Star Wars Episode 7: The Paul Ryan Menace

TheLandstander

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Tuesday December 20, 2011 · 1:27 PM PST

2011/12/20 · 13:27

I need to kill five minutes. Call it Paul Ryan theater.

TheLandstander

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Tuesday October 18, 2011 · 1:32 PM PDT

2011/10/18 · 13:32

It really shouldn't be all that surprising when the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal releases an editorial which portrays liberals/progressives/anyone so much as slightly complaining about the current status quo as 'radicals'. But this piece by Douglas Schoen reaches new levels of intellectual dishonesty, and shows that when guys like Schoen use terms like "out of the mainstream", they're not referring to America but to the corporate donors who own both parties.

TheLandstander

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Friday September 02, 2011 · 1:57 PM PDT

2011/09/02 · 13:57

It has happened again. The story is after the fold.

TheLandstander

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Thursday July 14, 2011 · 1:22 PM PDT

2011/07/14 · 13:22

Hat-tip to the always entertaining and informative Kalli Joy Gray and her midday round-up for the link.

This diary deals with "Budget Hero", one of several new "balance the budget" games that are out. Here's a link through Mother Jones.

I don't really know much about American Public Media's Public Insight Network, who made the game, so I'm not gonna attack them as inherently biased or anything like that. Also, the game is actually pretty well-made; it's about as "fun" as a balance budgeting game can be (I mean that sincerely). So no offense to the game creators. And I recognize the difficulties inherent in trying to make a budget game accessible to the average news reader.

But there's some problems here.

TheLandstander

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Thursday June 16, 2011 · 1:52 PM PDT

2011/06/16 · 13:52

Ranting/venting a bit, sorry if it's a bit rambly.

Exempt from hate: Huma Abedin, who Lawrence O'Donnell correctly identified as the real victim of this mess.

TheLandstander

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Sunday May 22, 2011 · 10:12 AM PDT

2011/05/22 · 10:12

The average voter doesn't know the name.

Most serious media outlets consider him an odd "pizza guy" outlier.

Even political junkies probably view him as an oddity.

But Herman Cain, former Godfather's Pizza CEO, sports a certain charisma, a business background, and a growing teabagger following. He's being portrayed as a "grassroots" figure, a businessman fed up with government who blahblahblah you know what I mean.

Let's ignore Cain's story for a moment. Let's look at his campaign manager: a man named Mark Block.

TheLandstander

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Friday May 06, 2011 · 8:02 AM PDT

2011/05/06 · 08:02

Curiosity? Masochism? Boredom? I don't exactly know why, but I watched the first Republican debate.

Right now, the candidates who actually showed up to the debate are, for the most part, trying to define themselves. Here's my rundown.

TheLandstander

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Monday April 11, 2011 · 12:49 PM PDT

2011/04/11 · 12:49

"You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."
- Lee Atwater, political aide to Ronald Reagan, 1981

NOTE: It is entirely possible Trump is doing this run for pure vanity reasons. For the sake of simplicity I'm assuming he's serious, but the points remain even if he isn't.

TheLandstander

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Tuesday March 15, 2011 · 12:06 PM PDT

2011/03/15 · 12:06

Between James O'Keefe's ACORN video which turned out to be a lie, James O'Keefe's New Jersey teachers union video which turned out to be a lie, James O'Keefe's Census video which turned out to be meaningless, James O'Keefe's buddy's Planned Parenthood video which turned out to be a lie, and James O'Keefe's NPR video which is in the process of turning out to be a lie, I couldn't help but notice a certain pattern in James O'Keefe's releases. Beyond the whole, y'know, endless lying thing, there's a certain formula that seems to repeat itself.

What follows is a vague, admittedly imperfect approximation of the life of a James O'Keefe release in the modern political era; you can call it a Mad Libs. Hopefully, bringing this pattern to light will prevent O'Keefe from getting undeserved credibility in the future.

By the way, the double-meaning of "Mad Libs" when discussing James O'Keefe didn't hit me until I started this...but hey, it kinda works.

TheLandstander

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Monday January 10, 2011 · 1:34 PM PST

2011/01/10 · 13:34

Like just about every other issue nowadays, the Loughner shooting has reached a point where the media has set up two "sides" for everyone. One side has been calling out the various insanity coming out of the tea party, which casts Democrats as literal enemies to be targeted and destroyed, by voting or second amendment remedies. The other side has mounted a defense of this rhetoric, blaming everything from pot to heavy metal to anarchism to (despicably) progressives themselves.

In my, admittedly very amateur, opinion, Jared Lee Loughner was probably mentally ill, and the idea he had a coherent motive for his actions is a bit implausible. Nor does it even seem he was connected to the tea party "movement" at all. So let's not start making motives that aren't there.

But the fact Jared Loughner wasn't directly influenced by Sarah Palin's target poster or Glenn Beck's conspiracy-board or whatever-else doesn't mean this stuff isn't irresponsible, isn't dangerous, and hasn't already caused real human violence.

If I seem a bit rambling, it's because both the tragic Giffords story and the reporting of the story itself have given me a lot of thoughts, and they don't quite seem to add up to any "side" in the debate.

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Star Wars Episode 7: The Paul Ryan Menace

WSJ Editorial vs. Reality: Are the OWS protesters "radical"?

Obama caves on important issue

Budget Hero: "Balance the Budget" game completely misses the mark

Why I hate almost everyone involved in the Weiner scandal

Herman Cain: The Koch Brothers go presidential

Republican Primary Debate: Number One (is the loneliest number)

Donald Trump's Dive into Right-Wing Cynicism: Why the GOP might be worried

The James O'Keefe Mad Libs Model

Loughner may not have been directly influenced by right-wing rhetoric. That doesn't make it okay.