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Showing posts with label liberal media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liberal media. Show all posts

Sunday, June 29, 2014

NPR Plays The Cult of Both Sides

Last Friday, the president spoke in my hometown and NPR in Minnesota aired a post speech analysis. At about the 12 minute mark, Keith Downy, chair of the Minnesota Republican party joins the conversation and, thus, any criticism of NPR being liberal goes directly out of the fucking window. For the next few minutes, Downy spins the usual yarn about how the free market can just sort itself out. If we had only left the government out of it in 2008, all would be well with our economy today.

What fucking planet are these people living on?

Worse, he's being terribly dishonest because he would have done the exact same thing the president did. I'd like Mr. Downy or any other free market fundamentalist to point to real world evidence of their theory. Show me a recession that was that bad and then show me how doing nothing worked out.

Of course the real treat of the segment was Andy from Sioux Falls, a small business owner fed up with federal taxes, who comes in at around 14 minutes into the segment. After hearing his remarks, I have to question whether or not this man was an actual small business owner or whether he was a Tea Party troll calling in to wax Ayn Rand. No business owner (large, medium, or small) turns down making more money because they are worried about paying federal taxes. What a ludicrous bunch of nonsense! After Downy's ad hom on the woman the president met with to discuss local economic concerns, I was left to wonder how NPR let themselves get into such a position.

When will the "liberal" media stop playing the cult of both sides? Sometimes there is only one side to a story. Supply side economics doesn't work. Even the guys that came up with it (David Stockman, Bruce Bartlett) have admitted they were wrong. You can't simply ignore aggregate demand and pretend it doesn't exist. The problem with our economy today is that there are not enough people buying things so businesses don't hire people. There isn't enough population at the top to support our economy.

The middle class is the engine that drives our economy and when they have more money, our economy will improve.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Ukraine Inks Deal With EU

The EU and the Ukraine signed an association agreement yesterday but it got little notice in the press. Odd, considering that this was the spark that lit the flame which started all the instability in the region. Perhaps the "liberal" media has become too obsessed with either the "Obama is weak" meme or wringing their hands over the "fact" that "Obama is weak"

Regardless, the focus should be on this agreement because it's exactly why Vladimir Putin has already lost. It is the first step of trade and economic integration with Europe that won't stop with Ukraine.

The EU also announced it will speed up similar association deals with Georgia and Moldova, it said in its statement: The European Union reconfirms its objective to further strengthen the political association and economic integration with Georgia and the Republic of Moldova. We confirm our aim to sign the Association Agreements, including the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas, which we initiated in Vilnius last November, no later than June 2014.

As I have said many times in the past, the West's soft, economic power always wins in the long run. Sooner or later, Putin will have no choice but to fall in line like everyone else.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Monday, December 30, 2013

Riiiiight

I love how every photo of the president these days is some variation of this one.






















Liberal media my ass!

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Good Words

The most common fallacy of journalism, and one of the most common fallacies of the human brain in general, is the assumption that whatever is happening at the moment will continue to happen forever. That has been the implicit assumption of the hyperventilating coverage of the miserable Obamacare rollout. (Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine Online).

A great companion piece to the Begala post from ealier today and one which has inspired a new tag-"Hyperventilating Media."

Of course, this is more than just a fallacy of journalism as Chait aptly notes. It is indeed a fallacy of the human brain that plays perfectly into the adolescent taunting of the Right. Fallacy is their bedrock after all so Democrats need to remember this and simply be patient. Long term, nearly all of the items on the Democratic wish list will end up as the law of the land as reality will dictate necessity.

And it will be with the help of Republicans!

Saturday, November 09, 2013

Good Words

There’s a certain type of political journalism that so exists in the moment that numerous such moments have been declared to be disasters for Obama, going back to Jeremiah Wright. This kind of hyperventilating approach always turns out to be wrong and overheated. It turned out that all those things were pretty bad, but it also turned out that Obama survived them. And he’ll survive this, too. Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast.

The whole piece is fantastic and exactly why I continue to laugh at the hyperventilating:)

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Other Shoe=Dropped

I was wondering when the other shoe would drop in terms of the hysteria over "If you like your insurance, you get to keep it." It looks like it has.

"If you're an insurance company, you're trying to hang onto the consumers you have at the highest price you can get them," Laura Etherton, a health policy analyst at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, told TPM. "You can take advantage of the confusion about what people get to have now. It's a new world. It's disappointing that insurance companies are sending confusing letters to consumers to take advantage of that confusion. The reality is that this could do real harm."

It never ceases to amaze me how folks like Mika Brzezenski get sucked in to the faux outrage. Why are they so insecure? Ah well, I used to be like that so maybe she will learn and become like Juan Williams over at Fox someday.

You should be blaming your insurance company because they have not been providing you with coverage that meets the minimum basic standards for health care. Let me put it more bluntly: your insurance companies have been taking advantage of you and the Affordable Care Act puts in place consumer protection and tells them to stop abusing people. The government did not “force” insurance companies to cancel their own substandard policies.The insurance companies chose to do that rather than do what is right and bring the policies up to code. This would be like saying the government “forces” chemical companies to dispose of toxic waste safely rather than dumping it in the river.

People should be angry that their insurance companies were not paying for these humane, common sense benefits all along. It baffles me that people are directing their anger at the ACA which rights these terrible wrongs.

There's nothing baffling about it. Our country is filled with adolescents who have problem with authority figures and would never think to blame insurance companies because they are filled with wealthy people who, by their very nature, are perfect and should be worshiped. Just blame the government...it's easy!!

So, what does happen to those people whose policies are "cancelled?"

Yeah, you'll have to excuse me if I don't fall for their bullshit again.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Demons of Progess

A recent discussion on Facebook made me realize that my frustration with conservatives has two levels. The first is that I simply don't understand how they can believe the lies that are peddled to them inside of the bubble. These fictional tales can easily be torpedoed by a simple check of the facts. But that's not even the worst part.

The second level is what really drives me nuts. That's when they very erroneously believe that liberals are the ones that are actually brainwashed. Their media are the ones telling the lies and only conservative media tells the truth. They essentially turn it around (Projection/Flipping) and truly think people like me are the ones that have fallen victim to the "liberal" media. This notion is completely false.

With each level, no amount of reality will persuade them yet I think we are coming to a turning point in this country in terms of information gathering. The conservative bubble isn't going to hold for all that much longer as reality comes crashing in (climate change, antiquated gun laws, poor macroeconomic policy etc) and destroys it. I already know that, while there is certainly liberal bias out there, it's not the out and out lying and propaganda that we see coming from the Right. Liberals, by nature and definition, are very reflective people and recognize the shortcomings of their own views and policies. That's where the over-analysis comes in to play. Conservatives are the exact opposite. They don't reflect at all, are set in their ways, never change and under analyze.

They are, in short, the demon to progress and that's why I can never be one.

Tuesday, October 01, 2013



The best part of this video is the montage of the "liberal" media once again playing the cult of both sides.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Patience

I wrote this over the weekend before the Navy Yard shooting and planned to post it tonight...

I'm trying to figure out what I hate more after the Colorado recall election of two state senators over their support for new gun safety laws: the usual bloviation from the gun community or the hand wringing from the left that gun control is dead. I think it's the latter.

It's always amazed me how opponents of the gun community (and other conservative causes) cower in the face of defeat. Maybe they should take a page out of the Right's playbook and lie, foam at the mouth, and scream that America is being raped. Nah, they can't do that...sensible people are too reflective and honest!

What they should do is realize that the recall election was actually a failure. They wanted to recall five senators but only got two. The Democrats still have the majority in Colorado. It's amusing that the "liberal media" is spinning this as a loss.

Further, the only thing now that is required in the Great Gun Debate is patience.  Eventually, we are going to see something like this  on a larger scale within the gun community and all this nonsense will be over. Likely, it will come from the area of mental health as it relates to gun ownership and gun rights groups themselves will be falling all over each other to pass the legislation.

Until it affects them personally, nothing will be done.

As of right now we know that Alexis was a military contractor and a gun enthusiast. He was arrested in 2010 on gun charges (firing his weapon within city limits in Fort Worth). So, how did he get the guns he used in today's shooting? And I thought that mass shooters don't attack gun full zones like a military base...

Tuesday, September 03, 2013

The Only One

It appears that I am the only one who thinks that the president asking Congress for permission to bomb Syria makes him stronger, not weaker. That's true even if Congress turns him down.

Consider what would happen if that was the scenario as it was in the UK. Congress, not the president, would be blamed if we allowed the use of chemical weapons to go without an appropriate response. This would be a similar situation to World War II where President Roosevelt lobbied hard to get the United States involved in the war only to be rebuffed continually by Congress and their isolationist ways.

Granted, Bashar Asssad is no Adolph Hitler but ignoring his actions would have massive repercussions in the region. Iran would feel emboldened as would the various terrorists networks that both they and Syria support. In short, it's far too late to do nothing.

And the president knows this. But he wants to do this the right way and that's why Congress needs to be in the decision making process. They need to see the evidence over the next week (as will the world) of Sarin gas use in Syria. Once this happens, much of the hand wringing and fretting that we see in the "liberal" media is going to go away.

Honestly, I think Assad's days are numbered.

Saturday, August 24, 2013


Thursday, June 13, 2013

Thursday, April 25, 2013


Wednesday, April 17, 2013

On Their Way Out The Door

I've watched with amusement over the media's obsession with the word "terror" and how the president didn't use it right away. Fox News, in particular, saw their opening and started attacking the president for being "weak on terror" and proceeded to overuse the word throughout their broadcasts since the bombing in Boston on Monday.

Well, 'ol Sean Hannity was the leader of the pack. I can only stomach him for a couple of minutes but he used the word at least a dozen times in the span that I viewed. My advice to him is to be careful what he wishes for...he might get it. Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss speculated that this bombing seems like the work of a domestic agent. Rick DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office and head of this investigation, is asking for people who might have heard someone talking about April 15th (tax day) or if they heard someone practicing with bomb making materials. That also says home grown terrorist and we all know what kind that could be.

If it does turn out that this was an anti-government, right wing type, check out how fast Fox and the rest of the right wing media walk back the use of the word "terror" and play make believe that the bomber wasn't really a conservative. They'll be falling all over themselves on the way out the door.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The Liberal Media?


Thursday, February 28, 2013

A Profile in Courage

The media tends to love talking about conservative activists like James O'Keefe, Bill Whittle or Erick Erickson  but they never really talk about the liberal ones like Zack Kopplin. Man, is he making life hell for the creationists down in Lousiana.

Encouraged by Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University — and a staunch critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute — Kopplin decided to write a letter that could be signed by Nobel laureate scientists in support of the repeal. To that end, he contacted Sir Harry Kroto, a British chemist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. Kroto helped him to draft the letter — one that has now been signed by 78 Nobel laureates.

I can't figure out why creationists and intelligent design folks aren't content with teaching their stuff in church. They can talk about how Jesus rode dinosaurs or whatever they want in there. Kopplin had gone after the voucher program as well.

School vouchers, he argues, unconstitutionally fund the teaching of creationism because many of the schools in these programs are private fundamentalist religious schools who are teaching creationism. "These schools have every right to teach whatever they want — no matter how much I disagree with it — as long as they are fully private," he says. "But when they take public money through vouchers, these schools need to be accountable to the public in the same way that public schools are and they must abide by the same rules."

Those rules being a strict adherence to the scientific method. There is nothing scientific about creationism.

"Creationism is not science, and shouldn't be in a public school science class — it's that simple," he says. "Often though, creationists do not, or are unwilling, to recognize this." Science, he argues, is observable, naturalistic, testable, falsifiable, and expandable — everything that creationism is not. But what also drives Kopplin is the inherent danger he sees in teaching creationism. 

"Creationism confuses students about the nature of science," he says. "If students don't understand the scientific method, and are taught that creationism is science, they will not be prepared to do work in genuine fields, especially not the biological sciences. We are hurting the chances of our students having jobs in science, and making discoveries that will change the world."

"We don't just deny evolution," he says, "We are denying climate change and vaccines and other mainstream science. I'm calling for a Second Giant Leap to change the perception of science in the world."

In the final analysis, this is really the crux of the problem. In an age of globalization. we can't afford a bunch of religious nonsense to interfere with our economic growth and security. Young men like Zack Kopplin give me a lot of hope that intelligence is alive and well in young people in the deep south and the time to put this assinine, anti science garbage behind us is yesterday.

Honestly, I thought we already did that in the Age of Enlightenment but I guess we still have a few stragglers:)

Monday, January 07, 2013

Uh Oh

Looks like the rats are leaving the sinking ship. I guess they got tired of all the wrong information put out there on a daily basis.

What amazes me most about this is how the Right really hates losers. Everything is about winning for them and, if you don't, they have no time for you at all.

Sour, sour grapes...