W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

All Americans should be proud that our majority-elected leader is recognized for his positions on world peace. This is such an honor!

Oh wait. If you're a conservative republican, then you fill the airwaves with what a joke and an insult this is. Ri-i-i-i-i-ght. And the domestic bullsh*t media drops everything to cover the repugnants' yammering.

But then Rachel Maddow makes her several good points about this whole situation:


The rest of the world thinks our Republicans are crazy -- they're NOT laughing at our President. And how crazy is Washington that they think most of America doesn't realize how skewed and partisan all this talk really is. And, I hate to say, I find too much of the nastiness against Obama to be ill-disguised racism.

He battled brain cancer for years, and kept up with his politics until the end, it seems. He was very pro-universal healthcare, wow! Even way back when. Here's this clip from MoveOn.org where he talks about why. Very moving!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/01/ge/index.html

From The Salon, this article about how Charlie Rose (!) got media titans from FOX and NBC together and got them to cease the bitter feud between (despicable) Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann. Not because one lied or one didn't. Or one caused damage to the other's reputation or not. Nothing about the FOXNews or MSNBC, which actually were increasing ratings with this feud.

Purely because the corporate parent companies might be injured in the long term.

Glenn Greenwald reports how the NYT article on this "CEO Summit" didn't even comment on the implications on mega-corporations controlling the news.

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/02/beck-guest-calls-for-osama-bin-laden-to-bomb-america/

I meant to post about this last week, when the crazy ex-CIA guy said it and Jon Stewart broadcast it, with some pithy remarks:

Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer told Fox News’ Glenn Beck Tuesday night, “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.”

And also, Glenn Beck (an awful commentator hoping to be crowned Prince Limbaugh), just nodded sagely. No, "whaaaa?!" No, "but sir, this is your country!" Just nodded, as if to say our administration totally deserves that.

Love it, love it that Al Franken won the seat of a cranky, grasping old Republican senator from Minnesota. Hate it that the guy fought him forever, using the big money coffers of the Repugnant Party to pay the legal fees. Love it that the courts upheld the win, the recount proved the win, and Franken now gets to go to Washington.

Boy, but I wish I'd saved a book I got for Christmas years ago. "Stuart Smalley: I'm Good Enough..." It was the first printing, and I bet it'll be worth some bucks some day! Instead, I sold it to Half-Price Books.

But who could've guessed??

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.