is some indication this development might actually have rallied the GOP to Trump, at least temporarily. The sense of persecution, long fed by Trump, has proved an invaluable political commodity, and he’s got plenty of grist for that mill — whatever the actual legitimacy of his highly speculative claims of political targeting.

But the political impact of the Mar-a-Lago search won’t be measured in the polls conducted in the past couple of weeks. This is a long game. And the legal jeopardy Trump faces could well reinforce some of the reasons DeSantis appears to have gained on him in earlier surveys. Namely: Trump’s uncertain electability and the political baggage he totes along with him.

Those factors endangered Trump’s stranglehold on the party well before the Mar-a-Lago search. Two states likely to hold important early primaries — Michigan and New Hampshire — featured polls showing Trump and DeSantis running neck and neck. In this year’s primaries, Trump-aligned candidates almost always win, but that’s in large part because the party has overwhelmingly aligned with Trump’s values. In contested primaries, the candidates Trump himself actually endorsed have often been stuck around 30 percent of the vote.

Indeed, those primaries suggest people might be willing to go with Trumpism, and to go without Trump. And DeSantis provides that in spades. He’s constantly pushing the envelope by opening new fronts in the culture wars and pushing actual legislation or executive actions to back that up. But more than that, he does so with the kind of actual attention to detail and policy that Trump has long eschewed.

Fox News’s Laura Ingraham recently wagered that Republicans might become so “exhausted by the battle — the constant battle — that they may believe that, well, maybe it’s time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all Trump’s policies, who’s not Trump.”

Crucially, we have yet to see Trump face a truly Trumpian opponent. In 2016, pretty much everyone was going after Trump on the assumption that they had to offer an alternative to his brand of politics — or because they were losing and needed to do something. Today, lots of Republicans are emulating Trump’s in-your-face, own-the-libs style. And nobody has done that more successfully than DeSantis.

It’s not difficult to see Republicans coming to view DeSantis as a more serious version of Trump — and potentially a more electable one.

This isn’t an easy call. But throw in the perhaps-undersold possibility that Trump won’t actually run in 2024, and we put DeSantis at No. 1 by a hair.

Below are our latest rankings, in ascending order of likeliness.

Also mentioned: Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.), Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cheney, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

10. Donald Trump Jr.:
As we’ve said before, this applies only to a scenario in which his father doesn’t run. But that’s a scenario in which some polls show him running as high as second (with the caveat that we don’t have a lot of good polling). He’d clearly have a base to work with, but capitalizing on that is another matter. And it’s not just about lobbing bombs from the sideline, which is his true talent. (Previous ranking: 7)

9. Mike Pompeo:
The former secretary of state returns to this list, showing all the signs of a guy who will run. Those include running digital ads in Iowa and South Carolina. Also worth watching: He recently became one of the highest-profile Trump officials to testify to the Jan. 6 committee. And afterward, he seemed to temper his denial about having discussed removing Trump from office using the 25th Amendment, saying merely that it hadn’t been discussed “seriously.” It’ll sure be interesting to see how Trump backers respond to whatever testimony Pompeo provided. (Previous ranking: N/A)

8. Rick Scott:
The senator from Florida is often dismissed because of his awkward personal style. But he’s been positioning himself for the national stage by launching his own platform (which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has distanced himself from). And if Republicans can win back the Senate, perhaps Scott gets some credit as head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm? That’s a double-edged sword though, given it’s quite possible Republicans blow a good opportunity. (Previous ranking: N/A)

7. Nikki Haley:
The former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor is a real contender on paper. She’s also leaning hard into the idea that she’ll run, having repeatedly cited the idea of electing a woman as president. (You’ll notice she’s the only woman on this list.) But races aren’t won on paper. Haley often disappears from the national discourse, and it’s still not clear what her campaign would be about. (Previous ranking: 4)

6. Ted Cruz:
The senator from Texas has been out front in criticizing the FBI’s search of Trump, including an early push for the search warrant. He has also floated impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI agents had been turned into “stormtroopers.” (Previous ranking: 6)

5. Glenn Youngkin:
It still seems like a bit of a stretch for someone to launch a presidential campaign just a year into his one term as governor. (Virginia doesn’t allow governors to seek reelection). But he’s clearly putting himself in the mix, and 2022 could play into his hands. Imagine a world in which flawed candidates cost the GOP winnable races — and possibly the Senate — in states like Arizona, Georgia, Ohio or Pennsylvania. At that point, the guy whose 2021 win was supposed to be a road map for the party — a road map disregarded in these Senate primaries — might look pretty attractive. (Previous ranking: 8)

4. Tim Scott:
The senator from South Carolina has faced some criticism from the right for his endorsement of moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But if anyone can get past that kind of thing, it might be the broadly liked South Carolina senator. He’s also raising massive sums — $9.6 million last quarter — for what should be an easy reelection bid, and he can use that money to run for president. Scott’s recently published book included a blurb that said he was preparing a presidential run, but the publisher later said it was an error and that Scott hadn’t approved the line. (Previous ranking: 5)

3. Mike Pence:
Pence offered some interesting comments this week, opening the door to testifying to the Jan. 6 committee and saying, “The American people have a right to know what happened.” He has walked a fine line on criticizing Trump for that day, despite the insurrectionists endangering his life. We shouldn’t expect him to thoroughly denounce the man who picked him as vice president, but he’s certainly got a vested interest in the party moving in a different direction. The hard part is facilitating that without completely alienating the Trump backers he’d need in 2024. (Previous ranking: 3)

2. Donald Trump:
See above. (Previous ranking: 1)

1. Ron DeSantis:
See above. (Previous ranking: 2)

Monday, November 25, 2019

The Fog

‘I don’t know what to believe’ is an unpatriotic cop-out. Do better, Americans.


Since I became The Washington Post’s media columnist in 2016, I’ve developed a habit of asking people, wherever I travel, how they get their news.

In keeping with that, I had a brief chat last weekend in Sarasota, Fla., with a middle-aged man (a local used-car salesman, he said).

“Pretty much just from here,” was how he answered my question, indicating his smartphone. When I dug for specifics, he mentioned Fox News.

The impeachment hearings, which that day had offered riveting testimony from diplomat Marie Yovanovitch? He merely shrugged: Didn’t know, didn’t care.

That plenty of Americans share this apathy about what’s happening in their government is appalling, but hardly shocking.

Many clearly do care, as the movement of public opinion favoring impeachment suggests, but there’s a whole category that pollsters and pundits call “low-information voters.”

The New York Times published a story Monday with this headline: “ ‘No one believes anything’: Voters Worn Out by a Fog of Political News.” The reporters quoted a Wisconsin woman who said she didn’t know what to think of the various conflicting claims she’d heard about President Trump’s apparent abuse of power.

“You have to go in and really research it,” she said, and she doubted that many people cared enough to do that.

David Roberts, writing in Vox this week, explored “tribal epistemology” — the idea that “what’s good for our tribe” has become more important than facts, evidence, and documentation. He identifies a crisis that “involves Americans’ growing inability, not just to cooperate, but even to learn and know the same things, to have a shared understanding of reality.”

Roberts, the Times article and Florida Man all point to the same thing: A lot of Americans don’t know much and won’t exert themselves beyond their echo chambers to find out.

This is the way a democracy self-destructs.

And what’s more, it’s not that difficult for American citizens to do much, much better.

Granted, the flow of news is unending — exhausting, even. And granted, there’s a lot of disinformation out there.

But apathy — or giving in to confusion — is dangerous.

“I’m terrified that the idea that it is all too much and it is okay to tune out is getting socialized as an acceptable response,” said Dru Menaker, chief operating officer of PEN America, the free-expression advocacy organization.

“Our country is being challenged to its very core, and we have an obligation to pay attention precisely because things are so overwhelming,” she told me by email.

I couldn’t agree more. And it’s not really all that hard to develop some constructive news habits.

It doesn’t take a research project into every claim and counterclaim.

If every American did any two of the following things, the “who knows?” club could be swiftly disbanded.

Subscribe to a national newspaper and go beyond the headlines into the substance of the main articles; subscribe to your local newspaper and read it thoroughly — in print, if possible; watch the top of “PBS NewsHour” every night; watch the first 15 minutes of the half-hour broadcast nightly news; tune in to a public-radio news broadcast; do a simple fact-check search when you hear conflicting claims.

For those who can’t afford to subscribe to newspapers, almost all public libraries can provide access.

“Whatever the president wants us to believe, there are tested and reliable news sources,” Menaker noted. “There are even more firsthand sources than ever where you can judge yourself — links to documents, video clips, hours of televised testimony.”

I would also offer this small list of things to stop doing: Stop getting your news and opinions from social media. Stop watching Fox News, especially the prime-time shows, which are increasingly untethered to reality.

If every American gave 30 minutes a day to an earnest and open-minded effort to stay on top of the news, we might actually find our way out of this crisis.

As Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, noted Tuesday on Twitter, it was on Nov. 19, 1863, that President Lincoln challenged his fellow citizens to rise to a “great task.”

Americans must dedicate themselves to ensuring, Lincoln urged in the Gettysburg Address, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

So, too, in this historic moment.

After all, authoritarianism loves nothing more than a know-nothing vacuum: people who throw up their hands and say they can’t tell facts from lies.

And democracy needs news consumers — let’s call them patriotic citizens — who stay informed and act accordingly.

Flag-waving is fine. But truth-seeking is what really matters.


Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Carlin Knew It All Along

George Carlin was a prophet.

This is a clip from his gig at the Press Club Luncheon many moons ago. The part that always comes back around, sounding ridiculously prescient, starts at about 5:40.

Friday, March 23, 2018

Reshuffle


Chris Smith, Vanity Fair's Hive:

Representing President Donald Trump is not exactly a lawyer’s dream job. True, there are high stakes and lots of media attention. The downsides, though, include a slippery client who barely listens to your advice and who might not pay your bill. That combination has forced Don McGahn, Ty Cobb, and John Dowd to make some unusual strategic choices in trying to fend off Robert Mueller. The most recent was sending the special counsel a written summary of the White House version of key events in the Russia saga. The gambit is intended to get Mueller to narrow the range of a possible Trump interview. And it’s almost certainly doomed.

“I think it’s the nuttiest thing I’ve ever heard,” says Solomon Wisenberg, the former federal prosecutor who elicited the damning “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” answer from President Bill Clinton during grand-jury testimony for the Monica Lewinsky investigation. “I’ve never heard of defense attorneys doing that. If you’re Mueller, it’s highly unlikely you accept what somebody’s lawyer said, when that somebody is a subject, at the least, of your investigation. It’s just so weird. It’s one thing to limit the amount of time, or the location. But when people are interviewed in a criminal investigation, they don’t get to narrow the topic.”


Enter Joe diGenova.


The assertion is that even though the slam on Andy McCabe has nothing to do with an "anti-Trump bias", diGenova says that's what he should be held responsible for.

So again, "never mind the facts - listen to what I'm telling you"

This isn't even within the parameters of Spin. This is fairly typical of DumFux News Myth-Making which allows them to take whatever license they want to take in order to fit the facts to a favorable narrative.

"McCabe is guilty of this thing here, and even though he's not guilty of the thing I need him to be guilty of, I'm going to say he's guilty of this other thing so I can pin something on him that serves my purpose. After all, what's the difference? Guilty is guilty."

DumFux News Logic String:
If, A = B
and B = Flapjacks
and Flapjacks = Q
and J = Unicorns
Then,  Deep State!

DiGenova's been all over DumFux News, and so when 45* thought he needed another lawyer, of course he picked a TV personality.



Friday, August 18, 2017

He Has No Soul

"He is the malevolent fury..."

Lawrence O'Donnell with Bill Moyers


And here are some of the art pieces Lawrence referred to:
hat tip = Walker Thornton




















Friday, October 14, 2016

From Across The Pond

The world watches us pretty closely most of the time, but it's still a pretty neat trick when you've made the Brits notice just how fucked up our politics really is.


The lead article:
HOW do people learn to accept what they once found unacceptable? In 1927 Frederic Thrasher published a “natural history” of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Each of them lived by a set of unwritten rules that had come to make sense to gang members but were still repellent to everyone else. So it is with Donald Trump and many of his supporters. By normalising attitudes that, before he came along, were publicly taboo, Mr Trump has taken a knuckle-duster to American political culture.
The recording of him boasting about grabbing women “by the pussy”, long before he was a candidate, was unpleasant enough. More worrying still has been the insistence by many Trump supporters that his behaviour was normal. So too his threat, issued in the second presidential debate, to have Hillary Clinton thrown into jail if he wins. In a more fragile democracy that sort of talk would foreshadow post-election violence. Mercifully, America is not about to riot on November 9th. But the reasons have less to do with the state’s power to enforce the letter of the law than with the unwritten rules that American democracy thrives on. It is these that Mr Trump is trampling over—and which Americans need to defend.
And in light of some of our less than sterling political moments - Swift Boat, Iraq's WMD, Whitewater, Willie Horton, Iran-Contra, The Enemies List, Southern Strategy, Joe McCarthy (the list goes on and on) - the fact that this one stands out in bold relief is depressing.

Tuesday, August 09, 2016

More Cracks

First - reports of the demise of DumFux News are greatly exaggerated - or maybe they're just kinda premature.

But second - dang - It's been more than a little obvious for a good long time that Fox and the GOP are so inter-connected as to be divisions of the same Billionaire Hobby Corporation. So much so that if one craters, it pulls the other one in after it. And isn't that a happy prospect?

Friday, December 04, 2015

He Tries So Hard


I'm not wondering where Trump gets his ideas.  It seems obvious these "position statements" are the products of Policy Formulation By Lynch Mob.  You do a quick little poll or (more likely) a focus group of "regular people", and you get ideas that reflect the shallowest thinking, fueled by the darkest fears of the biggest paranoiac in the room at the time.  Whoever imagines the worst of all possible worsts holds sway, and drives the discussion.

I'm only wondering why it seems like Lil Donny of the Mega-Brain just runs with it every time.  In this latest instance, I have great difficulty believing he truly thinks Killing Your Way To Lasting Peace And Security is the way to go.  Maybe, but no - prob'ly not.

So I am not moved off of my position that he's looking for his exit.  If he can find that one thing that's just too fuckin' much - say the thing that makes enough of us turn away - then he can claim we don't deserve him and blah blah blah, and he can go back to being just another leech on the national nutsack.

In light of the San Bernardino Blood Fest, I can't help but wonder if the Trumpkins will hook anything up between that and the crap Trump always throws into the pile about "beautiful Kate - murdered by an immigrant."  It'll be interesting to watch; to see if they fold that into the mix, or if they Etch-A-Sketch it away.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Quiz Time

Take the Science quiz at Pew Research Center
How much Americans appear to know about science depends on the kinds of questions asked, of course. Science encompasses a vast array of fields and information, and the questions in the new Pew Research survey represent a small slice of science knowledge. On Pew Research Center’s set of 12 multiple-choice questions – some of which include images as part of the questions or answer options – Americans gave more correct than incorrect answers; the median was eight correct answers out of 12 (mean 7.9). Some 27% answered eight or nine questions correctly, while another 26% answered 10 or 11 items correctly. Just 6% of respondents got a perfect score.
These findings come from Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. The survey of 3,278 adults (including 2,923 adults online and 355 respondents by mail) was conducted Aug 11 - Sept 3, 2014.
The test is easy - almost ridiculously so - and not because I'm just that fucking awesome.

And I don't think it's important to know these few things just because they're important things to know in and of themselves.  They are, but - I think we have to widen that out and understand that it's important for us to know these (or other) things as a way of keeping ourselves better-informed in a more general sense.

What did Mr Jefferson say about the health of a democracy being dependent on a well-informed electorate?  

And what's become apparent as far as people being well-informed in the age of Alex Jones and Benny Hinn and DumFux News?

Sunday, July 12, 2015

The Professional Left Podcast

There is no GOP.

And there is no actual news content in your newscast.



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You can find Blue Gal mostly at Crooks & Liars

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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

And The Question Remains

Why is it that we're not getting any decent reporting from anywhere but HBO and Comedy Central?



Thursday, June 26, 2014

About That Thing In Mississippi

Teabagger fave Chris McDaniel challenged Thad Cochran in a GOP primary and lost.  The 'Baggers are trying to tell us that Cochran courted "the black vote" to pad his totals blah blah blah.

Look, guys - I'm not gonna try to convince anybody that the 'Murican voter is some kinda genius, but if those Mississippi Democrats wanted to fuck up the GOP's chances to get their guy back in the Senate, they woulda voted for McDaniel.  I can't possibly be the only one here who remembers Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell, can I?

Of course, it seems the Press Poodles are willing to go with the Shenanigans-At-The-Polls narrative - or at least the Tea-Party-Is-So-Over blurb - because if they point out that a lot of people in today's GOP really are stoopid enough to see a duck and call it a frog, then they lose the dramatic tension and it makes it harder for them sell us the Red vs Blue / They're All The Same / It's A Horse Race bullshit.

Just a thought.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

It Won't Stick

Here's Cliven Bundy trying to remind everybody that DumFux News is really in near-perfect agreement with everything he had to say "about the negro":



It's almost impossible for anybody not to know something about what's been happening with ol' Clive by now, and I'm not here to tutor you.  So if you can't keep up, take notes.  And if you're still a little confused, then you're prob'ly gonna be better off in some other class.

Now that I've weeded out the slackers and alienated most everybody else in my vast audience of ones and twos, let's get on with it:  Bundy obviously saw his opportunity to dance in the spotlight and he was determined to do it.  We saw video of him being all folksie and shucks-ma'am.  And we saw him galloping up that little hill with the stars-n-stripes.  And there he was speechifyin' at a podium festooned in red white and blue bunting, flanked by militia members looking all stern and cool and macho as they (almost literally) fondled each others' metal penises etc etc etc.

But then it all went to shit when Bundy took that next fateful step - which everybody "on the left" knew he'd take eventually, btw.  And suddenly, there's Bundy trying hard not to acknowledge that his 15 minutes were up about 20 minutes ago.

So anyway - two things:

1) DumFux News is in full retreat / damage control mode - disavowing him like he was Jim Phelps and the cassette tape's already self-destructing, while Bundy refuses to play along.





2) If history is any guide at all, the gurus at GOP and DumFux News will Etch-A-Sketch the fuck outa this little episode, and in a month or two the bubble-dwellers will be thinking it's all back to "normal" - like none of this ever happened.


The good news may well turn out to be that this has an effect on the big squishy middle.  

Bunches of people vote more or less according to "the fashionable trend".  They don't pay much attention to politics, and they don't know much about positions or policy, even tho' they have a general philosophy in mind and they tend to vote in a certain way.  These are the ones who get really uncomfortable in any discussion where they have to go beyond their usual centrist platitudes.  They haven't spent any real time or effort reading or listening or watching - they leaf thru People and Cosmo and USA Today, and they just kinda pick up a general attitude; they seem to get their political views by some kind of Social Osmosis.

It's not so much that they want to vote for somebody they think will best represent their interests (figuring that out requires work, which requires time, which a lot of people just don't have).  It's more like they only want to avoid being made fun of if they ever reveal who they voted for.

Sean Hannity isn't running away from Cliven Bundy because Bundy's a racist asshole.  

Hannity's running away from Bundy because Hannity's a craven political panderer who knows he has to un-couple Bundy from the GOP's candidates - in a big fuckin' hurry.

Here's what the symbology was supposed to be:  Every vote for a GOP candidate is a vote for freedom-loving patriots in The Real America® (roll the footage of Bundy waving the flag - what, you tho't video like that happened by accident?).

But here's what it is now:  Every vote for a GOP candidate is a vote for inveterate racist fuckheads like The Welfare Cowboy (roll the sound clip of "...about the negro").

When the thing kinda boils down to people thinking "you vote for the guy who's most like you", you're not gonna want people thinking you voted for the GOP because that makes them think you're an inveterate racist fuckhead like Clive Bundy.

Let' see if the Dems can make it stick.

Friday, April 18, 2014

VICE

Doing god's work, the folks at VICE are trying to show us all something that at least has some faint ring of truth to it.



Quick aside:
Isn't it interesting that so many of these Rebel Patriots crow about "both sides" being rotten, but their little militia-ness always seem to be in full flower only when the Dems hold power?

It's never about what they tell you it's about - "they" being Government or Business or Media or Political Activists.

The first corollary is that it's also never about what you think it's about.

All we can do is look at what information we can find - or whatever "they" allow us to see - and then gun it through our filters of experience and reason, trying to assess the probability that what we're observing is true or false or somewhere in between.

A couple of the smartest things I've heard anybody say in a while (Chris Hedges):

"Language is not benign - You have to get people to talk in the language of violence before they commit violence."

--and--

"Violence isn't gonna work.  Violence is a mistake.  The machine wants violence - it justifies further repression."

Also interesting is the view from inside this piece that there's a thread of truth that ties all of us together - the feeling of being alienated, used and abused, and disposable.  The trick now is to remember that most of us really do want the same things - in a broad and general sense - but we do; we want the same things.

Of course, we have to work out the details of how we go about getting what we want, and that's gonna take some serious attention to our absolute #1 Principle; the thing that lies at the very root of American Exceptionalism...compromise.

Figure it out, guys.  The only way you always get everything you want is to shoot everybody who disagrees with you, and that's not just rude, it's counterproductive, which makes it ineffective.  People have been trying to conquer the world in exactly that way for more than 500 centuries, and guess what - the world remains undefeated.

Ya sit down.  Ya have a drink.  Maybe a nosh.  And you work it the fuck out.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

What Happened

The wisdom of Bob Mondelo:
We have spent the last decade training the public to watch contests on television and then vote.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Oh, Sweet Jesus

I feel something like human compassion towards Joe Scarborough - or actually I would feel it if he wasn't such a partisan dick most of the time.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Dots

You just gotta figure there's a blogger or some wingnut somewhere who's feverishly working on how to put the Secret Service partiers together with something that makes the whole thing look even worse.  And here it is.  You're welcome.





Sunday, March 18, 2012

Melissa Harris-Perry

Some of the best TV on TV.  It's like being in Civics class again - which was an extraordinarily great thing as far I'm concerned.

This segment was a bit of departure, but still educational for me.



Saturday, January 14, 2012

Rachel, Rachel

I check in on Rachel Maddow once in a while.  When she wags her finger and gets preachy, I can do without her, but when she sticks to stringing the facts together and connecting the dots, there's no better reporter.

Monday, January 09, 2012

Smoke And Mirrors

I've been noticing lately that the officiating in the NFL has been something less than stellar.  This isn't a terribly new thing.  The players get bigger and faster, and the game speeds up, and it can take a while for the Stripes to catch up - pretty simple formula.  What really bugs me tho' is that I don't see any of the blown calls on any of the highlite shows, and I never hear any of the commentators talking about it either.  It starts to look a lot like a media blackout.

I'm not saying the games are rigged, but I will say that in the absence of scrutiny, the potential for dastardly behavior will flourish in sports, business, government, religion, whatever.

Connecting those dots with any of these other dots may a bit of a stretch, but it feels like there's a real corollary at work here.

(hat tip = HuffPo)