Greatest link ever:
Top 10 Crazy Political Commentators
Posted in Blog.
Joe the Plumber Quits the GOP
Publicity stunt? Shewd political move? Honest personal choice?
Whatever the reason, Time has a nugget in its latest story on the downward spiral of the Republican party that “Joe the Plumber” has “quit” the Grand Old Party.
Many on the left are pointing and snickering, but I’m not sure this is news, particularly. Ever since the pseudo-plumber positioned himself as the next great political commentator, he’s called himself non-partisan. A conservative, sure. A libertarian, perhaps. But he’s always made a strangely serious point of not aligning himself with the Republican party.
But hey, even Senators are going out of their way to avoid the GOP in its current form, so I’m not sure Joe the Plumber’s distance is a bad idea, even if it isn’t a new one.
Posted in Blog.
TheAtlantic.com Pulls Further Ahead in Web-success
Not much can be said for The Atlantic’s ever-blossoming website, except for that it is doing exactly what it needs to do in order to cement its status as king of the online highbrow monthlies. Check out their page on Obama’s first 100 days as an example.
It has everything I love in a website — short, conversational pieces; debate-themed features; a “forum” with tons of disparate sources giving their unique opinions. It’s a crafty blend of Politico and 23/6.
I applaud it. One wonders when other sites will implement more of these excellent features.
Posted in Blog.
The Land of Heartbreaking Partisanship
Andrew Sullivan stitches together a brief history of chilling partisanship from someone who was once a universally adored politician, John McCain, as he discusses executive power, the rule of law, and a subject much too close to his own psyche, torture:
“But we are not asked to judge the President’s character flaws. We are asked to judge whether the President, who swore an oath to faithfully execute his office, deliberately subverted–for whatever purpose–the rule of law,” - John McCain arguing for the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury in a civil suit, February 1999.
“Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot,” - John McCain, October 2007.
“We’ve got to move on,” - John McCain, April 26, 2009, reacting to incontrovertible proof that George W. Bush ordered the waterboarding of a prisoner 183 times, as well as broader treatment that the Red Cross has called “unequivocally torture.”
Posted in Blog.
After 8 Years of Trading Liberty for Security, Half the Country Starts to Catch Up
NewsCorpse on the Right’s newfound sense of independence:
For the past eight years, there have so many intrusions to the civil liberties that Americans are promised by the Constitution that it’s hard to recount them all. Amongst the most significant are the Patriot Act, the removal of Habeas Corpus protections, and Wireless Wiretapping.
[...]
Here’s the funny part: James Osborne of Fox News has written an article that takes the [new] administration and the Congress to task for stepping on the privacy rights of citizens.
Posted in Blog.
Ana Marie Cox Calls Out Press Conferences for Their Chummy Groupthink
Ana Marie Cox had a great tribute to independent thought in the Washington Post the other day. I’m just getting around to linking to it, but it is a great piece, succinctly demonstrating what many of us have always known: you don’t think critically about something that is your “privilege” to be in on.
Read the whole thing. Here’s a snippet:
Intense interest in the Obama administration has swelled the ranks of the White House press corps. Outlets such as Politico have thrown a basketball team’s worth of bodies at the project, and outlets that didn’t even exist until recently — Fivethirtyeight.com, the Huffington Post — have created their own White House correspondent positions.
Yet too often, the White House briefing room is where news goes to die.
Posted in Blog.
Shep Smith Strikes Again: “We do not f*ing torture.”
Shep Smith is my all-time favorite FoxNews employee, and he is increasingly becoming a viral video star thanks to his flippant disregard for his own networks “Message of the Day” memos.
Here’s one of his greatest hits, known popularly as “We are the United States of America, we do not f*ing torture:”
Posted in Blog.
NewsCorpse Digs Up Fox’s Stock Market Idolatry
NewsCorpse, the most underrated media blog of our lifetime (note: “lifetime,” in web terminology, means approximately 2 to 3 years), has an amazing rundown of FoxNews stock market idolatry, and how they are claiming that the recent upticks in the market are thanks to the valiant teabaggers, just as they claimed that the 6-month slide that preceded it was thanks to that dastardly Obama.
A lesson in media history, courtesy of NewsCorpse:
For several weeks, Fox has used the phrase “Obama Bear” to describe the stock market when it heads down. At the same time they refer to it as a bear market rally when it goes up. So it should come as no surprise that on the April 18, broadcast of Fox’s “Bulls & Bears,” the host, Brenda Buckner, ups the ante by opening the show with this:
“Call it a tea party rally. Wall Street’s sure partying, up six weeks in a row. The bulls came out about the same time these guys started to shout, saying no to big government, big taxes, and big bailouts. Will that keep investors saying yes to stocks?”
In an absurd flight from logic, Buttner is asserting that the Fox-sponsored, Republican rallies last Wednesday played a role in the market’s performance for six weeks prior to their even being held.
Posted in Blog.
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