Happy New Year! I hope all of your Zunes woke up this morning from their Microsoft error induced hangover. What a great new tradition to bring in the new year.
Microsoft’s responded to the Zune 30GB failure, blaming a leap-year handling bug. And they’ve provided a fix. Which is to wait til New Years, when the bug will go away by itself. Huh.
Add comment January 1st, 2009
Did you know the corporate media has a varsity team?
I sure didn’t.
Last night on Anderson Cooper, talking head Joe Johns let slip the existence of a media corps varsity team “of the likes you have just never seen.”
This highly trained journalistic strike-force was known for its dogged persistence and ability to get the job done.
They never take no for an answer. Instead, these superheroes will hound presidents, always asking the difficult questions, and are never satisfied with a none response.
Here is the startling revelation, straight from the transcript:
JOHNS: Sure. And nobody wants to jump out there and start slamming him immediately. But I’ve got tell you, at the end of the day, this is a varsity media corps of the likes you have just never seen.
And people are going to hammer away at a question and an individual like Barack Obama doesn’t want to ask. It’s just the nature of the beast. Wherever you go, you’re going to get that question after a certain point.
Wow…at every turn…hammering away at the hard questions…it’s just the nature of the beast. Booyeah, I tell you.
This, of course, got me thinking. Where has the awesome varsity media corps been hiding for the last eight years?
You know, when Bush lied us into the Iraq War, a shredded Constitution, an economic apocalypse, and a climate crisis turned into a daily worldwide catastrophe.
Hmmm.
Add comment December 17th, 2008
George Bush is throwing a “pity party” and everyone is invited! Fabricated intelligence which led to the Iraq War–not his fault. Likewise, the economic meltdown was the result of stupid, rogue investors, certainly not Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, further financial deregulation, or the economic burden of his two unending wars.
Add comment December 17th, 2008
Poor John McCain.
He watched his last chance at the Presidency go down the toilet.
His top campaign staff were shopping around their resumes before the first ballot was cast.
Even McCain saw the writing on the wall well before election day.
How else would one explain McCain’s announcement that he would not be attending his own victory party on November 2 due to space constraints. Huh?
Although a strong argument could be make that it sucks to be McCain right now, John should take some comfort in the fact that there was an even bigger loser this election season. Who was it? The corporate media, of course.
No matter what meta-narrative the corporate press pushed, the unwashed masses were not buying it this election cycle. Remember the inevitability of Rudy Giuliani? How about Hillary Clinton?
Oh, and what about all of the smears breathlessly repeated by the corporate media which failed to stick during the campaign?
Obama is exotic (read black) and somehow foreign. Foreign people with funny names can sometimes be terrorist. Obama knew a terrorist, so he must be one too.
Unswayed, the corporate media decided to double down on failure and laud McCain’s v.p. pick of the frightfully incompetent Sarah Pallin as the most politically cunning move executed during the whole presidential campaign.
Outside the media’s bubble, real voters were appalled.
Hillary supporters were furious that McCain would assume they would vote for any women regardless of her record, and Republicans were equally repelled by McCain’s willingness to put an unqualified idiot into the number two slot if it would focus some media attention on his dying campaign.
In short, instead of turning around McCain’s failing campaign as predicted by the talking heads, the Pallin pick was the begining of the end for McCain. Way to see that coming corporate spin meisters!
It has often been said that John McCain’s base is the media. This year proves it.
However, if McCain wants to stay in politics, it might be time to find some new peeps to bring him sprinkle donuts.
Add comment November 30th, 2008
It’s called a circular leak.
A politician has information which they want in the public domain. This message serves a particular purpose for the politician. It may smear an opponent, provide a distraction from a more damaging story, or legitimize a policy position.
A hand picked reporter is granted special, exclusive access to the information. In exchange, the source of the story–who also happens to benefit from the story–gets to remain anonymous.
The reporter writes a story using this information and it is printed in the paper. Now, the politician can cite the reporter’s story as proof that his false statements are true.
As the clip above illustrates, Dick Cheney made the circular leak famous, or is it infamous, when he used it to support his false claim that Saddam Hussein was developing WMD’s and posed an imminent threat to the United States of America.
This fancy bit of footwork helped convince the American people that Saddam was somehow linked to Al-Qaida and 9/11. The Iraq War soon followed.
Fast forward a few years.
Republican Congressman Dave Reichert is desperately trying to hold his seat against challenger Darcy Burner. Even though Reichert has lead in the polls most of the race, Burner has pulled ahead two weeks before the election.
What to do? Time to consult the Republican Handbook.
Why not shop around a story that Burner is lying about her Harvard degree in economics? Once the story is in print, use the article to smear Burner in a negative ad.
Mission accomplished!
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If you want to help Darcy Burner fight back against the smear, click here now.
Add comment October 24th, 2008
Here is my question. Is the corporate press willingly passing on McCain propaganda?
It took the blogosphere less than twenty-four hours to vet this guy, but the media, with all its available resources, never bothered to make a few phone calls to see if “Joe the Plumber” was legit.
Pathetic.
Anyway, back to Robert Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber’s father. You see, Robert Wurzelbacher was an executive of American Continental Corporation, the parent company of Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings. That’s the bank which caused citizens to lose their life savings and cost U.S. taxpayers $3.4 billion. As part of that scandal, Robert Wurzelbacher pleaded guilty to three counts of misapplying $14 million and served 40 months in prison.
And now, Lincoln Savings, Robert Wurzelbacher and Joe the Plumber are back with John McCain.
Add comment October 16th, 2008
This is just too easy.
One of McCain’s economic advisors, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, has now made the outlandish claim that McCain is responsible for the miracle known as the Blackberry.
Who knew a 72 year old man and self proclaimed computer illiterate possessed such raw technological genius? It boggles the mind on so many levels.
Oh, and wasn’t I just shooting my mouth off about how Al Gore got labeled a habitual liar when the corporate press decided to twist his words and push the story that Gore thought he had invented the internet.
I guess the corporate media will start labeling McCain a power hungry liar, just like they did to Gore in 2000. After all, fair is fair.
Add comment September 17th, 2008
First Amendment meet the Freedom CageTM
Add comment September 1st, 2008
Add comment August 28th, 2008
Would someone nominate Glenn Greenwald for a Pulitzer Prize. (P.S. I’m totally serious.)
It was really the perfect symbol for how the Beltway political system functions — those who dictate the nation’s laws (the largest corporations and their lobbyists) cavorting in total secrecy with those who are elected to write those laws (members of Congress), while completely prohibiting the public from having any access to and knowledge of — let alone involvement in — what they are doing. And all of this was arranged by the corporation — AT&T — that is paying for a substantial part of the Democratic National Convention with millions upon millions of dollars, which just received an extraordinary gift of retroactive amnesty from the Congress controlled by that party, whose logo is splattered throughout the city wherever the DNC logo appears — virtually attached to it — all taking place next to the stadium where the Democratic presidential nominee, claiming he will cleanse the Beltway of corporate and lobbying influences, will accept the nomination on Thursday night.
Add comment August 26th, 2008
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