The view from the Ivory Tower

Normally, I don't link NYT columnists—especially not Paul Krugman—but this piece of shit is such an amazing example of the lack of self-awareness displayed by people living in the MFM bubble that it belongs in a museum, where future generations can laugh at study it.

Barring a huge upset, Republicans will take control of at least one house of Congress next week. How worried should we be by that prospect?

Not very, say some pundits. After all, the last time Republicans controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now?

No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.

Um, could you remind me again which party has had control of the legislative branch of our federal government since the 2006 midterms? I guess there wasn't a whole lot of "political chaos" there, except for the fact that once they really got rolling, they had to pass their major wet-dream legislation through kickbacks and backroom deals, shady procedural maneuvers that nobody had ever heard of, and votes under the cover of darkness, but, hey, I guess shit that you kind of liked got done.

As for economic weakness under a Republican-dominated opposition to Obama's policies, well, you're the Nobel Prize-winning genius who has a column in the NYT and the rest of us don't have jobs, so I guess we'll just have to defer to your superior wisdom. In the mean time, we'll be out collecting bottles and cans.

Krugman goes on to lambaste the poopy-pants Republicans of the mid-90s for the whole government shutdown thing, which was, arguably, bad for both sides. However, he starts that argument with the following:

In the late-1990s, Republicans and Democrats were able to work together on some issues. President Obama seems to believe that the same thing can happen again today. In a recent interview with National Journal, he sounded a conciliatory note, saying that Democrats need to have an “appropriate sense of humility,” and that he would “spend more time building consensus.” Good luck with that.

Um, yeah. The problem lies with congressional Republicans, not President Slurpee Joke. The problem has nothing to do with "I won." The problem has nothing to do with a guy who has no compunction whatsoever about going to an ethnic media outlet and uttering the words "punish your enemies." That's a real consensus-builder right there.

Krugman goes on to talk about how fucking outrageous (my spin on how I think he views it) Mitch McConnell's focus on making sure that Obama is a one-term president (HORRORS! No political party has ever worked to this end!) and then writes one of the goddamn stupidest fucking things ever printed in the history of recent punditry:

True, Mr. McConnell did say that he might be willing to work with Mr. Obama in certain circumstances — namely, if he’s willing to do a “Clintonian back flip,” taking positions that would find more support among Republicans than in his own party. Of course, this would actually hurt Mr. Obama’s chances of re-election — but that’s the point.

As someone recently said to Obama himself: "Dude." The reason anyone other than Krugman, who's seemingly giving himself a visual prostate exam here, would mention a "Clintonian back flip" is that it fucking worked for Clinton. In fact, if McConnell actually suggested it, he's kind of fucking up on that whole "one-term" thing.

Bill Clinton ran as a moderate and then tried to ram a Big Government, leftist agenda down America's throat, and subsequently faced a massive backlash. What did he do? He moved toward the center, and got re-elected. Hey, fancy that.

Barry and Krugman both have Nobels. I once got four gold stars on a crayon drawing of a horsey, and my mom put it up on the fridge. I leave it up to you to determine which is the greater honor.

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:27 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 716 words, total size 5 kb.

There's no such thing as liberal media bias

Nope. Not at all. There's no such donkey animal. I'm totally sure that the juxtaposition of photographs at the top of this Politico article on the Nevada Senate race regarding alleged dirty deeds from the Reid campaign is just a coincidence...



Yeah.

Posted by: Sean M. at 02:42 AM | Comments (25) | Add Comment
Post contains 51 words, total size 1 kb.

Sigh

Really? Are you guys (by which I mean the MFM) still trying to prop this pathetic thing up?

A progressive infusion in US politics, the Coffee Party is brewing a strong counter-movement to the ultra-conservative Tea Party, just a week ahead of the US legislative elections.

Born in January in reaction to the bashing President Barack Obama's proposed health care reform was getting in Congress and the media, the Coffee Party first took shape on Facebook.

I'm not going to even bother to quote any more of the article, which mainly quotes leftist activist Annabel Park talking about how many Facebook friends she has.

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:20 AM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
Post contains 105 words, total size 1 kb.

Everything old is new again

Democrat president who's unpopular going into the midterms? Check.

Pushback against said president's policies, especially on government control of health insurance? Check.

MFM outlet doing a scare-tactic story about wingnut militias who believe in all kinds of Alex Jones-type conspiracies? Check and double-fucking check.

I'm not even going to excerpt this. You're going to have to read it to believe it.

Time should be ashamed for publishing anything so fucking blatantly shitty.

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:06 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 77 words, total size 1 kb.

Sometimes the guilty don't flee even when pursued

Heh.
And this is how I can be allies with social cons.
When Brent Bozell is not talking about the media, he's usually annoying me. But when he talks media, well, he's usually entertaining me.

In today's exciting episode, his Media Research Center is starting a campaign to try to shame Minitru (they don't have any, but I'm rooting for him anyway).
He actually has a bunch of trucks circling the block around a bunch of Minitru outlets in NY and DC with signs telling them to stop lying.
Update: The campaign is not just the trucks, there are TV, intertube and radio ads and billboards. They accept donations.

According to this CNSNews article, it's not just broadcast Minitru outlets but print like the Wash Post and intertubing Minitru tools like Politico and, my personal favorite, they're even circling the Newseum.
For those who don't know, that's a museum about journalists where today's "journalists" can go to pretend they're all brave and smart and stuff. 
I went once with a producer friend of mine. I'll go again when they have exhibits on Walter Duranty and/or Dan Rather and his Microsoft memos from 1972.

Bravo Brent.
H/T chain, Nice Deb to Gateway Pundit (she's before GP on my intertubing) to the CNSNews article, h/t on the MRC link to Veeshir.

Posted by: Veeshir at 08:23 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 227 words, total size 2 kb.

Interesting precedent

Those crazy search suggestions that Google makes can be considered defamatory, at least in France.  Which is making me doubt their status as leaders of the conservative free world.

Next up, George Bush sues for being called a lizard and Barack Obama sues for being called the Muslim antichrist.




And as long as we're discussing random computer crap, do you think Firefox is trying to tell us something by still not including Barack or Obama in its dictionary nearly two years into his term as President?

Posted by: Alice H at 11:48 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

It was thirty years ago today

Jimmah Carter didn't teach the Dems how to play...

“And yet, as I say, there's the sense that you were a failed President.”

They've been going in and (lately) out of style...

But they still make the MFM smile,

And now they've got a new Dem logo brand.

So let me introduce to you...

If you remember all these years...

The Jimmah Carter Fucking Tribute Baaaand!

Biiiiiiiilllllly Beer!

Posted by: Sean M. at 05:20 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 73 words, total size 1 kb.

Katrina 5 years later

So everybody is all excited about Katrina 5 Years Later (dramatic fanfare).
What's absolutely unsurprising is that none of them are recalling all the horrible reportage they did.
From Shep running after some poor deputy sheriff bleating something like "Where's the water? Where's the water?" to hearing about people eating babies that had been killed then raped or something, funeral pyres in the SuperDome built on the bodies of raped women, bloated bodies firing at helicopters and zombies eating ambulance drivers.
Every freaking rumor they heard, they reported.
So here is Jeff Goldstein at his finest relating something that might have happened or might only have been Shep Smith's dream.
Quote
hold the wide-eyed heads of a CNN camera crew and a couple of photogs from the Associated Press—“errand boys,” Smith tells the camera’s blinking red eye, “sent by grocery clerks to collect my Pulitzer.” In his left hand, he holds a microphone, the handle covered in a thick, stringy gore.  With his right hand, he fingers a piece of sharpened aluminum raingutter, folded into a blade and snipped at regular intervals to form a kind of makeshift serrated edge, itself coated in a viscous paste of blood and tendon and spinal fluid.

RTWT
I do every year. It never fails to make me belly laugh.

Posted by: Veeshir at 04:45 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 220 words, total size 1 kb.

RRRAAAAAAAACCCIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSST!!!!!

Posted by: Alice H at 11:31 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 2 words, total size 1 kb.

An exclusive first look at PeeWee's masturbation

I wish I were making this shit up.



I suppose now would be the time to ask if any of you masturbate with your non-dominant hand, but that would probably be over the top.

Posted by: Alice H at 01:58 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 41 words, total size 1 kb.

What literal media?

I was just watching a report on a local newscast (I think it may have actually been from CBS News, since that's who the station is affiliated with, though it's not the actual CBS station in the area) on Defense Secretary Robert Gates' proposal to cut defense spending (link goes to LAT, not the teevee news report I'm talking about), and they had bullet points to illustrate several of his proposals, each of which had a short video clip to accompany it.

One of the things Gates is proposing to cut is "military brass," and they used a clip of...a Marine Corps marching band.

Yes, I think someone who put the video part of the report together thinks that "military brass" = brass bands. Dumbass.

Update: Yup, it's a CBS News video.  I can't figure out a way to embed it, but you can see it here. The part I'm talking about is at about 0:35 into the clip.

Posted by: Sean M. at 11:53 PM | Comments (29) | Add Comment
Post contains 162 words, total size 1 kb.

Major daily newspapers are going broke for some reason

Seriously, Karl Rove must be secretly paying MFM people to write this kind of column. That's the only sane explanation.

Posted by: Sean M. at 01:41 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.

Rate our president!

I'm sure that no one is going to try to skew this CBS poll.

Posted by: Alice H at 01:14 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

New Sunday Feature: Connections

A documentary series by historian James Burke, "Connections" attempted to explain how various historical events and personalities led to discoveries that built off each other to bring about the modern world. Since the series originally ran in 1978 some of the material is a little dated but it is still one of the most interesting programs to have been aired on TV in my opinion. Fortunately James Burke has placed the entire series on YouTube (as well as the two follow on series).

Episode One: "The Trigger Effect" details the world’s present dependence on complex technological networks through a detailed narrative of New York City and the power blackout of 1965. Agricultural technology is traced to its origins in ancient Egypt and the invention of the plow. The segment ends in Kuwait where, because of oil, society leapt from traditional patterns to advanced technology in a period of only about 30 years.

I am only embedding the first portion of each episode the entire playlist for the episode is here.

The complete series is available from Amazon

(Disclosure: The link goes to my Amazon Associates account)

Posted by: chad98036 at 06:33 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 190 words, total size 2 kb.

Greg Sargent, allow me to introduce you to David Shuster

Greg Sargent of WaPo is convinced that only the right is capable of pushing information through the media, with a political agenda and without regard to factual integrity.

Right wing media are willing to engage in tactics that simply have no equivalent on the left -- even if mainstream news orgs and commentators keep taking refuge behind the notion that "both sides do it."
...
The leading lefty media organizations have teams of reporters who -- even if they are to some degree ideologically motivated -- work to determine whether their material is accurate, fair, and generally based in reality before sharing it with readers and viewers. They just don't push info -- with no regard to whether it's true or not -- for the sole purpose of having maximum political impact. Period.

Well, I can quickly call BS on this one.

Enter David Shuster, formerly of MSNBC, who in his attempt for glory in a "gotcha" moment with Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), stated falsely the location of a soldier who lost his life in the war. His efforts were clearly to have a political impact, by embarrassing a Republican elected official on national television. Shuster wanted a Republican to condemn the actions of a conservative talk show host. And in order to point to "hypocrisy", he demanded she name the last soldier from her district, who died in Iraq. Of course, he didn't fact check and was forced to issue an apology for being wrong about the name of the soldier and the district. He completely used the death of a young hero to achieve his goal. He cared not for the family of the young soldier or anyone else who might have been hurt in the process. Shuster used an innocent victim as a pawn for the sole purpose of political gain. Shuster wasn't a blogger or an activist. He was a cable television news reporter and anchor.

Ouch, that log in Sargent's eye must really be hurting by this time.

Sargent published his biased opinions full of tripe, without fact-checking to see if the mainstream media is guilty of the exact behavior he condemns. So I suggest Mr. Sargent take those rose-colored liberal glasses off and STFU from the cheap, pious seats. Period.

Posted by: conservativebelle at 01:50 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 386 words, total size 3 kb.

Dear Newsweek: Please go bankrupt faster

Okay, so Newsweek's got they're "It's time to have a serious discussion on race," article here. 

Uh, how about we not have a serious discussion about race, we don't need one, other than discussing the fact that liberals and MSM operations like Newsweek can't help themselves but demagogue the right and call us racist over every opposing viewpoint we offer.   Not once in that entire article do they mention the fact that this was a retaliation against the NAACP for their move to slander Tea Partiers by declaring them all racist, or that Breitbart's focus was as much on the crowd cheering Sherrod declaring she was gonna screw some evil whitey farmer when he did that post.  They offer this bit of literary diarrhea as well,

The American public, meanwhile, was left to wonder what the moral of this tale really is. For starters, it’s about the idiocy that can follow when ideology replaces journalistic integrity. Real journalists draw conclusions from facts. The ideologues who attacked Sherrod forced facts to fit their preconceived notions.

Yes, it's all about facts, sorta like CBS using fucking Media Matters as their source to "debunk" concerns over the two club-wielding Black Panther fucktards at the Philly polling center.  But of course, CBS is a respectable news organization, not some partisan muckraker hack like that damnable Breitbart.  Spare me the self-righteous fucking bullshit about drawing conclusion from fact.

I'm tired of the fucking handwringers on our side on this issue, and I'm really superfuckingtired of the media's bullshit high and mighty act.  You fuckers in media pull this shit on us on a daily basis, then have the audacity to bitch when Breitbart (sorta) does it once?  Fuck you.  Fuck you with a rusty chainsaw, sideways. 

And another thing, all you handwringers on the right, now that Sherrod has come out and accused Breitbart of wanting to reinstitute slavery, feeling stupid yet?  You should be.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 10:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 326 words, total size 2 kb.

Let me think. No.

Kathleen Parker. Sooper. Genius.

Hey Katie, I can call you Katie, right, I have a wee little question for you.  Were you on Journolist?  Because I'm thinking you were.  Also?  Fuck you. 

Posted by: alexthechick at 10:57 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 36 words, total size 1 kb.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

I'm not a fan of extreme sports or adventure tourism or any kind of vacation, really, that doesn't involve sitting indoors, drinking cocktails and basking under a roaring air conditioning vent, but I certainly don't consider foaming at the mouth on (I guess, kinda) national television a healthy or relaxing vacation activity.

Posted by: Sean M. at 12:50 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.

Notable quotables

Eventually, there were enough Indians in Edison to change the culture. At which point my townsfolk started calling the new Edisonians "dot heads." One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to "go home to India." In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if "dot heads" was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose.

Who said it? If you guessed Pat Buchanan or Joe Biden, I wouldn't blame you, but you'd still be wrong. Which MFM outlet published it—and apparently has not a single editor who would say "What the fuck are you thinking?" before someone published it? Click here to find out!

(h/t Darleen.)

Posted by: Sean M. at 01:19 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 133 words, total size 1 kb.

Your tax dollars at work

Los Angeles-area PBS station KLCS (which is, shockingly, associated with the L.A. Unified School District) is running "news" reports from the far-left show "Democracy NOW!"

Not that I believe that it would make a damn bit of difference, but here is where you can contact the Corporation For Public Broadcasting.  And here is the link to their "ombudsmen."

Posted by: Sean M. at 01:29 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.