The Un-Poodling Of The Press

And thus it starts. Some of the Press Poodles have finally had enough, and they're actually calling some the liars on their lies - sometimes live, in real time, on the air.

Don Lemon smacks Jack Kingston:

Jake Tapper points out some of 45*'s malarkey:

And I'm hoping to be a little hopeful that maybe kinda sorta we're seeing the Poodles pushing back against the False Equivalence bullshit - bullshit, btw, that they've been pimping right along with assholes like 45* and his asshole acolytes like Jack Kingston.

Obviously, they're not there yet, but I'll give the 4th Estate a baby bulldog today instead of the usual rainbow poodle.

Way to go, guys. 

We are trying to be not so fucked(?)

Wrapped In The Flag

via Wonkette:

Hooray! The spirit of McCarthyism is alive and well in Hastings, Nebraska, where for the first time in ages, the local school district has asked all its teachers to comply with a 1951 state law requiring all teachers to sign a loyalty oath. After teachers complained, the ACLU warned the district that it’s begging for a lawsuit, but the school’s attorney advised the superintendent that the law is still valid and probably should be followed. Besides, isn’t Real Americanism all about making people pledge to support democracy and freedom, whether they want to or not, and also judging whether they’re patriotic enough?

I really kinda love it when these "Conservative Capitalists" start muckin' about in things they need us to believe they understand perfectly, when the very things they say and do always point directly to the conclusion that they really don't understand jack shit - 'specially when it comes to American Democracy.

Look, guys - in your Randian Utopia of the perfect Free Market system, your "fact" that All Things Communist are bad and that All Things USAmerica Inc are glorious would be obvious because the Marketplace of Ideas would make it obvious without having to use Big Gubmint to force everybody to buy in.  Do ya kinda see the problem?

But that's not what it's about, is it?  It's that Sinclair Lewis quote about how fascism comes to America, isn't it?  A lot of us were fooled for a good long time.  I think that number may be starting to drop rapidly.  I can hope so anyway.

A Bit Of Encouragement

Tesla reports a profit for Q1 2013:

Despite a bit of bad press for its Model S and a less-than-ideal close to the 2012 financial year, things have been looking up for Tesla. Sales are on an upward climb, company CEO Elon Musk has sworn to deliver more superchargers, better service for customers and continues to tout his EV's high resale value. After promising in Q4 of 2012 that Tesla would turn a profit the next quarter, the EV manufacturer has done so -- generating $15 million in net income and $562 million in revenue in Q1 2013.

And following that "bit of bad press"?  Well...this, via Reuters:

Consumer Reports magazine awarded a near-perfect score to Tesla Motors Co's (TSLA.O) Model S, citing the electric car's power, "pinpoint" handling and quiet, well-crafted interior.

The score of 99 out of 100 puts the Model S far ahead of other electric and gas-powered rivals, including the Porsche Panamera sports car and the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid.

"Slipping behind the wheel of the Tesla Model S is like crossing into a promising zero-emissions future," the highly influential magazine said in its review on Thursday. "It's what Marty McFly might have brought back in place of his DeLorean in 'Back to the Future'."

We endure the daily barrage from Negativistas who get paid pretty well to propagandize us into thinking we can't possibly do anything to make anything better for ourselves or each other, and so we just hafta sit quietly and take whatever shit they feel like feeding us today and tomorrow and for as long as we refuse to see through the smoke and the dust they're forever blowing in our faces.

No more - not today anyway.  And today's enough for now.

Maybe this Tesla bunch is just as full of shit as the rest of 'em, but maybe it's really just a matter of reaching a little farther and taking one more step and going a little longer.  I dunno - but here's hoping.

Today's Nonsense

So the DumFux News affiliate in Hartford CT ran a story about Women's Day at the Capitol, and the 'b-roll' (the video they run so you have a visual to go with the copy being read) - yeah you prob'ly already guessed - it was nuthin' but tits.

Don't get me wrong here: I like boobies; bazongas; headlights; cans; melons; honkers; breasts; mammaries etc ad infinitum.  I like female, and I like all that 'female' implies which happens to include the tasty sensual and sexy bits.

I am also not stupid, and so I know about a little thing we grownups like to call "appropriate to time and place".  We also call it "respect for the wholeness of a human being", and sometimes we call it "trying not to think with your dick once in a while".

But I digress.  Take a look:



First, this kinda crap doesn't happen by accident. Some producer sat in a meeting and made a decision about what b-roll to put on the air; and even if that producer delegated the actual decision to an underling, that underling chose clips from the file footage that he/she knew to be in keeping with whatever is Standard Operating Procedure according to the station's and/or the network's style book. Those jiggle shots didn't happen by accident. Of course, the affiliate's PR folks tried to claim otherwise:

Second, this shit happens a lot at DumFux News, but somehow the "apology" never includes a mention of any disciplinary action being taken against the Producers, Associate Producers, Reporters, Editors, Interns, et al.

The kicker though is that a majority of viewers who called the station about the story were pissed off and that's what prompted the apology.

When 51% of DumFux viewers find something on Dumfux News objectionable, I have to take it as a good sign.

(more than a) hat tip = Crooks & Liars

A Fairly Simple Concept

I've been wondering pretty hard about how to articulate the basic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy the GOP is trying to make work when it comes to winning elections and being able to "govern"*.

It just doesn't make any sense to alienate up to 95% of any given (eg: black) demographic if you expect to win - unless of course if you have a solid handle on ways to keep a sizable portion of those demographics from voting in the first place.  And that's what all the Voter Suppression - I mean Election Integrity efforts were all about - fucking duh.  (How many times do we have to hear about it from Maddow and every commentator left of Fred Barnes before we get it?).

Anyway, the GOP's real problem is this:


(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

...and the real real problem is that yes, actually it is indeed possible to fool some of the people all of the time.  But we can hope that the "some of the people" demographic is finally starting to shrink a bit.

*is it really "governing" if you're elected by a self-selecting minority?  I think there's a different word for that.

Serious Wonkette

I've been in some FaceBook fights over the last year or so with some "friends" who have ended up calling me "the enemy".  Some of these guys are standard-issue wingnuts and they're pretty wacky and kookie and I tend to see them as little more than a fringe-y and colorful thing that serves as a distraction for the Press Poodles, but doesn't represent anything of substance.

I really hope that's the case, but when Wonkette has a hard time smiling about it, there may be real cause for worry.

A man advocating executing journalists for treason in honor of Free Speech Week for being too supportive of the American president just described other people as “Orwellian.”

This week marks the 50th anniversary of The Cuban Missile Crisis.  I bring that up because in the middle of all the shit, JFK managed to remember history, and specifically recalled the warnings from The Guns of August. ie: everybody has a plan; everybody follows their plan; and the whole thing becomes a matter of an If/Then Algorithm that always ends in a shooting war.  Having been burned once (Bay of Pigs), Kennedy broke with tradition, refusing to allow "the plan" to take precedence over actual in-the-moment reasoning.

With all the banter and bickering over Red Team vs Blue Team that's gone on for as long as there's been places on the internet to go and engage in the fiercest flame wars you can imagine, we've gotten to a place (I think) where the fight will no longer be confined to cyberspace.  Each "side" knows most of what the other side has to say; and each side recognizes the style and substance of the other side's rhetoric; so it becomes "if Attack 238, then Counter Attack G; unless Attack 238 is combined with Straw Man Gamma, in which case, deploy Parry & Riposte Yellow yada yada yada".

Unfortunately, there's always a very dark and dangerous aspect of things like Populism and Partisanship and Regional Chauvinism etc.  There's always somebody hangin' out in the bar (or the park or wherever) just itchin' for a fight to break out.  Doesn't matter what the fight's about, they're just looking to mix it up with somebody, and all they need is a decent-sounding excuse.

Now consider the sheer numbers of combat veterans we've been minting lately, and put that together with the fact that we have as many guns in this country as we have humans; plus the widening of permissive gun laws; and then take a long look at the style of recreation favored by a very important slice of the American Male Demographic: Video War Gaming, Paintball, Combat-style Shooting Sports (with real guns and live ammo).

Step by step; in small degrees; inching forward; If. Then. Boom.

Doesn't have to be that way.  It just happens to be the trend.

Gilligan And The Stench

Wasn't it about this time in 2008 that things started to fall apart for McCain and Palin?

“I hate to say this, but if Ryan wants to run for national office again, he’ll probably have to wash the stench of Romney off of him,” Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, told The New York Times on Sunday.

(more at Politico)

Everybody used to moan and wail about the impending death of the Democratic Party - now it's the GOP's turn.  How does any democratic organization fix itself?  What was the process that pulled the Dems up out of the abyss in the early 90s?  Much thinking and learning of new things are required here.

And with the recent news of how all the big money has shifted away from Obama and toward Willard, what am I supposed to conclude if Obama pulls it off and wins in spite of what looks like a concerted effort at a Corporate Takeover?

Connections

I don't know what's up here, but it smells really bad and I just wanna get something posted that maybe starts me stroking in the right direction.

From Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:

The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party), there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons, some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have been very few who've come at the issue from the inside.

We get one of those rare inside accounts in The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, a new book by Jeff Connaughton, the former aide to Senators Ted Kaufman and Joe Biden. Jeff is well known to reporters like me; during a period when most government officials double-talked or downplayed the Wall Street corruption problem, Jeff was one of the few voices on the Hill who always talked about the subject with appropriate alarm. He shared this quality with his boss Kaufman, the Delaware Senator who took over Biden's seat and instantly became an irritating (to Wall Street) political force by announcing he wasn’t going to run for re-election. "I later learned from reporters that Wall Street was frustrated that they couldn’t find a way to harness Ted or pull in his reins," Jeff writes. "There was no obvious way to pressure Ted because he wasn’t running for re-election."

And from Reuters (via The Agonist):

With less than two months to go before the U.S. presidential election, a new survey found 61 percent of Americans say a candidate's commitment to rooting out corporate wrongdoing will be key in deciding who gets their vote.

Along with keen interest in knowing each candidate's plans to fix the struggling economy, voters want government to do more to fight corporate misconduct - which they say helped cause the financial crisis.

"In these difficult economic times, Americans are mad as hell about corporate wrongdoing and are going to do something about it in the November elections and beyond," said Jordan Thomas, a partner at law firm Labaton Sucharow, which commissioned the survey and which represents corporate whistleblowers.

This is the first I've heard of a continuing disgruntlement over Corruption Inc - it seemed to me that it had been pushed way down the list of priorities.  But when I stop and put some thought into it, I start to see it making some real sense.  How do you fix the problem of Too Much Big Money In Politics if you don't fix the problem of Private Up-Side and Public Down-Side?

Oh yeah - no more thing.  When your clear-eyed and sensible Repub friends start yammerin' about how we need lots more deregulation to "unleash the mighty power of unfettered American free-market know-how", see if this rings a bell for 'em (from an AP story cited in the comments at The Agonist referenced above - and got practically no mention anywhere):

A Texas company that profited for decades by supplying mentally disabled workers to an Iowa turkey plant at wages of 41 cents per hour must pay the men $1.37 million in back wages, a federal judge ruled late Tuesday.

The judgment against Henry's Turkey Service in Goldthwaite is the third of more than $1 million against the company after state authorities in 2009 shut down a dilapidated bunkhouse in rural Iowa where the men had lived since the 1970s.

Post Truth Politics

You know we're pretty well over the edge when Neil Newhouse (Romney campaign pollster) says, "We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

From Slacktivist (linking to Political Animal - Steve Benen):

Over the past 30 weeks, Mitt Romney has told lie after lie after lie: I, II, III, IV, V, VI,VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII,XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX.

Click those links. Read the lists. List after list of lie after lie. Hundreds of them — 533, to be exact, although Benen does not make any claim to providing a comprehensive chronicle.

And to put it all together, Mr James Fallows:

Reporters are happiest, safest-feeling, and most comfortable when in the mode of he-said, she-said. "The president's critics claim that he was born in Kenya; administration spokesmen deny the charge." But when significant political players are willing to say things that flat-out are not true -- and when they're not slowed down by demonstrations of their claims' falseness -- then reporters who stick to he-said, she-said become accessories to deception. This is the problem The Atlantic's James Bennet discussed from Tampa yesterday, in a dispatch about the Republicans' false-but-endlessly-repeated claim that the Obama administration is coddling welfare recipients by dropping requirements that they work.

We Are Maybe No So Fucked - Yet

Privatizing certain things is not in itself a bad idea.  If we wanna build a new highway, we contract it out to private firms - that way, we don't have the on-going expense of keeping that capability in-house (and often idle between projects).  We also prevent some of the use-it-or-lose-it rationalization that goes on.

But there's a huge difference between privatizing the building of the road, and transferring ownership of the road from Public to Private.

Here's Maude Barlow talking about water (originally aired 2002).  Interesting by itself, but what really struck me was the bit starting at about 8:00.  Big Water (soon to rival, and then possibly dwarf Big Oil) is making significant progress in privatizing public water in places where there are some pretty bad governments.  This looks like a good thing is happening, but if Bad Government is the justification for privatizing, then it simply will become imperative for Big Water to support corrupt regimes in order to maintain the potential for expanding their market.



SInce Barlow's talk, people have won some of the battles against Big Water, but commerce never sleeps - the efforts continue.  Now we're seeing a change in tactics (I think).  The push now is towards consolidation of water districts.  If a local entity transfers control of its water services to a larger regional authority (eg: what's being discussed in Asheville NC), it gets a little easier for the water company to work their magic on the coin-operated politicians they've helped put in office at the state and national levels.

Don't bet against human nature.  Greed is a powerful motivator, but a figurative thirst for money and power is nothing compared with the real deal.

SCOTUS Update

I just got off the phone with somebody in the public info office - the message on the main number listed on the website says to call 202-579-3000 and ask them to page a representative.  The lady was nice enough, but she said they have no intention of issuing a statement on Thomas's problems, and that there's no press availability scheduled either; and that if I want to ask questions, I have to call during business hours and ask for a regular PIO (Public Information Officer).

I have no idea what kind of protocol might be in place for this.  I do think it would be cool in the extreme if huge numbers of regular US citizens started making personal calls to SCOTUS to ask them to explain themselves to us.