April 28, 2013

It truly made me deeply ashamed of my former profession.

Horrible times. What a disgrace. Their asses are owned.

Anybody remember the movie "Network"? Probably my all-time favorite movie, EVVVVERRRRRRRR. In 1976 I thought it was wild, entertaining fantasy. I have been horrified as the years have gone by - to see how accurately it predicted what's happened since.

When the programmers get involved, and the news department is expected to make a profit rather than merely shedding light and telling truth. I never imagined that life would imitate art.

April 28, 2013

Or as we mockingly said after the Boston bombing -

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a bomb is a good guy with a bomb."

Right, wayne lapierre? Well, isn't that the "logic" of the day?

WHEN will enough finally be ENOUGH??????

April 28, 2013

Jerry Brown is pretty doggone cool.

He was back in the day, and he's still got it.

It takes Democrats to clean up after even ONE reckless, feckless republi-CON (even a so-called "moderate" like der Gropenator. I still cherish the memory of the GOP CONvention in 2004 when Ahnold was a featured primetime speaker, and he was scheduled to follow the bush twins - otherwise known as Drunk and Disorderly with their snotty little speech about their repulsive little miscreant dad. The organizers made VERY sure that the girls were totally clear of the stage and out the door before they brought him up for his turn at the podium).

April 28, 2013

And in case someone might have missed it the first time...

HE LIED US INTO WAR.

Oh yeah, and one more thing: NOT EVERYONE believed there were WMD. And those who didn't were muzzled, discouraged from reporting or saying anything for fear of being called un-American or a Saddam-lover or a cheese-eating surrender-monkey or sympathizer thereof. OR a Neville Chamberlain. Anybody get that one? (I certainly did!) Or they were fired for even trying. Remember when you could be fired FOR EVEN TAKING A PHOTO OF FLAG-DRAPED COFFINS COMING BACK FROM IRAQ, FOR PUBLICATION?????? And those who shouted us down invariably said - "well, we don't know what THEY know. We don't see the classified info that bush and his advisors are seeing. So it's not for us to say or second-guess." Anybody get that one? That was a cutie, too.

DEAR GOD those were terrible times!!! And our media, which has been grilling Obama relentlessly, and never stopped baying at Bill Clinton's heels, just gave bush/cheney a complete pass. Nothing but softballs. Never really questioned ANYTHING. And those who dared were abruptly shown the door, or sent to the seat in the last row at the back of the room (like what they did to Helen Thomas). Gross Dereliction of Duty. NOW they want to make up for it. Where were they THEN???????

April 28, 2013

Welcome to DU, House of Roberts!

Glad you're here! Stockman has oodles of major flaws. I read his book a long time ago, and it was pretty infuriating. It talked about the complete sham the whole reaganomics fairytale was. There were two major characters in that fairytale. One was "Magic Asterisk" and the other was "Rosy Scenario." They built the whole budget scheme on a bunch of air. The foundation was wishes and fingers crossed. It'll all work out if you just add in this asterisk and call it balanced! See? We've got this! No worries! It all works just fine! Now let's all move on! It was all embroidered out of empty promises and make-believe. It came straight from the little room with the porcelain throne in it. Their cockamamie ideas only worked when you plugged all the holes with wadded-up pieces of toilet paper and maybe some toothpaste. The whole sorry affair was, to riff on the Blues Brothers, a "wish sandwich." You have two pieces of bread, and you wish you had some meat.

And after engineering, and advocating it for his term of service in the reagan administration, David Stockman actually woke up one day and smelled how bitter and burnt the coffee actually was. They ALWAYS wake up LONG AFTER their damage was done. It's like his former boss finally woke up to the idea of even MENTIONING the crisis of AIDS, and only YEARS after hundreds of thousands of Americans had been afflicted, suffered, and died too young - their plight flatly and baldly ignored for all that time.

GOD that was an awful time in America. AWFUL!!! I sometimes struggle to decide which era was worse, the reagan era or the bush/cheney era. It's a difficult call, except that the reagan era made bush/cheney possible, even inevitable. That era where they just frickin' WORSHIPPED the guy, certainly paved the way for all the look-the-other-way crap, and free passes and no questioning or challenging, and other "journalistic" failures of the mass media while they just frickin' ADORED the guy. The utter adoration was at times completely nauseating! To this very day, I'm afraid, all I can find that's good about ronald reagan is that he's dead.

April 28, 2013

Welcome to DU, Chuuku Davis!

Good to have you with us.

Hunting? Meh... somebody can always come up with an exception. But the problem with that is - while our reps are all noodling around with this exception and that exception and this fine print and that fine print - THEN NOTHING GETS DONE. We're still left with NOTHING DONE, and NOTHING SOLVED, and NO STEPS TAKEN AT ALL!!!!!

My question still is - "... and so, then we do nothing???????"

April 28, 2013

Yes We Can! And Welcome to DU, Mr. Evil!

Glad you're with us! What was that recent slogan? "Yes We Can"? This one should morph into "Yes We MUST!" Or "Yes We WILL!" I was originally gonna say "Yes We Should!" but THAT one goes without saying. DAMN STRAIGHT we should. We've all known that one for years. bus/cheney probably will never be brought fully to justice. Or even partially to justice. Sooooooooo... given that, and unfortunately, I think it's a pretty solid "given", I would hope the two of them would be hounded unmercifully and relentlessly for the rest of their accursed days. I hope they never have a minute's peace without somebody haranguing them or hassling them or getting in their faces or staging demonstrations like this, or facing photos or coverage of this, always having it buzzing around them or underneath them like some annoying gnats that will NOT go away and are impervious to any bug spray.

I want them haunted, nagged, bothered incessantly, facing it everywhere they go, every direction they turn. I want them NEVER to find relief this "nuisance" as they probably view it. I want it shoved in their faces and pelting down on them like a constant hailstorm - til they draw their last breath. It should be unavoidable, confronting them everywhere, every minute of every day of every year. There should be NO cover, NO escape, NO relief.

Or let's put it this way - they should be able to get past it and move on in EXACTLY the same way that all those Iraq War veterans have to get past it and move on while missing a leg or two, an arm or two, their vision, their hearing, maybe their ability to speak, maybe their ability to move at all. The way THEY get to move on. That's what should befall bush/cheney. That they be forced to live with constant non-stop torment for the rest of their lives.

April 28, 2013

Hey, I LIKE that Facebook page whose link you posted!

TONS of great stuff in there! And I LOVE LOVE LOVE Elizabeth Warren!

April 28, 2013

Yeah, it WAS pretty funny stuff, wasn't it!

I laughed out loud, quite a few times! I LOVED the bit about John Kerry being played by one of those Easter Island statues!

HILARIOUS!!!! And that whole series of jokes was even better as sight gags because of the photos chosen. Same facial expressions, same tilts of head or direction the eyes are looking. The slide producers did a VERY good job! And they found something just as funny for mitch mcconnell - other than the obvious Ninja Turtle or something. They went for Dame Edna! OMG!!!!!

April 28, 2013

That's probably going to become an all-purpose drop-in or bumper clip before a spot break.

I imagine we'll be seeing and hearing it as a lead-in or lead-out on MANY shows from now on.