Tag: Open Thread

There was once a little kitty. She was black with a crooked tail. She was quite neurotic all by herself and her neurosis should in no way be attributed to the person who fed her and napped with her and petted her on demand.  Not at all!  They shared a life and so maybe some neurosis spilled over but her fear of cars and traveling was all her own.

This kitty traveled half-way across the country, twice. She really hated highways. She never offered to drive and when the car stopped she’d howl like a banshee. She once tried to escape to an Amish village.  She was fiercely opposed to modern methods of transportation and thought the Amish might be her people and a good place to find a home. She was captured and kept from that life and never quite forgave her capturers for not allowing her to fulfill her destiny as a Cat of the Amish.

She really didn’t like tornadoes, either and took thunder and lightening sort of personally; fireworks, too. She had a special shoebox she’d go to whenever the gods of the sky made themselves known. She did like SciFi however and was a big fan of Mystery Science Theatre.

The kitty had many stories to tell.  There are many stories to tell about the kitty.

Well you can certainly rest assured that I’m in no danger of falling into this trap-

Say What You Will (Requiem for a TV News Career)

Chez Pazienza, Huffington Post

Posted February 18, 2008 | 07:22 PM (EST)

…

During my last couple of years as a television news producer, I watched the networks try to recover from a six year failure to bring truth to power (the political party in power being irrelevant incidentally; the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times) and what’s worse, to pretend that they had a backbone all along.

I watched my bosses literally stand in the middle of the newsroom and ask, “What can we do to not lead with Iraq?” — the reason being that Iraq, although an important story, wasn’t always a surefire ratings draw.

I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I’d “increased shareholder value.” (For the record, if you’re a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word “shareholders,” let alone be reminded that you’re beholden to them.)

I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public — to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks.

I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status and our willingness to let the airwaves be taken hostage by every permutation of opportunistic degenerate from a crying judge to a Hollywood hanger-on with an emo haircut.

I watched qualified, passionate people worked nearly to death while mindless talking heads were coddled.

I listened to Lou Dobbs play the loud-mouthed fascist demagogue, Nancy Grace fake ratings-baiting indignation, and Glenn Beck essentially do nightly stand-up — and that’s not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News.

I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity.

I’m nobody important.

Well after all Pickering, I’m an ordinary man.

Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance to live exactly as he likes and do precisely what he wants.

An average man am I of no eccentric whim, who likes to live his life free of strife, doing whatever he thinks is best for him.

Well… just an ordinary man…

But let a woman in your life and your serenity is through.  She’ll redecorate your home, from the cellar to the dome, and then go on to the enthralling fun of overhauling you!

Let a woman in your life and you’re up against a wall.  Make a plan and you will find that she has something else in mind, and so rather than do either you do something else that neither likes at all!

You want to talk of Keats and Milton, she only wants to talk of love.  You go to see a play or ballet and spend it searching for her glove.

Let a woman in your life and you invite eternal strife.  Let them buy their wedding bands for those anxious little hands.  I’d be equally as willing for a dentist to be drilling than to ever let a woman in my life.

I’m a very gentle man, even tempered and good natured who you never hear complain, who has the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein.  A patient man am I, down to my fingertips; the sort who never could, ever would, let an insulting remark escape his lips.  A very gentle man.

But let a woman in your life, and patience hasn’t got a chance.  She will beg you for advice, your reply will be concise, and she will listen very nicely, and then go out and do exactly what she wants!!!

You are a man of grace and polish, who never spoke above a hush, all at once you’re using language that would make a sailor blush.  

Let a woman in your life and you’re plunging in a knife!  Let the others of my sex tie the knot around their necks.  I prefer a new edition of the Spanish Inquisition than to ever let a woman in my life!

I’m a quiet living man who prefers to spend the evening in the silence of his room, who likes an atmosphere as restful as an undiscovered tomb.  A pensive man am I, of philosophical joys, who likes to meditate, contemplate, far for humanities mad inhuman noise.  Quiet living man.

But let a woman in your life and your sabbatical is through.  In a line that never ends comes an army of her friends, come to jabber and to chatter and to tell her what the matter is with YOU!  She’ll have a booming boisterous family who will descend on you en mass.  She’ll have a large Wagnarian mother with a voice that shatters glass,

Let a woman in your life?  Let a woman in your life!?

Let a woman in your life- I shall never let a woman in my life.

(Celebrating 10 years since I proposed to my ex-fiance.)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

So.  Do you think The New York Times finally gets it about the Protect America Act?

Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.

…

The law then, and now, also requires the attorney general to certify “in writing under oath” that the surveillance is legal under FISA, not some fanciful theory of executive power. He is required to inform Congress 30 days in advance, and then periodically report to the House and Senate intelligence panels.

Congress was certainly not informed, and if Mr. Ashcroft or later Alberto Gonzales certified anything under oath, it’s a mystery to whom and when. The eavesdropping went on for four years and would probably still be going on if The Times had not revealed it.

…

To defend themselves, the companies must be able to show they cooperated and produce that certification. But the White House does not want the public to see the documents, since it seems clear that the legal requirements were not met. It is invoking the state secrets privilege – saying that as a matter of national security, it will not confirm that any company cooperated with the wiretapping or permit the documents to be disclosed in court.

What about our Democratic Congress?  Glenn Greenwald–

… they are now not only capitulating to, but actually leading (in the form of their Intelligence Committee Chair, Jay Rockefeller), the Bush/Cheney crusade to legalize warrantless eavesdropping and institutionalize lawlessness through telecom amnesty.

…

That is the same failed strategy that Democrats have been pursuing with complete futility for the last eight years. In 2002, they became convinced by their vapid, craven “strategists” that if they voted for the war in Iraq, it would take national security off the table and enable the midterm elections to be decided by domestic issues. In 2004, they decided that they would reject a candidate who provided too much of a contrast on national security (Howard Dean) in favor of one who, having supported the war and with a record of combat, would neutralize national security as an election issue.

…

Notably, the one time they actually allowed a contrast to be created on national security — in the run-up to the 2006 midterm election, when they were perceived to be the anti-war party and the GOP was perceived to be tied to Iraq — they won a decisive victory. When they seek to remove national security as an issue by copying Republicans, they lose.

I don’t get it.  Mike Tabbi–

The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what’s to come if they win the White House. And if we don’t pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there’s still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years. With no one but ourselves to blame.

…

Democrats insist that the reason they can’t cut off the money for the war, despite their majority in both houses, is purely political. “George Bush would be on TV every five minutes saying that the Democrats betrayed the troops,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Then he glumly adds another reason. “Also, it just wasn’t going to happen.”

Why it “just wasn’t going to happen” is the controversy. In and around the halls of Congress, the notion that the Democrats made a sincere effort to end the war meets with, at best, derisive laughter. Though few congressional aides would think of saying so on the record, in private many dismiss their party’s lame anti-war effort as an absurd dog-and-pony show, a calculated attempt to score political points without ever being serious about bringing the troops home.

…

But any suggestion that the Democrats had an obligation to fight this good fight infuriates the bund of hedging careerists in charge of the party. In fact, nothing sums up the current Democratic leadership better than its vitriolic criticisms of those recalcitrant party members who insist on interpreting their 2006 mandate as a command to actually end the war. Rep. David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee and a key Pelosi-Reid ally, lambasted anti-war Democrats who “didn’t want to get specks on those white robes of theirs.” Obey even berated a soldier’s mother who begged him to cut off funds for the war, accusing her and her friends of “smoking something illegal.”

…

Even beyond the war, the Democrats have repeatedly gone limp-dick every time the Bush administration so much as raises its voice. Most recently, twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to grant immunity to phone companies who participated in Bush’s notorious wiretapping program. Before that, Democrats caved in and confirmed Mike Mukasey as attorney general after he kept his middle finger extended and refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Democrats fattened by Wall Street also got cold feet about upsetting the country’s gazillionaires, refusing to close a tax loophole that rewarded hedge-fund managers with a tax rate less than half that paid by ordinary citizens.

Instead they simply pretend to live in fear of the Villagers, a group of ineffective toothless sycophants (Greenwald again).

… there are plenty of people who still insist that people like Chris Wallace and Brit Hume are real journalists, somehow distinguishable from the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly. Shouldn’t this question from Wallace, by itself, preclude that assessment? Is Wallace’s embarrassingly deferential inquiry really any different than the defining question asked of the Commander-in-Chief which exposed Jeff Gannon:

Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines. And Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work — you’ve said you are going to reach out to these people — how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Both Wallace and Gannon — with the opportunity to question the U.S. President — basically asked: “Mr. President, how do you handle so well the fact that your political opponents are so crazy, malicious and anti-American”? Just compare Gannon’s mentality (“how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”) with Wallace’s (“are you ever puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us?”). Brezhnev-era Pravda would have been too ashamed to ask such blatantly subservient questions of political leaders. But Chris Wallace is a Very Serious Journalist and Fox is a real news network.

Real journalists?  Yup, just like Tweety and Timmeh and Shuster and Mrs. Greenspan and Wolfie from AIPAC and Candy and Mr. Matlin and the Beckmiester of hate.

Serious.  Respected.

Pfui.