W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=1306

Interesting site that really takes the media to task. You may have heard that ABC TV is going to do a special about the President's
Healthcare initiative? So immediately, FOXnews spokespeople, the Republican National Party, Karl Rove, etc. start screaming "Glorified Infomercial" and that there has never been this horrible misuse of the media by an administration ever before -- !?!! Sean Hannity states "It is the death of journalism!" [Despise that stupid Hannity.]

Batsh*t crazy, they are.

They horribly abused the notion of journalism themselves with Faux FOXNews coverage and special shows. This page has just a few excerpts of Bush and Cheney's special TV shows, on FOX stations, which played for the past 8 years.

When people can act SO VERY blind and ignorant, and expect that we have no memory or clips to replay or documented evidence, it makes me wonder about human beings in general. Are they lying? Are they just crazy people who don't see what they don't want to see?

O'course, I believe the phrase "FOX News" is an oxymoron, have for years. But even discounting them as I do, the crazy crazy commentators they have on there yakking about insane issues they have with the current administration and with Democrats, not using even half their tiny pea-brains to come up with logical arguments... well. They've sunk to such depths even jaundiced eyes must stare in disbelief.

So President Obama is taking them with a grain of salt, ha! When questioned by a reporter recently whether he thought the media was being "too easy" on him, he said one entire news station was entirely devoted to attacking his administration. So, no, he doesn't think he has it easy.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/17/obama-takes-aim-at-fox-news/

A very good perspective on the awful ruling by the Calif Supreme Court upholding Calif's ban on gay marriages.... I'm also seeing that the youth of today are really changing voting patterns and politics, yay!

---

The big gay shrug
Sorry, enemies of gay marriage. Prop 8 or no, you've already lost
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/05/27/notes052709.dtl>

Here's a fun thing to do to calm your frazzled, saddened nerves in the wake of the CA Supreme Court's very unfortunate, but also merely annoying and karmically fleeting Proposition 8 decision:

Head on down to your local high school -- hell, make it a junior high or even an elementary -- and take yourself an informal survey. Ask the various wary, bepimpled youth of Generation Tweet what they think about those scary gay people getting married.

Ask them, in your most panicky, alarmist, Mormonified voice: Aren't they horrified at the very idea? Aren't they shocked at the very thought of two people in love having their union officially recognized and validated by the state?

Don't they know the musty ol' Bible mutters some barely coherent, mistranslated silliness about it in a single word or two written 1,500 years ago in a long dead language by acidic church elders with powermad political agendas and violently repressed libidos who nevertheless wish to instruct us all how to live and love and screw?

Please note the response. Please observe how the kids merely look at you as though you're more than a little bit deranged and prehistoric, so out of touch you might as well be Dick Cheney talking up the diesel-powered rectal thermometers he so loved back in World War I.

Watch carefully as they sigh and roll their eyes, then whip out their Nokias to text their friends about how this creepy elder just tried to convince them that the harmless, yawningly commonplace homosexuality currently saturating the popular culture all around them, from fashion to Facebook, movies to "American Idol," is not only wrong, but so wrong that the law should ban it forever because... well, no one really seems to know exactly why.

[go to Website for the rest]

Hey, didja hear? Americans are MAD over the taxes they'll pay! We've had tea-parties and other protests organized all across the U.S. today on tax day...

Only the media isn't particularly jumping up to tell you who/where/why these are happening. For one thing, taxes are trending down for the ordinary (as in, not wealthy) American. Withholding in paychecks was just reduced so most of us are seeing more $$ on our paychecks.

So what's the beef? Here's some background I did find in U.S. News:

The tea parties were promoted by FreedomWorks, a conservative nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington and led by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, a lobbyist whose corporate clients including Verizon, Raytheon, liquor maker Diageo, CarMax and drug company Sanofi Pasteur.

The group's federal tax returns show its educational and charitable arms received more than $6 million in donations in 2007, the most recent year for which returns are available.

And of course, conservative Republicans are jumping on this to try to derail Obama's financial crisis plans. I for one am not marching anywhere with those Repug wackadoodles. Dick Armey is extremely slimy; I'm so sad he's associated with the great state of Texas. Sadly, the media mostly continues to bleat the conservative party line positions. Hah, but when Americans are polled, the President's approval rating stays high. That says to me we've quit believing what we read in news.

Update: Today's protesters had a 100-200 person march alongside our building at close of business to rally at the City Hall. Clogged up the traffic for the working folks trying to get home. I expect the local TV stations will report that "thousands marched" but my co-workers and I watched them from our big windows at 2nd and Cesar Chavez and do not believe the inflated hype.

Another Update: Today, 24 hours later, it's gratifying that many of the articles covering the events have made it clear that they were orchestrated by conservative Republican groups, FoxNews and Dick Armey. Often you read that the reason for the high U.S. debt is an inheritance from the previous administration. Color me pleasantly suprised!

I didn't realize Jay Smooth, videoblogger with www.illdoctrine.com, was coming to SxSW. But here's an interview on YouTube with him. He's fascinating to listen to. He's passionate about his music (hip-hop) and brings into his communications politics, generational issues, domestic violence, racial politics, media, .... Plus, he's the person I've based a key character on in my planned supernatural mystery novel: No-Dog Jenkins, hip-hop entrepreneur of Austin.


For a good, recent example of the awesome wisdom of the man, go hear him discuss his feelings about patriotism, racism and optimism on the day of Obama's inauguration.

Free music in Austin! I quit work at 5pm today and dined downstairs (like, in our own office building which has totally been built out now with restaraunts and retail) at Mama Fu's with NC's friends. Then we walked across the bridge to auditorium shores for the free SxSW concert. Up first: Bob Schneider! I love me some BobS, but I didn't actually get to see him. Heard the last few songs of his set as I stood in/near the long long loooooong line to get through security. So long that it wrapped around the side of the concert area and came halfway up Drake Street bridge!

Yeah, so I bailed once Bob was done, missing Raul Malo, the Arc Angels, etc. It was a long, exhausting week for me made extra awful by oak pollens that make me feel so slow, headachy and weepy. However, a shout-out to the weather gods who gave us dreamy warm weather in time for the festival. 80s and sunny, y'all!

There was a free SxSW concert on auditorium shores last night too, but I'd committed to doing the ASG Work Group meeting, held in a member's home north of Austin instead of Dominican Joe's, which was overrun with tourists. It was nice to see Kathy's lovely home in Pflugerville, but OMG. That was such a wasted evening. I think I gave some useful feedback on logic problems one must address in a "Born Free" story premise with clones. I got little to no feedback on my own script that related to anything I myself wrote. And then I missed 30ROCK for that!

Heard from my friends at Aether Paranormal that the production company I introduced them to is enthusiastic about creating a pitch package around them as a reality show. So cool! Shad came into our office wearing a TIE! OMG, our eyes popped out. "When have you EVER worn a tie before?" we asked. Turns out he did one time in July 2005. But each of the Aether Team members was making a 2-minute movie about their dayjobs and life outside paranormal investigations. Shad's was meant to point out how much more relaxed he was working from home than being in the office. And so I intruded myself on his clip with a goofy ad lib performance. I'm the obnoxious coworker who comes looking over his shoulder, startling him, and having a fit. "Oh man! Did you use purple on that?!" (he's doing desktop publishing of a marketing piece) "The execs hate purple! Gawwwhh!" (Cute touch, but, boy, I dislike seeing myself on camera.)

Next week or soon, as thanks for the help with Hollywood, Shad and the team plan to take me to Estancia Churrascaria -- the Brazilian all-you-can-eat steakhouse... W00t!

Tuesday my new sofa and loveseat arrived. Special order, green leather. For the first time in my life, I own reclining furniture... But classy! And it really is a comfortable set of furniture too. I had to sit on dozens of pieces to find it. For some reason, manufacturers make leather furniture with a very deep seat. Short people like me either perch at the edge of the cushions, or they scoot back with their legs sticking out straight in front of them. Not this furniture! But the smell of the chemicals in the dyeing of the leather is pretty awful, so I've been opening all my living room windows to air out while I'm home. And since I gave my perfectly fine if somewhat cat-mangled previous furniture to my brother, my living room had been pretty bare. Now it's furnished and comfy again.

I did get home last night in time to see most of President Obama's talk on Jay Leno. So smart! So charming! Explaining things so calmly. He and his Secy of Treasury inherited craziness and are doing such a responsible and focused job of putting out the fires and making changes. The idiots that have flamed him for creating a mess in his first 70-80 days in office? The media that reports every gaffe or stumble? Mostly the American public is ignoring them. Obama has a 65% or more approval rating in several polls. And the people in Europe are ecstatic about him. It feels so good to have someone in office I voted for. It feels even better that he's such a good guy!

From the way the media covers every little squeak of outrage from the Republican party about what President Obama is proposing (and actually implementing -- him being an effective leader, compared to what we had) you'd think the man was stumbling badly in his first few months of office.

But that's not what the American public thinks. In this op-ed article from Republican strategist Ed Rollins, he used some figures to spank the misguided positions of his own party.

Only 26 percent of voters have a positive impression of the (Republican) party at all and only 7 percent very positive, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey.

The Democratic Party is the reverse, with 49 percent positive. When 60 percent of the country approves of the job President Obama is doing, every Republican leader is going backward.

Me, I'm still horrified and aghast that not ONE Republican voted with Obama in his financial program. Then we have the idiot Repugs from Texas doing their rants against the President's excesses.

Luckily for the country, all these obstructionist behaviors are being noticed by the voters, and when the Democrats ask for help unseating long-time Republican office holders in upcoming elections, the American people will probably be only too happy to comply.

MILK, about the rise to political power and the assassination of Harvey Milk of San Francisco, the first open gay public official in America, is worth seeing. It won a best original screenplay for Dustin Lance Black -- and he was so earnest and full of emotion in his speech, bringing a message of acceptance to gay teens to offset the hate, I wept as probably did a million other people. It won best actor for Sean Penn, who amazingly captured both the odd physical appearance of Milk (a somewhat pop-eyed man who'd clipped his ponytail and returned to his stodgy 3-piece suits to get the respect of the non-gay populace) and the ferociously upbeat and sweet personality in spite of seeing the world through absolutely clear eyes.

What I didn't like in the script was the static and non-cinematic trick of having Harvey sit down alone at a tape recorder and give his own story "in case of my untimely death." We kept returning to this boring scene of him at a kitchen table, yakking. Not even with explosive or little-known facts, just the story we already were seeing. Harvey knew hate-mongers wanted to kill him, and one did, but even the prescience of him doing this was a drag on the story. Now I also have to say this was one of the best bio-pics I've seen. It made Harvey, his times and his city very clear. It took a cast of dozens and made their relationships and contributions easy to follow. Then it had some amazing and emotional crowd scenes that got everyone in the theater weeping. And hey, Black won the Oscar, so it obviously wasn't that much of drag on the story.

It's amazing how heartbreaking the scene of the assassination is, how sort of hushed and bleached of color (good job of Gus van Sant, also nominated for an Oscar). Despite knowing the sordid crazy story of Assemblyman Dan White, what he does and how Milk seemed to recognize it as it happened, boy. So sad!

With the Proposition 9 voted in by fear-mongering in California, this was a good movie to get out this year. Sean made his speech about overturning that, and good for him too. Worth seeing!

Then a new friend in my Writergrrls group, an older woman named Seja (and her sister Atari -- joke!) who'd lived outside San Francisco in those days running a chicken farm but dreaming with her boyfriend of being guerilla filmmakers, talked about when she'd met Harvey Milk. They came into town with boxes of eggs and tried to get someone to barter with them for film. Everyone laughed at them until they went to Castro Camera, Harvey's shop, such an important hub of activity in the film. He was delighted and dramatic at the offer. "Fresh eggs! How fabulous! What a deal, of course we'll do it!" She described him as overflowing with joy for life.

The Walgreens at Metric and Braker was robbed! That's the one near my house; I was just there yesterday and I stop by there 2-3 times a week for stuff. A young black man came in with a gun and helpfully shot a round into the ceiling (so they can totally use that bullet to ID the gun when they get the guy).

We keep saying these hard times are going to cause problems for us all...

But my theory is that no way that same violent thief will return to that particular Walgreens again.

Dear World:

We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the
ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our
2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to
this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software
responsible was replaced November 4. Early tests of the newly
installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we
expect it to be fully functional on January 20. We apologize for any
inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to resuming full
service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your
patience and understanding,

Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

(not sure where it came from; it's making the rounds...)