Category: Media

Because Palin is a Lazy, Uninformed, Idiot

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Well it appears that the final details of the debate have been negotiated, and after much whining, I’m sure, the McCain campaign got a bubble for Palin:

At the insistence of the McCain campaign, the Oct. 2 debate between the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin, and her Democratic rival, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., will have shorter question-and-answer segments than those for the presidential nominees, the advisers said. There will also be much less opportunity for free-wheeling, direct exchanges between the running mates.

Biden will still destroy her, the only question is whether she loses it on stage, and if she does, whether Sarah “Barracuda” Palin goes after him with a knife or a gun.

I mean, after, this woman got completely Pwn3d by Charlie Gibson, which is like being gored by Bambi.

Watching Krugman on Olbermann

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Just a thought watching him: He’s a really smart guy, but he is profoundly uncomfortable and awkward on television.

Republicans who are drooling morons get some coaching do the dance on TV, and folks like Krugman don’t.

It’s not fair how much this effects our discourse, but maybe we should set up some sort of liberal org to coach people to do the gasbag bit more convincingly.

Finally!

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It looks like the Obama campaign has concluded that “behold my incredible awsomeness” is not a winning strategy, so they have reversed themselves, and they are telling Democrats that they should “get serious” about contributing money to “independent” groups to attack McCain.

Nice that they finally got a clue that they need a a way to point out the many problems that McCain has with his temperament, ethics, philosophy, intellect, and health.

They are right to go after McCain’s character, after John Sidney McCain has no character, it’s just a pity that they are this late to the game.

The Problem With Journalists

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Will Bunch has an interesting observation regarding the press, that they are almost completely divorced from life around them.

He was reading an account of Len Downie upon his retirement from the Washington Post, and he noted that Downie said that he did not have any friends outside of the paper. Note also that Downie also did not register to vote until he retired.

So Bunch asks the question, “If Len Downie only hung around with other journalists, where did he get his ideas for what was news?”

The answer is, of course, PR flacks, because he has no context to make these decisions on his own.

Well, the WaPo Finally Talks About Junkie Cindy McCain

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It appears that the story was written, and the title put into the feed a few days early, so here it is.

The issue is not that she is* a junkie. The issue is that even though she had the ability to feed her need in a number of ways that would not have put people at risk, she forged other people’s names at her charity, etc. which placed them at risk through no fault of their own, and then she used her money, and McCain used his position, to protect her and to pursue vendettas against people who did the right thing, and went to the DEA.

Honor, my ass.

*Once someone is an alcoholic or junkie, they always are, the question is just whether they are recovering, or still doing whichever substance they have a problem with.

The Palin Interview: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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I didn’t see it live, I saw it in dribs and drabs over Youtube…..That is one scary politician.

If you were to take the hostility of Dick Cheney, and add in the itchy trigger finger of John McCain, the result would still look like Mahatma Gandhi next to Palin.

Going to war with Russia over Georgia? Is she nuts? (OK, she is nuts, we’ve already established that)

Is she confusing the Black Sea nation and the southern state that is the home of the Crimson Tide?

Biden is going to have her for lunch, even if the moderators are in the tank for her, unless he is concerned about making her cry.

Here’s a hint: you won’t make her cry, but she she may try to rip someone’s throat out with her teeth…Or is that a pitbull….the lipstick confuses me.

So, Now it Appears that John McCain Used His Office to Support His Sugar Mama Dope Abusing Wife

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We know the basic story: Cindy McCain used a charity that she set up to steal Percocet and Vicodin to feed her habit.

One of the principals in this matter is Tom Gosinski, who discovered the abuse, and discovered that Cindy McCain was using his name to get the drugs, so he went to the DEA, and John McCain used his office to call in political favors to get the US Attorney to go after him.

While it is clear that Gosinski is no fan of the McCains, they got an investigation ginned up claiming that he had tried to extort them after he had been talking with the DEA for months, the picture that he is painting, both of McCain and of his family is unbelievably grim

Well, he’s now releasing his journals to the public, and among other things, there are allegations that the McCains medicated their kids unecessarily.

Gosinski details a conversation with Jeri Johnson, Cindy McCain’s aunt, regarding Cindy’s nanny, Diane, in a July 28, 1992 entry.

Diane voice concerns regarding Cindy’s use of drugs and the effect it is having on the kids. Diane told Jeri that Meghan recently told her to “f$#@ off” after trying to discipline her. She also told Jeri that she is concerned that Cindy is giving the kids drugs which unnecessarily sedate them. I hope that is not happening.

Concerns that Cindy McCain is unnecessarily drugging her children appear again in a July 31 entry — “Cari (Cindy’s adopted daughter) told the three that she fears Cindy gives the kids prescription drugs they do not need,” Gosinski wrote.

Republican family values, my ass.

What more, it appears that the Washington Post had an article about this recently, but it was scrubbed from the web site.

Talk about the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations!

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Because, seriously for Bush and His Evil Minions™ to try to spin the continued breathing of Osama bin Laden with this:

Q: But Osama bin Laden is the one that — you keep talking about his lieutenants, and, yes, they are very important, but Osama bin Laden was the mastermind of 9/11 —

MS. PERINO: No, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11, and he’s sitting in jail right now.

I guess that bin Laden was some 6 foot 6 inch tall dude suffering from Marfan’s related kidney failure who occasionally attended meetings of the Ladies Sewing Circle & Terrorist Society, or some such.

Every time I think that I’ve grown too cynical to be shocked, they kick it up a notch.


The mendacity of these folks, even after 7 years, continues to stun me.

What the Pundits Really Think About the Palinator

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Well, it turns out that right wing pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan got caught in an unguarded moment with an open microphone, and suddenly, when they though that no one was listening, they stopped pretending that John Seymour McCain III was a man of honor.

Chuck Todd is part of the conversation, but he is not guilty of journalistic malpractice here. Journalists have opinions, and their job is to keep them off the air.

Murphy and Noonan, however, are lauding McCain and his alleged “honor” when the red light is on, and calling him an incompetent doddering hack when the light is off.

That is journalistic malpractice.

Transcript:

Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.

(cut away)

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And —

PN: It’s over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this —

MM: They’re all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives —

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

The Politico’s Roger Simon Gets One Right…..For Once

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He apologizes for the behavior of the media on the matter of Sarah Palin.

Actually he doesn’t, he explains just what Republicans find unacceptable about media coverage, and his use of the famous Lily Tomlin quote, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up,” is a nice use of quote.

Go read.

I’m not sure if it means much, except that perhaps the “elite media” that McCain is now complaining about, the media that literally heckled Mitt Romney, and did everything it could to get McCain the nomination, is beginning to realize that McCain isn’t another pundit.

It’s only taken them about 26 years that McCain is all hat and no cattle.

Just a Moment, While I Perform a Quick Palinoscopy

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We have the former head of the Alaska State Police calling Sarah Palin a liar over “troopergate”.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out, as a former Alaska Attorney General has categorized her legal defense strategy on the matter, that only the state Personnel Board (whose members she has appointed) has exclusive authority to investigate the matter as bogus.

We also have Palin’s own handwriting showing that she was lying over her opposition to earmarks, where we have margin notes in her own handwriting saying that, “We Did Well!!!,” in securing earmarks, and that John Sidney McCain III criticized the very earmarks that she had hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington, DC to get.

Meanwhile, her story of bravely persevering in her speech in the face of the dangers of a broken teleprompter is also a lie. Jonathan Martin of the right-winger funded Politico notes that he was standing where he could read the teleprompter, and it was working as intended, and he confirmed this with a convention organizer.

Of course, this goes along with the Anchorage Daily News’ analysis of her speech, where she is described as stretching the truth.

It seems like we have Alaska’s own Dick Cheney here, only she appears to be a better shot then “Deadeye Dick”.

Meanwhile focus groups of Hillary supporters in Michigan and Nevada were significantly more tepid on her speech than the crowd of mouth breathing Neanderthals* in the convention center, with a number of fairly brutal complaints about her.

Bummer of a birth mark, Hal.

*No offense intended to Neanderthals, or those Geico guys.

Well, Now We See the Ron Fournier Influence Over the AP

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Another day, another AP hitjob.

Kos noted that Charles Babington had to have written the piece bashing Obamas speech was finished. 603 words, edited, proofed, and posted online 23 minutes after Obama finished…and he got the length of the speech wrong.

Olbermann condemned the Babington piece, and told him to “find new work”.

The always reliable Editor and Publisher has a good rundown, and includes the factoid that, “Even as Babington was hitting Obama for a lack of specifics, AP was transmitting a second piece by another reporter, Jim Drinkard, that offered a detailed look at seven specific policy proposals in the speech (and expressed doubts about all of them).”

Note that Ron Fournier just wrote a piece Analysis: Palin’s age, inexperience rival Obama’s (no links to the AP…I’m still boycotting them for going after bloggers, see here.

I Agree with John Stewart

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Basically, he is calling the political reporters a bunch of wankers:

As Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” descends on Denver for four days of coverage, Jon Stewart took after the “established” media for getting too cozy with candidates and regurgitating campaign spin when it comes to political coverage.

In a breakfast with reporters, Stewart directed most of his ire at the 24-hour cable news networks, which he called “gerbil wheels,” and said the media at-large had “abdicated” to what he called the “slow-witted beast.”

He said the never-ending television news cycle creates a “false sense of urgency” and forces reporters to “follow the veins that have been mined,” instead of pursuing serious and in-depth reporting.

Seriously, I get to a point where I can’t take it any more, and use the mute button too much, and then I can’t stand their faces, and I change the channel watch Alton Brown on Food Network, and check in with the blogs.

Yesterday, I did keep checking in because I felt that Kennedy deserved the eyeballs, but during political coverage, even Maddow and Olbermann get on my nerves, because they spend so much time repeating themselves.