Testify, Sister

I'm very much Pro-Krystal on this one, while at the same time I just really wish her parents had been a tad more conscientious when it came time to pick a name for her.

Consumer Activism

I posted a few days ago about what a sludge bucket Lil Chuckie Todd is, and today over at Democratic Underground, they said the petition they started had 100,000 signatures, and yesterday I saw Todd on Alex Wagner and I turned it off immediately and today I sent a nastygram to MSNBC and here's the list of people at MSNBC you can annoy with your lefty radical complaints:

Executives in charge:
Deborah Turness, President, NBC News
Phil Griffin, President, MSNBC
Vivian Schiller, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer, NBC News
Bill Wolff, Vice President, Primetime Programming, MSNBC
Mike Rubin, Vice President, Long Form Programming, MSNBC
Richard Wolffe, Vice President and Executive Editor, MSNBC.com

Media Relations:
For reporters looking for comment on MSNBC.com, please contact:
Danielle Lynn, Media Relations Manager
212.664.7403
Email: Danielle.Lynn@nbcuni.com

For reporters looking for comment on MSNBC TV, please call:
MSNBC Media Relations  212.664.6605

For viewers wishing to leave comments about a MSNBC program, please email: msnbctvinfo@nbcuni.com

The Ol' Double Switch Two-Step

..with a half twist and an inverted flipflop in the pike position.

Repub candidate for Virginia's Lt Gov (EW Jackson) had a debate with the Dem (Ralph Northam).  It was really just a polite chat for the most part because the temperature of our political discourse has been pretty high lately and for people who don't wanna think too hard - well, apparently they feel uncomfortable when it comes to doing any of the actual work required of citizens living in a system of self-government.  So this was more yawn-fest than debate, but whatever.

Although the differences felt muted for much of the debate, the ending more than made up for it.

When Fox brought up Jackson’s record of inflammatory rhetoric, the Republican was ready. Saying he’d expected the question, Jackson surprised everyone in the George Mason University auditorium in Arlington by grabbing a tablet computer he had close at hand.

He then read a passage from the Virginia state constitution. It protects citizens’ rights to express any opinion whatsoever in matters of religion.
To fault him for speaking out on religious issues, Jackson said, was to create a religious test for holding public office. It wasn’t fair when critics did it to Roman Catholic John Kennedy or to Mormon Mitt Romney, and it wasn’t fair to do it to him now. He knew the difference between what he professed in church and what he said as a politician.

The first point is that when you say one thing in church and then you say something very different out in public - yeah, that matters.  Guys like Jackson have been screaming for years about how we need to get back to our Jesus-y roots and if only we cleaved a little more closely to our Sunday School lessons then government would be a walk in the park. But guess what - the handlers and image consultants have figured out that most of us just wanna puke whenever we hear our "public servants" yammering on about what their imaginary friends are going to do to us unless blah blah blah.  So we've already seen a guy like Cuccinelli trying to distance himself from guys like Jackson; now we get the extra special spectacle of a guy like Jackson trying to distance himself from himself.  Pretty neat trick.

And the kicker is the very standard rap that we need to recognize and be ready to stomp into the pavement whenever some slickster pulls it out: pretending that his right to express his opinion is under attack.  It isn't - he's just making that shit up to deflect criticism.  It's about the opinion itself, not the right to express the opinion.

Don't be a rube.

Playing The Opposites Game

American Swastika

Seriously, fellas - what you're using to fetishize your misty-eyed fantasies of a glorious past really doesn't stand for what you pretend it stands for.

Slavery was a bad idea.
Secession in support of slavery was a bad idea.
Fighting a war to defend secession in order to support slavery was a bad idea.
3 strikes.
You're out.
Get the fuck over it.

How To Obamacare

healthcare.gov



If guys like Chuck Todd were real journalists and not just Press Poodles, we'd all know this stuff already.

Today's Gun Nut(s)

There's no good news here - including what would normally be a primo opportunity to say something about the the dark side of irony:  "Well, at least the gun freaks are just shooting each other now - so maybe the problem will solve itself".

  Breaking News

And yet, it's still going to be the NRA's position that people with guns prevent these incidents rather than cause them.  It just sucks - top to bottom, side to side and front to back.

Nature Bats Last

A canary in a coal mine, and an albatross in the Pacific.



Makes me wonder if we have the guts to see the truth before it pops up and kicks us in the face.

Unintended Consequences

Please please please - can we try a bit harder (or at all) to get over this self-imposed exile to Stoopidsville that makes it necessary for a semi-dipwad like Bill Nye to think he should do this kinda shit just to "raise awareness" a tiny bit in order to put a few bucks back into an honest effort at making some sense of the world around us by not just requiring our kids to study the sciences, but also by investing in things that'll give them a decent shot at working at real jobs in the fields we're forcing them to study in the first fuckin' place?

So Sorry