(Snort)

Sunday's Doonesbury - Do Nothing CONgress

My Idea for the DNC

Have every major speaker provide a fact-check sheet to the media to prove they are telling the truth. This would really spotlight the mendacity of the repubs and prevent the "both sides lie" crap that is going on now. I don't know if it is practical, but it would surely be effective.

Righteous Rant! Tom Toles on Lyin' Ryan

Friday rant This just in: Lying works! edition
By Tom Toles
Where to begin? A better question is: Where to end? I have a good answer to that. You could stop watching and listening to Republicans forever when Paul Ryan, “Mr. Tough Truths”, opened his mouth, and let out a river of lies that the stranded barges on the dried-up Mississippi could have floated on all the way to his beloved Janesville. This was among the best of several take-downs of this outrageous speech, because it began with the Simpson-Bowles meme, with which the GOP has been contaminating the public discussion about deficits for some time.

And our beloved mainstream media? They should have put Bernstein’s post on page one and moved on to cover Sports and Weather. But no, we got respectful reporting and analysis of whether or not mendacity more naked than Prince Harry was “effective.” Gee, the GOP crowd really warmed up this new level of public deception! Was it effective “despite” it’s lies, as some analysts tried to explain it? No. It was effective BECAUSE OF its lies. Are reporters unaware of the history of lying propaganda? IT WORKS! When you build a heart-rending tale AROUND A LIE, well, by golly, people RESPOND. It was so heart-rending! Effective!

Dangerous. Yes there is an ideological division in this country, but when a national ticket starts defining its case around complete, brazen, and deliberate lies, then it’s time to sign off. No, you cannot have a public policy discussion with this level of misrepresentation. This level ends and poisons public policy discussion. Try discussing something with the open end of a giant sewer pipe. It doesn’t end well. It doesn’t end well, either, for a party to become known as a sewer pipe.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/friday-rant-this-just-in-lying-works-edition/2012/08/30/9d006a00-f2c7-11e1-a612-3cfc842a6d89_blog.html

Weekend TOON Roundup

The Sad truth about Clint Eastwood, in 1 toon

This campaign season is bringing out exceptionally nasty cartoons

One of the worst I have seen yet:


Does he really think calling obama supporters pigs is going to win votes?

Right on, Danziger, Right On!

Sidewalk-Free Illinois Neighborhood Arresting Scores of Black Pedestrians

It's amazing what kinds of telling data a Freedom of Information Act request can turn up. Dynamics between black residents of Champaign-Urbana Illinois and the police have been fraught in recent years since the police shooting of an unarmed teen there. Local reporter Jeff Kelly Lowenstein decided to use FOIA to take a deeper look at the arrest statistics in the metro area and got his hands on the details of every single arrest over the course of the five years between 2007 and 2011. He found striking patterns of discrimination.

There's one block in Champaign Illinois where more black people have been arrested for jaywalking than the total number of white people arrested in the entire city. Champaign-Urbana has a 16 percent black population, but 88 percent of jaywalking tickets went to black people in Champaign and an even higher percentage in Urbana. Lowenstein took his camera down to the 1500 block of Hedge Road in Champaign—the epicenter of jaywalking arrests in the city—to talk to residents. He found frustrated people and streets with no sidewalks.

more
http://www.good.is/post/sidewalk-free-illinois-city-arresting-scores-of-black-pedestrians/