Recently in New Media Category

In science, it is understood that to overcome inertia, you have to supply an excessive amount of energy to get movement. However, once that is done, the required energy to keep things moving drops substantially.

With Firedoglake screaming bloody murder and instituting a petition to kill the bill, I see just such a theory, but put to work politically. Honestly, the chances of killing the bill are pretty slim. But, make enough noise about killing the bill, and why, and maybe the pols begin to see their pretty little butts are not so securely fastened to their congressional and senatorial seats. At that point, change will happen.

And now is the time to make some noise. The Tea Baggers have pretty much screamed themselves hoarse and are out of sync with the parliamentary moves of congress. However, I think Firedoglake is poised at precisely the right moment to strike. Though the stated goal may not be admirable, the eventual effect may be laudable.

Being Liberal is a new Facebook page that is attempting to replicate the numbers of the Being Conservative Facebook page sans paid advertising. So, to those few Liberals that actually stop by and read my blog, could you please go to Being Liberal and become a fan.

Oh, Facebook sets it up that way, otherwise, I suspect the owner of Being Liberal would rather have members.

James Wolcott may not read my blog, but he must read my mind, because when I heard about Jake Tapper's doh act earlier this morning, my first thought was; he's working on a move to Fox. But, I was in a hurry..... errrr, well, actually, I just did not feel all that motivated to put my thoughts to words. Good thing, too, because James always does it better.

See kids, sometimes procrastination is a good thing.

Seriously. I need to know the benefit of all this commotion over the arrest of Roman Polanski. Now, do not get me wrong, what he did was horrible; awful; disgusting. You will hear no apology from me for his past behavior. Still, I am at a loss as to the benefit of focusing on his arrest. To me, in the grand scheme of today's events, this focus offers no benefit for our current crises. Will discussing his arrest reverse our economic recession/depression? Will discussing his arrest result in a better health care reform bill? Or is this simply another diversion, in a long line of diversions, that ultimately distracts us from today's problems?

What I find sad: many of the very people engaged in the discussion on Roman Polanski's arrest are the same people who decried the media's focus on the string of disappearances of young white women. Now that the story is about an issue that hits home, it is different?

As to the arrest; as a matter of rule of law, yes it is proper, it has happened, and now justice can play out. But it is my belief that many of the people latching onto this issue are doing so due to unfinished resolution of their own issues. It is a shame when the actual victim has been able to move on with her life, while people not directly harmed are spending copious amounts of emotional and mental energy arguing over the merits of the arrest.

But than, in my field I have witnessed many people whom were cruelly victimized in the past continue to victimize themselves today because of a lack of resolution. Should Roman Polanski's lawyers manage to get him released without extradition, what than of any hope for resolution? Is this a desire for justice? Or a desire for vengeance? For the world to finally do something fair? If so, well, good luck with that. The world is notorious for not giving us what we hope for or want.

My experience has shown me resolution comes from within, not from without. When I have put my hopes for resolution on some outside issue, whether or not it turned out as I wished, I found no resolution. Especially if what I wanted was vengeance. Not until I was able to find some internal sense of forgiveness was I able to let go and move on. Until then, I was continually distracted from the present by my insatiable focus on the past.

Oh, you know the scene. It is the one where Luke gets the living shit beat out of him in the boxing match. It is so bad, even the hardest of inmates turn away. Of course, in the end it earned Luke the respect of the crew. Unfortunately, Joe Klein is not Cool Hand Luke. Nor is he going to earn any respect after having the living shit kicked out of him by Glenn Greenwald.

I would link to the first time I referred to Cool Hand Luke, but that particular post is in the Lost Archives, yet to be restored.

Update: I honestly did not think it could get any bloodier. Man, was I wrong. In my day and age, before I became OLD, there would have been snickers and whispers of "He got his ass kicked by a girl!" Well, allow me this one brief regression. He got his ass kicked by a woman. It is a beauty to behold.

Update II: Man, it just is not stopping.

What does it say about the state of the modern Legacy Media when, between 1985 and 2004, the percentage of Americans stating they trusted the Legacy Media plummeted from 84 percent to 54 percent. Granted, this poll was focused on newsprint, but I have a hard time believing the average American separates newsprint from TV. Especially when many of the pundits spend as much time on TV as they do typing out opinion columns.

Now, we have the babbling hard on for men in power Chris Matthews claiming bloggers don't get fact checked. Look who's talking.

It's ironic that a cable news host such as Chris Matthews would attack bloggers for supposedly not checking their facts, considering the amount of falsehoods and factuallyinaccurate statements he regularly utters on the air -- which have all been fact-checked by bloggers.

This is what's know as projection.

Although babbling on about men in power appears more aligned to penis envy than projection.

And they wonder why they have lost the average American's trust.

No, I am not making a direct accusation of Joe Klein being a drunk or drug addict. However, one could easily make the claim that Joe Klein is addicted to power, Hence his bet hedging with both sides of the political spectrum.

In case anyone is wondering, the behavior of Joe Klein described at No More Mister Nice Blog is the exact behavior I have to deal with when confronting drunks and drug addicts on their behavior at the beginning of treatment. And, of course, Glenn Greenwald presents the facts to expose the denial and outright lies, just like I have to with drunks and drug addicts when they first enter treatment.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered Joe was confronted at a barbecue, with a drink in his hand. My my.

Of course, I leave you, my humble readers, to draw your own conclusions.

Froomkin's first post from Huffington. And, as per usual, he criticizes the President.

The other possibility -- well, I call that one the Obama-as-pushover scenario. In this one, Obama will come out of it having given away the store -- having neither significantly improved the health-care system nor lowered its costs, but rather having created a new entitlement that primarily benefits the health insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries.

So far, the glimpses we've seen from behind all those closed doors suggest the latter scenario. Most significantly, late last week, first the Los Angeles Times and then the New York Times broke the news that Obama had secretly made a sweetheart deal with former arch-nemesis Billy Tauzin, head of Big PhRMA. The same man who during his presidential campaign so ardently pledged to let Medicare negotiate prescription-drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, has now apparently agreed to block any Congressional efforts to do that -- or anything else that would rein in the industry's obscene profits, for that matter -- all in return for $80 billion in promised cost savings over 10 years and, it turns out, an $150 million ad campaign in support of "reform" efforts.

I am not sure I agree with this particular claim. The New York Times noted the White House appeared to backed off the deal. So, well, I guess we will have to wait and see.

When Kevin Drum left The Washington Monthly, I gave up on the site. However, I kept finding others linked to the postings of Steve Benen and Hilzoy so often, I ended up restoring it back to my RSS reader (Sage - a plugin for Firefox).

Today, that action paid off in spades with this simple graph:

It's a real shame Bush and Cheney screwed up so spectacularly, and ignored the law so systematically, that it's interfering with Obama's desire to govern. It really is. If I were in the president's shoes, I might feel the same temptations. But he signed up for this gig, vowing to rebuild the nation. As much as he'd like to get beyond the recent past, nothing of any value is ever built on a corrupted foundation.

'nough said.

Seriously, watching this Colbert segment makes Hannity appear to have the emotional maturity of a 14 year old.

Just because I can, here it is embedded.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sean Hannity Loves America
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Gay Marriage Commercial

National Public Newspaper.

(Star Tribune) WASHINGTON - A Maryland senator is proposing that newspapers be allowed to operate as nonprofits. A bill by Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., would let newspapers choose a tax-exempt status similar to public broadcasting stations.

So, that would allow all sorts of anagrams:

1. NPN
2. SPPN (St. Paul Public Newspaper)
3. MPN (Minneapolis Public Newspaper)
4. MSPN (Minnesota State Public Newspaper)
   

A myriad of possibilities.

Digby has a post up basically eviscerating Chris Matthews for his man-crush swooning over George Bush the day of the "Mission Accomplished" landing. No doubt I think the landing turned out to be a political liability for Bush in the end. However, Digby's resentment of Chris Matthews is, in my humble opinion, wasted energy.

We can carry on all we want about the Legacy Media's complicity in building up public approval for the Iraq invasion, but it will avail nothing. In the end, it's over and done with, and no amount of railing against the media types still in front of the camera, or taking up column space in print, will change what happened.

The truth is simple, majority does not really rule, it follows. Media types like Chris Matthews are followers. The majority of the population are followers. I'll even include myself in that group. I was willing to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt about his leadership after Sept. 11, 2001. That he failed me, and the rest of the country, goes without saying. Had he been successful, we would not now be talking to a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. In any event, on Sept 12, 2001, I was a willing follower.

Now, Chris Matthews simply did what he's always done, he followed. Oh, sure, he gets all riled up and spouts off incoherently from time to time. But that's to be expected. His ADD some days just gets the best of him. Indeed, I am willing to give him that excuse on the day of the aircraft carrier landing. Hell, I would have probably gotten caught up in the excitement.

 Now, let me reiterate; that was the past.

If we are to be held to the expectation of always being perfect, and never given a chance to redeem ourselves, to earn back trust, than the entire population of the world can not be trusted. There are many things I did, as a child, an adolescent, and as a drug addicted adult, that were hurtful, malicious, and disastrous; both to my life and others' lives. I've had to learn to accept that part of my past. So too have those I harmed learned to come to accept me despite my past. It's called forgiveness, a necessary component of being human because of our many flaws.

I am willing to give Chris Matthews a break. After the shock of Sept. 11, 2001, many of us were lost, rudderless. We naively relied on our president and his administration to lead us through the tragedy and become stronger. And his actions at first seemed to suggest he was headed in that direction. Unfortunately, we have since learned they victimized us, taking advantage of our collective shock and naivety. However, where the Bush administration  purposely lead us astray, I do not for one minute believe Chris Matthews, and many other journalists, were malicious in their blind following.

Chris is now working to expose the fraud that was the Bush/Cheney administration. Personally, I am glad to see it, and hope to see more of this in the future. If he's doing right by us now, I am willing to overlook his exuberance of the past. Sometimes, the best apology is not explicitly spoken but implicitly shown by works. Often, we ourselves change unawares, and only in looking back over time do we see that change. Perhaps Chris has changed, and is not yet fully aware of that change.

I understand Digby's fear of trusting Chris Matthews, along with many of his peers, considering their past actions and how they helped perpetuate a grave error of leadership. I, on the other hand, will instead give him the benefit of the doubt, and hope that he is now working towards being an honest defender of the truth.

Where I will not give such benefit is to those who still actively carry water for the past administration. They were, and continue to be, complicit in the manipulation. They still use fear and anger to pursue an ideology that harms the majority and benefits the rich elitists in this world. Their works expose them as corrupt. I maybe forgiving, but I am not naive. Not any longer. My shock has passed.

In the end, though, I have to recognize the humanity in all of us, which includes the imperfections we all carry. I refuse to live my life in constant fear of those flaws. It was that type of fear Bush and Cheney used to manipulate and mislead us, at the cost of our national pride, the loss of over 3000 (and rising) military members, and the loss of countless Iraqis lives.

I believe there is good in the majority of the people. More so than there is bad. I choose to focus on the good. I have no choice. Well, okay, yes I do. Yet, to focus on the bad means I will be unhappy, fearful, and miserable, opening me to further manipulation by people like those in the Bush administration. I certainly don't want that to happen - again. I believe Chris Matthews, and others, are also coming around to recognize their errors of the past, and are working at changing.

The thing is, I am not in control of others, and so have no say in how quickly, or slowly, a person changes old behaviors. That includes fellow progressives who still feel a lack of trust and an unwillingness to give others a chance at redemption. I have to recognize my own lack of power over the thoughts and actions of others. I have to let go and let Spaghetti & Sauce.

I hate waking up with headaches. Nothing sets a more ominous tone then that. But, since it is what it is, I have to deal. Still, headaches in the morning suck. I had intended on writing a long, angry screed, but I'm just not into it this morning. Imagine, if you will, a long, obscenity laced post that rails against the powers that be for destroying what once was a proud, prosperous nation. I wanted to tell them off, but John Stewart did it best:


Ya! What he said at the end.

Someone needs to redo the old Paul McCartney song "Uncle Albert" and switch the lyrics to say "We're So Sorry, Uncle Limbaugh. We're so sorry if we caused you any pain." etc., and so on. Seriously, it could become the Republican's new theme song.

And while we are on the subject of apologies.

Back when I was first turned onto blogs, around 2002 - 2003, one of the topics of discussion was ideological division. Usually, Kevin Drum would post some graph, or a new fangled gadget, that would display ideological leanings, and note that the actual division was quite wide, with very few moderate blogs of note.

Well, guess what. Here it is 2009 and once again, Kevin Drum has a post about ideological division.

Congratulations to Pam Spaulding for making the Washington Post. And it's not a short article, either.

Hat Tip: Mark at Norwegianity, who managed to get out a post after sleeping in.

As the legacy media slowly turns into a parody of itself, the new media -- that is, the internet -- seems to be getting some protection from corporate control.

Considering that corporate control has as much to do with the failure of our legacy media to expose; the lies of the Bush administration during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, acts eroding our civil liberties and displaying out right total disregard for human dignity, and the failure of dealing with the financial crisis, any move towards steering the internet away from corporations and towards an open forum is good news indeed.

Excuse me just a bit.

[loud sound of wood scraping on the floor]

Okay, there. I've got my soap box in place. Now, I just have to find my microphone.

[turns head about, looking for microphone]

Oh, come on! It's a simple request! Where in hell is my mic?

Oh, there it is.

[grins sheepishly]

Sorry. It was just sitting here on this table. Don't know how I missed it the first time.

[Steps up on soap box, adjusts mic on stan....]

Where the hell is my mic stand?

For Christ's sake! Who took my mic stand?

Oh, wait. There it is under my winter coat.

[another sheepish grin]

My bad. I forgot I hung it on the stand when I first arrived.

[steps back up on soap box, adjusts mic on stand, causes loud feedback]

Oh, jeez! I am so sorry.

[hops off of soap box and adjusts setting on amp]

[steps back up on soap box, adjusts mic on stand, taps mic]

Can you all hear me?

What? You, in the back, speak up. Turn it up? Oh, okay. I gotchya.

[hops off of soap box and adjusts setting on amp again]

[steps back up on soap box, adjusts mic on stand, taps mic]

Can you hear me now?

[makes a dead pan face]

No, I don't work for Verizon. Smart ass.

[makes final adjustment to mic stand, holds hands out for quiet]

Yeah! I got up early enough to write a quick blog post. I've checked the news. It damn near put me back to sleep. What news that is out there is being pressed into service as the next worst thing to ever happen in our nation. It's a shtick that right wing radio has had down pat for decades, but now it seems as if the Legacy Media and the various blogs are flagging that old approach well past it's death.

Yeesh. It's just a slow news day. Seriously. After 7 plus years of BushCo™, I suspect we are going to find ourselves bored with the lack of sensationalism. No one, and I mean no one, is going to displace BushCo™ as the most controversial United States administration in modern times.

We are all going to be like drunks looking for that elusive intoxication. Try as we might, we will never feel that exhilaration we first felt as we published a post about the latest outrage from the impertinent son of a misplaced New Englander.

Our drug of choice has actually been gone for quite some time. He's gone into hiding now that his popularity has sunk lower then Nixon's.

So, like any good addict, we've switched; thus lies the explanation of our fascination with Sarah Palin. In my using days, if I couldn't get pot, I got drunk. In today's blogging milieu, if we can't have our BushCo™ story, by God, we've got Sarah to take it's place. It's the same cheap, tawdry content, only with a feminine label.

Soon, though, she'll be empty. Then what? Write outrage over Obama? Does anyone really think that Barack will be as incompetent, as amoral, as ignorant as George W. Bush? If anyone out there thinks that; put down the pipe, back away, and check yourself into treatment. Or the psych ward. Because, DAMN, your either high or psychotic. Or both.

The Savaging of Scott McClellan continues. But it is not just the right that is tearing him apart. Several of our own progressive members of Blogstonia appear to be piling on just as righteously. Over at TPM, there are continued posts of Scott's past statements that, by his own recent admission, were misleading and lies. And yet, despite his admissions, he is being ridiculed, mocked, and smeared.

Was David Brock, a man most of us know to have been instrumental in the defamation, and eventual impeachment of Bill Clinton, held to this level of scorn and ridicule? Obviously not, considering his website, Media Matters, is the go-to site for all things propaganda.

Over the last 6 plus years, since the run up to the invasion of Iraq, a nation obviously not capable of mounting any type of attack against us, we have been demanding that the administration acknowledge it's propaganda agenda. Time and again, on blogs and websites across the progressive spectrum, there has been anger and disgust at the lack of honesty and forthrightness.

Now, finally, Scott McClellan steps forward, announces quite loudly, and convincingly, that the Bush administration used propaganda in the run up to the invasion, and what does he receive? Our derision and scorn.

"Where the hell were you back in 2002? Why the hell did you not resign in protest back then?" Here are some links: CampusProgress, The Register-Guardian, MetaFilter, Oliver Willis, All Spin Zone.

Stop. It. Seriously. Stop it right now.

Scott McClellan has stepped forward, just like David Brock, just like Paul O'Neill, just like Richard Clarke. Now, when those three stepped forward, did it make a difference? Did Paul O"Neill's account of the fiasco that is the Bush administration's handling of the economy make things change? Doh! Of course not. Did David Brock's admission of being instrumental in the propaganda machine -- The Mighty Wurlitzer -- of the conservative right result in the failure of the propaganda machine? Do I need to type Doh! again? And do I really need to point out the lack of serious security despite Richard Clarke's admissions? Yeah, I thought not.

Okay, maybe Scott could have done the honorable thing and bowed out earlier. In the end, it would not have mattered one iota. They simply would have filled his position with another mouth piece. Gee, in fact, they've done it twice since he's left.

So, how about instead of bitching about what he didn't do, because it doesn't really matter, and take comfort in what he has done. Because, unlike David, Paul, and Richard, Scott's book, and it's timing, might actually prevent the invasion of Iran. He has become an ally to our cause. How about we accept him?

Besides, if you really want to bitch about someone doing the right thing and preventing this mess, how about you bitch about this. Because, in the end, having a different man as president would have been the only way to prevent the failure that is the Bush administration.

Army Of Dude on Memorial Day.

No, not leaning left, but restoring balance.

Star Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO - They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece -- not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing workforce of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers profess a love of the nonstop action. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Once again, it's blame everything except the personal choices made by people. I usually don't speak ill of the dead, but in this case I have to speak out. It is not that a blogger's lifestyle kills, it is that people choose to work the hours they do, and live the life they live.

What is it with people? Something new comes along that makes a major impact on society, and those not benefiting from, or participating in, the new trend, decide it is evil and dangerous.

Cue Shatner; Get a life, people.

Actually, stop being so fraking scared. Your way of life is not going to disappear in a flash of bright light, leaving you destitute and hopeless. So some people lived life as they chose, and possibly burned themselves out to the point of death. It was their choice of lifestyle, not a diabolical new industry, that killed them.

New York Times

Of the many landmarks along a journalist's career, two are among those that stand out: winning an award and making the government back down. Last week, Joshua Micah Marshall achieved both.

On Tuesday, it was announced that he had won a George Polk Award for legal reporting for coverage of the firing of eight United States attorneys, critics charged under political circumstances. The "tenacious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales," the citation read.

Also last week, the Justice Department put him back on its mailing list for reporters with credentials after removing him last year.

Mr. Marshall does not belong to any traditional news organization. Instead, he is creating his own. His Web site, Talking Points Memo (www.talkingpointsmemo.com), is the first Internet-only news operation to receive the Polk (though in 2003, an award for Internet reporting was given to the Center for Public Integrity), and certainly one of the most influential political blogs in the country.

I remember when Josh was simply a lone blogger. Way to go Josh! Congratulations on establishing an on line News Media Company. So, is a Pulitzer on the way?