Damn liberal media. Heh.
[via Atrios]
27 November 2007
Why Conservatives Suck
Projection!
I'm remaining incivil to conservatives until further notice. Or at least until this happens.
The Broders and Kurtzes are invited to do the same.
How is any kind of normative political discourse possible in the environment created by right-wing eliminationist rhetoric? How is it possible to be civil to people who constantly are placing you under threat of assault, verbal and otherwise? How can there be dialogue when the normative rules of give and take and fair play have not only been flushed down the drain, but chopped into bits and swept out with the tide? Do the advocates of civility place any onus on the nonstop verbal abuse, and absolutely ruthless, win-at-all-costs politics emanating from the conservative quadrant? And do they really expect liberals to refuse to defend themselves, even realizing that doing so gets them accused of further incivility?Extra special thanks to the village wise men who ignore conservative hate while engaging in much hand-wringing over attempts by liberals to defend themselves.
Ironically, the mainstream right has largely managed to avoid much discussion of its venom-by-the-bucket role in poisoning the well of public discourse by, somewhat predictably, accusing liberals of being unconscionably nasty and vile in how they respond. It’s become a common theme not just from the usual quarters (Malkin devoted an entire book, titled Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, to the subject) but a common talking point among the hoi-polloi “centrists” of the Beltway Village media, “wise men” like David Broder and Howard Kurtz: “decent” Democrats must eschew the very kind of ugly hardball politics Republicans have spent the past decade mastering, and must ignore the loud voices of their increasingly angry base.
It’s a neat trick. Not only has the village lunatic gained their permission to continue wandering the town square poking everyone he dislikes in the eye with a sharp stick, he gets to claim victimhood when they respond angrily.
I'm remaining incivil to conservatives until further notice. Or at least until this happens.
I'll believe conservatives are serious about civil, adult dialogue when they step back and give liberals some breathing room. When "civil" conservatives seriously confront the violent and vicious rhetoric coming from their own quarters; when they do away with suggesting that their political opponents are somehow disloyal Americans; when they admit that torturing prisoners and wiretapping American citizens is not the kind of America they want; and when they finally acknowledge that the vision of government by “compassionate conservatives” has been an unmitigated catastrophe for the nation and for the world -- then, perhaps, they can expect to start seeing some civility in return.Until that moment, conservatives can take their eliminationist rhetoric and go fuck themselves.
The Broders and Kurtzes are invited to do the same.
Media Idiot of the Day
Tucker.
He actually said that Al Gore would have been a disaster as President because Al would have brought us back to the Dark Ages and that he's "fundamentally hostile" to human civilization.
Serious. A disaster?
Compared to the peace and prosperity and ponies we've been living with/under the past 6, almost 7 years?
Go fuck yourself, Tucker.
You're fundamentally hostile to anyone with a brain.
As is your favorite environmentalist, the Preznit.
It's hard to understand why hasn't MSNBC cancelled your shitty show yet.
He actually said that Al Gore would have been a disaster as President because Al would have brought us back to the Dark Ages and that he's "fundamentally hostile" to human civilization.
Serious. A disaster?
Compared to the peace and prosperity and ponies we've been living with/under the past 6, almost 7 years?
Go fuck yourself, Tucker.
You're fundamentally hostile to anyone with a brain.
As is your favorite environmentalist, the Preznit.
It's hard to understand why hasn't MSNBC cancelled your shitty show yet.
17 November 2007
I-L-L
I-N-I!
New Year's Day bowl, here we come.
A long way.
New Year's Day bowl, here we come.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) -- As he watched Florida beat Ohio State in the national championship game back in January, Juice Williams, quarterback of two-win Illinois, had a crazy dream.A long way from 2-10.
"I was just thinking, like, wow, I know it's a great feeling to be out there on the national stage," the sophomore said Saturday.
After polishing off their ninth win, 41-22 over Northwestern, the Illini (No. 19 BCS, No. 20 AP) almost certainly will live Juice's dream.It could be a showdown at the Jan. 1 Capital One Bowl with Illini coach Ron Zook's old team, Florida (No. 12 BCS, No. 14 AP), where a lot of fans still hold a grudge. Or a BCS bowl, if a few of the teams ahead of Illinois in the polls lose during the next two weeks.
A long way.
Sad
Can't imagine.
What will that mean for her only son now that she’s gone? Kanye West is a ferociously driven artist; his work ethic borders on the obsessive, with multiple projects juggled all the time. Now is no exception, with a still-fresh album to promote worldwide, tour dates looming in London and worldwide, and outside production work — including a collaboration with Michael Jackson — to oversee.
"I haven’t spoken to Kanye, but I know what he’s going through," said Fiasco, whose father died last January. "One of the reasons I am speedily pulling myself out of the music business is that it didn’t fit into my schedule to mourn my father’s death properly. It was like you got to get on a plane next week. Or the day after the funeral you have to leave and go. Promoters would get salty because you have to miss a show to bury your father. You can deal with it by putting it in proper perspective, with a firm understanding of the cycle of life and the hereafter. That can console you. But there are still periods where you can’t believe that person’s gone, and it will color everything in your world."
Your Republican Party
Big fans of torture.
Big fans.
Big fans.
It seems to me that the pro-torture right needs to make this explicit: legalize waterboarding explicitly, and withdraw from the Geneva Conventions, and the relevant UN Treaty. If resistance to America becoming a torturing nation is mere "moral preening" why not just get the Congress to do what the Republican base wants? It's far more honest than voting for Giuliani in the sure knowledge that he will torture any terror suspect he can get his hands on, while pretending that America is still the same country it was before 9/11.They also don't realize that 24 is a teevee show, and Jack Bauer isn't real.
Rudy!
In case you had any doubts he is running for President of September 11th, justwatch the video.
Yes, those are all unique clips.
Yes, those are all unique clips.
Why Our Media Sucks
Is a complete lack of self-awareness and/or understanding of irony a requirement to be a pundit?
Example.
Yes, Juan is upset about that a dirty f-ing hippie blogger (who actually has a degree in journalism and worked at a real newspaper) is getting an opinion column in Newsweek, which as we all know has nothing to do with being a journalist.
Yes, Juan is expressing this discontent on SEAN HANNITY'S SHOW, who has even less credentials as an exalted journalist than that dirty f-ing hippie blogger, Markos, who it should be noted also served his country, not by just wearing flag pins on his lapel, but by actually serving in our armed forces.
Thankfully someone else watches this crap to light for the derision it deserves.
I couldn't do it.
It would drive me insane.
I'm sure Juan will be as passionate in his concern after Newsweek announced who would be the columnist opposing Markos.
Example.
Yes, Juan is upset about that a dirty f-ing hippie blogger (who actually has a degree in journalism and worked at a real newspaper) is getting an opinion column in Newsweek, which as we all know has nothing to do with being a journalist.
Yes, Juan is expressing this discontent on SEAN HANNITY'S SHOW, who has even less credentials as an exalted journalist than that dirty f-ing hippie blogger, Markos, who it should be noted also served his country, not by just wearing flag pins on his lapel, but by actually serving in our armed forces.
Thankfully someone else watches this crap to light for the derision it deserves.
I couldn't do it.
It would drive me insane.
I'm sure Juan will be as passionate in his concern after Newsweek announced who would be the columnist opposing Markos.
14 November 2007
Generally Recognized as Safe
E. coli conservatism at its finest.
Since 2004 the federal government has allowed meat producers to treat their product with carbon monoxide. They use it because it makes the meat look fresher. Now comes news that the U.S. Department of Agriculture signed off on the technique "even though scientists at the two companies promoting the technology had questioned the validity of their own safety tests."Safe, even though the technique is banned in the EU, Japan, and Canada.
Here's what Congressional investigators just learned: an employee of Hormell wrote May 5, 2004 to an employer at Cargill about their companies' joint effort to persuade the feds their process was safe. He said they were finding that the more rotten the meat, the less microbial contamination they were measuring: "we are puzzled by the data.... Quite honestly, this test seemed to raise more questions than what it answered."
The Ag Department was not puzzled. Or maybe they didn't really care. They signed off on the technique post haste. The FDA still calls the technique "generally recognized as safe." Though since the technique is banned is the European Union, Japan, and Canada, that recognition would not appear to be as general as the FDA would wish. Also, now that several supermarket chains have recently announced they'd stop selling "gassed meats."
12 November 2007
10 November 2007
I-L-L
I-N-I!
J Leman!
Zook!
Unbelievable!
The Illini lined up to punt on a fourth-and-inches at their own 34 with 6:53 left, but Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel called timeout and Zook reconsidered after being prodded by his quarterback.Juice!
"I will get it," Zook said the sophomore quarterback told him. "You better get it," the coach said told Williams.
Williams sneaked for the first down and twice more he converted third-and-long on quarterback draws.
J Leman!
Zook!
Unbelievable!
Mr. Civility
Bad words like this, Karl?
UPDATE II: Atrios highlights one of Rove’s oh-so-civil quotes: “We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him!”I didn't know you were so delicate of a flower.
09 November 2007
Why Our Media Sucks (Again)
No matter what happens.
It's bad news for Democrats and good news for Republicans.
Even when it's not.
[via Atrios]
It's bad news for Democrats and good news for Republicans.
Even when it's not.
[via Atrios]
08 November 2007
Why Our Media Sucks
All this talk of centrism, usually accompanied by calls for bipartisanship and much handwringing by serious people who wonder why dirty f-ing hippie bloggers are so shrill and why the American people can't see how great this war/torture/domestic spying is.
In any case, this gets back to the media's weird definition of "centrism, which is not "holding opinions similar to that of a majority or plurality of the American people," but "holding opinions similar to that of The Washington Post editorial board, and routinely breaking with the Democratic Party on high profile issues."Serious people all agree Centrism is AWESOME1!!!
Poem of the Day
Langston Hughes' Let America Be America Again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
Make No Little Plans
Great column from Morrissey, the sportswriter, not the music icon.
Marathon running might have triggered those health issues, but it was not the cause of death. It would be like saying basketball caused the 1990 death of Loyola Marymount star Hank Gathers instead of cardiomyopathy, the heart-muscle disorder he had.Obsessive. Heh. I don't know anyone like that.
Distance running obviously can be a grueling sport. It's why there was so much outrage from runners who said there wasn't enough water on the Chicago course this year. Most of the marathon-training guides recommend that runners drink liquids at least every other mile. When a competitor signs a waiver form, it's with the understanding that there will be sufficient water on the course. Running without water is playing with fire.
Too many people believe distance running is inherently dangerous when the opposite is true: running is inherently good for you. Exercise helps extend lives. It's up to runners to find out if they have health issues that might lead to dangerous situations.
We've been taught to bury the old saying of "no pain, no gain," because to ignore pain is to ask for injury. But like any cliché, there is truth in the saying. Most goals worth achieving take effort and sacrifice and, sometimes, pain. Training for marathons can become obsessive. It can be lonely and selfish.
But if mankind stopped doing everything that involved pain or danger or single-mindedness, where would we be? Probably very cold, having not had the guts to attempt to harness fire.
"Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood," said Daniel Burnham, the architect who planned the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
06 November 2007
Simple Answers to Simple Questions
[Stealing this bit from Atrios. Consider it the public access cable version.]
The answers are no, and no.
Serious Anne prefers to go after those silly actors and supermodels that talk to Chavez.
Serious Anne can't recognize that she's the useful idiot.
This has been a rip off of Atrios' simple answers to simple questions.
The answers are no, and no.
Meanwhile, has Applebaum written any columns condemning businessmen or politicians who travel to the capitals of America's friendly dictators in Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai, etc.? Shouldn't a person interested in Americans who help prop up authoritarian governments be trying to come up with something to say about Pakistan?Pakistan?
Serious Anne prefers to go after those silly actors and supermodels that talk to Chavez.
Serious Anne can't recognize that she's the useful idiot.
This has been a rip off of Atrios' simple answers to simple questions.
Why Our Media Sucks
They give equal time to crackpots in the interest of "balance."
Meredith, the sun revolves around the earth, you know. The science isn't conclusive. The earth is only 6,000 years old, too. Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs. Put me on the teevee.
No wonder I can't watch that crap.
Meredith, the sun revolves around the earth, you know. The science isn't conclusive. The earth is only 6,000 years old, too. Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs. Put me on the teevee.
No wonder I can't watch that crap.
Why I Will Never Ever Vote for a Republican
It's personal.
It is in the last of these failures -- painting dissent as treason -- that the president, his administration and the accompanying pundits (or rather, the choir of sycophants) all have affected us all personally, and badly -- because that view has become the worldview of mainstream conservatives in all walks of life. It's manifested itself not just in nationally prominent scenarios like the attacks on the Dixie Chicks and other entertainment folk, but in other smaller and lesser-noticed ways, too, like the way conservative officers are reportedly driving liberal soldiers out of the military. The clear message in these cases: Dissent is disloyalty.
[...]
But I no longer much trust in the moral strength of my conservative friends. Whereas once I believed that the basic decency of average, mainstream conservatives was more than an adequate bulwark against the possibility of right-wing fascism from ever manifesting itself, I have been forced to conclude that, when swept along by the combination of a movement and the fearmongering of public officials, they are as susceptible to doing the wrong thing as their ancestors were in 1942, when they shipped off 110,000 Japanese Americans to concentration camps.
Too many of them have been all too willing to aid and abet the worst features of conservative rule under the leadership of the Bush administration: the invasion and occupation of another nation under false pretenses; the assumption of near-dictatorial executive powers under the aegis of “wartime powers”; the willingness to engage in torture and wiretapping of citizens in defiance of the law, both national and international; the deliberate malfeasance in the handling of domestic policy, especially regarding the environment, education, immigration, and the economy. When confronted by these massive failures, they either concoct half-baked diversionary excuses or blame it on Bush’s incompetence. They never, ever, acknowledge their own complicity in Bush’s policies or his failures.
But most of all, they have turned a blind eye to the ugly reality of conservative-movement politics so far in this 21st century – namely, that it has become infected with a divisive worldview that divides America into Us and Them, and in doing so dehumanizes and demonizes anyone it deems Them. Anyone deemed Them is not only targeted for attack and suppression, but for their outright elimination.
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