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September 30, 2008
Bad copy-editing in our time.
Today's unworthy NY Times subheadline:
Those mowers are awfully crafty to avoid changing the natural fucking color of grass.
It gets worse—this is from the article itself:
Baseball parks have long been identified by architectural touches, from arching facades to ivy-covered walls. These days, they are widely recognized by grass, cropped into distinctive, green-hued designs using the everyday tools of mowers, rollers and other grass-bending gadgets.
"Grass-bending gadgets"? Can we now look forward to a feature about bananas being the elongated yellow fruit of choice among chimpanzees?
OK, so she's not a big reader.
But then, who among us can name one of these so-called "newspapers and magazines" anyway?
John McCain has taken us right through the looking glass with this choice. And speaking of which, here's Josh Marshall, from earlier today:
...if John McCain loses this election he will have lost much more than the presidency. His reputation as an honest and honorable politician will be wrecked, I suspect, for good...McCain has revealed himself as a liar well outside the permissive standards applied to politicians. He's shown himself to be reckless to the point of instability, repeatedly putting the country at risk (exploiting the Georgia crisis, picking Palin, storming the bailout negotiations) for transparently self-serving reasons. And in too many ways to count, he's conducted his campaign in disgraceful and dishonorable ways.
Perhaps the most telling thing is that McCain was willing to flush that reputation down the drain, betray everything he pretended to stand for, all to be president. If he wins, it will all have been worth it. He was happy to sacrifice one for the other. And now he may end up with neither.
"Losing Everything" (Josh Marshall, TPM)
September 26, 2008
All right kids, get to work.
I nominate Sarah Silverman to be Secretary of Education.
September 25, 2008
Please let this be the end of the charade.
Here's a transcript:
COURIC: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?
PALIN: Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and, on our other side, the land boundary that we have with Canada. It’s funny that a comment like that was kinda made to…uh...cari—I don’t know, you know…reporters.
My guess is that she was trying to say "caricatured" there, but because she had only recently heard the word for the first time—uttered perhaps by one of her handlers to another—she wisely realized that she probably couldn't get all four syllables out in the right order, and punted. Who says this lady isn't prepared?
COURIC: Mocked?
PALIN: Mocked, yeah I guess that’s the word, mocked.
COURIC: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign-policy credentials.
PALIN: Well, it certainly does, because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there…
COURIC: Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth, we do. It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right next to, they are right next to our state.
Hendrik Hertzberg comments:
This seems to be a case of incoherence of thought leading to incoherence of syntax. Pronouns wander in search of antecedents like Arctic explorers in a blinding snowstorm. Homophones confuse the transcriber...
In the "Putin rears his head" answer, jagged shards of the hasty briefings lately stuffed into Palin’s pretty head clang tinnily against one another. "We send those"—those? those what?—"out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this powerful nation, Russia." Those what? We send what? My hunch is that this alarming jumble must have something to do with the path that Russian intercontinental missiles would take on their way to the lower Forty-eight and/or the air-defense installations that NORAD maintains in the state Palin is executive of. But who knows? The whole thing reads like something rendered from the Finnish by Google Translate.
For a seventy-two-year-old cancer survivor to have placed this person directly behind himself in line for the Presidency was an act of almost incomprehensible cynicism and irresponsibility. It makes a cruel—what’s the word?—mockery of his slogan. "Country First" indeed.
September 22, 2008
Apparently cranky is not the new statesmanlike.
These are no ordinary times when George Will, who never met a Republican campaign he wouldn't shill for, says something like this:
I suppose the McCain campaign's hope is that when there's a big crisis, people will go for age and experience. The question is, who in this crisis looked more presidential—calm and un-flustered? It wasn't John McCain, who, as usual, substituting vehemence for coherence, said 'let's fire somebody.' And he picked one of the most experienced and conservative people in the administration, Chris Cox, and for no apparent reason... It was un-presidential behavior by a presidential aspirant... John McCain showed his personality this week, and it made some of us fearful.
Also, can the next Congress please write some legislation to declare Sam Donaldson's toupee a threat to our national dignity and sense of self-worth? I think every American would support an immediate air strike to remove that preposterous rug. That's my idea of putting Country First.
September 21, 2008
You could get a yard sign. Or you could accomplish something.
FiveThirtyEight.com, an Obama-leaning poll-number-crunching site, has this on the uselessness of yard signs and the importance of concrete action:
Organizers—the people out there killing themselves to win this election—hate yard signs with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.Barack Obama’s organizers hate them. John McCain’s organizers hate them. It’s because yard signs don’t vote—but they do generate a ridiculous amount of complaining that must be patiently listened to. Until yard signs sprout little legs and go to the polls on Election Day, in a presidential election with universal name recognition they are just a nice little decoration.
They’re little feel good things, making you feel like you’re on the team. There is nothing wrong with that—that’s not the objection. The objection is that there is limited time for organizers to accomplish a wide array of prioritized tasks, and in this election they’ve chosen to prioritize identifying, registering, persuading and getting their voters to the polls. Yard signs cut into the organizer’s sleep time – literally.
A lot of people aren’t going to like hearing this truth, but organizers recognize that the majority of people who walk into offices for yard signs are, for volunteering purposes—and this is a technical term—useless. In the majority, these people are not going to knock, they’re not going to make phone calls. Instead, they are going to throw the organizer’s incredibly precious, sleep-deprived time down a bottomless abyss of irretrievability.
Obama Campaign Organizers Trying To Win Election Instead of Get You Yard Signs (FiveThirtyEight.com)
Stop preening and start working. You can bet that the other side is working just as hard.
September 20, 2008
Straight Talk from Colbert.
On Wednesday's show, Stephen Colbert took John McCain's assertion that the vile attacks perpetrated by his campaign are all due to Barack Obama's unwillingness to meet him in a series of "town hall" meetings to its logical conclusion:
For the record, John McCain has not accepted my invitation to appear on this show, so unfortunately I have no choice but to spread horrible lies about him. Here we go: John McCain wants to harvest the organs of sleeping toddlers, inject RedBull into his taint, and is determined to run a campaign based on straight talk and decency. Phew. Thank God none of that is true.
The McCain Treatment (Colbert Report, via Crooks and Liars)
September 19, 2008
Yet another reason to love the New York Times.
One of the joys of a good Times article is writer's use of subtle observational detail to make a larger point, done in a way that gives credit to the reader's ability to pay attention. Writing on the media-neglected campaign appearances of Joe Biden, currently playing "fourth or fifth fiddle" in this election cycle, the similarly non-heralded writer Mark Leibovich notes:
In an interview, [Biden] rejected any notion that his message was not being heard. “I just don’t get that, I don’t see any evidence of that,” he said in the back office of the Maumee Elks Lodge.
I also love Joe Biden, for countering criticism of his taxes-as-patriotic-duty comments with this:
How many small businessmen are making one million, four hundred thousand--average in the top 1 percent. Give me a break. I remind my friend, John McCain, what he said--when Bush called for war and tax cuts--he said, it was immoral, immoral, to take a nation to war and not have anybody pay for it. I am so sick and tired of this phoniness. The truth of the matter is that we are in trouble. And the people who do not need a new tax cut should be willing, as patriotic Americans, to understand the way to get this economy back up on their feet is to give middle class taxpayers a break. We take the tax cut they're getting and we give it to the middle class.
September 18, 2008
Where a literary death hurts the most.
Love unto The Onion.
David Foster Wallace's work came to stock car racing in the mid-1990s, just as the sport began experiencing almost geometric yearly growth. But the literary atmosphere of the sport was moribund, mired in the once-flamboyant but decidedly aging mid-1960s stylings of Tom Wolfe, whose bombastic essays—notably "The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!"—served as the romantic, quasi-elegiac be-all and end-all for NASCAR fans and series participants alike. Racing was ready for new ideas, and when a new generation of young drivers like Jeff Gordon arrived on the scene, sporting new sponsorship deals on their fireproof coveralls and dog-eared copies of Broom Of The System under their arms, an intellectual seed crystal was dropped into the supersaturated solution of American motorsports.NASCAR Cancels Remainder Of Season Following David Foster Wallace's Death (The Onion)
Which McCain is it now?
The best line I read today:
...McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them...
The McCain of the Week (Gail Collins, NY Times)
September 17, 2008
Irony in the wilderness.
The majestic grizzly bear, once king of the Western wilderness but threatened with extinction for a third of a century, has roared back in Montana.The finding, from a $4.8 million, five-year study of grizzly bear DNA mocked by Republican presidential candidate John McCain as pork barrel spending, could help ease restrictions on oil and gas drilling, logging and other development.
And a bit of background:
To hear Mr. McCain tell it in his presidential stump speech and campaign ads, the government has squandered $3 million (actually more like $5 million) to study the DNA of bears in Montana. “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or criminal,” he jokes, “but it was a waste of money.”A report by Joel Achenbach in The Washington Post makes clear, however, that this was not really a study of bear DNA but a study that used bear DNA to determine whether the grizzly bear was still a threatened species or had rebounded. Mr. McCain and his staff either failed to realize that or chose to distort the facts for political effect. Either choice is not encouraging.
The intent of the study, whose results have not yet been published, is to estimate the size and makeup of the grizzly bear population in a vast region, encompassing Glacier National Park...statistical models could then predict the total population.
That is hardly frivolous. It is a prerequisite for sensible administration of the Endangered Species Act.
The presumed Republican presidential nominee also fails to mention that the project was sponsored by Conrad Burns, a former Republican senator from Montana who chairs the McCain campaign in that state. Mr. McCain never explains why, if it was such a waste, he didn’t try to curtail it on the Senate floor.
McCain misfires at Grizzlies (NY Times, 3/12/08)
A pause in the invective.
Sarah Palin's energy expertise: lying.
The Washington Post did a Pinocchio test on Sarah Palin's claims about Alaska's energy production. She and her statements didn't fare so well.
The woman touted by John McCain as the most knowledgeable person in America on energy issues has been having a lot of trouble getting her basic energy statistics straight. Last week, Sarah Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that her state, Alaska, produced "nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." On Monday, she told a campaign rally in Golden, Colo., that she had been responsible for overseeing "nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." Both claims are way off.While Alaska is a leading producer of crude oil, it produces relatively little natural gas, hardly any coal and no nuclear power. Its share of oil production has been declining sharply, and the state now ranks lower than Texas and Louisiana. Alaska is the ninth-largest energy supplier in the United States, accounting for a modest 3.5 percent share of the nation's total energy production.
After nonpartisan Factcheck.org pointed out Palin's error in her interview with Gibson, the governor revised her statement somewhat, limiting it to oil and gas. But data compiled by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) contradict her claim that she oversees "nearly 20 percent" of oil and gas production in the country. According to authoritative EIA data, Alaska accounted for 7.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production in 2005.
It is not even correct for Palin to claim that her state is responsible for "nearly 20 percent" of U.S. oil production. Oil production has fallen sharply in Alaska during her governorship. The state's share of total U.S. oil production fell from 18 percent in 2005 to 13 percent this year, according to the EIA.
The McCain-Palin campaign did not respond to a request for an explanation.
What a surprise.
The Post gave Palin's statements four Pinocchios, by the way, calling them "real whoppers."
Palin Exaggerates Alaska's Energy Role (Washington Post)
September 16, 2008
When pastors attack.
I always thought the future was where you and I were going to spend the rest of our lives.
Apparently it won't take quite that long.
Oddly enough, this is not a product of the Church Sign Generator. It comes from Nashville, via Sean O'Dea.
Let confusion reign.
Ska meets surreal:
Do NOT miss the verse at 1:44. It's even better than John 3:16.
Thank you, b3ta.
Is our McCain sycophants learning?
Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist who admits being a McCain partisan in the past, has had enough:
...the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised...McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though...
His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not...
Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.
"The Ugly New McCain" (Richard Cohen, Washington Post)
Even sniffy, self-loathing elitist David Brooks is getting in on the act, having decided that Governor Hockey is not ready to be president after all. Still, he insists, the left was wrong before the right was.
Bonus: watch the McCain campaign lie in Spanish!
All these are via Joe Klein, writing at Swampland.
September 15, 2008
A handy guide to the lying lies.
The DNC has put up a Wikipedia-style page that's a compendium of lies and exaggerations promulgated by the McCain campaign, all with links to the relevant media or web resources that examined the lies in question.
It's astonishing how long the list is already, and we've still got 50 days to go. Look for things to get uglier.
McCainpedia: Count The Lies (Democratic Party)
The link came from Andrew Sullivan, who I've been reading more and more.
Hell freezes over.
People of my political ilk talk a lot of shit about Fox News, lambasting it for its relentless and well-documented right-wing slant, willingness to parrot White House/Republican talking points, and generally empty-headed, sensationalist approach to what it calls "journalism."
That said, credit must be given where it is due. And here's Megyn Kelly of Fox News doing her damnedest to hold McCain spokestoad Tucker Bounds responsible for one of that campaign's favorite lies: that Obama will Raise Your Taxes.
Fox News: not quite always in the tank for Republicans.
September 14, 2008
Pussy vs. Printer.
Click immediately. You won't be sorry.
Thank you, b3ta.
September 13, 2008
David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008
Use this very sad news to launch yourself into the world of Infinite Jest, if you haven't done so already.
I was looking forward to many more years of great writing from this man. I wonder if he left a very long and heavily footnoted suicide essay.
Antler International said it much better than I.
September 12, 2008
The futility of football.
The Onion News Network does sports! Their greatness continues.
Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars
Realize Randomness Of Life
September 9, 2008
Gobble this phallic popsicle FOR U.S. FARMERS!
Industry trade ads are always strange, but this one sets a new standard.
Ladies and germs, the Corn Refiners Association presents this Ode To Sublimation:
Via Slog.
What do you think, Tug and John?
September 8, 2008
The power of the Big Lie.
CBS's Face The Nation ran an interview with John McCain yesterday, and host Bob Schieffer passed up a perfect opportunity to confront Grumpy with what has become the Big Lie of his campaign: that Barack Obama will Raise Your Taxes.
Finally, at least one prominent Democrat has had enough:
Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania just accused the campaign of Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin of flat-out “lying” about Senator Barack Obama’s plan on taxes.Mr. Obama would cut taxes for the majority of Americans, according to the Tax Policy Center that has examined his proposals, and yet the McCain campaign continues to say that Mr. Obama would raise them.
“I call on Senator McCain to stop misleading, stop lying, about Senator Obama’s tax plan,” Mr. Rendell said in a conference call with reporters.
Politicians rarely accuse each other of lying, preferring euphemisms instead. Mr. Rendell’s unusually blunt language is a sign of the anger that Democrats are feeling as they watch the McCain camp distort Mr. Obama’s proposals (Factcheck.org says the McCain campaign is engaging in “a pattern of deceit”) and their frustration at being unable to stop it. Governor Rendell was highlighting the issue in advance of a visit Tuesday to Pennsylvania by Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin.
Mr. Rendell repeated his accusation several times. He said that most speakers at the Republican convention in St. Paul last week had “lied” about Mr. Obama’s tax plans and that Mr. McCain’s television ads “have continued to lie.” He said Mr. McCain was using “the big lie strategy,” which is to repeat something often enough in hopes that it will stick. And, he lamented, “to some extent it has stuck.”
Rendell: ‘The Big Lie Strategy’ (NY Times)
Straight Talk about John McCain.
In case you missed it, The Daily Show put together an excellent antidote to the worshipful, fact-deprived biographies you heard about John McCain during the Republican convention (and which you'll be hearing ad nauseam until November 4th, if you're unlucky enough to live in a battleground state):
While those other pussies kept their planes in the air, John McCain fought back against The Man—crashing not one, not two, not three, not four, but five of the Navy's finest aircraft.John McCain: Reformed Maverick (The Daily Show, via Crooks and Liars)
September 5, 2008
WE ESCAPE NOW.
Blame CO.
Where they stand.
And Judith Warner unloads on the bizarre theatre of Sarah Palin's candidacy:
Palin sounded, at times, like she was speaking a foreign language as she gave voice to the beautifully crafted words that had been prepared for her on Wednesday night.But that wasn’t held against her. Thanks to the level of general esteem that greeted her ascent to the podium, it seems we’ve all got to celebrate the fact that America’s Hottest Governor (Princess of the Fur Rendezvous 1983, Miss Wasilla 1984) could speak at all.
Could there be a more thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women?
You are not, I think, supposed now to say this. Just as, I am sure, you are certainly not supposed to feel that having Sarah Palin put forth as the Republicans’ first female vice presidential candidate is just about as respectful a gesture toward women as was John McCain’s suggestion, last month, that his wife participate in a topless beauty contest...
...Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so “real”?
Because the Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they’ve cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs. the Elites. It’s a smoke and mirrors game aimed at diverting attention from the fact that the party’s tax policies have helped create an elite that’s more distant from “the people” than ever before. And from the fact that the party’s dogged allegiance to up-by-your-bootstraps individualism — an individualism exemplified by Palin, the frontierswoman who somehow has managed to “balance” five children and her political career with no need for support — is leading to a culture-wide crack-up.
Photo background fuck-ups we can believe in.
During the first section of McCain's speech last night, the enormo-screen behind him displayed what appeared to be a grand mansion with an expansive front lawn. Was this one of his (well, Cindy's, really) many homes? This seemed like an odd way to claim kinship with Middle America.
Worse, the close-up shots of McCain made it appear that the campaign had stumbled into another green-screen "Make McCain interesting" moment.
This morning, TPM reports that the truth is even stupider: the photo in question is of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, which would seem to reflect an attempt to celebrate Walter Reed Army Medical Center by someone who's not too good at teh internets.
Is this the competence that McGrumpy would bring back to Washington? I can't wait!
September 1, 2008
Thus spake Jesus in Article I of the Constitution.
From an Eagle Forum Candidate Questionnaire:Q: Are you offended by the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?[SARAH] PALIN: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.
The phrase was added in 1954.
Is our children abstaining?
If abstinence education can’t keep the daughter of the evangelical governor of Alaska off the cock, what hope is there for the daughters—and sons—of average Americans?
