SoonerBlue

Mostly politics, a few current events, a squirt of seltzer down yer pants .. a little blog for my rambles and rants.

2009/11/11

Look what Fox News tried to get away with

Busted!

This Daily Show episode shows unmistakable evidence that Fox News splices and doctors its videos to fit its agenda. They show footage of the last House Call rally...with some of the 9/12 rally spliced in. You can tell that the trees changed color. Journalists, my left foot! Thanks Jon Stewart for holding them accountable...and keep up the good work!

Yep, Jon Stewart caught Sean Hannity using misleading video clips of a protest rally to support his claim that nearly 45,000 people turned up at a health-care-reform protest last week.

Washington Post had reported that only 10,000 people attended, or Hannity might have gotten away with using old protest footage to show larger crowds.

"If I didn’t know any better, I would think they just put two different days together and acted like they didn’t," joked Stewart.

He then showed clips of Glenn Beck using the same footage two months ago at a different event.

Watch here:

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911100063

 

2009/11/4

I'll loan you my garlic necklace, silver bullets and crucifix

 

I followed last night's election results with great interest...Democrats won a couple and lost a couple. Looks like voters are the most upset about jobs and the economy.

I already knew Republicans would win governorships in NJ and VA. Democrat Jim Corzine ran a lousy campaign based on Karl Rove's dirty tricks and deserved to lose NJ.

We had a sucky candidate who ran a sucky campaign in VA...enough for Republican Bob McDonnell to get by with that thesis he once wrote on keeping women subjugated. He also probably won because he didn't buy into Tea Party ideology and kept Sarah Palin at bay.

So Teabaggers can relax....New Jersey and Virginia are safe from a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Let's party like it was 1871! The NY-23 Democratic win against the Tea Party Conservative candidate sure helped me sleep a little better. Looks like the traditional wing of the Republican party said "hell, no" to the crazies.

Take that Teabaggers and Birthers! You drink too deeply from the cup of Palin, Beck and Limbaugh.

But don't get too giddy, lefties... this doesn't mean the Teabagger movement is smothered in its crib. They won't give up this easily. But if NY-23 was a trial run for Florida.... if the Republicans don't want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, somebody better rein 'em in.

In a way, I hope no one does...we Dems love to see them run wild.

It was a shame that left-wing zealot Republican Dede Scozzafava got chased off from NY-23 by Glenn Beck and the Teabaggers -- hey, nice name for a rightie rock band -- but the crazies didn't have the smarts to back a moderate who could win in a moderate district by just being moderate.

It was good that Dede threw her lot in with loyal comrade Democrat Bill Owens...and if he isn't up to the job of crushing those capitalist pigs, Chairman Obamovich can always exile him to Siberia...or North Dakota.

Is anybody amused because the Republican Party spent $900,000.00 on a Republican who dropped out and endorsed the Democrat? Or because the combined votes for Scozzafava and Hoffman would have given them a win? In a district that had been held by the GOP since 1871...when Ulysses S. Grant was President....

The GOP might be better off taking a Hoffman loss, rather than emboldening third parties in 2010. Remember Ralph Nader and Florida in 2000? Third parties are suicide...but the hard-left and hard-right wings often get impatient with the moderates and try it from time to time.

I know the Republican establishment is spineless and out of ideas, but for us to have a decent two-party system, someone needs to save the GOP. It dang sure ain’t gonna be me...but if someone wants to try, I'’ll loan you my garlic necklace, silver bullets, crucifix and wooden stakes....oh, and you might need some pitchforks and torches.

And don't worry, there's not all that many of them...they call themselves the base of the party, but they're just the fringe...the lunatic fringe.

I have a year's supply of popcorn, I'm going to love every minute of the Loony Teabagger Revolution. It's going to make the Goldwater thang look like a walk in the park.

2009/10/24

Bill Maher's New-Rules recap 10/24/09

 

New Rule: People from Southern California have to learn how to drive in the rain. You can go faster than five miles an hour, people. It's water, not K-Y jelly.

New Rule: If Republicans want to get back into power, they have to stop naming their lobbying groups after maxi-pads. [slide of logos for "FreedomWorks," "Keep America Safe!" and "Freedom First"]

New Rule, and it's our last of the season: Let's admit that despite all the media hype, there is one thing that George Bush did not destroy when he left office: comedy. If anything, Republicans out of power are even funnier than Republicans in power.

Now, I'm taking a hiatus for a few months...But, before I go, I'd like to go back to the beginning of the year and remind everyone that when Barack Obama, an actual college professor, replaced George Bush, an actual chimp--commentators announced that comedians would be out of a job.

Well, they were wrong. Everyone is out of a job.

So, yes, Bush was a sweet target. But, it turns out there were plenty of ridiculous Republicans behind him that we just couldn't see. His stupid "star doth shone too brightly."

To wit, the year began with Obama's State of the Union speech, rebutted by teenage governor Bobby Jindal. Who was the great hope of the party. But, when Americans saw him that fateful night, their thought wasn't "A new leader for a new time," it was "Good God, Mad magazine has outsourced Alfred E. Newman."

Now, after Jindal flamed out, the Republicans still needed a fresh new face. So they got Dick Cheney. Who, for a while, popped up on TV more often than the GEICO lizard to demand he be given proper credit for torture. Not that I'm comparing Cheney to the GEICO lizard. One's a cold-blooded reptile and the other is the GEICO lizard.

Now, after Cheney came that exciting new group of Obama critics known as "the birthers." Or as they used to be called, "the Klan."

And after them came Governor Mark Sanford. All over Argentina. Yes, this is truly a bizarre year for Republicans. Their sex scandals were with women.

Well, soon it was tax time, and the "teabaggers" filled the streets, purple with rage that their taxes under Obama had STAYED EXACTLY THE SAME OR GONE DOWN!!!

Yes, the "teabaggers," who started a movement and in the process sullied the name of a perfectly good gay sex act--that's right, when the year started, "teabagging" was a phrase that referred to dangling one's testicles in someone else's face. And they managed to turn it into something gross and ridiculous.

This is also the year that conservatives taught us that there's only one kind of racism left in America, and that's reverse racism. It was inspiring to see white men finally stand up to the oppressive, rigged system that has forced them to live in a hopeless cycle of wealth and opportunity.

And, speaking of opportunity, have you heard this broad? [slide of Michele Bachmann] The floor of a cave called. It wants its bat shit back.

And, speaking of bat shit, to reiterate my theme, if Obama hadn't been elected, would we have ever seen Glenn Beck cry on TV? On a park bench while masturbating, sure, but not on TV. And was there any better TV than watching this weepy, wonderful special-needs cousin of Rush Limbaugh? Angry one moment, then frightened, scolding, sobbing. We loved him because we've all known someone just like him. Usually an ex-girlfriend.

[From HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher]

 

Man up and tell him to his face!

 

Or - when you lie down with dogs....

Last Friday media analyst Marc Lamont Hill learned that he had been fired by Fox News through a Google Alert.

A Google Alert.

Here is the audio and transcript of his interview with radio host Steve Malzberg.

"I got a Google alert at 11 o’clock [a.m.] that it had been announced that I’d been fired. After that, I guess someone followed up later in the day, you know because I was sort of trying to figure out what was going on…I found out that it was true but other than that I don’t have any other information…I haven’t had any thorough conversation with anyone."

Then, over the weekend, a possible reason for his dismissal came to light. Seems that Hill had once said some not so flattering things about Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Seems that News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch broke the news of the firing himself, at stockholders meeting Friday morning.

There are those who say that Fox is an arm of the Republican party...what if it's scarier? And the Republican party is an arm of Fox?

See, Hill was being gunned for by rightie propagandist Cliff Kincaid, who works for "Accuracy in Media", and had been trying to get Hill fired...he told Murdoch that Hill is a "left wing cop-killer apologist."

Isn't it ironic that the same news outlet that's playing the victim and crying about the White House trying to "silence them" is truly silencing liberal commentators on their "news" channel?

Hey Hill, consider this a bullet dodged...count your blessings. This is what happens to someone who gives off the slightest whiff of 'fair and balanced' at Fox News.....


2009/10/17

Teabagger Frankensteins

Tags:
@ 06:56 AM (1 month, 6 days ago)

 

Now even the conservative Wall Street Journal is writing about the problems the GOP is having with its wingnut fringe.

We all know how the Republicans rounded up and bussed their hard right loonies to townhalls to scare people away from President Obama's healthcare reform...and how they organized and promoted tea party marches. Well, the crazies got fired up alright, but now they won't go away...they're still running rampant and scaring the villagers.

From the WSJ: "[B]ut these newly energized conservatives present GOP leaders with a potential problem: The party's strategy for attracting moderate voters risks alienating activists who are demanding ideological purity, who may then gravitate to other candidates or stay at home. It's a classic dilemma faced by parties in the minority -- tension between those who want a return to the party's ideological roots and those who want candidates most likely to win in their districts.

"The potential that the Republican Party puts up candidates that fail to excite the support of this movement is very real," says Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, University of Minnesota....."

Well, judging from all the photos and videos of townhalls and teabagger marchers, no wonder they're scaring centrists and moderates off. Teabaggers don't seem like just disgruntled conservatives who want to return to the party's roots...they come across as a little batshit nutty...no, a lot batshit nutty.

Democrats are sometimes berated and called wimps because they don't defend their principles strongly enough. It's true...when we march we don't carry around signs depicting Republicans as Hitler, and we don't show up packing heat, or call for an armed revolution to take our country back.

The crazies on the right are an entirely different species...they're not just party purists, they're extremists. That's a big difference.

Too late Republicans...you reap what you sow. You have actively cultivated these people, encouraging them to become outraged about issues you invented...like 'death panels.'

You gave radicals like Glenn Beck the most powerful mind control device ever used on people, television...and let him spew poison and lies continuously. You promoted the worship of frauds and phonies like Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber.

You should've worked harder to come up with your own ideas and plans, instead of blaming Democrats and making them the scapegoats for your frustrations. You should've thought more about how fearmongering turns fear into anger, rage, violence, xenophobia and paranoia...which now scares off the villagers.

Why did so few of your moderate Republicans stand up and denounce the insanity? Too afraid to piss off Rush Limbaugh?