Elections

[Disclosure: I dropped a day’s pay on Obama’s campaign about a week before the pastor thing happened, and hope I never feel compelled to write about this election again.] Matt Taibbi is (as usual, and in spite of his ridiculous humping of Hunter Thompson’s legacy) repeatedly correct in his assessment of American politics as a […]

Four Stages of a Media Event

How is it that I don’t even own a television and I know what the Mooninites are? (Well, I couldn’t remember their names before reading it, but I knew what they were and where the reference came from). I think the whole situation is really an emotional onion. First there’s the laughter when you realize […]

President Batman

A friend of mine IM’d me an article ostensibly about how Russia is tragically under the (now-former) KGB’s thumb again. Yes, yes, we all know Putin is a dirty bastard who should never be in charge of anything more involved than [insert menial civil-service gig here]. And the more media-savvy (ahem) will figure out that […]

Cynicsm for Fun and Profit

Glenn Greenwald is discussing the stunning hypocrisy of Republicans, as they decry the viciously partisan Democrats for outing a gay Republican—ostensibly because dragging personal sexual conduct into politics will drive good people from governance. Color me cynical, but why is this such a shock? This is the same crowd that spent a large chunk of […]

Sanity Has Left The Building

It’s actually pretty amazing how crazy TV has gotten since I stopped watching it. Obviously, I can’t know for certain how crazy it is, since I don’t own one, but I read bloggers talk about ABC putting on shows about “how soon is the apocalypse,” and supposedly some CNN anchor was recycling bullshit from WorldNetDaily […]

Allen vs. Webb

So I’m listening to an older clip from CNN, and I have to say this. To ask George Allen whether he is Jewish or not is a scumbag question. The “he’s just a celebrity” excuse is lamentably lame, and I for one got the impression that Arianna Huffington would just as soon the person who […]

Suckered

Yep, I was fooled. No homoerotic missile-on-missile action. No death from above. The paranoid, cynical, haven’t-slept-in-a-week side of me thinks the stories were planted as part of a last-ditch effort to frighten the North Korean government into calling off the test (for technical reasons, naturally). Of course, that side of me also thought they were […]

No Santa

I started writing this post to point out that the coordinated demands by virtually every major nutcase over the New York Times’ revealing the data-mining of banking records via SWIFT—the calls for execution, harassment, lynching, etc.—was a clear indication that Karl Rove is no longer a target of Fitzgerald’s investigation. The much-vaunted “Fitzmas” is over, […]

Kabuki Dance

Friday, on the way home from work, I figured the U.S. would try to shoot down the North Korean missile test. The NPR story mentioned that possible outcome, and they wouldn’t do so unless one of their sources mentioned it. Further, since the sources for this story would come from the foreign policy establishment, AKA […]

Two-Minutes Hät

Targeting America in Iraq in terms of economy and losses in life is a golden and unique opportunity. Do not waste it only to regret it later.Osama bin Laden, December, 2004. (via A Tiny Revolution) Whatever one can say about Osama bin-Laden, he is not stupid. He is smart enough to understand that the U.S. […]

You say "MSM", I say "Corporate Press"

A few days ago, I watched a clip from an episode of The Propagandist on CNN (the actual title is something archetypally boring, of course: “Live From“), I see them suggesting that Wikipedia begin “screening” it’s contributors and paying fact-checkers, lest the Government Do It For Them. It was like I was in a time […]