July 29, 2010

Stupid Is As Stupid Votes

It is fitting that on the day that The Howard Stern Show reveals the results of its I.Q. challenge (and it's neo-conservative douchebag Scott Depace by a point) that E.J. Dionnemustard asks:
Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?
Poor, unfortunate nail. You've been hit square on the head by Mr. Dionne. Go read it here. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Leftblogistan: Newshoggers on the bleak job market. Tom Tomorrow's Bizarro World looks mighty familiar... Russell King writes "an open letter to conservatives" that is so comprehensive that we may consider linking to it as a permanent resource. Yet another open letter from BlondeSense. Good news: Shirley's going to sue The Scum Breitbart. Alicia Morgan faces the Grayson. Rude Pundit spies a billboard...Kingfish is alive and well in sunny Louisiana. China's Growing Pains Want to know how obsessive tax cuts can affect an entity's finances? Look no further than Arizona.

July 27, 2010

Would the ADA Pass Today?

Jonathan Cohn asks this question in the New Republic. I says hell no it wouldn't. Cohn notes that the Act passed the Senate in July 1990 with a comfortable margin, passed the House on a fully unanimous voice vote, and was gladly signed by President George H.W. Bush. Can you imagine the rhetoric that would be employed to defeat it today? It would probably be pinned as a Commie-nist plot. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "Conservatives" are no longer conservatives. Barry Goldwater would have been tied up and body surfed out of the 2008 Republigloat Convention, and, as much as they uttered his name in reverence, Ronnie Raygun would be made to sit in a corner wearing a funny hat. These people are not conservatives. They are Bizarro-Utopian Anarchists.

The Bottom Line On Racism

I just wanna say this because it boggles my mind. Racism is more than just one guy calling another guy a bad name because of his hue. Racism is the power that insult hurled has because of the history and because of the institutionalization that makes that power possible. Racism is 400 years of black people allowed to be owned and another 100 years of black people allowed to be sorely mistreated. It's a society that would not allow black people to learn how to read, to dine with the rest of us, to worship with the rest of us, to live with the rest of us. These conditions did not happen between individual people. These conditions happened because powerful institutions colluded to make it so, on purpose. So here's the fact that I wish all people could understand about racism: Black people cannot be racists. Let me say this again in another way so that you might understand it better: If you are a black person in this country, you cannot possibly be a racist. Because when white people mount up with the armor of racism, it's a powerful mace indeed that they grasp, and it's one that no African-American can even reach out to touch. Sorry, white people, but "honky" just isn't drenched with hundreds of years of oppression and terror like that other word is. So. The next time you hear Buchanan or any of these other jive turkeys on the television, and they're accusing Shirley Sherrod—whom I am officially applying today to adopt as my third Grandma—or the NAACP or the Rev. Al Sharpton or whomever of being a "racist?" They're putting their stupid white foot into their stupid white mouth.

July 26, 2010

Profiles in Courage?

Recently one of the more familiar NPR voices whose name I can't remember honored Dan Schorr as a "courageous cranky monument to a courageous cranky profession. " I will give them that Dan Schorr was courageous and cranky and a monument to what journalism should be. Dan Schorr was hated by Noxin, shut out of Russia by Khrushchev, fired by CBS for leaking a document that CBS would not allow him to report about. His contract with CNN included a clause saying the company would not interfere with his reporting, and CNN put him aside and let the contract expire when they figured out what he really meant by that. Dan Schorr was courageous and cranky and a true hero to anyone who believes the Fourth Estate should be something more than a political tool or a trivial entertainment. Courageous and cranky. I will not give the shills at NPR the right to take the title for themselves or for any other journalist who has not specifically earned it… and there are damned few of them. Rachel Maddow, Ellen Smith, Helen Thomas, Eugene Robinson. The McClatchy newspapers deserve some credit for not caving in to common wisdom on Busch's phony Iraq war. There may be other honest and upright journalists out there, but they are rare. For every Dan Schorr there are a thousand Judith Miller's, willing to sell their soul to the high and mighty for an opportunity to get a front page byline and a mention on 60 minutes. Lies and deceit and bullshit bought and sold by the media have accounted for much of what might rightly be considered our decline. The Whitewater fraud could have been uncovered and exposed. Lazy reporters preferred to take crap they were fed and report it as gospel, even if it made no sense on its face. The real scandal of the Lewinski saga was not that the president got a blow job in his closet but that it was a part of a "vast right wing conspiracy" that was determined to cripple and destroy if possible a moderate presidency. It goes without saying that the fools in the press never seriously questioned the "elections" of The Moron George W. George Busch, never held Congress' feet to the fire on investigating his crimes, and only when it was so obvious the television camera could not miss it was there any serious discussion of his gross incompetence. No member of the Fourth Estate raised any fuss when one of their own bloviators built his reputation and his career on hatred of immigrants, even though most of his claims were false or wildly exaggerated. Bob Woodward wrote two worshipful books about The Moron before he discovered the winds of conventional wisdom were changing and wrote a third to correct the record. Although most press outlets have begun to admit up front that the President's Birth Certificate is real, many still maintain that there is a genuine issue raised there. The Press stood by and watched a brilliant and capable leader, Van Jones, get railroaded out of office by the right wing lie machine. Not one journalist ever investigated the record and came to his defense (neither did the Obama Administration.) The press always found false claims of voter fraud to be reasonable, especially when ACORN was involved, and accepted at face value Andrew Brightfart's lies about that most valuable and innocent organization. Now we have the spectacle of another of Brightfart's lies being accepted from coast to coast and costing an honorable public servant her job, all without a modicum of skepticism from the news media. Courageous my ass! Cowards and whores and mountebanks have only the courage of their ambition.

July 22, 2010

Watch and Laugh



A Special Special Comment

For a long time, our man Keith did everything he could to wear out his signature bit, the "special comment." I suspect that his handlers were impressed with the ratings they bore and egged him on, to the point where for a while he was making a nightly "quick comment." Either at that point, or at the point where he dedicated an entire hour to a "special comment" on health care reform, or at the point where it was nearly successfully lampooned by Ben Afleck on Saturday Night Live, the thing really jumped the shark. You've got to remember how awesome the original Special Comment was. We were in the throes of the stupidest war ever. And the Secretary of God-Damned Defense had just come out and said that anyone who disagreed with the administration's stance on this stupid war was somehow um, morally or intellectually confused. Keith tore the living hell out of that, and a star was born. Luckily, the K-Man has given the Special Comment a bit of a respite as of late, at least comparatively. That is the right move. That "Special Comment" logo should only be dragged out when you've written something truly inspiring about something that's truly and legitimately pissed you off, brother. How to tell when that occurs? You'll know it when you've written it. Like last night. I was concerned when the man started by comparing this Shirley Sherrod thing to the Dreyfus Affair. But man what the hell happened after that was really something. In case you missed it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

He tears Fox "News" a new asshole of course, though he isn't dishonest about the thing; he agrees that media in general failed on the Sherrod incident. He also rips into the White House, as they deserve. The killer is the ending, which I'm not giving away for you. It's lovely. And of course, Howard K. Kurtz is in the fucking Washington Post today inexplicably apologizing for Fox "News." Kurtz claims that Fox "News" actually did its homework on this thing actually actually. Howie. Baby. We've seen the tape dude. Does Murdock sign your checks as well?

July 21, 2010

Nip It In The Bud, Bud

A lot of liberals are coming down pretty hard on the White House for its knee-jerk response to the Shirley Sherrod story. I agree with the criticism to a large extent. But I think the critiques do not consider a certain specific perspective. This is a President who was a candidate who in both capacities has seen too often the deleterious effect of a negative story that sprouts legs and walks on its own. The Rev. Wright story. The health care reform town halls. ACORN. This is also a White House that may be running on fumes regarding its own momentum, and yet one with a still ambitious political agenda. It may very well be a White House that doesn't want another damned story to sprout legs and start boogyin'. Little did the Administration know that at mid-afternoon, the tide would change completely on this story, that the farmers Sherrod helped all those years ago would do the decent thing and come swiftly to her defense. Who could have guessed such a thing would have happened? By day's end, all the air had been sucked out of that sucker and Ms. Sherrod was sitting pretty. Yes, for sure, the White House's reflex when it comes to this thing has become absurdly well-honed. The President's staff would do better when this shit hits the fan to take a step back and consider the source. Andrew Breitbart is not a legitimate news source and he probably farts a lot, and a ten minute Google search might have saved them the embarrassment of having to resolve things with Ms. Sherrod now. (Because they do have to do that now.) But. I can certainly understand the impulse. By the way. Three cheers to The Washington Post for successfully burying this story's lead all the way to friggin' China in this morning's edition. The story's resolution; the full context of Sherrod's story and the Spooners' dash to her defense, should have led that story, you numb-nuts, instead of appearing way in the last paragraphs. Shame on ya.

FUTA

At 3:15, Congressman Grayson at last says what I previously said needs said. Senate Republigoats AND BEN NELSON fought long and hard to withhold munny from you that you've already paid in. Once again, Grayson kicks ass and takes names.

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July 20, 2010

Unemployment Insurance

Here's what I don't understand about what's not being said regarding the Senate's asshole behavior on the unemployment extention. If you work, your employer is required to pay state and federal payroll taxes into unemployment on your behalf. This expense is based on your earnings. These benefits are included as part of your gross income for consideration by the Internal Revenue Service. We're not talking about handouts when we're talking about unemployment insurance. We're talking about a legitimate benefit that people pay for through their working lives. The Senate is denying people a benefit they've already paid for. These assholes are stealing from you. Again. Dig? Why isn't anyone saying this, anyway?

July 19, 2010

Stole This From Twitter.

Prudence Palin was just kidding when she used the word "refudiate" in a sentence. She has a wonderful self-defecating sense of humor.

Bloated

I have to say, it really is something when you figure out that the ombudsman to one of the most prestigious newspapers in America is a god-damned liar. In Sunday's edition of The Washington Post, Andrew Alexander chided the paper for its alleged "silence" regarding this idiotic story about these "new black panther" idiots. Here's what Alexander reported in his column:
The story has its origins on Election Day in 2008, when two members of the New Black Panther Party stood in front of a Philadelphia polling place. YouTube video of the men, now viewed nearly 1.5 million times, shows both wearing paramilitary clothing. One carried a nightstick. Early last year, just before the Bush administration left office, the Justice Department filed a voter-intimidation lawsuit against the men, the New Black Panther Party and its chairman. But several months later, with the government poised to win by default because the defendants didn't contest the suit, the Obama Justice Department decided the case was over-charged and narrowed it to the man with the nightstick. It secured only a narrow injunction forbidding him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of Philadelphia polling places through 2012.
BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENED. The decision not to pursue the case was made under the administration of GORGE DUBYA BUSCH. As Adam Serwer points out: "This means that the case was downgraded to a civil case 11 days before Obama was inaugurated, 26 days before Eric Holder became attorney general, and about nine months before Thomas Perez was confirmed as head of the Civil Rights Division." We're gonna have to start keeping an eye on the ombudsman at the Washington Post. I suspect he's taken the suppository right up his ass.

What About the New Black Panther Lawsuit

There is a lot of misinformation about the fact that the Justice Department dropped charges of voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party. This story spins well for the GOOP, so you might expect a lot of lying bullshit to surround the issue. Surprisingly, the GOOP is stronger on the facts in this case than it usually is, but that does not mean the GOOP is right. Here are the facts. On January 7, 2009, less than three weeks before the Busch era finally skulked its way out of power, the Justice Department brought charges against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members. They were charged with intimidating voters by hanging out at a polling place wearing uniforms. One of them was carrying a nightstick. It is important to note that the precinct in question was a black precinct that had always voted for Democrats and the pretence of the NBPP was that they were there to prevent voter intimidation. It is also worth noting that thhis is the first voter intimidation law suit brought by the Busch Civil Rights Division in eight years despite substantial evidence of voter intimidation in the 2006 and 2004 elections. In all these cases the voters being intimidated were black and the people doing the intimidation were GOOP poll watchers. (The principal focus of the Civil Rights Division during the Busch years was protecting the rights of Evangelical Christians.) On May 15, the DOJ dropped charges against the NBPP and two of the defendants, and brought charges only against the guy carrying the nightstick. Thus, on its face, the GOOP is right. Charges were dropped. That's where the story ends. The fact is that there were no intimidated voters and no actual evidence except the fact that one guy was carrying a weapon at the polls. From a strictly legal standpoint, it was probably not worth the DOJ's time. From a political viewpoint, however, dropping the case was stupid. It was a small matter to pursue it and let the process weed out the lack of evidence and poor facts. The current flap, which is giving the GOOP and its allies in the stupid press a field day, is not necessary. Dropping the charges reinforces the racist fears of the right wing base and gives pause to the stupid independent center, which is as likely to be guided by ancient fears as current thinking. And speaking of screwing up the facts, Keith Olberman reported that the Busch Justice Department had dropped the charges on January 9. I don't know where he got his facts, but a quick trip to the DOJ website revealed that is not the case. I nearly wrote this article entire based on Olbermann's reporting, but the Washington Post's article Sunday, about the failure of the straight press to cover the story, made me do my homework. Olbermann should work harder to get his facts straight, and, while I am usually skeptical of Keith's blather, in the future I will also be more skeptical of his reporting.

July 12, 2010

Hemmed In

The Washington Post today offers yet another reason why media writer Howard Kurtz is, for the most part, useless. Kurtz today spotlights comedian Bill Hemmer, who plays an "anchor" for Fox "News" and previously worked for the Cable "News" Network. Kurtz attempts to provide insight into Hemmer's role at Fox "News." But Kurtz' column simply lets Hemmer spout the Fox "News" party line bullshit and pretty much lets him get away with it. It ledes:
Bill Hemmer, a middle-of-the-road guy from the middle of the country, sees himself as the straightest of straight arrows when it comes to news. "The opinion-makers on our channel have enormous talent," he says in his Fox News office in midtown. "I deal in facts. I deal in evidence. And opinion, frankly, is not my comfort zone. Opinion news is something I'm not good at. It is in the DNA of certain individuals. I'm not one of them."
Kurtz gives Hemmer a pass despite his and his network's insistence on relying almost entirely on "conservative" (damn I have to use a lot of scare quotes when I write about these assholes) guests. He quothes:
"If the booking leans one way, it's the responsibility and duty of me as the host, the presenter, the interviewer, to make sure the topic is evenly treated," Hemmer says.
Ha-ha! Later in the column, Kurtz writes, UNATTRIBUTED:
Despite the guest lineup, Hemmer, 45, takes a generally balanced approach, a style he honed in his native Cincinnati and during 10 years at CNN. After joining Fox as a daytime anchor in 2005, he was paired in the morning with rising star Megyn Kelly; when Kelly got her own 1 p.m. show in February, Martha MacCallum became Hemmer's co-host.
Later, Kurtz gets down on his damned knees. Note again the lack of attribution:
With his infectious grin and golly-gee demeanor, Hemmer exudes boyish enthusiasm both on and off the air. He is quick to sing the praises of his network, his colleagues, Chairman Roger Ailes (a fellow Ohioan), even the Sixth Avenue lobby for its mix of visitors. Has he ever said anything on the air that he regrets? "Knock wood, I think I've been lucky to, as my mother would say, be careful before you speak," says Hemmer, his eyes occasionally wandering to his four television monitors in what he admits is a Pavlovian response.
Yep. Bill Hemmer reports right down the middle, all right:
A turning point, in Hemmer's view, came during the health care debate in the summer of 2009: "We covered those town-hall meetings with greater vigor than our competition, and we were rewarded with viewers. It was better television." ... Another view is that Fox seized upon the footage of angry constituents shouting at Democratic members of Congress because it undermined the president's health-care push. Hemmer begs to differ. "I don't think it was anger toward the Obama administration," he says. "It was an honest insecurity on the part of average Americans." ... Hemmer also feels strongly about federal spending, a constant topic on the show. "The deficit is staggering," he says. His lead-off commentator is often Fox business anchor Stuart Varney, who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize the administration's fiscal policies...
Yep, he's one fair and balanced dude all right. A few days ago, I made light of the fact that Glenn Beck, who is one of that network's most popular opinion leaders, is not aware somehow that C-SPAN is basically a child of the '80s (a quick Internet search reveals that the first C-SPAN transmission was a floor speech by Congressman Al Gore on March 19, 1979). But I think Beck's tremendous error belies a grander problem with Beck, his network, and by association, Hemmer. This is a network that is culturally ignorant of even the most basic knowledge regarding current events, civics, and history. A guy who is unaware that in 1964 TV cameras in the legislature were more than a decade away should not be a major opinion leader in America, and the network that doesn't pull his broadcast off the air immediately should not have "news" anywhere in its moniker. But this is what happens when you decide that media is just another fucking commodity to be bought sold and traded.

Are We All Bozos On This Bus II

We believe ourselves to be a meritocracy. We have for the most part made merit, as measured by test scores and academic performance, the key to every career-making decision at every level. In theory, our government and our universities and our corporations are be led by the best and the brightest. So why are we beset by incompetence? Would we expect that the smartest guys in the room would fail to notice that Bernie Madeoff was bilking thousands of investors out of billions of dollars with a scheme as old as…. Ponzi? What kind of moron would conclude that the appropriate response to a terrorist attack by a small band of radical Islamists was to invade the only non-religious country in the Middle East? Why, when alternative technologies have existed for decades, would we continue to design our lives around a carbon-based energy economy? And finally, how is it that no one in the universe could have foreseen that if you are drilling for oil a mile below the ocean's surface you might one day have a blow out? Wouldn't some smart guy at least have done some research to figure out how to fix the problem before the problem actually happened? However the world ends, whether by fire or ice or oxygen deprivation or famine, it will have been caused by incompetent smart guys.

July 11, 2010

More Idiocy From Fox 'News'

Mickey Spillane's son has died after falling from the sixth floor of his apartment building. In other news, Fox "News" thinks that Mickey Spillane was an "infamous monster." Here's the screen shot to prove that I am not making this up: And yet, there are still people who receive the majority of their current events information and, indeed, a good deal of their historical background and civics lessons, from this shoddy "news" organization. I made fairly light the other day of Glenn Beck's weird and quite serious insistence that it was somehow conspiratorial that there's no tape of the late Sen. Robert Byrd filibustering the Civil Rights Act. You've seen the tape, folks. He's not kidding. But the fact is that Beck and his cronies at Fox "News" are constantly exposing themselves as people who don't even have a handle on the most rudimentary concepts in historical matters and civics. If you sincerely don't know that C-SPAN is a fairly recent phenomenon, then you have no business being an information leader on the complex and difficult issues that comprise public policy. None. And yet, many such "leaders" reside over at Fox "News," where they think that one of the great American authors, whose stories and lead character were quite visibly produced as network television during the late 1950s and in the mid-1980s, they have now categorically stated that Mickey Spillane was an "infamous mobster." For fucking gravity's sake, Spillane became a Jehovah's Witness in 1951. Mobster? This is where you get your news from? Really?

July 8, 2010

The Stupidest Thing Ever Said Has Finally Been Said

Like Glenn Beck, I am nonplussed that, no matter how hard I search on YouTube and Google and the vast B-Roll archives we maintain here at the imaginary think-tank Crack Whores for Good Government, I cannot find any footage of Sen. Robert Byrd filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's an outrage. Someone should invent a time machine and go back to 1964 and force a television camera into those proceedings. Damnit Jim! I hereby RETIRE the "If It Weren't For My Horse" category here at KIAV. It's useless now. I'm bleeding out my damned nose, Lewis! There goes my friggin' aneurysm! GLENN BECK HAS AT LONG LAST SAID THE STUPIDEST THING THAT CAN EVER BE SAID. "If It Weren't For My Horse" lives and breathes; it is no longer Lewis Black's second-hand news. It's like on the one hand, there's Einstein writing "E=MC(2)" on a blackboard, and, on the other hand, BOOOOOM!

July 1, 2010

Meyerson's Got It

Spotted today in sunny Georgetown: The Rev. Al Sharpton, in front of Barnes & Noble, talking on his cell phone. Sometimes, living in this city can lead to good sightings indeed. Anyway, I think everyone in America today should read Harold Meyerson's column. He's got it exactly right:
Germany and China don't have a lot in common. Germany has a mature economy and is a stultifyingly stable democracy. China has a rising economy and remains disturbingly authoritarian. What sets them apart from the world's other major powers, purely and simply, is manufacturing. Their predominantly industrial economies meet their own needs and those of other nations, and have made them flourish while others flounder.
I would only add this to his thoughts of today regarding the importance of manufacturing and this country's gleeful willingness to toss it out with the baby and the bathwater: Manufacturing is, by definition, creating wealth. It is the process by which you take an otherwise useless raw material and convert it into something that people want to buy. A country that does not work at retaining its manufacturing sector does not work at retaining the economic sector which quite literally creates real wealth. We have been entirely too eager to sell out this vital portion of our national infrastructure. Read Meyerson today. It's damned good.