Resting on his Laurel







"COUNTRY FIRST vs. SELF-SERVING PARTISANSHIP"



McCain's newest strategy is too ironic to be taken seriously.



McCain strategist Steve Schmidt has released the master plan for McCain's 2008 presidential bid: underscore McCain's willingness to sacrifice everything for his principles, while pointing to Obama's "flip flops." The main thrust of this gameplan will focus on McCain's five years as a Prisoner of War.



Are they nuts? If anything, it will serve to remind people that McCain was once a much bigger man than he currently is.



Consider this quick list of easily-proven McCain flip flops:



Torture

Abortion

Gay marriage

Immigration

The Inheritance tax

The Confederate flag

Ethanol

Ethics Reform

The Religious Right

Cuba

How to deal with terrorists

Privatizing Social Security

Ease of "victory" in Iraq

America's "official" language

FISA

Iraq timetable

Oil company profits

Tax cuts



Surely an exhaustive search for issues about which McGrumpy's waffled would contain five times this many subjects.



If this is the best Schmidt can do, the rapture-ublicans are in deep shit.



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George Carlin: Visionary. Comic Genius. Civil Libertarian.



To give you an idea how much Carlin offended the self-righteous right wing, check out these comments by FOX News bloggers:

"He hasn’t been funny since his first appearance on Johnny Carson. Since then, sophomoric at best. He never grew out of the hippie phase. Sad to say, but I won’t miss him for a second."

"George was not funny. Nothing he said had any depth to it. He lived his life in opposition of all that was good and now, sadly, he faces eternity without the God of love he so hated."

"I don’t understand. Please clarify. This man was a known and admitted atheist. He used vile language, and was downright vulgar. Why in Heaven’s name is he so passionately missed and revered?"

"The Gene pool just improved. George will forgotten, but not really missed!"

"I shall not miss his dirty excuss for humor. He showed disreprct for God, Crist and the religions of the world. His next show will be a hot sold out performance, now appearing in hell."

"He finally shut up..Sorry it had to be by death, but I did not like his mouth..Filthy and disgusting."

Funny how hateful the self-righteous can be when they're challenged to examine their own stupidity. These folks, who criticize the left for political correctness, curse a man for speaking his opposition to their fairy tales.

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As Fair as it Got



Tim Russert, 58

Obviously, reporters are used to being labeled 'unfair.' Some of these allegations are accurate, but frequently they're without substantiation. Often little more than rallying cries pundits wield against legitimate reporting. Partisans unable to offer logical criticisms of a journalist's work will typically defer to the tired old "liberal bias" or "media whore" labels.

The most common of these is the "bias" tactic; the right owns this one. Characterized by a selective recollection of the reporter's work, it usually falls apart once fleshed out logically (Bernard Goldberg's [confirmation] Bias is the Rosetta Stone of selective-memory-as-'science'). Most on the right never seem to mind the pseudoscientific nature of their favorite complaint. Then again, most accept the story of Noah's Ark, Lott's wife, and the rest of the Bible's mythology as literally true.

Recently these accusations have arisen from the left, as well. However, due to the difference in thought patterns, these manifest themselves as allegations of corporate sell-outism. I.e. a journalist being 'unfair,' to a liberal, is a "media whore" -- the implication being he or she has traded principles for a fat, corporate news salary. Often, as in the case of Dick Morris, it's an accurate description. But in some instances the characterization stems from critics' fundamental inability to discern between reporting and editorializing.

Mr. Russert caught it from both ends. Those on the right unable to find a hole in Russert's work would pull out the "liberal bias" card; those on the left who confused his reporting with editorializing loved to call him a "media whore."

In reality, however, he was neither. Tim Russert was as fair as it got.

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FOX News: Hillary "Mad Cow" Clinton

Have you noticed the preponderance of Mad Cow stories running on the banner below the image of Senator Clinton?

What a petty little organization, that.

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Confirmation Bias

Before 9/11, my online efforts were largely directed at battling pseudoscience, like the crap spewed by religious zealots claiming to have disproved evolutionary theory, or the dime-a-dozen ‘Grand Unifying Theories’ by hack theoretical “physicists” claiming to have resurrected some pre-Einsteinian model of time. So when I caught the political bug in 2001, I was already intimately familiar with people unable to escape their own cognitive biases.

The phenomenon of Confirmation Bias is the psychological mechanism whereby a person only tends to notice stuff that supports what that person already believes, and tends to overlook evidence that contradicts what he or she believes. It’s a mindset all scientists must learn to overcome; an obstacle to objective evaluation folks who believe in things like Astrology, UFOs, and Bigfoot apparently cannot overcome.

Numerous neocons are enslaved by this mental mechanism. In fact, for a long time, the more I studied the right wing mouthpieces, the more I became convinced being incapable of seeing around one’s own biases tends to make a person conservative.

(There are just as many ascientific nut jobs on the left who've proved this idea wrong.)

One of the first targets of my “satire” was Bernard Goldberg’s book “Bias.” That rag was one of the most obvious cases of Confirmation Bias I’ve ever seen (yes, I bought and read the whole thing without barfing once). Goldberg’s "Bias" may as well have been called “Stuff I Remember Noticing.” In my spoof I presented a Shepard Smith review of the book with excerpts. (I recently resurrected the “satirical” piece here.)

As I mentioned above, unfortunately there are those on the left just as enslaved to their cognitive biases. Wackos like the WTC conspiracy theorists. The nut jobs who believe in astral projection. And many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters (though if the tables were turned - i.e., if Obama were on the brink of losing the nomination - many his supporters would be just as incapable of rational thought).

Regardless who our nominee is this fall, if that person loses to McCain, supporters of the alternative Democratic choice . . . those who cannot overcome their own cognitive biases . . . will scream, “See? We told you so! We nominated the wrong candidate!”

But that's not our big obstacle at this moment. Our primary focus at this time is to keep these cognitive-bias-saddled Hillary supporters from destroying our opportunity before we win. We don't need to pull a GOP-esque self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sean Insanity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Orally and the rest of the right wing ascientific bunch continuously point to a handful of media figures as "liberal." Amazingly, many Clinton and Obama supporters point to these same, exact people as "pro-GOP" or "media whores." If you're not sure who on the left are incapable of thinking rationally --of seeing around their own cognitive biases-- a good starting point is these people. Coppage, for example, (the Bartcop guy) has let many of us down, revealing his own inability to see around his confirmation biases. Showing us his IQ really is just south of the Forrest Gump range.

If the GOP somehow wins this fall, convincing Clinton supporters their candidate would’ve been equally vulnerable to the Swift Boating job by Faux News et al will be like trying to convince Bible thumpers to take a rational view of evolutionary theory.

But that scenario will only become a reality if we let the ascientific, irrational sorts prevail. There are numerous, logical Clinton supporters out there. Let's hope they keep a lid on the idiotic fringes who cannot overcome their cognitive biases.

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"We Report . . .

About one-fifth the news everyone else reports

(...that’s all we can talk about without reminding you the GOP is in trouble)."

It's awesome to be back with my family.

It's great to be home.

The back yard barbecue we had today was sheer joy. And it didn't take much suds to lift my spirits. My beer tolerance needs some work. Think I'll spend a good portion of my R&R time working on that...

It's always interesting to jump back into the "real world" after being gone for a significant chunk of time. The only TV news I got while deployed was FOX News (sic). My observations, therefore, should come as no surprise:

Ted Kennedy has an inoperable brain tumor? FNC didn't tell me this. I guess it's not "newsworthy" in their petty little minds. Apparently this was big news two weeks ago. That is, newsworthy to every news outlet except Rupert Murdoch's pile of shit.

Scott McClellan has published a book. Some sort of minor thing, you know, which suddenly seemed a lot bigger once I arrived home. And saw the real news networks.

Gasoline rose by 75 cents during my deployment. Of course I was aware of this, from conversations with my wife. But it didn't sink in until I saw it with my own eyes. Holy sheep feces. And it's supposed to inflate by another dollar over the summer. Joy.

I did learn a few things while watching nothing but FOX. When Dick Morris opines, his bottom lip moves in more directions than Mitt Romney's stance on abortion. Alan Colmes is more poised when he argues with Sean Insanity than I remember, though he still gets bitch-slapped occasionally. Mediocre comics with right-leaning political stances have established a late-night FNC show called the "Idiot Zone" or something.

What else, oh -- FOX News is petrified of Obama. Shemp Hannity is hilarious with his "Obama has connections with communist radicals" spin. And his "Hannity's America" show is hilariously dumb. Apparently, according to Shemp, Obama used to hang out with the Unabomber. Or something equally fabricated.

FNC wanted to get Hillary nominated, and tried for several weeks, until it became clear that's not going to happen. At this point they started asking "should Hillary run as an independent?" Ha!

I never heard a thing about Reverend Hagee. Not once in six months. You know, John McCain's Reverend Wright. Oh . . . I saw plenty about Reverend Wright, and some white Priest mocking Hillary Clinton. But Hagee – nothing. Now that I’m back in the real world, I’ve seen the Hagee clips and WOW.

None of this really comes as a surprise, but it's noteworthy.

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On "our" side of the political fence, I've noticed my friend Bartcop acting inexplicably anti-Obama. Calls Rachel Maddow "Olbermann's toady" and thinks a McCain win will "prove" Hillary should've run instead of Obama. Maybe his IQ really is 60.

Speaking of Olbermann, he's getting fat. Not extremely so, just enough for someone gone for a half a year to notice. But he's still fighting the good fight, so I say lecture on O Jolly Man.

Rachel Ray has porked up as well, and seems to have aged about ten years. The scarf ad looked like the Rachel I remembered; her "mainstream" cooking show - on the other hand - looks like it's hosted by an older sister on Prednizone or something.

Huffingtonpost.com has made some improvements to their comments feature, Stephanie Miller still rules the airwaves, eBay sucks donkeys dicks (though I use it for beer can images... heh heh), snopes.com is just as silly as ever, Daily Kos still kicks ass, and YouTube still proves a valuable resource for SHIT I JUST DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT.

One last thing - how is "morning joe" without anyone named Joe? Is Scarborough - an embarrassment to many of us Pensacolians - so powerful an NBC employee these days that he can take huge chunks of time off while his staff continues to run his namesake morning show in his absence?

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