You win this round, blacks

In case you missed the "big" story of the past week, let me recap. Dubious right wing smear merchant with a history of lying and editing videos in a misleading way, Andrew Breitbart, posts up video of a USDA employee, Shirley Sherrod, apparently claiming that she, a black woman, once denied help to white farmers because they were white. Outrage ensues, Fox News and the right wing media blow the story up, constantly trumpeting it. The NAACP and the Obama Administration, successfully baited, offer up statements of condemnation, with the Agriculture Department eventually firing Sherrod. Once again this proves to the Breitbart/Fox News crowd that black people are the true racists and that white people are currently the only true victims of racism.

But wait, it turns out that the liar with a penchant for editing videos in a misleading way, Andrew Breitbart, was a liar who edited a video in a misleading way. It turns out Sherrod was relay that story as the first half of a story in which she reveals in the second half that she realized the error of her ways, learned about racial harmony, and went on to help that white family save their farm. The white farmers were interviewed saying how Sherrod was a close friend and had helped them out tremendously. Oh, and this had happened 24 years ago. NAACP, the Obama Administration, and the news agencies that pilloried Sherrod and got her fired are forced to offer grudging apologies, and the Agriculture Department offers Sherrod her job back. This is all recounted here. And also here.

It was all a disgusting display of how lying, phony outrage, the 24-hour media cycle, and cowardice combine to turn this country into and awful and stupid place. It was even enough to get Keith Olbermann back from his vacation to pillory everyone involved for perpetrating this bullshit or falling for this bullshit. Truly a sight to behold. He's angry!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well, you win this round, blacks. Sure you may still be able to intimidate whites with your New Black Panthers, but we're on to you and your racist ways. But it's important we come away with three thoughts in the aftermath of this: 1.) blacks are way more racist than whites, who, despite some foibles that ended in the 1800's, are totally not racist anymore. 2.) Andrew Breitbart is in no way to blame for any of this, the racist NAACP and black President are. 3.) It was wrong to fire Sherrod for being a racist, which she probably isn't. She should have been fired for being a dirty left-wing socialist liberal, with leftists liberal plots that seek to liberalize an un-liberal America. LIBERAL!

Are we clear? Now go back to living in constant fear that the blacks are coming to take our shit.

News sentence of the day

Via Glenn Greenwald, an Agence France-Presse wire story on Dick Cheney's exploding heart.

Whoops. Someone better get on the blower and tell France how real American journalism professionals sidestep that whole "torture" thingy dingy. Hint: they pretend it didn't happen and that torture isn't actually torture. Shh, pass it on.

I know, France. This whole "Debate" over who did what to whom with electrodes and barking dogs seems so cut and dried that even a Fox News analyst can see it for what it is and prescribe the correct line of action, but it isn't. Because. Try to bone up on your journalism standards. The objective isn't truth, it's covering for those in power. Remember that next time you go besmirching a man like Dick Cheney's record with an objective reporting of the facts.

By the by, it's nice to see Cheney finally have a heart type device implanted into his chest to replace the gaping black void of nothingness, avarice, and sadness that resided there before. A few years too late by my count, but still a nice gesture.

Broken News: News organization wants area man’s opinion for some reason

ALBANY—Chet Smith sat down last night to watch national news network CNN in an attempt to learn what had gone in the world that day and avoid conversation with his wife. But rather than sit and soak in the day’s event and avoid confronting mistakes which are rapidly approaching a 10th anniversary, Smith soon found that the network had drafted him into providing content and news for their broadcast.

“So, apparently they want my opinion on everything to be texted, phoned in, blogged, or tweeted at all times and on all subjects,” said Smith, quizzically. “Why? If I knew anything about the world I wouldn’t be sitting down at a TV to find out about it. Of what use is my opinion on the Israel flotilla raid to the greater public at large? Don’t they have experts they can tap for this kind of help?”

To further explain his lack of credentials, Smith produced a semester’s worth of poor grades from the local community college as well as documentation to note that he had dropped out.

“I was majoring in air conditioning repair,” the man said in a bewildered tone. “Even if I had mustered up the courage to get that Associate’s Degree in History or to not drop out, what are the odds I can offer up a cogent reaction to Middle Eastern politics that is even valuable enough to be worth reading as it speeds across the bottom of a screen, let alone have Wolf Blitzer single it out? What do I have to offer on the BP oil spill other than inchoate rage that someone ‘do something’, as if I even knew what that something is?”

“No,” Smith concluded. “It’s best I be left out of this news gathering operation. My notions, reckonings, and poorly shot amateur video of the neighbor’s wife are hardly a valuable component to the news.”

When notified that Mr. Smith would not be accepted their unsolicited offer to become an unpaid correspondent and content generator, Janelle Rodriguez, CNN Director of Programming, simply sighed and commented that “newsing is hard.”

She did however wish to extend the same offer to all other CNN viewers, noting that “24 hours was a lot of time to fill every day” and that their ill-informed notions on the day’s events combined with showing boring family photos and internet video memes was needed to fill up several hours of that block. She advised that people send in photos or videos of their family “beating the heat” or the network would be forced to use the news as a means to educate and inform rather than entertain.

“I don’t think that’s anything that anyone wants,” she grimly intoned. “So I better see at least 20 photos of cats in old-timey bathing suits and swimming caps by noon or so help me God, Christiane Amanpour will be doing a twelve part series on global geopolitics.”

"Don't make us analyze the Israel-Palestine conflict from all sides," she yelled, wagging a finger. "All sides!"

Confronted with the sad reality that he can no longer be allowed to watch something without becoming an active participant in it or have the mundane details of his life treated as if it had equal value with real news, Smith sighed, dug out his camera, and went to find the cat.

“It’s better this way,” he rationalized. “Knowing what was really going on probably just would have made me angry. Cat pictures are funny.”

According to a flash online poll of CNN viewers, taking into account text messages and Facebook posts, 78% of the viewing audience also agrees that cat pictures are funny.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.02

Zombie Meat. For when you want a blue peppered jerky snack that makes it seem like you're eating the flesh on a re-animated dead body.

In America Has An Awful News industry news, Adam Serwer goes into detail about how waterboarding moved from being "clearly torture" to "erm..... *clears throat, tugs at collar* a matter.... of.. debate?" in the New York Times during the Bush Administration because of politics and GOP messaging. It turns out that high level journalistic arts requires giving credence to both sides of an issue, even if there aren't two sides and one is just craven ass-covering.

Think Progress compiles a list of Senators who not only have successfully blocked extending unemployment benefits, pretty much the least thing we can do to combat the bad job market, but have also essentially helped block doing anything substantial about jobs. What's so great about this list? They all come from states with double digit unemployment that is much higher than the national average. Hey, when you're trying to sink the economy further to help your electoral prospects in November, you can't be concerned with little things like people or people who elected you.

Now we know why Arizona had to enact that Walking While Latino law. Apparently there are roving gangs of crazed illegal immigrants decapitating law abiding citizens. So says Governor Jan Brewer. Some liberals, media types, Latino groups, and people with common sense say that this is a completely fabricated lie intended to scaremonger about the Mexicanos, but I don't know; illegal Latin guillotine gangs sounds so plausible. Maybe this is a new breed of Mexican coming here searching for a job and a head (or cabesa as they call it). No dice, Pablo, those jobs and heads are ours.

Scientists believe they have found the earliest known form of complex cellular life: weird scallop things that are 2.1 billion years old. Do you know how they figure out how old the organism was? It was carrying an ancient bible and they just added up all the ages of the people inside it.

The Amazing Kreskin has offered up his services to the Pittsburgh Pirates, saying that unless they hire him they'll continue to lose for at least two more years and he'd offer his help to stop their 18-year losing streak. Unless Kreskin can go a solid 7 every five days and keep his ERA under 3 or has some serious gap power, I don't think he can do much for us. Unless he has no ethical qualms about hypnotizing Bob Nutting into committing suicide. Plus, the Bucs would never hire him; they can't lowball him in arbitration or trade him for several middling mentalist prospects.

In Rich People Have Too Much Money news, a Russian billionaire has commissioned an Australian goldsmith to create a $21,000 golden diamond encrusted vuvuzela. *dusts hands off* God, send the meteors, I think we've clearly bottomed out as a society.

Broken News: Katrina Never Happened

NEW ORLEANS—For many citizens in this once hurricane-ravaged city, the events of the past couple of days remain simply unbelievable. Virtually overnight, all levees have been competently rebuilt, the lower 9th ward and surrounding areas restored to pristine condition, millions of residents back in undamaged homes, and local businesses up and running at full capacity.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” a giddy Mayor Ray Nagin announced to the assembled press who had gathered at city hall when they all realized what was occurring. “But I think that the Saints winning the Super Bowl caused a sort of temporal rift. HURRICANE KATRINA NEVER HAPPENED!”

“Just like all the media and sports press have essentially been claiming. WHO DAT?!” the mayor jubilantly exclaimed.

In a comprehensive list released to the media, Nagin detailed all the policies, programs, relief and reconstruction efforts that were going to be canceled immediately because of the magical circumstances stemming from this sporting victory.

These include such programs as efforts to rebuild and restore the lower 9th and the 80% of building in Orleans parish that sustained severe water damage, attempts to rebuild a fortify the levee system, efforts to encourage growth after nearly half the city population left, efforts to revamp and rejuvenate the education, cultural, law enforcement, and local governance systems, as well as addressing widespread poverty, health, employment and other urban issues, or any other efforts to address the weak tax base, business community, and economy that are all now completely fixed.

In addition, David Simon announced the cancellation of his upcoming New Orleans HBO series Treme saying “I guess there no longer exists an overarching tableau of decay and rebirth that I can use as a backdrop to critique the fading American empire and its self-destructive institutions.”

Added a clearly dejected Simon, "I guess we'll always have Cleveland."

While nearly everyone is pleased to see New Orleans magically overcome the greatest natural disaster in American history through otherworldly means in conjunction with the outcome of a sporting championship, most are just confused as to how this occurred.

While certain sporting events have come to be seen as triggers for important historical events, most notably the 1935 Detroit victory in the World Series ushering in the New Deal and the 1968 formation on the Cincinnati Bengals being retroactively blamed for the My Lai Massacre, there has yet to have been a sporting victory or loss that has seemingly traveled back through time to change past events.

“I don’t claim to understand it, I’m just glad it happened,” a victorious Mayor Nagin yelled from a parade float led by a jazz brass ensemble playing “When the Saints Go Marching In”.

On the other hand some in the media seemingly did foresee such a chain of events, peppering their coverage of the Saints with references to how their good season was part of the complete rebirth of New Orleans and that an arbitrary victory in a football game could possibly signal that the city was back and A-OK.

“Yeah, when I first heard all of that I was a little incredulous,” observed Saints QB and Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees. “I mean I do a ton of charity work around this city and I failed to see just how us winning one game would retroactively fix the deplorable state that the city was in... at the time.”

“I remember being asked by Katie Couric if I had saved New Orleans,” Brees recounted, highlighted a pre-game interview with the CBS anchor that beggared belief. “I just thought to myself ‘Listen you dippy bitch, how the hell is a high octane passing attack and intensive film study going to fix the very real socio-economic problems that I tirelessly work to help fix?’”

“But here we are," he shrugged. “Everything was fixed. Because of a football game.”

In a statement he released to the press Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning, who threw a game changing interception for a touchdown and who himself grew up in New Orleans while his father played quarterback for the Saints, noting that he was “glad to do his part to revive his hometown”, feeling that the complete and total rejuvenation of most of Southern Louisiana was a much better result than what would have happened for Indianapolis had the Colts won: half-price burgers at participating Steak’n’Shakes in the greater metro area.

“Whatever,” Mayor Nagin was heard to yell while reveling in parade festivities on Bourbon Street. “I’m just glad that no one ever has to worry about New Orleans ever again or concern themselves with the status of this city. We won a football game! It’s all golden baby.”

In a related story, the nation of Haiti petitioned several top NFL franchises to legally relocate their headquarters to Port-au-Prince for the upcoming season in the hopes that a Super Bowl victory could not only fix the damage done in the recent earthquake, but provide the country with a mulligan for most of the past 200 years.

Video of the day

You may have heard about the proposed NBC Universal/Comcast merger that would make them one of the largest entertainment/content/cable/internet companies in the world and further shrink the number of people in this country who control what we watch and how we access information.

Amidst the House and Senate committees tasked with judging whether or not this merger is legal and should be allowed, there were many statements from our elected betters about how media monopolies are great and boy isn't in wonderful when competition is strangled and we have fewer and fewer sources with which to get an unbiased look at things. However there was one Senator who decided that maybe it isn't such a good idea to rubber stamp this merger and that maybe large media conglomerates are a bad idea. That man? Al Franken.



I know it's confusing to see, but that's an actual sitting US Senator standing up for what he believes is the common good, questioning the intelligence of media consolidation, and not trusting what he is told by the CEO's who are pushing for the merger. Baffling.

So another in a long line of thanks to Al Franken for, yet again, being an elected official that is doing something commendable that he doesn't seem to gain any personal benefit from. He even went after the White House this week for their poor leadership on health care reform. And thank you Minnesota for electing... oh Christ, Michelle Bachmann is out talking about health care opponents being put on secret lists and denied care. You know what, Minnesota? We'll call this a wash.

Video of the day

Charlie Brooker of Newswipe explains how to report the news.

Broken News: AMERICANS ARE DEAD IN HAITI!!!!!!!!

PORT AU PRINCE-In what was initially thought to be a minor geological event notable only for its proximity to the United States, reports made almost a week after the fact revealed something so shocking that America, and indeed the world, must now stand up and take notice.

According to reports filed by the US media, a minimum of 17 Americans were killed during the quake that may or may not have damaged areas outside of where these specific Americans were staying. Upwards of 5,500 Americans are also missing, feared dead as a result of events that we are now allowed to consider important.

“My God, the toll that has been wrought on America has been incalculable,” observed Red Cross spokesman Erica Paymer.

“Here we all were, thinking this was a minor curiosity of little importance that might allow for some pundit posturing or celebrity tax write-offs. But thanks to the vigilance of an American media that incessantly mentions 17 dead Americans, we now know the true toll of this horrific event.”

In addition to the dead Americans, there are also a number of other dramatic inconveniences to America as a result of the Haitian catastrophe. Initial reports point to a precipitous uptick in Wyclef Jean sightings, as well as some sort of correlation between the Haiti event and a decrease in backup supplies of food and water held by relief organizations.

In fact, several aid workers stationed in Miami noted that pallets of bottled water traditionally reserved for filling Super Soakers or moistening MRE’s consumed when nobody felt like driving to a nearby McDonald's had mysteriously disappeared.

Flights bound for Haitian resorts and connecting flights to other South American resorts have also been canceled due to an apparent increase in other kinds of airplanes flying into the Port-au-Prince airport for some as-yet undefined reason. But all of this pales in comparison to the hardships the earthquake has caused to cruise ships docking nearby.

“They cut our jet ski time in half and canceled the glass-bottom boat ride and never told us why,” lamented Helen St. Croix, a passenger on the Carnival Cruise Ship The Aristocrat. “Honestly, it was just a bit of ground rumbling, tragic though the deaths of those Americans were.”

“The worst bit was at the evening luau. We barely had enough local staff to dig the pig out of the fire pit and there weren’t nearly enough waiters. I had to get my mojito myself. You don’t think this earthquake thingy dingy affected people other than Americans… do you?”

This sense of dread seems to be growing more common amongst both the moneyed elite partying on the beach and those watching this tragic jet ski situation unfold back home. While most are content to believe that those brave, selfless dead Americans are the only story here, others are beginning to search for different story angles.

“You know, I keep trying to lead these searches for injured or missing Americans amongst these curiously piled heaps of concrete that seem to be everywhere. But all of these mocha-colored chattering and screeching obstacles keep getting in my way. I wonder what the hell they are,” wondered a puzzled Jim Ridgels, field correspondent for CNN Headline News. “It’s the damnedest thing.”

Others have more solid ideas about what is going on.

“I have come to learn that those annoying, intrusive figures Ridgels refers to are the native inhabitants of this island,” observed MSNBC journalist Stig Danforth. “Apparently they were also near the areas where American lives were claimed and were themselves also affected.”

“It is most important to realize that these swarthy humanoids are very much like us and deserve our compassion. That is why I have taken it upon myself to interject myself into their poorly organized rescue efforts. Viewers seem to like that I am helping these poor creatures. They're like children! Some might say ‘Stig, aren’t you just hampering these relief efforts in an attempt to gain face-time for yourself and taking away from the real story here?’ And to that I say, no. The story here is the dead Americans. The secondary story here is me and other enterprising journalists creating an air of goodwill for ourselves and filling airtime by being shown helping these poor, disadvantaged mud people that have been unfortunately drawn into this event.”

“Understand?,” he angrily finished.

But whether or not these stories of people other than Americans being affected are true or just the wanton exaggerations of fame-seeking journalists, one thing is clear: this is an uniquely American tragedy.

The country, for now, is expected to pay attention until such a time as stories of dead Americans stop coming out of this shapeless, faceless landmass which we don’t know the location of or are even completely sure exists. That, or until the Super Bowl kicks off. Whichever comes first.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 01.11

Why Is the Whistleblower Who Exposed the Massive UBS Tax Evasion Scheme the Only One Heading to Prison?
When a massive international bank helps thousands upon thousands of people evade taxes and hide money to flagrantly that it has to pay almost a billion dollars in fines, who goes to jail? If you answered "One guy, the one who blew the life off the scandal in the first place" then you... must have read the headline above. Democracy Now conducts and extensive interview with the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center to show just exactly how banks, the US justice system, and the US government endeared themselves to you again.

Chinese Coal Formed During Earth’s Greatest Extinction Is Still Deadly
You have to hand it to the Chinese. Not only are the set to drag ass on climate change in such an epic manner that it would make the US stand back in awe, they've apparently found and are burning the deadliest and most polluting coal known to man. Not only does this coal, formed 250 million years ago during a massive extinction (I wonder...), pollute just as effectively as the regular stuff, but it come with a cancer chaser that's 20 times greater than normal. See, the Chinese even pollute and poison their populace more effectively than us. We just can't win.

ABC News embraces the nonsense
Let's say you were a TV news director and you were doing a piece on the fact that 28 doctors who have spent their lives studying autism, conducted an exhaustive study that found no correlation between GI disorders, diets and causing autism or diets in improving autism cases. Who is the first person you'd rush to interview for the story? If you said "a Playboy model/vaccine denier", you get to run ABC's news division for the next month. The Bad Astronomy blog takes a look at autism, ABC, Jenny McCarthy, vaccine gainsayers, and the difference between news and "news" and science and "science".

Abortion Foe Defies Party on Health Care Bill
Question. What do you call someone who would kill an attempt to make sure that 45,000 people a year don't die due to lack of access to health care as well as better the lives of millions, because he doesn't think he's getting enough control over women's bodies? That's a serious question, because I don't think "pro-life" quite covers it. The NYT covers Bob Stupak's bitching and moaning over the fact that people don't agree with him.

Google Earth helps find El Dorado
According to some wags on the internet, they've used Google Earth to find the fabled "lost city of gold." Sounds all well and good, but this better not be like the time some jagoffs said the found the lost city of Atlantis on Google Earth or those people who said they found the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This time their treasure better not be knowledge. The lost city of gold better contain some gold. This time I better see some archeologist in a fedora hauling 24 karat bricks of of the Bolivian brush and whipping some fascists in the face.

Vatican takes aim at 'Avatar'
id you ever want to see movie criticism from a leading religious body that not only accurately described the flaws in a movie but also unknowingly provided a meta criticism about itself and the way it runs said religion? Well, God bless the Catholic Church. It's the pot shooting the kettle in the kneecap.

Broken News: TMZ abandons overcrowded gossip market to cover real news

HOLLYWOOD—Worlds collided earlier today as the rumor-mongering gossip engine of modern media, TMZ, announced that it would be abandoning its corner of the celebrity news world in order to pursue new avenues in the field of actual journalism. The unholy brainchild of AOL and Warner Bros., which has taken great pride and revenue in directing internet-based media down a shamelessly pathetic path, hopes to re-brand itself as the go-to source for news on the world, politics, the economy, foreign policy, and other such serious journalistic pursuits

“I am sad to announce that we are abandoning the gossip based infotainment sector of the news that we so heartily and successfully pioneered,” announced TMZ managing editor Harvey Levin. “But in this harsh media environment and with the moribund future for the print industry we feel we need to shift gears to stay afloat and viable in the news landscape.”

“Frankly, too many supposed hard news organizations are horning in on our shit” he sighed, anger flashing across his red face.

Slamming his fist on the podium Levin yelled “Well, enough is enough. They want to abandon real news to cover celebrity nonsense? Well, we’ll just go cover Ben Bernanke’s confirmation hearing, Taliban influence in the Kunduz province, and the Copenhagen climate conference. See how they like it.”

Sources close to Levin and TMZ management say that they have been under increasing pressure to make up the increasing drops in revenue that have been occurring with more frequency as formerly legitimate news organizations abandoned traditional journalistic fields for dumpster diving and catty rumor spreading.

Some, including Columbia Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Dr. William Banks, see opportunities in the field of hard news now that for former mainstream media establishment has ceded the ground.

“There used to be a time when you’d come to us when you wanted to know exactly how many bar skanks Tiger Woods was plowing, how long A-Rod had been plowing Kate Hudson, whether Brad Pitt was still plowing Angelina Jolie or if he had gone back to plowing Jennifer Aniston, and who was too fat to be allowed on TV and in movies.”

Banks continued, “Now you just flip on the network news, 24 hour news, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or wherever. Hell, I just read the Wall Street Journal editorial board writing about Courtney Love losing custody of her kid. I think there’s a real opportunity for TMZ to fill in the areas that traditional media has abandoned.”

“By which I mean all areas that don’t have to do with horse race politics and petty electoral gamesmanship,” Banks clarified.

For now, the response from traditional media outlets has been one of smug triumphalism, with CBS noting that they were content to know that Katie Couric would have to deal with less crowding and elbows while rummaging through Lindsay Lohan’s trash. ABC announced that they were happy that there would be less competition for Barbara Walters to do softball, hazy lensed interviews with the most famous hooker or mistress of the moment.

“This is just the MSM catering to the whims of the American people,” observed Oliver Tilden, media analyst for E’s Lookit! Famous Boobies! program. “The public has decided that the real world is too horrible and depressing to deal with and instead they’d rather focus on seeing celebrities brought down to their level. If TMZ thinks they can woo America with competent reporting on issues that affect their lives, then they’re just sadly mistaken.”

Tilden coldly added, “Just ask the Rocky Mountain News, Tucson Citizen, Kentucky Post, King County Journal, Union City Register-Tribune, Halifax Daily News, Albuquerque Tribune, South Idaho Press, San Juan Star, Capital Times, the Detroit Free Press, Christian Science Monitor, East Valley Tribune, Ann Arbor News, Flint Journal, Bay City Times, Saginaw News, the Hudson Register-Star, the Cincinnati Post, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Baltimore Examiner, and, after next month, the LA Times if covering real news is a good idea.”

TMZ will reportedly ease into hard news coverage, first starting with details on who Tim Geithner is plowing, Taliban weight loss tips, and State Department gossip from six-party talks with North Korea, before hopefully moving into a fully legitimate news operation in the 1st quarter of next year.

This pretty much explains it all

What with the Copenhagen climate conspiracy conference going on Al Gore is back in the news again, doing interviews, making speeches, and doing whatever he can to increase the millions of dollars he secretly earns from promoting doing something about all that climate change.

In a post describing how Gore is now taking a harsher, no-nonsense approach to climate change denialists, the Washington Monthly's Steve Benen uses a sentence to segue into a quote from a second Gore interview that perfectly sums up the state of modern politics, our modern media, the way experts and activists are treated in the media, and the way the problem of climate change and science in general is addressed by our political and media elite. Yup, all of 'em.

This morning, Gore appeared on MSNBC, where Andrea Mitchell read from Sarah Palin's Facebook page to ask the former vice president questions about climate change.

*dusts hands off and walks away* Yep, that about sums it all up. Enjoy running the world, China. I hope you learned from our mistakes.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.09

Iranian student dares to criticise Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to his face
An Iranian student totally clowned an Ayatollah the other day, taking an opportunity he was given to ask Khamenei a question and turning into a 20 minute diatribe about all that stuff Khamenei has done. Of course the Ayatollah responded to this by saying "Nuh-uh" and leaving, making sure to give a press release saying they totally allowed him to ask that question because of freedom and stuff. Meanwhile, the student, Mahmoud Vahidnia, gets to dodge literal and figurative bullets because he chose to do it in such a public, televised place. Well done, sir. It's going to be such a shame when we find out you committed suicide by beating yourself to death with multiple police batons.

Hany Farid, Dartmouth Scientist, Says Controversial Oswald Rifle Photo Real
As if the past few days weren't weird enough, how does this strike you: that Oswald photo of him with the rifle that everyone says is fake...is real. So says an expert. Hmmm, so maybe Oswald did do it. It's all well and good, with so many conspiracies about things that are going on now and think it's time we put to bed some of the old classics. Unless Glenn Beck comes up with a way that Oswald shooting Kennedy ties into Barack Obama becoming President, perhaps through ACORN or Oswald himself planting fake birth announcements in Honolulu papers to legitimize our Kenyan sleeper agent President, then I think we might have to move on.

Gadgets and Ideas to Revolutionize Healthcare
Wired Science gives us a look and the TEDMED conference and some of the revolutionary ideas and gadgets that were shown, including wireless medical monitors, the chemical compound resveratol, and tissue engineering, that some see as the future of health care. Sadly no one at the conference had invented the one device that would revolutionize health care the most: a robotic whirling dervish or chainsaws, weedwhackers, and blowtorches that would be used against our elected betters in an attempt to make them pass single payer health care. Though one scientists from MIT did unveil a prototype device that would administer a 50,000 volt shock to Joe Lieberman's anus any time he got a "notion" about getting himself on the TV more.

A media orgy of rumors, speculation and falsehoods
Salon's Glenn Greenwald chronicles the latest failure of the TV media to provide accurate, relevant, and informed coverage on a breaking story, this time the Ft. Hood shootings. From numerous mistakes involving the number of shooters, to the fate of the shooter(s), to the background of Hasan, to the weapons used, to all sorts of other unverified miscellaneous claims, anyone actually watching the coverage would have struggled to even understand anything other than the fact that a shooting happened. Greenwald goes on to discuss how damaging this kind of thing is in creating false zombie narratives and dimwitted conventional wisdom that shpes public perceptions. But hey, who cares if it's all misinformation, it made for some damn fine TV. And isn't that the whole point of TV news?

Exclusive: I Was Kidnapped by the CIA
With the recent in absentia conviction of CIA agents in Italy for their rendition and torture program, perhaps it's best to actually take a closer look at what it was they were accused of. Mother Jones was prescient enough to have a full account of the case of the man, Abu Omar, that the CIA agents were convicted of rendering and torturing for their March/April 2008 issue. Congratulations America, this was done in your name! I hope you like it.

Chart of the day

A study of last week's most covered stories from The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Which really should be changed to Project for "Excellence" in "Journalism". It found that while health care was the big story of the week, balloon boy came in a strong third ahead of Afghanistan and Pakistan in our intelligent national discourse. On the other hand Falcon Heene, or "That little lying shit" as we all know him, was the week's second most covered "newsmaker". Placing second to the most powerful leader in the world, who also coincidentally got stuck in a balloon, but was able to extricate himself with the help of the Secret Service, Sasha, Malia, and a pointed stick.

I know some of you are angrily saying "I can't believe it was ahead of the two areas we're about to escalate a war in the week lots of big news comes out about it!" I think the better question is: Only third place? I think that had a function to do with the fact that the balloon boy story happened on a Thursday and therefore wasn't given a full week's worth of coverage like that health care bullshit was. I'm sure if that family pulled that hoax on a Monday or Sunday evening, we would have seen some serious media abdication of journalistic responsibilities. As such, real news was actually allowed to break through during the week, though thankfully not on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday.

Sadly, I think we're going to have to suffer through real news on a national level for most of this week. Hopefully some kid gets caught adrift in a homemade catamaran or falls down a well or something so we don't have to hear about health care or any of our old wars on the evening news.

Broken News: Nation turns its attention to Afghanistan, health care, and climate change as all three become perilously trapped in balloon

WASHINGTON—“Oh my God Boss, I can’t find them anywhere and our giant balloon is missing! I think they might have… gotten into the balloon... and set it loose!” a panic-stricken and emotional Vice-President Joe Biden was heard to exclaim this morning, touching off the current crisis that has gripped the nation.

As of 9:15 EST, it seems that our nation’s political debates on Afghanistan, Health Care, and Climate Change became trapped in a homemade weather balloon that is currently circling 6,000 feet above the greater Washington metro area.

The balloon, which the President and Vice-President had constructed as part of a "trust exercise," had been, until this morning, tethered in the South Lawn. The design consisted of a large, helium-filled, silver metallic exoshell attached to a basket meant to carry scientific weather measuring instruments as well as letters White House staffers had written to God. Unfortunately, the space that would have housed these instruments and letters was large enough to fit three of the largest issues facing the nation today.

In an ironic turn, this dramatic series of events has forced the American news media to actually devote airtime to useful analysis, information, and constant substantive coverage to the three issues for the first time in years.

“It’s just that there are so many different, interesting angles,” observed Dirk Benson, an afternoon segment producer for CNN. “Why did Afghanistan get in the balloon? Was it because of recent election controversies? Is about the escalation of hostilities and the American troop build-up? Does it just like balloons? Then there’s the matter of Health Care. Is it in the balloon because it believes the push to pass it is over? Or is this a protest over the seeming lack of will on the part of a Democratic Congress to do anything even remotely useful? Is Climate Change just there for meteorological expertise?"

Benson then added, “Then there’s the whole life-and-death aspect; will they survive? It’s just so much more interesting to cover that today than it was to cover how these issues affected life-and-death situations for Americans yesterday. Funny how that works out, right?”

For those who are well-versed on these issues and have spent time mulling over their potential repercussions, this newfound media interest is part of the problem.

“This is what they were always going on about. ‘No one takes us seriously’, ‘No one ever tries to talk about us in any real depth’, and ‘It’s always politics, politics, politics, and fake controversies’ they’d always bitch about,” observed foreign and domestic policy expert Bert Hoffman, a close personal friend of the three issues.

“I just thought they had finally gotten sick of all the political and media inanity and absurdity. Health Care was about as depressed as I can recall, given the whole 'Death Panel' thing. Afghanistan was going on and on about how no one had learned anything from Iraq, and Climate Change… well, after basically eating shit sandwiches for the last thirty years, Climate Change just wanted to be mentioned.”

“This wasn’t no accident,” Hoffman said. “They did this on purpose, for the attention.”

Indeed, it seems their gambit, if that was their purpose, is paying off. With the media attention and the threat of the situation stripping rhetoric and partisanship from the issues, early reports have the American public at-large increasingly becoming aware of the resurgent Taliban, cost control measures lacking teeth within any health reform bill not containing a public option, and an emerging realization of the near-unified scientific consensus of global warming with a staggering reduction in “Al Gore is fat” jokes or “It’s cold today, how can the planet be warming?” references being made.

In fact, this early revelation has caused many policies and issues to put themselves in harm’s way in order to grab the attention of news organizations who only seem to be able to focus on the most meaningless, least significant parts of a debate and are easily distracted by sex, violence, and imperiled animals. As of this hour, The Push to Reform the Financial Regulatory Structure had become trapped in a well with a family of baby ducklings and Iranian Policy had been caught in a sex scandal with Nuclear Disarmament Policy.

“Look, we don’t care why they did it or if it was just a tragic accident," said a weeping Joe Biden during a press conference to announce what rescue attempts and safety precautions were being undertaken. “We just want them back safe and sound.”

“We promise, things’ll be different. We’ll treat you better. We’ll pay attention to you, maybe even address you with dignity and respect. Just come back safe, just come back safe. You won’t ever have to pull one of these stunts again.”

Initial reports that Drug Law Reform, Mass-Transit, NASA, and Public Schools had absconded with a trimaran and were drifting east toward the Azores have yet to be verified.

Afternoon video

The Daily Show shows us that while our news media just doesn't have the time in a 24 hour news cycle to fact check leaders, know anything of substance, invite worthwhile guests on to inform the public, or really justify their constant droning stream of "information", they do have time for one thing: fact checking moderately funny sketches from SNL.

It's such a shame that the wrong part of our news media is dying. Craigslist, why couldn't you have smote 24 hour news?

Off in the distance Shep Smith sheds a single tear of despair

What's the one thing you think the Fox News media empire needed? Was it one more loathed right wing pundit famous for his screeds against immigrants/immigration, his belief that the President is a Kenyan sleeper agent, shallow faux-populism, and a gargantuan sized ego replete with delusions of grandeur? They heard your clarion call.

Certainly, Fox continues to aggressively bolster its on-air talent, most recently with the hiring of John Stossel, the libertarian investigative journalist from ABC News, for its spin-off channel, Fox Business. The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

John Stossel and Lou Dobbs? They're taking everyone I hate and putting them on two channels I will never have to see them on. I don't know what this emotion is I'm feeling towards Fox News...is it...gratitude? Heartfelt thanks? A desire that their studio collapses when all of them are gathered inside?

That said, if you see Shep Smith today just give him a pat on the back and tell him you feel for him. If he's wearing a cast on his hand it's because he punched a wall in anger. Ah, it's just one more thing for him to get righteously indignant about.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.09

Putting America’s Diet on a Diet
So a lisping celebrity British chef is going to West Virginia in order to get them to change their eating habits and not explode their hearts so much with the 15 pound cheeseburgers for an ABC documentary series. This is not going to turn out like Deliverance how? It's a noble cause Mr. Oliver, but I advise caution. You push too hard against America's Craz-E-Burger culture and the people of West Virginia will light you up like a couch at WVU.

Iraq All Over Again?: The press & Iranian nuke allegations
So what did the American news media learn exactly from the buildup to the Iraq war that it's doing different for our buildup to a war with Iran? Nothing. Actually, they learned Iraq was a good template to follow in the future. Hell they aren't even changing up the "experts", "evidence", or ominous intoning. Why is it that the newspapers are the ones that have to die, why can't it be TV news?

No 'golden age' in the Senate
For all of those people like me who opine about how the new Senate isn't like the Senate used to be, the Politico is here to remind us that no, the Senate was always a pile of shit, stacked to the rafters with lunatics, idiots, racists, and barely literate crooks. True, but at least they got shit done. We aren't even afforded that courtesy anymore.

Direction of NASA’s Future at an Impasse
Despite early success today lobbing the first salvo in the War of Lunar Aggression, NASA is at an impasse in regards to future plans and funding. Especially when dealing with human spaceflight and new means to get them up there. As if that wasn't hard enough they have to pitch these billion dollar ideas at a time when the economy cratered, and trillion dollar action is being taken on health care with climate change on the horizon. So, uh, good luck with all of that NASA. Just keep proposing all your stuff in terms of violent aggressive action against space, like moon bombing, and I'm sure Congress will find it a sufficiently worthy endeavor.

Still chasing shadows?
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman always knows how to bring the disheartening financial news. This time it's about how banks, financial institutions, credit markets, and he Fed all seem to think that the best course of action for our economy would be to make everything like it was back in January of 2007....you know, right before our money got set on fire. Sounds great. What are the odds the world economy crashes twice in a row? Isn't thee supposed to be some lag of a few years before history repeats itself? It's not supposed to repeat before it's even finished happening yet.

Yeah, that seems about right

via Tom Tomorrow. It's nice to know that with even more revelations coming out about CIA doctors and human experimentation that we have our great media establishment out there making sure that America hears the drumbeat: prosecuting people, even the lowest level people, for torture is wrong. We shouldn't even take that sideways glance. Thanks.

Oh media, you irrepressible scamp

There's a lot of talk about the effectiveness and the methods of the media going around, particularly in respect to the way the media is covering the health care fight. It started a bit when Walter Cronkite died and there were numerous snarky comments about how the newspeople covering his death and trying to honor his contributions don't seem to be able to perform the basic functions of their job in the way that Cronkite did. But the discussion has started up again as we see more and more polls showing that large sections of the public believe various lies about death panels and new polls showing that despite all the coverage of health care, people still don't understand what is being discussed.

Ahh, but then the media doesn't actually cover the substance of health care debate, it covers the politics. As Paul Krugman points out in the Times: all the media does is partake in horse race reporting. Why? Short answer: they aren't smart enough to cover the policy parts. Long answer: they aren't smart enough, it's easier to do politics, they're lazy, making factual assertions is scary. But then again this isn't surprising, the media has long reduced coverage of everything to horse race politicking and actual knowledge has to be sought out through the labyrinthine tubes of the intarwebs. This is the profession where a professor can be heralded as a genius for opining in print that the solution to the types of problems is that maybe, just maybe, newspapers should fact check a little harder, and maybe, just maybe, that they shouldn't print the lies in the first place. Use "news judgment."

But maybe the media just isn't good at getting the facts right and should stick to opinions about who won what political battle and how the success of a bill lies not in its content but in who conceded the most and who can claim victory. I mean just look at what happened when the Times tried to speak factually about Cronkite:

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International. An appraisal on July 18 about Walter Cronkite’s career misstated the name of the ABC evening news broadcast. While the program was called “World News Tonight” when Charles Gibson became anchor in May 2006, it is now “World News With Charles Gibson,” not “World News Tonight With Charles Gibson.”

Yeah.......stick to the horse race stuff. Just...just...yeah.

Broken In Brief: Gossip journalist spends 2 hours each morning convincing herself her work is important

NEW YORK—In an altogether unsurprising revelation, gossip reporter Mary Haren, a “journalist” with Us Weekly, has revealed that most mornings it takes her nearly two hours of psychological motivation about the importance and necessity of her job before she can muster the self esteem required to even go to her office.

“Those are the days when I can even look at myself in the mirror,” she said, suppressing the urge to harm herself. “I just think, what’s the point? Do I exist only to create fake relationships between two celebrities who happened to be photographed together and force teenage starlets into bouts of depression garnished with eating disorders? Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if Us Weekly, People, Perez Hilton, Access Hollywood, OK!, The E! Channel, Star, the paparazzi, and about 70 other magazine staffs and TV shows were flown into space and then jettisoned out an airlock?”

“But then I think about how much I deserve to be famous and how that despite rave reviews from my parents for that high school play I was in, Hollywood still conspired to lock me out of the acting career I so richly deserved. Then I get angry and I’m able to do my job,” Haren finished, having sufficiently summoned the requisite self-delusion and bitter spite she needs to continue on with her shallow, insubstantial existence.

But Haren contends that despite a morning spent creating a news piece whereupon she derides female celebrities that are five pounds overweight by celebrity standards, but 40 pounds underweight my medical standards as ”fat”, that she still has a functioning human soul.

“I mean I have to agonize over it in the morning, right? That means I’m still recognizable as a member of the human race. At least that’s what I tell myself when I get home.”