Anniversary
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Put-down of the day number one — from Juan Cole, pissed at Mitt Romney’s put-down of President Obama’s take-out of Osama bin Laden:
Mitt Romney said Monday that of course he would have taken out Bin Laden and that ‘even Jimmy Carter would have made that call.’
Since Jimmy Carter ordered a brave and risky but failed military mission into Iran, that was a cheap shot on the part of someone who has never had anything to do with the military.
Moreover, Jimmy Carter made peace between Egypt and Israel and played a major role in reducing the number of Africans stricken by the Guinea worm from 3.5 million to 1,100.
So Romney, who has mainly been sending our jobs overseas, isn’t good enough to shine Carter’s shoes.
Furthermore:
The problem with Romney is that when it comes to the Muslim world, he doesn’t have the slightest idea what he is talking about, and seems intent on alienating 1.5 billion Muslims, a fifth of the world.
He wanted to substitute a crazy conspiracy theory for a tactical approach to getting Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership.
In this regard, the Obama campaign has correctly nailed him, but they haven’t gone far enough in emphasizing the truly creepy character of his obsession with Muslims in general, far beyond the fringe al-Qaeda element.
Romney knows life about as much as Sophia Loren is way-madly in love with me.
This the one-year dateline of Osama’s demise, but in a few weeks will be the 40th anniversary of Watergate — the biggest, internal US historical event this past century, and journalism’s big-clap event.
The two guys who gained way-more-than-fame off the episode — Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — are in the news again, this time some stuff in their original reports might might have been a little off kilter and this might have upset the Bob.
(Illustration found here).
In the mid-1970s when I started my journalism career as a lowly police reporter in Montgomery, Alabama, those two Washington Post reporters were the gem in the IBM typewriter ribbon that beckon the pride and neatness of the job for all of us in the trade.
Didn’t like Woodward too much — appeared too much of a button-down asshole — but Bernstein was my kind of guy.
In appearance, he should have been playing bass for The Ramones instead of being in a newsroom, chained-smoked and looked like shit — I could way-relate.
In fact, I tried to emulate Dustin Hoffman playing Bernstein in ‘All the President’s Men.’
Woodward, however, looked the CEO instead one of ‘us’ regular guys in the newsroom.
And while Bernstein went on benders, dated Elizabeth Taylor, recovered from the all that Watergate fame to become a competent older journalist, Woodward has become a mouth-piece for the DC establishment — and has become wealthy.
In put-down of the day number two, Alex Pareene at Salon nails Woodward to a journalism wall of shame:
We now all know, in other words, that Bob Woodward is a sketchy reporter.
This has always been the case.
All of his post-Watergate books feature ridiculous, clearly invented (or “embellished”) internal monologues, and re-creations, with quotation marks, of scenes he couldn’t have witnessed or recorded.
He is shady about his sources, even to his editors, and because he is so well-sourced, he is always sitting on important information that he refuses to divulge, to protect his powerful sources.
His depressing flailing about the periphery of the Plame affair — Woodward was the first journalist to learn that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, and Woodward declined to mention his knowledge to his bosses or anyone else for months after the story broke, for fear of getting subpoenaed — was proof that his balancing of his responsibility to the public and his responsibility to his sources had become, or perhaps always was, severely out of whack.
I think that Woodward has enjoyed a lack of critical attention for years now, as he’s basked in the glow of his staggering professional success, and he is terrified that he’ll be remembered not as the greatest investigative reporter of the 20th century, but instead as the ultimate reporter as pawn of the truly powerful.
Some folks are journalists, some are fame-seeking hacks.
Monday’s Word
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Mitt Romney waxing eloquent Friday at Otterbein University in Ohio:
“The impact of gathering facts, gathering information, learning about the reality behind the words, has proven to me, in the business sector, that facts are more important than words and that results are more important than words,” he said.
“So as you look at the campaign of 2012, you’re gonna hear a lot of words, but you’re going to have an opportunity to also look behind the words at the facts.”
Dude, you’re so full of male-cow droppings.
(Illustration found here).
In the same speech, nearly at the same time, Romney lashed out at the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly known as the stimulus (via Think Progress):
Then there was the stimulus itself.
$787 billion of borrowing.
It could have been entirely focused on getting getting the private sector to buy capital equipment, for instance.
That puts people to work.
Or to hire people.
Instead, it primary protected people in the governmental sector, which is probably the sector that should have been shrinking.
Those students sitting in those seats most-surely went, WTF — he says look at the facts not the words just a second ago, then spins around and throws out shit that’s so ludicrous it cries for shame.
Does Mitt look beyond his own lips?
In fact, Otterbein College itself received a grant worth more than $80,000 for a federal work-study program in July 2009, from that self-same stimulus program — Federal Work Study provides need-based financial aid to students through compensation for hours worked at on- or off-campus jobs.
Some students do need to work to get through the financial side of college, didn’t you know that?
And then, as if there wasn’t enough shit piled up to the eyeballs, Romney also lowered the bar to himself, telling students to just ask their parents for money:
“He graduated from high school and he didn’t want to go to college,” Mr. Romney said.
“And he said to his dad, can I borrow some money, I want to start a business.”
His father was skeptical, but he loaned him $20,000.
“The only thing that would work for $20,000 was a sandwich shop, so he started making sandwiches,” Mr. Romney said.
…
Mr. Romney encouraged the students in the room to follow Mr. John’s path.
“Take, take a shot, go for it.
Take a risk.
Get the education.
Borrow money if you have to from your parents.
Start a business.”
Wham-bam, thank you ma’am.
And a final few words — did Rick Santorum sin in his heart for Lindsay Lohan?
From HuffPost:
Rick Santorum reportedly asked Lindsay Lohan to pose for a photo at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday — then denied it.
Lohan was sitting with Greta Van Susteren when Santorum approached, according to TMZ.
He reportedly asked Lohan to take a picture of him with Van Susteren, then snapped a photo of Lohan alone.
…
“I took a picture of a lot of people today,” a visibly uncomfortable Santorum says, as though he cannot remember what happened.
Words escape me now.
Voices of Vicious Villainy
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As we begin a near-seven month nightmare — the 2012 elections — the US of A has become one vast holding pen of pure bullshit, creating an ironic, near-mockery of American democracy.
Not only is the political discourse so freakin’ stupid, sometimes just a pain to watch, but the distortion of so much data is beyond mind bending — and the nasty, self-centered lying coming from the right side of the political mind-set is so staggering, one couldn’t have imagined it even a decade ago.
If fact, events are so saturated with shit, last week the Republican dominated US House passed the Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act, a move that would surely make Twain scream once again, this time from the grave: “There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.”
Maybe with all that irony in his diet, John ‘The Boner‘ Boehner will have the energy to pitch another hysterical, and completely phony, temper tantrum.
(Illustration found here).
Flying clods of bullshit can be deadly, especially if one ain’t payin’ attention, and even when struck squarely in the face with a big wad of dookie (not to be anywhere-near confused with Dookie), a lot of people are either shocked out of their minds, or really didn’t feel the impact.
Ignorance without humility is most-terrifying, but arrogance born of ignorance is pant-shitting horror.
And even worse are the assholes.
Just yesterday, a well-known total quack, blubbered that Mitt Romney, who’s always called for the US auto industry to go bankrupt and has stood on that point for years, now reveals President Obama’s car-builders’ bailout was actually a Romney idea.
Via Crooks and Liars:
“[Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed.
I know it infuriates them to hear that,” Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said.
“The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney’s advice.”
Lying because assholes just don’t care, though, some call it being cynical — Karoli at C&L is more-then right on: ‘This is the cynical Romney campaign at it’s lying-est best.’
And a most-glaring example of the ‘don’t-give-a-shit‘ dysfunction at the heart of this country — nearly all of the disinformation, distorted-delusional data and bullshit has originated from the Republican party, the GOP, postulating the verbiage onto the nowadays: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
Of course, Democrats are assholes, too, but absolutely nowhere-near the asshole level of Republicans.
And for reasons I can’t fathom, Democrats can also act like spineless, little turds — and although Obama is hovering near a failed presidency, he’s also nowhere-near an asshole like George Jr.
Obama’s heritage/legacy is that he’s by far the most-disappointing president in US history.
On the posture of the ugliness of the GOP, the MSM appears to have at least allowed some discourse on the subject.
A piece Friday in the Washington Post by Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and titled ‘Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are The Problem,’ narrates the plot point, but in ho-hum, MSM fashion — they never come out say these guys are really just a bunch of f*cking assholes, they try to be nice about it.
The commentary should have been written by a Matt Taibbi or a Hunter Thompson — way-more interesting and readable.
Nevertheless, Mann and Ornstein do paint the picture — a few snips:
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional.
In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted.
Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics.
It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
…
In the third and now fourth years of the Obama presidency, divided government has produced something closer to complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington, with partisan divides even leading last year to America’s first credit downgrade.
On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt, on climate change and health-care reform, Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship.
In the presidential campaign and in Congress, GOP leaders have embraced fanciful policies on taxes and spending, kowtowing to their party’s most strident voices.
And in the slosh of last night’s ‘Nerd Prom,’ Mann and Ornstein also slapped at the MSM:
Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views.
Which politician is telling the truth?
Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?
Of course, a lot of the shit belched out by the GOP is tolerated by the MSM, or The Villagers, as they’re sometimes called in DC and let a lot of bad stuff slide.
The authors surmise the reason behind this GOP ‘problem‘ as a building factor, starting maybe way back with Roe v. Wade, Prop 13 in 1978 California, and more recently, the rise of hard-right news organizations, yep, Fox News.
Even the actions/policies of just two small turds — Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist — were also cited as reasons behind the bat-shit crazy antics spun into the current GOP ‘problem.’
However, all this ugly didn’t really see the light of day until the 2008 presidential campaign and the arrival of Sarah Palin — all the shit finally had a conduit.
All the ignorant dumb-asses finally had a spokesperson, and even appearing from the get-go as obviously uninformed, but also carrying a simmering mean streak, Palin seemed to reflect that underbelly of US peoples who live off delusion.
And in one of those terrible quirks of historical coincidence, the Tea Party movement appeared to suck Palin’s ignorance right down to the bottom of the glass, and then continued to suck even harder.
Couple that shit with Fox News, and, presto!
Instant bullshit, and tons and tons of it — and the rest is bad-stomach history.
All with startling ferocious array in October 2008: “This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”
Apparently, Palin didn’t even pay attention or even care for her source material for that statement — it was lunacy at best, and just an out-right, manipulated lie at worse.
Either, it’s a bitch.
And then the obvious biggie — “death panels” for President Obama’s health care plan, coined via her Facebook page in August 2009 — and called by fact-checkers at Polififact as the “Lie of the Year.”
Ms Palin’s response: “The term I used to describe the panel making these decisions should not be taken literally.”
This opened the door to similar Republican bullshit-tossing, becoming a forerunner of sorts — we all remember about this time last year when slip-knot, jerk-ass Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) slobbered out that abortions were “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”
Kyle’s office then tried to trot it back, claiming Kyle’s crap was not spoken to be taken literally: “his remark was not intended to be a factual statement…” and no matter.
And Rick Santorum in February just shit on the Dutch and their euthanasia laws — inflating, exaggerating, creating an impression of a nightmare land where a fairly-good sized portion of Netherlands people are ‘involuntarily‘ euthanized every year.
Despite evidence to the contrary and creating a small shit-storm in the Netherlands, facts or anything else literally doesn’t matter, Rick was just being himself.
Santorum press secretary Alice Stewart when confronted by Dutch TV: “It’s a matter of what’s in his heart. He’s a strong pro-life person.”
Just say anything you want to, just don’t take it as literal reality — the truth is they’re lying.
These people can’t stand up under any kind of scrutiny — Sarah Palin has had only one real press conference, shortly after the 2008 election and: It was a mess.
The interview with Katie Couric a disaster — revealed too much silly, easily-spouted bullshit.
The face of Palin is Facebook.
(An aside: What about social media? Played a major part four years ago — and how about a Facebook election? People voting online — PCMag reveals possible possibilities).
Palin as a runner-up in Time‘s Person of the Year 2008 — although the rag figured it was an achievement, but way-not the way they intended.
Indeed, if Palin was anywhere near Person of the Year, the ensuing time has ironically posed this as reality:
Hardly anyone saw Palin coming.
The newspapers had to tell readers how to pronounce her name.
The culture war had gone quiet but had not gone away: conservatives had been searching for a soul mate for ages, and it sure wasn’t John McCain; the left was primed for a fight that Barack Obama seemed unwilling to wage.
Women, meanwhile, were wondering what comes next: if Hillary Clinton, the wonky workaholic with her legions of fans, could not capture the White House flag, who was next in line?
Palin broke it all open, even before she headed out to conquer what she termed the “pro-America parts” of America.
She arrived at the bonfire with the tinder stacked high, and somehow it fell to her to be the match.
Among a select cast of runners-up to the 2008 Person of the Year (Barack Obama) — Hank Paulson, Nicolas Sarkozy, Zhang Yimou — Palin has remained about the same — an ignorant loud mouth.
From The Dish in September 2008 and a record already public on Palin lying:
I know the MSM demands that we move on from the fact that someone who could be president next January has a list of public lies so extensive and indisputable that the McCain campaign has still not been able to rebut or even address any one of them, while fencing her off from the press and refusing to hold a press conference to clear the air on so many murky questions of fact that get to the core of whether this person is fit to be vice-president or president.
Read the post which has links to all the lying bullshit.
Despite the obvious, Palin can still wring shit out of nothing.
Last week, she once again took to Facebook and literally distorted a proposed Department of Labor regulation on child labor laws on farms, typing ferociously “if you think the government’s new regs will stop at family farms, think again.”
Another factoid lie: The plan specifically excluded children who work on farms owned or operated by their parents.
Despite reality, the Labor Department nixed the plan late last Thursday after a campaign by a shitload of GOP-influenced assholes (not just Palin) caused a minor political stir in an ugly election year, thus the Obama administration caved.
Not a pretty result, however.
Via HuffPost quoting Norma Flores Lopez, a child farm workers’ advocate at the nonprofit Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs:
“We felt that these were commonsense protections that maintained the traditions of family farms and would have saved many kids’ lives.
We’re sad about it,” said Lopez, who herself was a migrant worker as a child.
“All the misinformation being put out there was really misrepresenting what these rules were.
The benefits were overshadowed.
The ones who will be paying for that is kids.”
Politics is politics, however.
Last night, Obama in his sometimes funny remarks at the Nerd Prom also chided Ms Palin and the distorted gossip-news she winks about and proclaims as truth: “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?” Obama asked. “A pit bull is delicious.”
No wonder trust in the so-called ‘press’ has plummeted.
Georgetown political scientist Jonathan Ladd at The Monkey Cage (h/t The Dish):
Party polarization has raised the stakes in elections.
And polarization combined with the growth of partisan media options has created an incentive for party leaders and activists to discredit the mainstream media among their supporters.
Party leaders convince their partisans in the mass public to resist informative messages from the mainstream media and ideologically hostile outlets, and instead rely more on ideologically friendly new outlets.
In doing this, they can help to inoculate their supporters against voting for the other side. Polarization created the incentive for political media criticism, but the changing media industry created the opportunity for it to be effective because there were so many non-mainstream media outlets providing alternative messages.
The GOP has gotten good at that shit, and a consequence is delusion, an attribute Republicans seek: A variety of evidence suggests that those who distrust the media are more resistant to new messages about the state of the country, instead relying on their prior beliefs and partisanship to form their current perceptions.
Boy, are we in a fix.
Power Outage
Filed Under Bullshit, Everything, Politics | Leave a Comment
Early yesterday, we had a couple of power outages — pretty rare up here — and the last one occurred while working on this blog, and no post.
First time during the weekdays for more than 18 months straight — hey, not bad.
And man — when one is so used to light 24/7 dark is really, really dark.
Outside was pitch black of the purest kind and way creepy.
(Illustration found here).
Although power came back on before I left for work, the little time spent in total darkness with just a flashlight bursting the gloom was not fun, and awkward to say the very least.
We are so used to flipping the switch on everything that when there’s no response, humanity nowadays can get really freaked.
And life is going to get more freaked as we move along.
The UK’s Guardian yesterday on a new environmental report from the Royal Society on the next few years:
“The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment.
We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption … or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future”, it says.
…
The authors acknowledge that it would take time and massive political commitment to shift consumption patterns in rich countries, but believe that providing contraception would cost comparatively little.
“To supply all the world’s unmet family planning needs would be $6-7bn a year.
It’s not much.
It’s an extremely good investment, extremely affordable.
To not provide family planning is an infringement of human rights”, said Sulston.
And it’s also the old inequality question:
“The planet has sufficient resources to sustain 9 billion, but we can only ensure a sustainable future for all if we address grossly unequal levels of consumption.
Fairly redistributing the lion’s share of the earth’s resources consumed by the richest 10% would bring development so that infant mortality rates are reduced, many more people are educated and women are empowered to determine their family size – all of which will bring down birth rates,” said an Oxfam spokeswoman.
The rub here, however, is the lack of fight.
President Obama seemed to appear in a Rolling Stone interview to put climate change into the vast dish of just another issue to be dealt with “…in a serious way.”
What!
Via a small snip at Daily Kos:
That there’s a way to do it that is entirely compatible with strong economic growth and job creation — that taking steps, for example, to retrofit buildings all across America with existing technologies will reduce our power usage by 15 or 20 percent.
That’s an achievable goal, and we should be getting started now.
The problem Mr. President is that we should have started yesterday — it’s bullshit if there’s any real seriousness involved here.
Right now there’s no other issue as serious as climate change and why worry about economics when they will be no nothing in a real short time — the shift in how climate slaps mankind in the face.
The reason?
Shit like this:
Humans might not be to blame for the latest piece of news that has caused new concerns about global warming.
A newly-discovered, naturally occuring methane leak over the Arctic Ocean could play a role in future climate change, according to a NASA scientist.
…
“We didn’t expect to see methane being emitted from the remote Arctic Ocean,” he wrote.
According to the researchers, the amount of methane coming from the Arctic Ocean is about as big as the pockets of the gas being released from an ice shelf in Siberia.
In 2010, the National Science Foundation said that the “release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the [Siberian] shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming.”
And then power outages coming way-abrupt, and staying out.
Meanwhile….
HAPPY BIRTHDAY FUNNY, FUNNY LADY
The most-wonderful Carol Burnett is 79 today.
In my humble opinion, the funniest person ever — a lot of people say Lucille Ball, but she didn’t carry the laughter Burnett can and didn’t have the humanity.
Burnett is hilarious just standing there without saying a word.
The closest nowadays is Kristen Wiig, who also can just stand there, do nothing and be so, so-funny.
Burnett covered more than half-century of funny — happy birthday, gal.
(Illustration found here).
Much Ado About…
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Pretty much a fact that Republicans can’t govern worth a shit — three GOP presidents excepted, Abe, Ike and Dick, though the last guy had some major pathological problems — and George Jr. was the worst White House occupant in US history.
The only way that nasty party can even stay alive is by blowing thick bullshit smoke.
And in 2012, it’s the word, War, as in everything.
The GOP has funneled up phony conflicts ad nauseum — however, the shit is on the toilet paper: President Obama and Mitt Romney are only a few percentage points apart in tracking polls, so despite reality, the thick, bullshit smoke seems to be working.
Mainly, maybe there’s a lot of real, real dumb-ass and ignorant US peoples out there.
(illustration found here).
One big phony war that ain’t phony is the slashing on women’s rights through all kinds of legislative and backdoor ways.
And the GOP knows it.
Mitt Romney said last week: “We have work to do to make sure we take our message to the women of America, so they understand how we’re going to get good jobs and we’re going to have a bright economic future for them and for their kids.”
Yeah, right.
Heather Borden Herve asks why women haven’t really come a long way, then answers:
The question isn’t whether Ann Romney ever ‘worked’ a day in her whole life, but: Does her husband Mitt truly give a rat’s ass about anyone—especially women—in the 99 percent?
This made-up battle between working moms and stay-at-home-moms is causing people of every gender to lose focus on more important issues—namely whether politicians are advocating stripping rights from women (like reproductive health choices) or finding ways to penalize them and hold them back (withholding equal pay) or simply having a double standard when it comes to lower- vs. higher-income women (Romney’s welfare mom requirement to work).
…
What I’m looking into is where the candidates stand on the issues I care about — not what jobs their spouses had or didn’t have.
Cutting a lean swath through the war zone, Jezebel opens up the can, touching on all the much-ado bullshit of wars, saving the best and brightest:
In the battle of the political wars, the one that mostly resembles an actual war with fighting and people getting hurt is what graphics behind news anchors’ heads have been calling the War on Women.
Of course, no one’s suggesting that women be subjected to the horror of having to pay higher taxes like Class Warfare, or the indignity of not being allowed to force other people to live lives according to their doctrine like the War on Religion, or the soul-crushing torture and violence of being accused of being a lazy rich lady by a pundit with opposing political views like the War on Conservative Moms.
But the War on Women has given us such gems as a serious debate over whether or not to renew the 12-year-old Violence Against Women Act because it expands protection for gay people and immigrants, and an all-male panel discussing whether or not birth control should be provided to women with bosses who don’t like birth control, and several bans on late-term abortions that would force many women with dangerous or doomed pregnancies to wait until an emergency to take any medical action on the inevitable, and the shuttering of a $30 million program designed to help low-income women get health care because the state of Texas doesn’t want to give money to Planned Parenthood, and state legislators saying that women should avoid divorce when they’re getting beaten by remembering why they fell in love with their husbands (his eyes… and left hook).
People could actually get hurt because of this!
But the bottom is in reality this:
So which war is the best war?
That title goes to a below-the-radar war that you don’t hear much talk about — The War on Facts.
And just maybe this little blurb might help.
Maybe a shift in the financial windfall of wealth:
In a stinging rebuke, Citigroup shareholders rebuffed on Tuesday the bank’s $15 million pay package for its chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, marking the first time that stock owners have united in opposition to outsized compensation at a financial giant.
…
“C.E.O.’s deserve good pay but there’s good pay and there’s obscene pay,” said Brian Wenzinger, a principal at Aronson Johnson Ortiz, a Philadelphia money management company that voted against the pay package.
Mr. Wenzinger’s firm owns more than 5 million shares of Citigroup.
Maybe a war on over-paid assholes.