Showing posts with label rachel maddow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rachel maddow. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Feature, not a bug


Rachel Maddow shows exactly why the Teapublicans were never, ever, ever going to back down from shutting down the government.

There's no reason whatsoever to think they'll change their minds (such as they have).

There's also no reason for confidence that they will shrink back from default when we soon bump up against the debt ceiling.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Segregation academies

Conservatives are frothing at the mouth (again! You'd think they'd run out of froth) about President Obama's completely innocuous comments about schools and communities separated along sectarian lines in Northern Ireland.

The reason our homegrown American paranoid wingnuts are angry about this - other than anger being what they do - is that they've spent the past forty years building separate institutions parallel to public and secular institutions.

Their building started as a way to keep their delicate little white babies from having to learn with colored chillun. You never know what might happen when children sit next to each other in class. They might become friends! Or those dark boys might deflower innocent Southern girls. Mongrelization, miscegenation, race-mixing, and bastardization of America!

Feh.

After resegregating K-12, of course, the racist wingers needed "higher" education that would permit their smallworldview to go unchallenged all the way through college and even grad school. But you can't say cadres for Christ - that sounds too much like the Bolsheviks. Hence Bob Jones University (BJU, unintended double entendre foreshadowing teabagger) and Liberty University. Too bad Oklahoma's ORU wasn't named for a televangelist named Oral Richards.

Then of course, the conservatives built their own media, intended from the beginning to get their story our, never mind what's true. Fox pretends to be news to pump out propaganda. Rush and his ilk of haters purvey unguested confrontation and won't countenance any response on their bullshit programs.

Well, not quite never mind what's true. Some viewers need a little convincing. So billionaire wingnuts built tax exempt foundations to provide a thin veil of propaganda for the alleged truth of their views. Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Accuracy in Media, and all the various denier "think" tanks on climate change, tobacco, and the so-called free market, etc.

Conservatives hate what Obama said in Northern Ireland because they've graduated from advocating separate but unequal for black folk into advocating separate institutions for themselves - and, oh by the way, the destruction of public institutions for the rest of us.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Sweet talk won't cover bullshit


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Too bad he never served his convictions. In federal prison.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Media performance after the Boston Marathon bombing

Or, should I say, non-performance?


My observations:
  • CNN really truly sucks at journalism.  cnn.com, though, is still a useful source of breaking news.
  • Fox I avoid on general principles, but they can manage breaking stories in between the toxic bigotry of their opinion personalities. I watched a little Shepard Smith on Monday while the story was still news and not yet another opportunity to push invidious delusions into the puke funnel of the VRWC.
  • MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is vital for background. Her competitors who lean backward into infotainment breathlessly reported on pressure cooker bombs, as if everyone knew what that meant. She actually reported it.
  • Both the Boston Globe and the New York Times web sites failed. To judge by the Globe's subsequent removal of access controls, they may lack enough oomph in their user authentication servers.
  • NECN was o.k. for a while, but then reported that Boston was being evacuated on the strength of one cop with a bullhorn. Panic, people, panic! But keep watching!
  • Any media outlet that gives Alex Jones a platform cannot be trusted.
  • Infotainment is the norm:

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Derangement, plain and simple


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We used to mock wingnuts for Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Because they noticed that tag stung, they accused us of Bush Derangement Syndrome, even though CDS (Hillary murdered Vince Foster!) was mainstream in the GOP and BDS (Darth Cheney did controlled demolition of WTC4!) was only in the wacko fringe left.

The truth is that many wingnuts are simply deranged. They can't tell obvious bullshit from something that's in range of plausible. There are plenty of them, too, which is why our politics is so screwed up that a centrist like Barack Obama (bank rescue, Heritage Foundation health insurance reform, chained CPI, no accountability for financial crimes, gradualist war policy, weak on environment) has crazy teabaggers screaming "socialist commie fascist" at him.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Time for a new Voting Rights Act

Wingnut Republicans simply cannot be trusted to run a fair election.


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Thursday, November 1, 2012

But all politics is theater


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The national press corpse (most of it, but obviously not Rachel) eats up theater. The only insight they need to report on it is their subjective impression of how good the production values are. Back in middle school, they already knew enough to write up their feelings about Moby-Dick, so they can surely tell us whether they thought Mitt Rmoney, the charity drive Ahab, performed well in a good show or not. No need to investigate or even question the moral values expressed by his cynical theater, they've got their superficial and banal impressions.

Sure, Rmoney caught a bad break that Hurricane Sandy gave President Barack Obama such an easy chance to look presidential. To be presidential. Never mind how badly past Republicans have muffed that easy chance. But we all know the Mitt is all about ... Mitt, and only his policies are Bushist. You think he's whining behind the scenes about his gosh darn bad luck? While New Jersey and New York recover bodies?

Hurricane Sandy happened. One candidate actually did something constructive. It helped, of course, that he was already President and had that big FEMA club in his hand. The challenger, already on record  as favoring the end of FEMA, tried to appear to help - and utterly failed.

Rmoney didn't keep the Potemkin Village of his theatrical presentation hidden. So the press Villagers will probably hit him hard. He unwittingly let the audience in on the seaminess of backstage.

I'm still waiting for the press to care that Rmoney and his kiss-up-piss-down friends are simply and irrefutably wrong, both morally and practically. They don't care what happens to those who suffer disasters, large or small - because they are safe in their gated worlds, looking down on all of us whose lives are so contingent that one natural disaster can leave us homeless.

If we were Galtian heroes, we'd have as many houses as we needed.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Gee whiz liar



I've been saying for years that Republicans can't win elections without lying. It's sooo lovely to have Mitt Rmoney proving my point again and again.

(h/t Maddowblog via Balloon Juice)

Saturday, April 7, 2012

When Teapublicans say this is a republic, not a democracy

This is what they mean:



Yeah, for them, it's short for they get all the power.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Even Teapublicans can tell that Mitt Romney is a liar



Tomorrow Mitt Rmoney will claim that Eric Fehrnstrom is a junior staffer. It's the only way Mitt can stay true to his pattern of dishonesty at all possible moments.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Radio Rwanda, c. 1994



Fox is blatantly and explicitly dividing its viewership from anyone with the slightest taint of liberalism. They are dehumanizing us with the goal of making us conscience-free for their soldiers to kill. In a Christian way, of course.

The entire War on Christmas trope is a propaganda tool intended to divide Americans. It's working.

You think I'm exaggerating. But the Tutsi never thought their neighbors would hack them to death with machetes.

Update (12/24): Exaggerating?

Monday, October 31, 2011

Poll-tested in every instance



Even Republicans can tell...

Mitt Romney's message people, I would guess, poll-test his convenient position changes. What they fail to poll-test is his credibility after switching yet again.

(h/t Rachel Maddow)

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Media whore Wolf Blitzer



CNN has always been about placing product.  The teabaggers just offer a particularly dangerous and worthless product.  They must pay their bills, though, which is plenty good enough for CNN.

There are of course product placements everywhere.  I was idly watching a repeat of "Bones" tonight, and there's Angela bragging how great her minivan is for hauling an artist's gear - normal enough, but she pointedly gives its name (which I decline to repeat).

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Suspension of disbelief



Only possible rejoinder to Rachel Maddow: IOKIYAR!

Will she be next?

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Shorter David Vitter

I wouldn't pay Rachel Maddow for sex.

Sorry to break it to you, asshole. Rachel Maddow couldn't care less if the scurvy likes of you is attracted to her.

Oh, yeah, it's David Vitter watch, day 1101. I would have thought that Republicans could have gotten their most prolific consorter with whores out of the Senate by now. Could it be that they recognize their caucus's own activities as prostitution, merely without all the messy fluids? Nah, no way they have that kind of self-knowledge.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Making shit up

Rachel Maddow (bless her!) calls the Republicans and Fox, their propaganda arm, on their bullshit:

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Can you imagine how often she'd have to use the word bullshit if she only could? About as often as I do...

While I'd love to have her as my Senator in 2012, she's more valuable critiquing the debasement of American politics than engaging the bullshitters in debate in the well of the Senate.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Depressingly rare journalism

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A friend clued me into this, but I've been saying for years that Democrats have to respond to this kind of Cheneyite bullshit by saying over and over and over again that the Republicans always lie. Always.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Rally 'round the wingnuts



The amazing thing is that the teabagger movement keeps emailing me, as if they could possibly win me over. Today, I received two emails, one from Arkansas, the other threatening a lawsuit based on the Tenth Amendment if health reform passes. Guess they'll hire Orly Taitz...

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Conservative anti-Americanism



You thought it didn't exist? Ha!