Category: Media

Was it his wife’s shotgun?

ST. MARIES, Idaho (AP) – A northern Idaho man who police say fired his shotgun near a U.S. census worker who was trying to deliver a census form has been cited for exhibition of a deadly weapon, a misdemeanor.

Fifty-4-year-old Richard L. Powell of St. Maries faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The Benewah County Prosecutor’s office says that on March 3 Powell told the census worker to get off his property and then fired a shotgun into the air.

AssociatedPress

Bold text added by the diarist

    Although this happened before Erickson told his listeners on RedState radio that he would pull his wife’s shotgun on any census worker who set foot on his property, it shows how some people are already on the verge of violence and need no egging on.

    So it is official, Erick son of Erick is the new Lou Dobbs/Glenn Beck of CNN.

More below the fold

What with nuclear disarmament, a Supreme Court nomination, and the looming possibility that I may actually have to shovel my driveway all falling upon our heads at once, we are not going to have a lot of free time over the next few days–so we better have some fun while we can.

To get it going, I have a couple of videos for your dining and dancing pleasure…videos that are each, in their own way, so crazy that you will be talking about them, from now until the time we get around to some of that more serious stuff–and possibly for quite a while after that.

Let’s start with the funny.

During the 2000 debates, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6).

In the 1992 debates, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), while George H.W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8), as did H. Ross Perot (6.3).

In the debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the candidates spoke in language used by 10th-graders.

In the debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas the scores were respectively 11.2 and 12.0.

In short, today’s political rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a 10-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. […]

Voltaire was the most famous man of the 18th century.

Today the most famous “person” is Mickey Mouse.

America the Illiterate

Chris Hedges — Nov 10, 2008 (pg 2)

I think, I’m detecting some sort of trend here …

Back in the early 1970s, there was a new genre of film, called Blaxploitation.  Remember it?  The movie would be set in the ghetto and all the characters would be hit men, drug dealers, pimps or narcs.  One may recall the films Foxy Brown and Blacula.  And who could forget Blackenstein?  Try as we might.

In the late 70s, there was a film called I spit on Your Grave, in the Rape and Revenge genre, trying to situate women’s rights the same way Blaxploitation did for African-American rights.  I Spit on your Grave is apparently being remade, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about Ticked Off Trannies with Knives.

Synopsis of I Spit on your Grave 2010:

The story of a woman who is brutally attacked, raped, and left for dead in the wilderness.  She survives to hunt down her assailants and methodically, graphically takes her vengeance.  Based on the 1978 film.

By David Swanson

ACORN is shutting down because of a fraudulent video pimped by the corporate media.  U.S. forces in Afghanistan have heroically laid seige to and conquered a fictional city, helping build the case for further escalation.  A cable news channel has created a right-wing mass movement by pretending it already existed.  Congressman Dennis Kucinich voted for a health insurance bill he believed would deprive more people of healthcare (and wealth and homes), because fraudulent reports had convinced his constituents of the opposite.  The peace movement was defunded in November 2008, because of a fraudulent presidential election campaign.  71% of Americans believe Iran has nuclear weapons.  41% of Americans think the quality of the environment is improving.  Has the power of the corporate media to overwhelm all before it begun to sink in yet?

ACORN’s funders didn’t have to run and hide because of a bunch of laughably bad lies, but they were afraid.  The most common excuse of progressive congress members for anything they do is fear of the media.  The peace movement didn’t have to shut down, but its funders had used war as a criticism of Republicans; opposing war for its own sake was secondary, and their televisions told them peace had arrived. Kucinich could have stuck to his No vote on healthcare, but he probably wouldn’t have lasted long in Congress.  We don’t have to be suckered by comically manipulative war news, but all the big media outlets want war — and the Democratic-party outlets especially favor war now.  Fox News could not have created the Teabaggers on its own, but MSNBC and the Democratic blogosphere spend a majority of their time focused on Teabaggers and Republicans because it unites their viewers/readers against something uglier than elected Democrats, never mind that in Washington the Democrats technically have all the power.

[snip]

I see things in wholes and in parts at the same time. We are each part of the Kollective Krazy of this time. Tea Baggers are examples of millions of Mad Hatter Tea Parties. We are not in the realm of reason — Marx would never have foreseen that Lewis Carroll would be the great thinker of our age.

Since WWI there has been a conscious and concerted attempt to control the minds of the American people. To rule in a democracy requires that minds be controlled and programmed–there is no alternative. Naturally, that is what has happened.  We are so used to it we normally don’t see it. We have to get out of our normal consciousness to see it–I think most of us here know this from having a long experience of being on the outside looking in.

I believe there is no hope at all for anything resembling the ideal view of a Constitutional Democracy ever flourishing in the USA. That period is over never to return. I suggest we adjust to that reality and try to build something relatively sane for our family and friends. I think life will go on but we have to get rid of the hope that anything can stop the march towards the clearly discernable neo-feudal order. There is simply no force in society that can help us at this time. American intellectuals and progressives have given up on integrity, reason and courage and are as much corrupted by konsumer kulture as the Tea Baggers — perhaps even more so.

Everyone seems to know that the tea party “movement” had a rally on the steps of the capitol yesterday.  They got in the face of a few Congressmen and now every Beltway media outlet from the Washington Post to Meet the Press is talking about it.  But there was another protest in town yesterday.  Thousands of people showed up in front of the White House to tell Obama (and Congress) to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to treat Palestinians fairly, and to generally end the US military empire.

MSNBC estimates that somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 tea party people showed up at the capitol building.  Yet the low end of the estimates for the number of people who showed up at the peace demonstration (including myself) is about 2,500, and the high end is about 10,000.  Where’s our moment on Meet the Press?  Where’s our article in the New York Times?