Category: Media

I Love it When Conservatives Go Hammer and Tongs After Each Other

No Comments

In the left corner, wearing the bible print trunks, Michael Dale “The Gastric Bypass” Huckabee, and in the left corner, wearing currency print trunks with the corporate sponsorship, the Club for Growth.

It appears that the CfG is taking out bunch of nasty ads against Huckabee.

Four years ago, they called me a, “tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show”, so I’m experiencing no small amount of schadenfruede.

A Note to Ramesh Ponnuru

No Comments

It appears that the Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor for National Review, has taken offense at a a blog post I made about 8 days ago regarding rumors that Time Magazine wanted him to write regular OP/EDs for them.

The title was and is over the top and offensive, which will surprise my friends no one bit, and you can go to the post and see my apology in the comment.

However, I take exception (not offense, exception) to one thing that he posted in The Corner:

That’s one “progressive” blogger’s reaction to the possibility that I will become a regular columnist for Time.

(emphasis mine)

I am not a progressive. I am a liberal.

A progressive is what wimps call themselves if they favor forward looking programs, but have capitulated to the linguistic efforts to equate the term “liberal” with “N***er Lover” in the 1970s by various reactionaries.

I’d like to think that I have a bit more intestinal fortitude.

To quote John F. Kennedy:

But if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

You can also refer to the late Steve’s Gilliard’s post on the subject. He was alway rather insistent on his use of the term “liberal”, rather than “progressive”.

People Who Write Better Than Me: Glenn Greenwald

No Comments

Glenn Greenwald nails it again:

What a stupid and vapid woman this is, but respected and admired by our media class because she fits right in with them — endlessly impressed by her own sophistication, maturity and insight while drooling out platitudes one never hears except in seventh-grade cafeterias and on our political talk shows. As always, this isn’t worth noting because the adolescent stupidity on display here is unique to Noonan, but precisely because it isn’t. This is how our national elections are decided: by people like her, spewing things like this.

Retail Sales Fall During Christmas Season, But Innumerate Reporters Miss It

No Comments

Once again the inestimable Nouriel Roubini catches something that all the major news outlets missed, though in this case, it ain’t rocket science*: since inflation is running now above 4%, an year over year increase in sales of 3.6% is actually a decrease in sales.

Both the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal get this wrong.

*Full Disclosure, in 1999-2000 and 1996-1998, I worked as a mechanical engineer for what is now Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, and I have some claim to actually being a rocket scientist.

Sally Quinn Is Concerned

No Comments

Oh my, Sally Quinn is shocked.

It appears that the House of Representatives has passed a resolution (H.R. 847) declaring that “Expresses continued support for Christians in the United States . . . acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States . . . rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and expresses its deepest respect to American Christians.”

She expresses concern that, “Earlier this year the House also passed resolutions honoring Islamic and Indian holidays but nothing that so equated a single faith with America and Americans”.

Gee, I wonder who might have created this.

I don’t know, maybe those people who valued pleasant DC cocktail party conversation over real discussions of issues and real values.

Maybe those who favored phony protestations of faith as a good way to “play the game” of politics”, because, of course, inside the Beltway, where all the important people live, policies don’t matter.

Whether you are a Washington Post editor (or just married to one), a congressional page, a lobbyist, a reporter, or a Washington DC pundit, you make decent money, are guaranteed steady work, have excellent health care benefits, and a pretty good retirement package.

You can’t take policy seriously, it gets in the way of your parties. It makes conversation stilted. It makes people think that you aren’t a “very serious person”.

Sound like anyone you know?

Why Are Talibaptists So Bloodthirsty?

No Comments

Matthew Yglesias comments on the Washington Post OP/ED by Harold Meyerson. They both ask why if the the words in the Christian Bible are so full of peace and love, that the Christo-Fascists are so mindlessly selfish, punitive, violent, and warlike.

Meyerson mentions the punitive nature of their immigration positions, which favor punishing children of illegals.

It’s not just Bush whose catechism is a merry mix of torture and piety. Virtually the entire Republican House delegation opposed the ban on waterboarding. Among the Republican presidential candidates, only Huckabee and the not-very-religious John McCain have come out against torture, while only libertarian Ron Paul has questioned the doctrine of preemptive war.

But it’s on their policies concerning immigrants where Republicans — candidates and voters alike — really run afoul of biblical writ. Not on immigration as such but on the treatment of immigrants who are already here. Consider: Christmas, after all, celebrates not just Jesus’s birth but his family’s flight from Herod’s wrath into Egypt, a journey obviously undertaken without benefit of legal documentation. The Bible isn’t big on immigrant documentation. “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him,” Exodus says the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai, “for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Yet the distinctive cry coming from the Republican base this year isn’t simply to control the flow of immigrants across our borders but to punish the undocumented immigrants already here, children and parents alike.

So Romney attacks Huckabee for holding immigrant children blameless when their parents brought them here without papers, and Huckabee defends himself by parading the endorsement of the Minuteman Project’s Jim Gilchrist, whose group harasses day laborers far from the border. The demand for a more regulated immigration policy comes from virtually all points on our political spectrum, but the push to persecute the immigrants already among us comes distinctly, though by no means entirely, from the same Republican right that protests its Christian faith at every turn.

I would add the death penalty, support for Iraq, opposition to social programs.

I do not know the whys of this. I am not a Christian, and I have read little of the Christian theological works, so my understanding of this cognitive dissonance is limited.

By the same token, I am not in the least surprised. While I am not a student of Christian theology, I AM a student of Jewish history, and the behaviors that they are all so very shocked about have long standing historical precedents.

History shows that the use of the Christian texts to promote hate is the rule rather than the exception.

More happened in 1492, for example, than Columbus going to America.

Conservatives Outsourcing Punditry to India

No Comments

Time Magazine has decided not to renew the contracts with William Kristol or Charles Krauthammer.

If you are wondering if this means that there is an outbreak of sanity with Time‘s editor, the answer is no. They are in negotiations with Ramesh Ponnuru to write some OP/EDs for them.

It’s pretty clear that they were pushed. Kristol is not talking, and Krauthammer has made it clear it was pushed:

“I was very happy to work with them,” said Mr. Krauthammer on the phone from his Washington office. “And I have a lot of things that occupy me.”

Asked if he would have preferred to stay with the magazine, Mr. Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes a regular column for The Washington Post, suggested there wasn’t much of a choice. “It’s a hypothetical that didn’t arise,” he said.

(emphasis mine)

As to my little funny about, “outsourcing punditry to India”, if the Wingnutosphere decides to get up in arms about it in an orgy of phony offensensitivity, that’s fine with me. They are a bunch of inbred, knuckle dragging, drooling idiots.

It’s the Fault of Clinton’s Penis

No Comments

Yep, that’s what the Wall Street Journal says (subscription required):

The joint housing and mortgage-market crisis once again reminds us that all financial implosions stem from the same cause: borrowing short and lending long without enough equity to weather periodic storms in the gap between.

But this bubble was different. Besides being fueled by housing purchases and repackaged loans, each with inadequate equity — doubling down with other people’s money — at the end of the capital-gains rainbow was the right to take up to $500,000 of profit, tax free.

Thank you President Bill Clinton for your 1997 action, applauded by the banks, the realtors and all citizens in search …

Scabs

No Comments

It looks like a number of the talk show hosts are going to cross the picket lines in addition to Carson Daley, Jimmy Kimmel and Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien will all be returning to air shortly.

Leno and O’Brien are actually members of the Writers Guild, which makes it worse.

Don’t watch them, boycott their advertisers.

I think that this is very different from David Letterman’s efforts, where, as opposed to breaking the strike, he is attempting to cut a limited deal (the same is rumored of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show).

The Old Negro Space Program

No Comments

If you are wondering what screenwriters are doing while on strike, some of it is private online projects that are pretty damn good, like The Old Negro Space Program (10:22).

It’s a very funny send up of Ken Burns documentaries (full disclosure, I went to Hampshire College for 2 years, and he graduated from there, though we never met, IIRC, he was up for an Oscar for his Brooklyn Bridge documentary my freshman year).

The movie studios are saying that they don’t need the writers, but it appears that a number of striking writers are in talks to launch Web start-ups, so I’m not sure if it’s not the other way around.

Why It’s Called The Grauniad

No Comments

Corrections and clarifications | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

· This article was amended on Wednesday September 26 2007. We misspelled the word misspelled twice, as mispelled. This has been corrected.

And you wonder why I call it The Grauniad*

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

Kevin Drum Explains Social Security and the Very Serious People In Washington

No Comments

As we all know, the “Very Serious People” go on and on about how Social Security is not affordable….After all, look at this picture from the CBO looking at budget impact:

Needless to say, it’s clear that it’s medical costs, and not Social Security that are the issue, But Kevin Drum explains why the “Very Serious People” think that Social Security must be gutted today:

Of course, Russert and his pals actually use medical services, of which Medicare is merely a reflection, and are thus not quite so keen to bang on endlessly about how we should be working to control medical costs and distribute medical care more efficiently and more equitably. After all, that might actually affect them. Slashing Social Security benefits really doesn’t.

This, is more than an insight into their attitudes into Social security. This is an insight into their attitudes on EVERYTHING. Basically, it’s all about making the tough choices that hurt other people.

That is what makes one a “Very Serious Person” in Washington DC. Hurting those who have no power and who you don’t know, except perhaps as landscapers, housekeepers, and waiters. They define this as bold thinking.

I believe that Marie Antoinette said something similar, “Let them eat cake.”

Now Krauthammer is Hating on the Talibaptists

No Comments

First Peggy Noonan goes after the religious right, and now it appears to be Charles Krauthammer’s turn. (Apologies to the townhall.com link)

….

The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher.

In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race — changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next — so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.

….

This is pretty elementary stuff. I haven’t exactly invented hot water here. The very rehearsing of these arguments seems tiresome and redundant.

But apparently not in the campaign of 2008. It’s two centuries since the passage of the First Amendment and our presidential candidates still cannot distinguish establishment from free exercise.

It appears that the corporate green heads that have used the religious right for years cannot abide Huckabee, and this time, a few worda about abortion will not mollify his supporters.

I experience some Schadenfreude, but the thought of a Christian Dominionist as a major presidential candidate is rather more worrisome than my uncharitable amusement.

Jerome Armstrong Has the Definitive Word on Obama

No Comments

The “Blogfather” just put his finger on my problem with Obama, and I did not realize that I hadn’t gotten what was wrong already.

Once again, someone who writes better than I ever will.

Barack Obama is lacking in the most basic experience of a presidential candidate: He has never run a real campaign against a Republican.

His state senate races were in a safe Dem district, and for Senate, he ran against Alan F###ing Keyes.

All of his real political campaigns have been against Democrats, in the primaries.

….

This questionnaire in and of itself is just one thing, but Obama’s response to it coming out is unsettling in it’s pattern of positioning himself above the partisan fray. Obama has never faced a serious Republican challenge. Not one. Obama has no experience of the hostile and polarized political environment that he’d enter were he to win the nomination, and he has distanced himself from partisan Democrats during his campaign for the nomination. I don’t think it’s spin to question how Obama might actually do once he confronts Republicans on the campaign trail, instead of across the table in those bipartisan negotiations he longs for making happen.

My guess is that, once he’s personally experienced the confrontation of the Republican machine, it would totally transform the way Obama views campaigns. Rather than viewing partisan progressives as something to Sister Soulja while he appeases the non-partisan media machine, he would come to realize the value, in today’s partisan environment, of engaging partisan Democrats as part of his campaign. He’d prepare to battle with us, rather than trash us as tokens of the past.

….

For Democrats that think about how a campaign might position itself best to win, the question really comes down to this: Do you believe that this nation is going to transcend partisan politics in 2008?

(emphasis mine)

I disagree on only one point, the media machine is not non-partisan. It’s had it’s tongue up the right wing’s ass for way too long.

Hillary might win. She is the most vetted candidate in history, and she understands the war, and even savors it a bit.

Edwards would win. He has been blooded by the 2004 election, and his own contentious senate campaign.

Obama can’t win. The press loves him right now, because he sucks up to them, and the ‘Phants are keeping their powder dry. He is bringing a knife to a gun fight.

So Now the Obama Campaign is Going After Krugman

No Comments

I have to agree with Ezra Klein when he says, Something’s really gone off the rails when the Obama campaign decides to release an oppo document on Paul Krugman. (Obama doc here)

Considering that Krugman is arguably the most prominent liberal pundit in America, this is surprising. What is not surprising is that, much like he does with social security, he goes out of his way to use Republican talking points to defend his ideas and attakc other’s.

Thirdestae has a good analysis, he believes that Obama is, “attempting to appease/manipulate the class of establishment pundits, and with them the press corps as a whole”.

I agree that this is part of his strategy, but it’s also a symptom of a problem, specifically that he wants to please people too much.

Bill Donohue and His Merry Band of Bigots Call “Golden Compass” Anti-Catholic, American U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops Disagrees

No Comments

The Catholic League has represented itself as the voice of American Catholics while ignoring statements by the religious hierarchy. This time, it’s directly disagreeing with the Bishops, calling for a boycott, while the USCCB, “thought that series helped reinforce faith, and finds value in Golden Compass.”

At some point, I’d like to see someone in the Catholic church with legitimate religious authority disavow Donohue and the rest of those anti-Semitic bastards.