Mission: Cassandra

I’m not going to warn you or say “I told you so.” I’m going to tell you the Cassandra was a seer in Troy who was cursed to see the truth but that no one would believe her.

29 OCTOBER 2010 · 5:49 AM

Enter Title Here (conclusion)

Like I told you at the beginning, the Koch machine is going for a hostile takeover of the Republican party, and by their mantra ye shall know them: “limited government and tax and spending cuts.” You know: “Your mortgage isn’t my responsibility.”

Global Smarming, or, Gone Fission

We begin at the periphery of the chain-reaction:

Dave Blount / Moonbattery: NASA Data Confirm Global Warming Is a Hoax

The atoms keep smashing — as with all chain-reactions, eventually damping down to zero, dependent on confinement and density as to the when but not the what. But when we trace the reaction back to its source, we find that the headline bears very little resemblance to reality. Here’s the beginning [Emphasis added]:

Juan, Juan, Is That You Carrying On?

The subtitle is also the mission statement, seemingly

Juan Williams (no relation) wants you to believe that he’s been “Muzzled” by NPR (conveniently forgetting his 3-year Faux Nooz deal, his column, and his access to media outlets to whine).

He has written a book of the same title, and as a literary critic of three decades and some, I’m in a quandary: I can’t review the book, since I don’t have a review copy, and I’ll be damned if I’ll underwrite this. But I CAN review the “publicity” surrounding the book. So: His publisher, Crown Books, dropped this blurb on the Amazon website (sorry, I won’t link to it).

“You can’t say that. You’re fired.”

Prize-winning Washington journalist Juan Williams was unceremoniously dismissed by NPR for speaking his mind and saying what many Americans feel—that he gets nervous when boarding airplanes with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. NPR banished the veteran journalist in an act of political correctness that ultimately sparked nationwide outrage and led to calls for Congress to end its public funding of the media organization.

Really? The Republicans in Congress were so upset at Williams’ treatment that they did what they did? Seriously?

In what galaxy do the Crown copywriters believe we’ve been vacationing in? An entirely convenient excuse for “topicality,” perhaps, but for Juan Williams to ENABLE, AID and ABET this utter nonsense is already a grand and spreading blot on his ‘credibility.’ It continues …

The Political Culture of America, Today

News reports continuously confirm two facts: We’re fat and we’re broke.

The Kochtopian Nerve Seems to have been Struck

WARNING: THE VIDEO AT THE END OF THIS PIECE MAY SHOCK YOU.

Something about the Nick Gillespie post struck a nerve among “libertarians” on YouTube. What’s the big deal? Aren’t the Kochs our benefactors? This is nonsense! Harrumph. Harangue. Harass. But there IS something fundamental in not revealing who Nick Gillespie’s patrons are –and Matt Welch’s, co-author of the book Gillespie was on Bill Maher’s REAL TIME to shill. Seriously. So, why is it a big deal to note that Nick Gillespie owes his career to the Koch Brothers — who still fund his/their paychecks?

The Koch modus operandi has always been to hide, to disguise, to operate under any name but their own. That’s an unbroken series of demonstrable actions going back to the 1970s, and a slew of actions that carefully AVOID a causal link, but look increasingly likely as the evidence mounts. In the 2006 “Howie Rich” scandal, millions of dollars were slushed to dozens of states and the Center for Public Integrity’s investigation turned up that THREE individuals funded them all, to the 99% + level, but we still don’t know who those Three were.

A Post-War Story and a Bad Song

This is a strange goddam thing.

My son was in the Iraq War. In 2009 his mother co-wrote this terrible song about him, and it’s on YouTube.

I found it more or less by accident, and, as regular readers know, I was not happy to have Dick Cheney’s knife at my son’s throat, nor was I happier when it was revealed that the reasons for invading a sovereign nation (half-a-world away that bore no immediate threat to the USA) were manufactured, or, to be extremely charitable, the result of wishful, magical thinking. I have never belabored the point, nor are your sentiments — supportive or snarky — solicited or desired (that’s a hint, pilgrim).

Smart ALEC – A Short Clarification

I haven’t commented — pointedly — on the ongoing slew of revelations on Kochian machinations.  After all, what is one more peroration in a sea of cogitation?

Make that a “D-Plus.” There is a reason that they call it the “Kochtopus,” after all.

The Running of the Bulls in Manassas

Today, the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War actually begins — not that you’d know it from the coverage.

It was hotter than hell today at Manassas National Battlefield Park, in Prince William County in Northern Virginia. According to the (Manassas) News & Messenger: Manassas, Virginia 99° Feels Like: 105°.

The Civil War started in earnest one hundred fifty years ago, today, with the First Battle of Bull Run. But you wouldn’t know it from Google News (which is, when you think about it, a kind of people’s poll, no less manipulated than most). These were their top stories at this hour [3:55 PM PDT]:

Happy Moon Day 2011!

Perhaps the finest moment in the life of our species. Forty-two years ago today, on a hot summer evening.

A species from this planet …

The Third Industrial Revolution Claims Another Victim

It is as dispiriting as it is symptomatic that this story — which was BIG NEWS yesterday — has already fallen from the digital front pages as we move on to the pie-ing of Rupert Murdoch and the transparent BS of today’s “testimony” before Parliament of the aforementioned and his henchpersons. (Or, in deference to our British cousins, the BBS.)

And Murdoch is caught in that symptomatology. I’ve written about this before, so I won’t recapitulate. The digital revolution is sweeping through skilled professions that had formerly been considered sacrosanct: legal offices, mechanical draftsmen, and, from Gutenberg, print and publishing. The former gatekeepers of news, information, publication and distribution are suddenly adrift in the sea of change — as is Rupert Murdoch the newspaperman, raised by a newspaperman in an increasingly newspaperless age. The Wall Street Journal — a Rupert Murdoch newspaper — reported:

The Dumb and Google Corps.

If ever was there a watermark for just how low in the cesspool we’re mired, the latest iteration of “Atlas Shrugs, Part I” is surely it. Consider the bizarrely plastic “screengrab” that Faux Nooz™ used to illustrate a ‘borrowed’ Reuters story and a ‘borrowed’ blog story:

This is Faux Nation’s plastic notion of an Audio-Animatronic®
‘screengrab’  to promote their ‘borrowed’ story (-ies),
minus the “audio” and the “animatronic” parts. 

You see, Faux Nation (literally) was blaring this headline yesterday:

July 17, 2011

Palin Film Opens Strong, Theaters Packed

It may not be “Harry Potter,” but another film featuring a bespectacled protagonist is racking up strong pre-sales before its national roll-out this weekend.

“The Undefeated,” a glowing look at failed vice-presidential candidate and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has already sold out a show in Grapevine, Texas (population 46,000), according to the distributor Cinedigm.

Grapevine isn’t exactly a teeming metropolis but the film is set to roll out across Tea Party country in 10 AMC theaters.

In addition to Grapevine, the documentary by conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon will expand to Indianapolis, Ind.; Independence, Mo.; Kennesaw, Ga.; Houston, Texas; Orlando, Fla.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Highlands Ranch, Colo.; Phoenix, Ariz.; and Orange, Calif.

Read the full story at Reuters.com

And it’s a lie, or, rather, a meta-lie encapsulating the more mundane garden-variety lies in a sort of Russian nested doll pattern.