Much ado

Appearances can be deceiving. I get e-mails with pictures of huge crowds rallying against Obama because only the far left liberal cringe loonies would think Obama had any support in "forcing his ideas down our throats." All the conversations I overhear, all the bumper stickers I see and all the viral e-mails I get support the idea that nobody likes Obama, everyone is drinking the tea and that 2012 will be the "End of an Error."

But Obama's ratings are on the way up, they've been no worse than Reagan's. Sarah Palin's are on the way down and at this point more people have favorable opinions of Socialism, than of the Tea Party.

Where was the "there are no legitimate uses for guns" crowd when a bomb was found at an MLK parade Monday? There are sure as hell no legitimate uses for IEDs, so why is there no attempt to make them go away by "tougher" ' assault bomb ban' legislation? Why aren't we terrified of bombs now? In fact there isn't even increased support for more gun bans - just a lot of sound and fury.

I keep reading that since this latest assassination, America is for "stricter gun control" That's deceptive too, since what the vast majority is in favor of isn't what you'd think from those articles and blogs. The country is hugely in favor of the second amendment, doesn't want any more bans on types of weapons and accessories. What they do want - nearly unanimously - is a massive effort to improve the background check system to keep certain people away from firearms says The Huffington Post. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the blogs may be blaring, the activists may be active, but there really isn't a renewed support for more of the same old "gun control."

You know, it's isn't only Fox News making things seem other than they are.

Loonies, Moonies and Republicans - oh my!

I remember reading Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon many years ago. It's about an old Soviet apparatchik fallen from grace and thrown into one of Stalin's prisons to await some miserable and sordid fate in the Lublyanka cellars. It came to mind because there's a mention in it of group photos of the Old Guard, the early, idealistic, committed Communists out to make a better world and how one by one, the official photos on the office wall were replaced by newer ones with certain people missing, certain others added.

It was long before digital photography and before it made it so easy for unscrupulous, devious, dishonest, America hating, indecent propagandists to produce photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda, for instance, or Barack Obama saluting improperly -- and do it far better than old Ivan in the back room could with a razor and some glue. It is far too easy for the kind of trolls who work for right wing rags owned by foreign born lunatics like the Washington Times to produce photos of Elena Kagan in a black Turban so as to insinuate perhaps, and without any sense of journalistic integrity, that she's a terrorist supporter as well as a probably homosexual cross dresser and part of an "ominous plot" to insinuate Sharia Law into this country.

It's far too easy for an American public so insanely desperate, so grossly, childishly irresponsible that they will get into bed with the Moonies just to have one more idiotic piece of dung to fling at the opposition. It's so easy for a public who never reads to miss the parallels between what they do and what the people they claim to hate did. It's so easy for an infantile America to dismiss someone for having Communist cooties because they simply haven't the brains to do much more and certainly can't be expected to discuss her actual qualifications and record.

It's so hard for a person who likes to see people get their just desserts when those people are the country he so wishes to be proud of.

The bow that shook the world

Actually it shook very little outside the Fox's den other than the behinds of the Wingnut Obama haters when President Obama did the traditional Japanese equivalent of the European handshake with the Emperor of Japan. Inside the borrow however, it was immediately dubbed the Bow-Gate in the tired old idiom of "let's get 'em back for what they did to Nixon."

Yes, we've all seen pictures of Don Rumsfeld bowing and shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, and we've seen too many pictures of George Bush lovingly caressing the Saudi Royals and all but making out with Prince Bandar -- not to speak of the Andrea Merkel supergaffe. What we haven't seen, except on blogs like The Reaction, is Richard Nixon bowing to Mao Zedong as though he were the Emperor of China.

Fox Folk may have short and selective memories, but the Internet remembers. To give him due credit, Nixon's little bow opened up an era of detente, increased cooperation and a liberalization of human rights in China. The internet remembers.

Shameless in the morning

Fox may just be the most busted name on Television, but it never seems to affect them or the faithfulness of their coven. We've heard plenty from them about how President Obama is a racist and the lack of evidence doesn't keep them from clinging to the slur or using it to disparage anyone who dares disagree. It also doesn't keep them from airing obnoxious and personal racist attacks without any disguise at all. What else would you call Bo Dietl, pulling on his eyes and mocking CBS anchor Katie Couric for looking Chinese and "oriental?" Probably the same thing he would call me if I put burned cork on my face and said "Holy Mackerel, Andy:" a racist idiot.

"Ten years ago, she looked American," Dietl remarked. "Today she is an Oriental"

as though nobody of Asian ancestry could possibly be an American. As though nobody with dark skin could possibly be one either. As though Dietl weren't a nasty little racist prick.



Dietl, who is a frequent Fox contributor, former Bush appointee and midwife to the "birther" hoax, chose Imus in the Morning simulcast on Fox for this infantile insult. In any other venue, he would immediately be fired and Imus, if he had a brain in that zombie-like head of his should have thrown him off instantly, but of course Imus is Imus and all he could do was to call Curic a rodent in that whiskey and heroin voice of his, but of course it was on Fox and the racism and ugly slander is fair and balanced, you dirty Liberals.

Sure, they'll have an excuse, it wasn't racist, he was misunderstood, Liberals have no sense of humor and yada yada. We've heard it all before. They'll get away with it because Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch and their employees are pigs who deserve nothing better for Christmas than to be visited by the ghost of Bruce Lee who can demonstrate to them just how hilariously funny it is to be Chinese.

Sometimes an opinion is just a lie

It's going to get harder for Fox News to hide behind the giggles, the puffed up pretense to being offended and accusations of insanity if more of the other networks begin to fight back against Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes's lie machine. Brad Blog covers CNN’s Rick Sanchez's, slapdown of Fox. Sanchez, who seems of late to be more willing to speak up against injustice went after Fox's Washington Post ad claiming they were the only network to cover the 9/12 "tea party" in Washington.

It's good to see someone get mad at the ever increasing torrent of lies, distortions and false claims emanating from Fox. It's going, as I said, to get harder to call the few vocal opponents like Olbermann and even Jon Stewart crazy or inconsequential if CNN is willing to run ads as they did yesterday evening, accusing Fox of "Distorting Not Reporting."

The people who send me wingnut e-mails about things that are designed to outrage the ignorant, often preface them with "why isn't the MSM covering this?" although usually, they are and have been. Fox's WaPo ad seems to have been the "enough is enough" trigger and even ABC declared it “demonstrably false.” The claim that no other networks were there was deemed by the Post to be an expression of an opinion not a lie, which of course doesn't help their credibility, regardless of what they claim the meaning of the word "is" is. Sanchez, concluding his diatribe said this:

“Let me address the Fox News Network now, perhaps the most current way that I can — by quoting somebody who recently used a very pithy phrase. Two words, that’s all I need. ‘You lie.’”

Lets hope it becomes a movement. Let's hope the Glennbeckery, the outrageous liberties taken with the news have finally pushed the timid competition into speaking out for the truth - they way they're supposed to.

Mom - he's threatening me!

Perhaps if we had not, like Dr. Pavlov's dogs, been trained to growl at the mention of Iran, we could perceive just a bit of cant in the news reports of Iranian pugnaciousness today.

Iran tests missiles, vows to hit back if attacked, shouts the Reuters report and similar headlines blare in the papers today. What would we do if we were threatened with attack? What would Canada do? Indeed what have we been doing but testing our weapons and threatening apocalyptic destruction on any who attack us?

Iran has some missiles with a 1200 mile range, but by all accounts they have only rudimentary guidance systems. The warheads of course are conventional explosives and without pinpoint accuracy, their overall effects would be far less than a Tomahawk cruise missile or two. Anyone they might be aimed at in anger has nuclear retaliatory capability and advanced multiple delivery systems. Iran would stand no chance in any conventional confrontation. Iran knows this very well.

I'm no fan of heavy-handed theocracies, but even a milquetoast with his back against the wall can be forgiven for saying "if you hit me I'll hit you back" as pathetic as it might sound. The only thing more pathetic is using that as an excuse to bully him further. Considering the anti Iran rhetoric, The West's history of meddling with their elected governments and our covert operations within their borders; considering our constant threats of annihilation, what would any country do? Indeed what can any country at odds with US desires do these days but cringingly comply with our increasingly bellicose demands to disarm and assume the position?

Whether or not Iran's current government is a substantial threat to us or to our allies, such as they are, by continuing to demonize and disrespect any country refusing to pledge fealty, we continue to cultivate our image as a brutal bully, concerned only with feeding our addictions and ego and completely confused as to why everyone hates us.

Lara's song

"Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever. "

Lara Logan

I was never really conscious of Lara Logan's existence until the Daily Show had her as a guest recently. She made a well presented and credible claim that the news from Iraq was being toned down, under reported, redacted and sometimes ignored, and as someone who has been in the thick of it for years as the chief foreign correspondent for CBS, and who frequently has been in the midst of combat, she has a great deal of credibility. That network has been cutting back its staff in Baghdad and some critics say that the public perception of improvement in Iraq has a lot to do with the lack of coverage. Indeed, despite the constant emphasis on danger and terror, it's possible to sit through a very long period of broadcast news without a single story from Iraq.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” she said to Jon Stewart.

It might be that she pushed the wrong buttons. Headlines and weblogs have begun to bleat about scandals in her private life, led by such Liberal Media as the National Enquirer and Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. Will Bunch at Philly.com has a provocative article today and a link to the Daily Show interview.

Backlashes against less than enthusiastic reportage of Bush's war began immediately after the initial enthusiasm. Networks refused to allow a reading of the names of casualties lest it be taken as criticism of George Bush or his invasion. I don't think it's far fetched at all to see this attempt to ruin a brilliant career as a continuation.