Here's what the MSM should be covering

Ted Cruz—one of Obama's many worst nightmares in the dreams of the tea-baggers—is going to run for President.

As everyone should know, he's a Canadian anchor-baby born of the Cuban dissident/pastor Rafael Cruz and his American wife.

Obama was born of a a Kenyan father and an American mother and in Hawaii. But that did not stop many politicians and people alike from questioning his citizenship. Even when politicians knew better, they would give an ambiguous "Well, I do not know where he was born" response.

So now that Cruz is running, this noise machine is silent. Of course, it has nothing to do with Cruz not have too much melanin in his dermis or his being a Republican, right?  Well, that's what the MSM should be relentlessly asking every single person who claim or claimed that Obama was ineligible to be POTUS.

Because, you know, that'd be fair, balanced and would go a long way towards showing that the MSM is not racist.  No, now is NOT the time to "rise above the fray." or "take the high road," or "avoid a circus," or any of the vomit they are going to provide as a reason.

C'mon MSM, do your job!

Who is Chuck Easttom?

I have had no idea, but I saw this, and liked what he states:

Question Everything. #Atheist pic.twitter.com/IEc3E7Tcnr
— ASH: DARK KNIGHT (@daraiderx) May 3, 2014

"Cliven Bundy is a racist, BUT..."

“However, I also want to say this. The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy. At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control. Now, to me, this was about a federal agency’s dangerous response to a situation that could have resulted in a catastrophe, and that means people dying and people being shot, kind of comparable to what we saw in Waco, Texas.”

Thus spake Sean Hannity trying to treat The Unraveling as a Christian buffet. Sadly, this will work. There was never a question that his fans would forget (there is nothing to forgive as far as they are concerned) how eagerly Hannity had supported the welfare queen with the cowboy hat the days preceding that racist tirade.

Not a skeptic, DENIALIST!

This is what's wrong with the corporate media. They are calling someone who is a science denier, a skeptic.

No, he is not, he is a denialist.  Look it up.

Moar Overton Window Please!

I intend to keep pointing this out, since I have to point out very little.

A few days ago:

Ah, so who are these moderates?

Today, one of the moderates is denying everything. This, despite being on record.

But wait, did he really deny it?

How to move the Overton Window

The country is moving right. If you do not think that is the case, you need to familiarize yourself with the Overton window and then examine recent history.

Thanks to the mainstream media trying to be balanced, or be "fair and balanced," one side—the more vocal side—is winning the mindshare of the general populace.

Do not confuse this to be a Democrat vs Republican thing. This is about Republicans going farther right, and the Democrats following suit.

Witness the current battle for defund-Obamacare-or-shutdown going on.

Shocker: Christian says one thing, does another!

That'd be Pope Francis.

Who said this:

[P]ope Francis sent shock waves through the Roman Catholic church on Thursday with the publication of his remarks that the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he had chosen not to talk about those issues despite recriminations from critics.

And then did this:

Melbourne priest Greg Reynolds has not only been defrocked, but also excommunicated by the Catholic Church over his support for women priests and homosexuals. The order came directly from Vatican under the authority of Pope Francis.

Wasn't that predictable?  No, I do not mean the two-faced nature of religion mongers, but the low volume of that second announcement.

The first was blared over every media loudspeaker.

The second? Not so much.

Wingnuts do not think before they speak

Steve King said this of global warming:

"It is not proven, it's not science. It's more of a religion than a science"

Therefore it stands to reason that Steve King holds science in higher regard than religion. Christianity then, has to be even more of a religion than global warming as far as King is concerned.

Yet, not many in the inept media will corner him on this wingnuttery.

WTF is wrong with this guy!

First it was Google Earth, Obama and the Beijing Olympics that boiled over into what is now being remembered as "The Arab Spring."

But wait, Friedman is now blaming Climate Change. Which might almost make sense, except it is not any hotter in the deserts of the middle east to have provoked thirsty Arab farmers into revolting against autocrats. No, it was the drought in Kansas.

Wait, what? That's right, Thomas Friedman has connected all the dots, and then some, between Kansas and the Arab Spring.

Also, too, al Qaeda.  Here, read all about it: Kansas and Al Qaeda.

PuffHo wonders what'll happen to A Good Newspaper

Say, Woodward and Bernstein look like Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. Perhaps if we really cared about the news, we'd care to show the ones who actually reported it.

In real life, not in a Hollywood film.

Moderate voices

From Mojo:

So how does Louisiana's arch-conservative Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, feel about the parish's continued enforcement of the invalidated sodomy law? He's been silent. His office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Monday, nor has he previously commented on the sodomy statute.

Of course, Jindal will always be touted by most of the media as a moderate, reasonable voice in the GOP. Why? Because there are some really—and I mean REALLY—batshit insane wingnuts in their midst, and to be "balanced", someone has to be decreed as moderate. Compared to bigots who speak, bigots who do not are less obvious as bigots.

See, silence is golden!

Kenyan Muslin Socialism in two graphs

Public Sector Kenyan Muslin Socialism

Private Sector Kenyan Muslin Socialism

Bad Cop...Good Cop

The "47 percent remark" cost Mitt Romney heavily. I do not think it was the single reason why he lost it, but it weighed heavily in his defeat. A disdain so viciously articulated in front of a friendly private audience when you are expected to speak truthfully does not augur well when those who are never supposed to hear it, do get to hear it.

So ask yourself why would Mitt do it again? On a telephone conference call, where he knew reporters from the media would be listening, and surely one or more of them would be recording it.



"Because Mitt is an idiot!"

Nope, wrong, try again.

Punditry Watch

From xkcd.com

Today's the day we get to watch how the Punxatawney Phils did with their prognostications. The New York magazine has collected a pretty exhaustive list of pundits who have been bold enough to put their names next to a number.

As have pollsters and poll aggregators, although for those, the predictions were not final at the time the list was compiled.

Nevertheless these stand out for what appears to be a disconnect from reality:

Jim "No, no, no, Bear Stearns is fine" Cramer.  He has Obama winning 440 electoral votes and the popular vote by a margin of 10 points.
George Will. He has Romney winning 321 electoral votes but he has Obama winning the popular vote by 1.3 points. To put that in perspective, in 2000, the winner had 271 electoral votes (won by 5) but had lost the popular vote by 0.5 points. So what George Will is saying is that Romney will win 50 more electoral votes than George the Younger, but will lose the popular vote by a margin that is 2.5 times worse!

That is not the scary part.

The scary part is that they will continue to have jobs, will not have to explain why they disregarded data, and will continue to be considered "respected pundits."

Hey, Juan Williams does not look so bad, does he?  He has Obama winning 298 electoral votes, but Romney winning the popular vote by 1 point.

That's what happens when we grade punditry on a curve.

No one will even notice the pundits who got the winner wrong. They'll have excuses ready. Sandy.

I'll quote a journo's (seemingly honest) opinion on the matter:

STREETNOISE: Worked in the news profession for 30 years, 15 of which have been where it ought solidly be considered entertainment, albeit all teeth grinding and no fun. But then, the U.S. press has always been owned by corporations and conglomerates, so let's get real and cherish the days when those corporations were actually good stewards of the 4th estate and of the country: pre-Reagan, mostly, and decidedly pre-Bush II. For a moment, there was the promise of well-educated and informative internet press, then that, too, was scooped up, co-opted and turned into drivel. The other shoe is yet to drop. Now that those same corporations have gutted the newspapers, turned cable news into a partisan trailer park, and fired all the bona fide journalists, there are next to no press alternatives. Get ready for across the board mainstream media/news paid internet content that isn't worth the bandwidth.

Imagine what happens if Nate Silver, Sam Wang, Mark Blumenthal et. al. get it wrong?  The likely reason for all of them to wrong would be bad polling, since they do not poll, they just aggregate, but does anyone think the pundits won't crucify them?

Science has always strangled priestdom. Punditry is priestdom, science is its natural enemy.

The Corporate Media Narrative if Romney Loses

Well, three more days, and it'll be done. National polls have been tight, with a tiny lead for Romney, but the state polls, especially the battleground states have been breaking largely in Obama's favor. Multiple poll aggregation sites, such as Nate Silver's 538, Sam Wang's Princeton Election Consortium, PuffHo's Pollster (all declared Obama supporters) and Real Clear Politics (Republican leaning site) have this.

To summarize as of 11/3/2012

[UPDATED: Obama's win had little to do with Sandy]

• Nate Silver has Obama winning 305 electoral votes, 50.6% of the popular vote, 83.7% chance of winning.
• Sam Wang has Obama winning 323 electoral votes, with a 98.0%+ chance of winning.
• Pollster has Obama winning at least 277 electoral votes
• RCP has Obama winning 290 electoral votes (no tossup model), with 47.4% of the popular votes, (Romney has 47.2%)

I'll leave the cranks aside, because they have Romney winning. This narrative does not apply to them.

WTF?

If Mitt Bullshits and the Media Isn't Around...

Is he still accountable?

Well, how about if the media is around, and actually prompted the questions that led to his steady stream of bullshit?

Word has it that the insipid Empty Chair Yellathon, otherwise known as the Republican National Convention failed to inspire the voters, whereas the Continuing Slick Willy Love Story, otherwise known as the Democratic National Convention did give Obama and the Democrats a pretty big bump.

The PuffHo censors, too.

Well, there was this mushy ejaculation of thanksgiving projectiles over at the Huffington Post, and the head ho of the PuffHo said something about "Occupying Gratitude" (I kid you not, she really did say something that yeasty!)

In my infinite wisdom I saw it fit to post this:

Arianna should also be happy that unpaid writers and bloggers made her a fortune, and that legally she was not obligated to share her riches with them. Surely $315 million is not something you earn by yourself, as she'll tell you herself.
In this respect, she's no different than Alaska Palin.

Naturally, they said "no, thanks!"

But here it is, anyway.