Overslept, and didn’t get out of bed until around 8, and was in a generally grumpy mood until I checked my email and found this:
I guess things could be worse.
Archives for 2009
Hollywood East
I’ve started to get some very strange press releases since I joined Red State Strike Force, the Atlasphere, and the Republican Jewish coalition a few weeks ago. I can’t make heads or tails of this one, from Hollywood East Inc. I’ve bolded the most interesting parts but it begs to be read in its entirety:
January 6, 2009 was a prophetic day in American history. On that day, 2 tsunamis hit the entertainment world. Hollywood East, Inc. was launched by John Campbell, and Big Hollywood was launched by Andrew Breitbart. The more powerful of the tsunamis was the launch of Hollywood East, Inc. in Orlando, Florida. According to the Florida Secretary of State, January 6th was its official incorporation date. John Campbell, former 2008 U.S. presidential candidate, is its founder and CEO. For his bio, Google “John Campbell Beverly Hills.” The first 22 entries will link to his various websites.
According to Campbell, the mission of Hollywood East, Inc. is to become “The New Hollywood.” It will produce, distribute and broadcast – entertainment and media content. The goal is to replace the old Hollywood (Hollywood west), like the new media is replacing the old media. This will be done the American way – by beating them in the marketplace. Hollywood East, Inc. will produce content that will dominate the box offices, the airwaves and the internet. The content will be pro-God, pro-family and pro-America.
Although its main studios will be in Orlando, it will have studios throughout Florida – and around the world. Hollywood East, Inc. will eventually be listed on the New York Stock Exchange – and seek to become an American icon.
A few thoughts on this….first off, is Brick Oven Bob writing their press releases? This is barely coherent. Second, no one has ever heard of Big Hollywood so why bother bragging that you’re a “more powerful tsunami” than it is? And speaking of Big Hollywood, what is it with Breitbart and teh gay-sounding phrases. Remember this gem?
So let’s stop first at Abercrombie and Fitch. See those shirtless models in the storefront tossing footballs in the air?
There’s a better use of their time and efforts. Tanned, coiffed and seriously cut, these young studs could be tossing free-trade legislation across the halls of the Cannon House Office Building faster than you can Twitter “The Bella Twins.”
Complete and Total Incompetence
Heckuva job, guys:
A former military prosecutor said in a declaration filed in federal court yesterday that the system of handling evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay is so chaotic that it is impossible to prepare a fair and successful prosecution.
Darrel Vandeveld, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, filed the declaration in support of a petition seeking the release of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan who has been held at the military prison in Cuba for six years. Jawad was a juvenile when he was detained in Kabul in 2002 after a grenade attack that severely wounded two U.S. Special Forces soldiers and their interpreter.
Vandeveld, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the lead prosecutor against Jawad until he asked to be relieved of his duties last year, citing a crisis of conscience. He said the case has been riddled with problems, including alleged physical and psychological abuse of Jawad by Afghan police and the U.S. military, as well as reliance on evidence that was later found to be missing, false or unreliable.
Vandeveld said in a phone interview that the “complete lack of organization” has affected nearly all cases at Guantanamo Bay. The evidence is often so disorganized, he said, “it was like a stash of documents found in a village in a raid and just put on a plane to the U.S. Not even rudimentary organization by date or name.”
Keep this in mind the next time you see someone saying that all Obama needs to do to close Gitmo is to “let the innocent ones go free.” There really is nothing that the Bush administration has touched that they didn’t turn into a complete hash.
Even dumber than you’d expect
The latest from Joe the Plumber.
In Our Time
If you listen to podcasts, check out the four-part Charles Darwin special on Melvyn Bragg’s BBC show In Our Time. There will be plenty more fun to be had across the blogosphere to mark Darwin’s bicentennial and the 150th anniversary of his best known book. Tom Levenson will be a great place to start. Also check out the diverse crew at Scienceblogs, especially PZ Meyers.
In other science news, North American archaeologists found what might be a neolithic stone circle…40 feet under Lake Michigan.
Treat this as a scientific open thread. You can talk about anything, but falsifiable statements only.
More GOP Fail
If true, this is too rich:
The Republicans — who had just finally won control of the State House for the first time in 40+ years – were suppose to elect their Speaker of the House today. And failed!
Anaxamander has the details in his/her diary. The Tennessee State House has 50 Republicans and 49 Democrats. Well, Rep. Kent Williams (R-TN) got the support of all 49 Democrats plus his own vote to put himself in the Speaker’s chair.
***In the last election, a bunch of belligerent right-wing radicals tried to bully Rep. Williams (a moderate) into taking far-right stands — going so far as to threaten boycotts on his family business, etc.
Well, Rep. Williams had had enough of bullies and blowhards destroying the Republican Party from within. And the Democrats knew it. So the Democrats approached Rep. Williams about being the new House Speaker.
Rep. Williams said, “yes,” and history was made, just minutes ago.
***The GOP was promising all sorts of abortion votes, 2nd amendment votes, anti-immigrant votes, anti-gay votes, etc. – your basic nightmare right-wing nutjobs run amuck scenario. Not so fast!!
If this is true, I nominate any one of those 49 Democrats to replace Harry Reid.
*** Update ***
Delicious tidbit via Wonkette:
The official Republican nominee, Jason Mumpower (a wingnut from Bristol in Sullivan County) was left speechless, clutching the family bible that he had brought in preparation for taking the Speaker’s oath of office.
I can’t stop laughing.
*** Update #2 ***
BTW- It is important to remember exactly what kind of wingnut makes up the Tennessee GOP:
The Tennessee Republican Party issued this press release today, in the wake of Barack Obama’s hesitance to denounce, or reject, anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan’s support in last night’s debate. Obama’s Muslim heritage poses so great a threat that the press release felt it was proper to use his full name: “The Tennessee Republican Party today joins a growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East, if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.” [Update below!] And guess which photo they used to illustrate this point?America’s favorite Matt Drudge photo, that’s the one!:
Of course, the Tennessee GOP only used this photo because it so aptly illustrates their important points:
Obama, (pictured dressed in Muslim attire in a 2006 visit to Africa) has on the campaign trail pledged to rapidly remove American soldiers from Iraq regardless of the resulting instability and the creation of opening that would be filled by Islamic extremists, like Al Qaeda, in Iraq’s government and military.
Also, this:
In a preview of the political onslaught Michelle Obama may face in the fall, the Tennessee Republican Party unveiled a Web video Thursday highlighting her comment that she was proud of America “for the first time in my adult life.”
Michelle Obama is the target of a video by the Tennessee Republican Party ahead of her visit there.
The four-minute video coincides with a visit to the state by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s wife for a Democratic Party event Thursday evening.
It features several Tennesseans saying why they are proud of America while repeatedly cutting to Michelle Obama’s comments.
“The Tennessee Republican Party has always been proud of America. To further honor the occasion of Mrs. Obama’s visit, the Tennessee Republican Party has requested the playing of patriotic music by radio stations across the state,” said a statement on the party’s Web site that accompanied the video.
They are truly a class act, which makes this even better.
Villagization and its discontents
Via Atrios, Jay Rosen has an interesting piece about how elite media determine what constitutes the “the sphere of legitimate debate”, how they do so while pretending they don’t, and how blogs and other new media are beginning to undermine elite media’s ability to make this determination unilaterally.
The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.)
[….]
This can be confusing. Of course, the producers of Meet the Press could say in a press release, “We decided that Pat Robertson’s CBN is now to be placed within the sphere of legitimate debate because… ” but then they would have to complete the “because” in a plausible way and very often they cannot. (“Amy Goodman, we decided, does not qualify for this show because…”) This gap between what journalists actually do as they arrange the scene of politics, and the portion they can explain or defend publicly—the difference between making news and making sense—is responsible for a lot of the anger and bad feeling projected at the political press by various constituencies that notice these moves and question them.
[….]As Len Downie, former editor of the Washington Post once said about why things make the front page, “We think it’s important informationally. We are not allowing ourselves to think politically.” I think he’s right. The press does not permit itself to think politically. But it does engage in political acts. Ergo, it is an unthinking actor, which is not good.
[….]
Now we can see why blogging and the Net matter so greatly in political journalism. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.
Now, the problem here, for me at least, is not that the media is completely undemocratic. There are plenty of undemocratic institutions which seem to function well (the military is one example, universities are another). Nor is the problem that the elite media tends to focus on superficial, personal issues the public professes little interest in. The public also claims to be interested in making informed decisions about the products it buys, yet is influenced by catchy advertising campaigns.
The problem is that our current, elite-dominated media system produces bad outcomes. Most Villagers believe that the Bush presidency has been a complete failure (Broder has said this explicitly, though I can’t find a link right now). Many would even agree that the three interrelated disasters of the Iraq War, the destruction of federal bureaucracy by Bush (which encompasses the FEMA fiascoes, the politicization of the DoJ, etc.), and the financial crisis are unprecedented in modern American history.
Yet, there can be little doubt that their lack of interest in questioning pre-war propaganda, bureaucratic shennanigans, and the Bush fiscal policy contributed to these remarkable failures. And, looking back on the 2000 election — given that Bush was clearly a mediocrity and that the country was happy with the general state of the sate under Clinton — its clear that the nation “chose” Bush because they’d rather have a beer with him or some such. And only a fool would deny that the media’s anti-Gore, anti-Clinton jihad encouraged this attitude.
The trouble with our media elites isn’t that they’re arrogant, isolated, and disinterested in the public’s opinions. History is filled with arrogant successes. The trouble is that their particular brand of isolation produces such horrible effects. We should always remember that.