A friend sent us this summary of things he’s seen on Fox News in the last few days. Good thing Fox isn’t part of our cable programming:
1. “public service announcements” supposedly about “civic lessons” and “the role of the president” — GWB talking about what a great job he’s doing. Also a “public service announcements” about how important it is to go out and vote.
2. O’Reilly emphatically saying he won’t say who he’s voting for, and
flashing a big logo that says “no ideology zone.”
3. O’Reilly reading a reader letter that accuses him of being biased for
liberals, and using this as an opportunity to say that he gives equal
airtime to both sides.
4. A report that high times magazine is endorsing Kerry.
5. Big text-over: “GANGSTER RAPPERS COME OUT IN FAVOR OF KERRY”…. a few seconds later, a shot of kerry speaking to NAACP
6. A “debate” about whether it should be in the media’s right to be left-biased.
7. An anti-Kerry ad (from the NRA, i think) saying that kerry “supports a
UN-style gun ban” with video showing lots of european flags
8. A “review of political advertising” that consisted of re-airing three
Bush ads, then having some talking head talk about them.
9. A local candidate’s ad describing his opponent, who used to be a
newspaper columnist, as “a card-carrying member of the liberal media” and
mentioning that the opponent “is from New York, the land of Hillary Clinton
and gay marriage.”
So, back to Katherine Harris. According to an interview in World magazine, Harris attends a Calvary Chapel church in Tallahassee. Calvary Chapel is a Charismatic church, founded at Costa Mesa by Chuck Smith in the 1960s (and attracting the same kind of “Jesus Freaks” who also went to L’Abri during the same era). Smith is a Christian Zionist in the Hal Lindsey mode, although whether those Christian Zionist ideas are actively promoted at Harris?s particular church is another matter. But Harris is certainly connected to David Barton, with whom she shared a panel on the subject “God in Government” at Doug Giles’s April conference (the cached pdf I found on this has since disappeared).
And The Rant has the one, the only, … Scott Gray!:
Republicans believe in traditional values. We believe in right and wrong and having a strong moral compass. From the Civil War, we have not flip-flopped on issues that are dear to us. Republicans are strong people, and we have a deep desire to protect our future generations. Homosexuality is a bad decision, and it is not something that should ever be promoted in society. When a government promotes behavior that is harmful to a majority of citizens, this problem trumps other problems. [Emphasis added; homophobia in the original.]
Have you been harmed by homosexuality? Call our professional attorneys to see if they can work for you!
Affirmative action is a negative step because it keeps America thinking on a racial scale. It is time for America to move beyond this pitiful bickering. We believe that African-Americans need to go to college to get a step up in life, but they should never be shown a preference. This denies the equality that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated when he dreamed of all races being able to one day sit equally together at the table of life.
The table of life — is that located next to the chair of asinine metaphors by any chance? Or is it closer to the toaster of straw men? What about the microwave of logical fallacies? The blender of desperate pleas?
We have increased education spending by 49% in four years.
Don’t forget to mention the word “federal” in there, big Scott! Which sort of matters a little:
In the 2003-04 school year, 83 cents out of every dollar spent on education came from the state and local levels (46 percent from state funds and 37 percent from local governments). The federal government’s share was 8.2 percent. [Emphasis added.]
Might wanna think that one over, Scooby.
Remember just a few seconds ago when Scott was telling us how bad affirmative action was for college admission? You know, Dr. King not liking it and stuff? Well, it turns out that sometimes it’s cool:
Other [tax] breaks have specifically been promoted toward minority business ownership.
Get to college on your own! But run your business with the help of a special tax break! It’s all part of the Republican party’s plan to level the playing field through a commitment to principles and values.
President Bush wants dangerous criminals to stay behind bars, and he has worked with Attorney General John Ashcroft to lower gun crimes, something that he calls a perfect alternative to gun control.
Yet Senator Kerry wants to force you to be a guest family to dangerous, foreign, criminals!
Republicans do not harm civil rights, but we have always looked to promote them. We do not want to hold minorities down. We have instead spent more than ever in attempts to raise them up, not through preferences, but through society.
Head spinning, must control head spinning, oxygen, need oxygen… aaarrrrggh!
Government must see the social unrest, and it can only be rectified by encouraging moral behavior, not dissuading it with things such as same-sex marriage, encouragement of abortion, and the continuance of large and uneffective social programs. Wake up, African-Americans. Republicans have a plan, and you ARE a part of it!
Wake up you bunch of dumb asses! You don’t have to put up with the uneffective policies of the Democrats! And don’t forget to get Scott a drink and wash his car when you get a chance, ok?
“French officials say 20 percent of the $3 billion of “French contracts” flagged in the Duelfer report in fact went to French subsidiaries of U.S. firms, notably General Electric ($445 million) and Halliburton ($127 million).”
In other words, France to Cheney: “Va te faire enculer!”
Talk dirty to us, George!
Unrelated — Triumph The Insult Comic Dog to Karl Rove: “You’re Bush’s Brain, Karl? I was expecting a much smaller man!” (14MB clip)
“When we walked into the bunkers that apparently nobody [else] went into, there is no way there were 380 tons of explosives in those bunkers,” [...] When the 101st arrived on April 10, 2003, the Al-Qaqaa bunkers were “wide open,” he told Gill, as if somebody had already been there and broken the seals placed on the high explosives by the U.N.
Dixon, of Hinesville, Ga., was a passenger in a vehicle that rolled over March 28 during a night mission about 20 kilometers from Baghdad. At the time, his wife, Allesais, was an Army sergeant stationed in Pakistan.
“My vehicle rolled over into a ravine, upside down,” he said. “There were about six soldiers with me in the back. It was dark, visibility wasn’t that good.”
Dixon said he suffered a broken spinal cord in the accident.
Dixon suffered a broken spinal cord but kept serving with his unit so that he was at the Al-Qaqaa training camp 2 weeks later? At which point did his injury confine him to a wheelchair?
His spine snapped, resulting in a spinal cord injury and paraplegia. He underwent rehabilitation at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., and later the Richmond, Virginia and Atlanta, Georgia VA Medical Centers.
Are we missing something? There may well be two Ken Dixons.
In the aftermath of the 2000 election controversy, Congresswoman Harris’ leadership provided a driving impetus for election reform. In 2001, she testified before the U.S. House Administration Committee and proposed legislation that became the blueprint for Florida’s nationally acclaimed Election Reform Act. In 2002, as the momentum for election reform subsided in states across America, she successfully proposed and achieved passage of historic civil rights legislation in Florida that forcefully addresses the exclusion of persons with disabilities from full and equal participation in the electoral process.
There’s arguably a lot of material there, but our attention was drawn to this part of her biography:
She studied abroad at the University of Madrid and at L’Abri outside Geneva, Switzerland.
Now, we’ve heard of the University of Madrid, but not of a school called “L’Abri.” Given that the name means shelter in French it seemed like a rather odd name for an institution of higher learning. Which likely explains why it isn’t:
The L’Abri communities are study centers in Europe, Asia and America where individuals have the opportunity to seek answers to honest questions about God and the significance of human life. L’Abri believes that Christianity speaks to all aspects of life.
Fourth, the reality of the fall is taken seriously. Until Christ returns we and the world we live in will be affected by the disfigurement of sin. Although the place of the mind is emphasized, L’Abri is not a place for “intellectuals only”.
Well if there’s one person you need in any discussion of disfigurement, it’s Katherine. (Disclaimer: You’ll never get those 2MB of bandwidth back.) But people who go there are students, right?
Each branch is staffed by one or more L’Abri families and single people, called “workers”, who look after those who come and stay – “students”.
Oh, you’re that kind of “school.” Katherine did manage to pick up some useful skills there:
The other half of the day is spent in sharing the community work load. This involves your doing some practical work each day, which consists of helping with the cooking, cleaning, gardening, maintenance, etc.. We have numerous chalets to keep up, many meals to serve, and lots of grounds to care for. Your work is a help to us in running a place of this size and it will hopefully bring a healthy balance to your lives. Thursday is a day off for students who are given a packed lunch, allowing them to go off and sight see, ski, hike, etc.
What if I don’t like to do maintenance work?
If either of these two aspects of being here are problematic you should carefully and prayerfully consider whether a time here with us is the right thing for you.
Aye captain! We wouldn’t mind being able to meet a lot of single women while we’re there. You mean that can be arranged? Not only that, but these guys will be our competition? And we can kiss the dog from Frasier? Yet we always have to get back to work, don’t we? Let us pray!
In unrelated news, our favorite insult comic dog (Triumph) stopped by Spin Alley after the third presidential debate. Wanna see Ralph Reed get called a bitch? The answer is not sadly, no! (Also via Political Physics.) [We'll mirror the Triumph clip tomorrow, if anyone cares.]
Mr. Kerry is against free trade because he believes America must “establish core labor rights around the world.” He would repeal Nafta and other trade agreements[.]
From the John Kerry web site (which, unlike other presidential candidates’ sites, is accessible to international visitors:)
I strongly believe that America must engage in the global economy, and I voted for trade opening from Nafta to the WTO. (link)
The United States and Mexico made commitments with the signing of NAFTA. Both countries must abide by those commitments. (link)
His 19 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have given him experience in national security and foreign affairs, including Latin America, where a frayed relationship needs attention. He supports NAFTA and FTAA and considers Miami the region’s key financial center.
“President Clinton was trying to move us in the right direction on job creation and on including labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. I supported him and I made the right decision. We created jobs and opened markets, but since then we have learned that we need to go even further on labor and environment standards. John Edwards and I will fight so strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards are included in the core of future trade agreements, like they were in the Jordan Free Trade Agreement.” –John Kerry
So Pete, what, exactly, is the source for your claim?
Seriously. This is the best (?) part of his latest column:
It is only now that the dinner party lion emerges to stake his claim to greatness. While others quiver with pre-election anxiety, their mood rising and collapsing with the merest flicker of the polls, he alone radiates certainty. He alone can read the internals, cross-tabs and trends, can parse Gallup and Zogby and emerge with clear answers. He alone can captivate a gathering, while men hang eagerly on his words and women undress him with their eyes.
The astounding thing is that this comes near the end of Brooks’ column:
Then, having filled the air with 45 minutes of bogus pontification and pretentious gibberish, he should sagely declare that this election is just too close to call and that it would be irresponsible to make a prediction.
Which really should read: “Then, having filled the page with 800 words of bogus pontification and pretentious gibberish…” It would be funny if Brooks weren’t such a hopeless and untalented hack. Sadly, he is, and as a result, sadly, it isn’t.
HOW TO CAMPAIGN IN WISCONSIN — EXPLOIT SCHOOLKIDS? [...] This morning I heard a story on Wisconsin Public Radio about how schoolkids in Milwaukee have been assigned get-out-the-vote work. (The story isn’t up on the WPR website yet, but it will at some point be here.) The Milwaukee State Journal is also covering the story. [...] I firmly believe that once the state compels young people to attend school, deprives them of their freedom, it owes the highest duty to them to use their time only in ways that benefit them. To see them as a source of free labor or to exploit them for any purpose that is not itself a good reason for depriving the young of their freedom is a great wrong. [Emphasis added.]
Boy that libertarian shtick never gets young, does it? Is it some sort of InstaPundit requirement that Republican voters post some libertarian dribble to give the illusion of independence? (The expert on the “faux liberal / real conservative” act is alicublog.)
In any case, we’d add that the Milwaukee State Journal article continues thusly:
Marx vehemently denies that the project is designed to encourage more Democrats than Republicans to vote. He notes that the children do not wear any partisan buttons or clothing. Nor do they use partisan rhetoric or encourage people to vote one way or another. Participation is voluntary and parents are required to give their approval.
Republicans are outraged because a get out the vote drive is targeting areas with low voter turnout. Have Democrats no shame? No shame at all?
Surfers outside the US have been unable to visit the official re-election site of President George W Bush.
The blocking of browsers sited outside the US began in the early hours of Monday morning.
Since then people living outside the US trying to look at the site simply got a message saying “access denied”.
The blocking does not appear to be due to an attack by vandals or malicious hackers, but as a result of a policy decision by the Bush camp.
The international exclusion zone around georgewbush.com was spotted by net monitoring firm Netcraft which keeps an eye on traffic patterns across many different sites.
It’s a good thing we don’t read InstaPundit too often:
but this time I’ve got an all-star team of guestbloggers coming in: Ann Althouse, Megan McArdle, and Michael Totten
The woman who fancies herself Amber Frey, the one who fancies herself an intellectual, and the man who fancies himself a liberal. (He also has the world’s worst -and dumbest- suggestion: “Link to Michael J. Totten with the logo button.” Uh, Sadly, No!]
It’s an all-something cast, we’ll grant you that. IP has been able to use his free time to write such wonderful insights as:
. That will expand [blogs'] impact considerably. On the other hand, they’ll grow less significant, in a way, because they’ll grow more ordinary. Like other communications media, from newspapers to email, they’ll just become part of the background, and their particular thread of impact will be less noticeable.
By that logic, according to our calculations newspapers stopped being significant in 1957.
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq’s interim prime minister blamed U.S.-led coalition forces Tuesday for “great negligence” in the ambush that killed about 50 American-trained soldiers, and a U.S. airstrike in Fallujah killed an aide to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the military said. [...]
“It was a heinous crime where a group of National Guards were targeted,” Allawi said. “There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces. It seems there was sort of determination on doing Iraq and Iraqi people harm.” [Emphasis added, shrillness in the original.]
We’ve just about recovered from last night (although Pete M. is still missing,) and fortunately for us there is much right wing nuttiness around. Indeed, there are some brand new talents out there (does the name Randall Fuller sound familiar?) so you better get ready. For something.
Someone was listening yesterday when I asked “How do you ask a goose to be the last goose to die for a campaign stunt? How do you ask a goose to die for a big head fake?”
We don’t know Hugh — but do you happen to know the answer to how do you ask a soldier to be the last one to die for a campaign stunt?
Stewart, who has called the Iraq war a mistake, is more likely than Jay Leno or David Letterman to ridicule Bush while going easy on Kerry, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found. “He’s an outstanding comedian, but clearly he does comedy from the Democratic left perspective,” says Republican strategist Mike Murphy.
The opening monologues of the three late-night comedy shows-The Tonight Show, The Late Show, and The Daily Show were studied for the presence of the seven narrative themes. Video tapes of the shows were used for the analysis. Program re-runs aired during the content analysis period were discarded. In all, 33 shows were studied, broken down as follows: The Daily Show-9
Nine fucking shows — did these assholes learn statistics from Trying To Grok?
As we’ve seen many times in the past, there’s a pretty good reason for that as well. James Bowman, a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (we kid you not) gets an easy publication with this bit of manure in OJ*:
But there is a difference. The consumers of TV satire 40 years ago were assumed by the satirists to be pretty well-informed people already. Now there are indications that a lot of people, especially young people, are skipping the regular news and going straight to the satire.
And then begins a rant, to put it kindly, about Jon Stewart being mean to the poor man’s George Will (aka Tucker Carlson,) just because, under the pretense of intelligent political discussion Tucker (like Begala,) does nothing more than partisan hackery. Believe, if you can, that the new conservative complaint du jour about the mainstream media is, are you ready?, political bias at Comedy Central:
And of course it isn’t just the media that are mocked: It is also conservatives, Republicans, the Religious Right and, most of all, President Bush and his administration.
It could be, one imagines, that President Bush gets lampooned because, well, he’s the President. The Daily Show (TDS,) after all, didn’t get its start in 2001. Yet just as quickly as conservatives forgot the little sympathy shown for Clinton by the media, they’ve forgotten that TDS was anything but a Clinton spinning machine during the Clinton years. (TDS’ guest for one of its year-end spectacular was Gennifer Flowers for fuck’s sake.) Then again, someone who can complain about TDS’ coverage of the Iraq war and write (without noticing the irony) this:
offers a combination of real stories from the “wacky” end of the news spectrum–like the one about the Iraqi tourism minister whose job is to prevent tourists from coming to Iraq…
isn’t going to notice the obvious. The Iraqi tourism minister story is funny precisely because it’s real. So real, indeed, that one can read the following in other publications:
The ancient ruins of Babylon are one of Iraq’s treasures Iraq’s tourism chief, Ahmed al-Jobori, has urged visitors to stay at home until the violence there ends. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr Jobori warned tourists that “Iraq could be a one-way trip”. [...]
Mr Jobori, an employee of the US-appointed interim Iraqi government, has himself received death threats, and keeps his daily routine secret.
This isn’t the “wacky” news Mr. Bowman. (This is the wacky news.) And yes, that’s what makes it so funny. In addition to the fact that the government’s own tourism minister needing to keep his schedule secret perfectly illustrates how fucked up things remain in Iraq. To Mr. Bowman however, just because the Iraq war is a product of a “conservative” government is no reason to mock conservatives for it.
Mr. Bowman continues his disassembling when he writes:
Mr. Stewart used his appearance on “Crossfire” to make a serious point, yet when it was taken up seriously he tried to retreat into his characteristic pose as a harmless comedian. “You are on CNN,” he said to Mr. Carlson when accused of sucking up to Mr. Kerry; “the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.”
Oh, how sweet it is be to be Tucker Carlson’s “butt boy” to use one of Tucker’s favorite expressions. Tucker’s “defense,” when called on the hackery of Crossfire, was to argue that a satirical news program was insufficiently harsh on John Kerry. However harsh its satires may be however, TDS has never been a place for hard hitting interviews. Only someone who doesn’t watch the show could complain about the “butt boy treatment” received by Kerry. (Unless Bowman is working on a dissertation that includes a discussion of why Jay Leno didn’t ask Schwarzenegger tough questions when he announced his run for Governor on The Tonight Show, we’ll assume Bowman is happy being another partisan hack.)
Certainly Mr. Stewart’s criticism of “Crossfire” for its resemblance to pro-wrestling is odd coming from an avowed entertainer like himself. Could it be that he wants to corner the market in turning politics into entertainment?
Oh, all that stifling of dissent — all poor Tucker and Paul want to do is be entertainers, and here is a mean entertainer asking them why they don’t want to leave the entertainment… up to the entertainers. CNN’s slogan is “The Most Trusted Name in News,” not “Partisan Hacks Yelling At Each Other Every Night.” Let’s see its programs deliver on that promise.
Those familiar with the Stewart technique won’t be surprised to learn that in this foreword the third president shows his familiarity with the language of the 21st-century streets and recounts the doubts of a certain “Sally” about his taking on such work: “You are the author of the Declaration of Independence. A scholar. A statesman. This is beneath you. It’s not even network.” Then he has “T.J.” sign off with a postscript: “Oh, and is it true Halle Berry is once again single?”
If the only thing he knows about Jefferson besides his authorship of the Declaration is the allegation of his sexual liaison with his slave Sally Hemmings, it doesn’t bother Jon Stewart–or his audience. Just as you don’t have to know the news to watch “The Daily Show,” you don’t have to know anything, really, about American history or government to enjoy “America (The Book).”
Actually, that joke is funny even if you don’t know about the allegation of TJ’s sexual liaison. Not only that, but many of the jokes in the (extremely funny) book make a lot more sense if you do know some things.
Mr. Stewart sounds in his book as he does on his TV show–not affectionate but arrogant, as if he were way too cool to bother finding out the facts of the real history, or news, that he’s sending up. Who can take such stuff seriously?
Main Entry: com?e?dy
Pronunciation: ‘k?-m&-dE
Function: noun
3 : a ludicrous or farcical event or series of events
Does that help at all?
Someone should tell Jon Stewart that partisan hacks are what made this country great.
Mr. Bowman closes with an observation that fails at being funny or interesting.
We’re sure we’ll be seeing him as a guest on Crossfire very soon.
When we let other bloggers do our work (mocking the differently abled) for us:
Tim Lambert, fresh from his whooping of InstaPundit, takes a whack at Steven “I’m not posting anymore but here’s a post anyway” Den Beste. The results, for Steve-oh, are not pretty:
Den Beste also draws two trend lines for each candidate. However he seem to have constructed his trends by just eye-balling the graph. This is not a good technique for constructing trends since it is far too easy to find the trend you were expecting or hoping to see. To get trends that are not effected by subjective bias you need to use statistics.
Roger Ailes points out that Andrew Sullivan isn’t just an idiot, he’s an idiot who celebrates getting money from bigots:
Precisely how dense is Sully? He thinks the blogad on his site for the smearumentary Stolen Honor “funnels a few Sinclair dollars to the blog.” He also believes he’s running an “ad from Ann Coulter.”
In fact, both ads are from NewsMax.com. NewsMax is giving away the Coulter book to idiot subscribers.
Of course it’s simple. A Rightwing Nutcase simply finds a subject that he has always favoured but is universally repugnant to the civilised world, and makes an argument of “exceptionalism” for it. Shall we conduct a test? Yes? Okay, think of something unsavoury or wicked in a banal way, first. Ahh, yes, there’s the two subjects mentioned above:
So go over there and add your own suggestion. He’ll give you a prize if it’s any good.
It’s more visible in Philadelphia than anywhere else as of tonight, where the Bush campaign staff attempted a last-minute drive to shuffle around polling places in Philadelphia–again, a predominantly black city in a predominantly white state. The Bush team argued that they wanted to relocate 63 polling places because they allegedly lack sufficient handicapped access, and because of “intimidation.” Said Matt Robb, the Republican leader of the 48th ward in South Philadelphia, “It’s predominantly, 100 percent black. I’m just not going in there to get a knife in my back.” Another gem of a Republican said they were trying to change polling places in black neighborhoods because “The black neighborhoods are the ones that do the funny stuff. What are you supposed to do?”
Terrorists are out to bomb the fuck out of you and you and you. Big Dick speaks:
CARROLL, Ohio – Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the possibility of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear weapons and questioned whether Sen. John Kerry could combat such a threat, which the vice president called a concept “you’ve got to get your mind around.”
Dick, can you get your mind around the concept that you are pathetic, scaremongering, lying piece of shit? Because the time has come. No, really.
