NBA stats: finessed to look however the home team scorekeeper wants them to look

Truth is not important

I came across the video below, a compilation of a guy named Peter Schiff on various news talk shows in 2006 and 2007. It is 10 minutes of him being right forecasting the current economic collapse, while all the other talking heads literally laugh at him. It is kind of fun to watch. My first thought was that those idiots who mocked him while they predicted endless booming growth should never get a job again.

But that was very silly of me, a vestige of my naive former worldview. I was imagining a world in which news programs are in the business of getting things right, of telling the truth.

News television, like all television (and other media for that matter), is in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. As such, we expect the programming to reflect these interests. Also, the major television networks are owned by a small handful of wealthy conglomerate corporations. As such, we expect the programming to reflect the interests of those corporations and their owners. These two interests largely overlap, though there can be a few conflicts, as in all cases where the same parties have multiple interests. In those cases strategic decisions have to be made. But in the case at hand, it is pretty easy to see that an audience of people who believe that endless economic prosperity is always just around the corner is easier to sell to advertisers, and is better for the corporations who own the media.

The only thing truth has to do with it is if the audience figures out how unreliable the programs are and stops watching. The immense popularity of Fox "News" is a prominent, but certainly not isolated, demonstration of the appropriate level of concern TV networks need have for such a scenario. If their dishonesty becomes impossible for the audience to ignore, they have ways of handling that too. After US forces failed to find any WMDs in Iraq, what did the TV networks that credulously amplified the false WMD justification for war tell you? That everyone believed there were WMDs, and nobody could have predicted otherwise. There is ample documentation to prove otherwise, but that doesn't matter. They just lie after the fact to cover up their previous lies.

So the idea that the laughing fools in the video will never work again is foolish. They've shown that they're willing to say whatever needs to be said to advance their careers. Networks make good use of such people.



(By the way I know nothing about this Schiff guy. He may or may not be advancing his own interests here, which may or may not have anything to do with the truth. Maybe he just got lucky. I don't know and don't really care.)

Go vote for Obama like the liberal sheep that you are

CHANGING THE VERY NATURE OF POLITICS!!

"My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices." Thanks BO!! The US puts more carbon into the air than any other nation, 22% of the world total despite having just 5% of the world's population, but BO's interest is in making sure we have cheaper gasoline. Such bold leadership! Such vivid change!

In linking McCain to the unpopular President Bush, [BO] struck a theme from Ronald Reagan's successful 1980 campaign against President Jimmy Carter by asking a town-hall audience in St. Petersburg: "Do you think you are better off than you were four years ago or eight years ago? If you aren't better off, can you afford another four years?"

Just like in 2006 when we took over Congress! Republicans had been in charge, but you marched to the polls and voted for Democrats because you knew they'd make everything better! Remember how great things were after that? BO supporter Glenn Greenwald will remind you:

Since that overwhelming Democratic victory, this is what the Democratic-led Congress has done:

• Repeatedly funded -- at the White House's insistence -- the Iraq War without conditions;
• Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- Jim Webb's bill to increase the intervals between deployments for U.S. troops;
• Defeated -- at the White House's insistence -- a bill to restore habeas corpus, which had been abolished by the Military Commissions Act, enacted before the 2006 election with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support;
• Enacted -- at the White House's insistence and with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous Republican support
-- the so-called Protect America Act, vesting the President with extreme new warrantless eavesdropping powers;
• Overwhelmingly approved the Senate's Kyl-Lieberman Resolution, to declare parts of the Iranian Government a "terrorist organization," an extremely belligerent resolution modeled after those which made "regime change" the official U.S. Government position towards Iraq;

• Deleted from a pending bill -- at the direction of the House Democratic leadership and at the insistence of the White House -- a provision merely to require Congressional approval before the Bush administration can attack Iran;
• Overwhelmingly enacted -- at the White House's insistence, and with substantial Democratic and virtually unanimous GOP support -- the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008," to vest the President with broad new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, all but putting an end to any chance for a real investigation and judicial adjudication of the Bush administration's illegal NSA spying program;
• Confirmed, with the indispensable support of two key Democratic Senators, Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, despite his support for radical Bush theories of executive power and his refusal to oppose torture;
• Stood by passively and impotently while Bush officials flagrantly ignored their Subpoenas and refused to comply with their investigations.

BO and the Democrats are fucking filthy slime, and you just can't get enough. He'll punch you in the face and you'll ask for more. When someone mentions that he just punched you in the face, you get mad... at the person who mentions it... as you crawl back to Obama and kiss his feet.

Then he kicks you in the teeth.

CHANGING THE VERY FOCUS OF OUR IMPERIAL WARS OF AGGRESSION!!

Hooray! Glorious freedom bombs dropped on different civilians! But dropped by a President who might actually know how to pronounce the name of the towns he destroys, so that makes it better!

bullshit

I noticed this article in hwong14's shared items and the headline caught my attention: "Does Power Corrupt? Absolutely Not." So I read the article and was a bit confused because the headline has basically nothing to do with the article. So then I went and read the paper featured in the article.

The experiments in the paper manipulate people's feelings of power, inducing them to feel temporarily powerful or powerless, and then gives them tasks. It generally found that people who feel powerful perform better than those who feel powerless. Read the paper for the details. One of the paper's authors, Adam Galinsky, has done other work on power, for example finding that feeling powerful is associated with reduced tendency to understand how other people think. I can see how that would bear on the corruption issue. But I don't see any way the featured research justifies a headline like that. It has nothing at all to do with corruption, though Galinsky does say it has "direct implications" on power and corruption. Aside from the headline, the lede sentence, and that quote, no other mention of corruption is made.

Coincidentally, the article was published in Time Magazine, a powerful and corrupt publication.

Lauren Green, Kathy Griffin, and Jesus Lord of Comedy

It turns out Kathy Griffin was wrong! Jesus had everything to do with her winning that award!

But here's what I don't quite understand, although I'm sure there's a very good explanation. If Jesus really did have everything to do with Kathy Griffin's award, and think Lauren Green has undoubtedly shown that to be true, then that means Jesus had everything to do with Kathy Griffin saying "Suck it Jesus! This award is my God now!" And since Lauren Green makes it clear that she finds self-effacing humor to be amusing, why is it that Lauren Green is unamused by Kathy Griffin's remarks, which is essentially Jesus' own self-effacement? Jesus is Lord of Comedy, but Lauren Green is won't scarf down his tasty communion wafer.

But like I said, I'm sure there's a very good explanation. It is probably related to the reason why Lauren Green would have "turned the other cheek" if Kathy Griffin had just said that no one had less to do with her award than Jesus. Obviously that kind of a comment is the literal equivalent to a slap in the face, but Lauren Green, good Christian that she is, would receive that slap without complaint, and then offer her other cheek to be slapped again. But if Kathy Griffin (at Jesus' insistence) goes on to then slap again, as Lauren Green specifically offered, apparently at that point Lauren Green must spring into action.

Now, I very much believe that Lauren Green and Bill Donahue and Fox News would never have said anything if Kathy Griffin had only disavowed the involvement of a 2,000 year old fictional Jewish zombie. They would have gladly ignored that, and nobody would have censored remarks on the broadcast, and Lauren Green never would have written her well-reasoned column.

But why turn the other cheek if you won't accept the inevitable re-slap? Why doesn't Lauren Green have a sense of humor when Jesus uses an irreverent comedian to make a little fun of himself?

I guess its just that me and Jesus are on the same comedic wavelength. We get each other. That's what I love about him.

80,000 to 1

I'm guessing that the following parlay is highly unlikely but I'll give it a shot anyway. What are the odds that:

(1) Someone who reads this (2) thinks that Fox News is a respectable news outlet, (3) clicks on this link, (4) reads the entire thing, (5) agrees that Gibson is full of shit, (6) is then open to the possibility that the entire network functions that way, and (7) exercises this kind of critical thinking in the future to form the proper conclusion that Fox News is nothing but a Republican propaganda network.

Seems like an impossible parlay but I'll put it out there anyway.

the list of bullshit

1.) The offensive foul call against DJ Strawberry that changed the end of the Maryland game today. Not that the Terps played very well, but they deserved a fair shot at the end, and the defender looked to be moving. You can't call a questionable charge in the last minute of a close game.

2.) This couple getting kicked out of an IHOP for a quick kiss on the cheek. Fuck those facist bigotards.

3.) Anyone who doesn't love MAN BEARD BLOG. A haiku in honor of MBB:

Brambles of whiskers
Adorn his rugged visage
Fellate him or die