The Good Professor (as opposed to the Bad Professor) certainly does go on.

Main Entry: glob·al
Pronunciation: 'glO-b&l
Function: adjective
1 : SPHERICAL
2 : of, relating to, or involving the entire world : WORLDWIDE (global warfare) (a global system of communication); also : of or relating to a celestial body (as the moon)
3 : of, relating to, or applying to a whole (as a mathematical function or a computer program) (a global search of a file)
- glob·al·ly /'glO-b&-lE/ adverb

Try this instead:

Kerry wanted to say "smell test" or "sniff test," but had a quick flashback of a sweaty Terasa after a "steam," thought it wasn't dignified and in that split second substituted "Global" for "Sniff".

He should have stuck with "Smell Test" to emphasize how Bush stunk things up.

You'll thank me. Click here for paste this URL: http://flashconway.com/media/gopconstrm.html

Then pass it along, it's very well done.

Try this link or this one if the first one doesn't work. (It did for me)

VIA: Ameriblog through Matt Gross

Ah, I see there are some grown-ups at Fox News who, after rival CNN picked up Cuticle Carl's idea of a joke, issued this statement informing the brats who run the place for Mr. Murdoch that if any more shenanigans happens which embarrasses the network heads will roll.  Like Peter Jennings said, "occasionally you'll get caught in something like this . . . it's tough."  (At least he didn't say, "It's hard.)

Of course, that was not before the hooligans in the backroom at Fox issued a bogus statement that Carl Cameron had been sacked.  They also issued "regrets" for the "Commies for Kerry" crap.  Now I wonder if they'll ever get around to an accurate account of Kerry's record of passed legislation. I'm not holding my breath.

I doubt that anyone at Fox took the reprimand seriously.  Nothing was done to dispell the culture of pure unprofessionalism and bias there.  After all, relatively few people were actually exposed to the fun and games these numbskulls engaged in.  No harm no foul.  They can resume without interruption their quest to transform this Nation into a bastion of corporate greed and excess supported on the backs of the ignorant they ridicule.

FOX NEWS: "credibility is our lifeblood" Feh!

Even this "high and mighty, hypocritical, DNC talking point spouting bloviator." knows the limits of proper political discourse. This picture just is too much. I simply cannot support an organization which publishes a picture which clearly exaggerates and distorts the buldge in Senator John Kerry's pants.

Terrible, just terrible

The Political Wire seems to think that unlike so many other forgettable Vice-Presidential debates, this one coming up tuesday may be more important that ususal.  While the conventional wisdom holds that people vote for presidents, not vice presidents.  As John Boy demonstrates over on the side, there is very little separating the candidates in the polls.  This thing is that close. (OK, go ahead and fill in your own caption.  My mind stayed in the gutter too long to even try after seeing this picture.)

If this one is about style and charm, Edwards toasts Cheney, unlike the debate between their bosses where Kerry upstaged Bush on all counts -- yes even the "global test" thing you doinks, if you actually care to take his statement IN context and wrap your brain around the full concept that foreign policy includes relations and perceptions of -- foreigners. 

Nations that conduct military, economic and ecological action without regard for international consequences are considered rogue nations by consensus.  We should have achieved all (yes all) of the stated objectives of our war in Iraq without resorting to war, or if war was inevitable, with international support not scorn.  That is not a permission slip; that is diplomacy.  If you don't have the patience to engage in meaninful relations with the rest of the world you will soon lose your position as its leader.

However, if the Cheney/Edwards debate is a technical and detailed policy discussion, the old man will eat John Boy for dinner.  Edwards will not be up against the bumbling fool who stammared his way into the Oval Office, but the power behind the thrown, the wizard himself who took the most inept man he could find and actually made him president.  Cheney is not someone to be trifled with.

I was a bit harsh on Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice the other day.  The graciousness with which he took my insult and the caliber of his writing has humbled me and I wish to offer this mea culpa.  Sorry Joe.  You aspire to a very high calling of fairness and ethical standards which I abandoned as far too difficult years ago.  I'm an advocate, you are a fair judge and asire to sainthood.  But you have to admit that you bear a striking resemblence to Ghengis Khan . . .


There are two competing conspiracy theories about both Bush and Kerry cheating in the debates.  Talk Left has the quick and dirty links for the "Bush was listening to an earpiece" during the debate theory; while Outside the Beltway goes with Drudge and Moonbat Research claiming that Kerry cheated.  Guess which tin-hat-rant is getting more play?  Personally I like the idea of explaining Bush's hunched over stance as an attempt to get a clearer signal from the microwaves Karl Rove was beaming into his skull, but that's just me.

In what Matt Stoller calls distractocrap, he points out that the right has conceded that Kerry won outright, they're just blaming the lyin' cheatin' Demon-o-crats, who look like they have been doing a bit of ballot stuffing as it were in FloriDUH according to this story:

A field director for one of the many national partisan organizations trying to drum up votes in Florida admits to routine efforts to rig the outcome. They include submitting thousands of invalid voter registration cards, as well as failing to turn in boxes of cards filled out to register Republicans.

Don't you just love how they describe election fraud in Florida as "routine."  Anyway, Stoller points us to Ameriblog who analyzes Drudge's video which supposedly catches Kerry cheating and actually exposes Bush unfolding crib notes.

Oh, but only as Drudge can do, the video Drudge posts as "proof" on his site bites Bush in the ass. If you zoom the video to full screen (right click on it while it's running and click "zoom" and then "full screen") you can see Bush unfolding a piece of paper and laying it down on his podium! Remember the debate rules say all paper will already be on the podium, and unless the debate organizers folded the paper up in a wad before placing it on the podium, Bush is cheating with his own cheat sheet.

Since none of this crap is very Mac friendly, and the LGF quicktime movie only zooms in on Kerry, I looked at the C-SPAN feed for myself and yes!  It does indeed look like both candidates took out something from their pocket.  Bush seems to unfold something and look down at it between 2:12 and 2:15 into the video.  Kerry definitely reaches into his pocket and brings out something too.

What bugs me is that none of the clips available on the net are clear enough to show anything with precision, I was highly disapointed not to find the microwave transceiver poking out of Bush's ear.  Dammit.  Maybe it was Cheney's mystical powers that fed Bush's Brain and made Bush grow for the cameras as well.  Hopefully Cheney won't be able to get away with his magic act in Cleveland during his debate, but I'm afraid, I'm very afraid.  Edwards should be too.  Why is he smiling?

Drudge's video is from Fox, which makes it suspect.  I still have heard no retraction or apology for their running with the propaganda from "Communists for Kerry."  What they did do is change their story:

And then there were the pranksters in the audience . . . the Communists for Kerry (who, in fact, are rooting for Bush) and the Billionaires for Bush (who, of course, are Kerry supporters).

"Pranksters!?!"  That's not what they called them originally, nor was there any mention of Billionares for Bush.  Fox News: The First Draft of Revisionist History.  But the fairest treatment I've seen on the subject so far was from Joe Gandelman, hence the foregoing apology.  Mind you the Yuppy from Miami U. couldn't resist his slams on me and when you read the comments, you'll see he tries to take the middle ground for himself (nice try), and elevates CBS's standards to the stratusphere while excusing Fox because they are, well, simply simpltons who can't be expected to reach to the levels of a truly professional news organization like, for instance, CBS.  Casey actually made my point while disagreeing with me.  Amazing.

Someone must have got to conspire.com because they took down the Fox-O-Shopped debate photo showing Bush magically growing 5 inches, hence the broken link below.  If anyone actually d/l'd it let me know. 

Look, Fox is an arm of the GOP communications department, so is Clear Channel, I expect this from them and really feel no outrage.  WingNuttistan is replete with those who insist they are free thinkers with some sense of proportionality and actual fairness.  Yet here they go again lowering the bar, after pronouncements of utter outrage against CBS and demanding Rather's head -- dismissing Fox's actions as shenanigans is reminicent of Rush Limbaugh calling abu Ghraib prisoner abuse mere fraternity pranks.

I don't care what Fox did or did not do in the wake of their clearly irresponsible actions.  Their insta-retraction does nothing to dispel the culture of an obviously biased media outlet pretending to be a credible news agency.  The fact that they put Cameron's stuff out there is merely symptomatic of their culture and the story about the so-called "Communists for Kerry" without a similar swift retraction, just an edit without explaination is indicative of their willful inability engage in serious jounalism. 

They are what they are, the media wing of the GOP.  To compare them with legitimate news organizatioins is insulting.  I don't hold FOX to the same standards I do for CBS for that reason,   Is that it Casey?  How can so many FReepers feel this way, sincerely, yet perfer to get their information from this propaganda outlet knowing how biased and hypocritical it is.

But if we bloggers, as pioneers in a new form of media are to have any credibility, there must be consistency -- and peer review should not be dismissed out of hand.  Gandleman's stand that both are equally guilty may be a start.  My admitted partisanship does not help my disagreement with either the equivalent stance nor holding CBS to the higher standard.  The mens rea of Fox is exremely culpable while I believe there was some attempt at honest yet inept journalism at CBS.  There was no pretense at honesty Fox.

Yet it is the CBS incident which has calls by congressmen for hearings, former Attorney General's leading blue ribbon investigations, demands for resignations, protests and now Hal discovers a possible liable suit is in the works against the jerkoffs who can't identify Shinola -- even when I drew them a picture, all stemming from the allegedly forged documents which merely supported established truth, that our president is a sniveling coward.

What will be the fallout for Fox?  Not a goddamn thing, not even a hit to their ratings.  They will skate and continue with no change whatsoever, while the damage to Dan Ra^ther and CBS will continue for the rest of the decade.  Outrage?  No, merely disgust towards anyone who seriously watches them on a regular basis and actually buys the "Fair and Balanced" Bullshit.

UPDATE: Seeing the Forest notes that although a disclaimer has now been posted by Faux News regarding the "Communists for Kerry" story in "what passes for "good journalistic practice" at FOX News."

You know, I wouldn't be so damn pissy about all this if it weren't for the fact that those hypcrits at Fox, who lie and spout GOP talking points as if they were gospel, didn't hammer, and continue to hammer CBS for fucking up.

Thanks to AMERICAblog we know why they don't think we need more troops in Iraq -- we need more G-Men.

"It's very hard to do. The United States military wasn't organized, trained and equipped to go out and do manhunts. That's an FBI job."

Bush had better see if he can borrow Lyndie England's leach so he can put it on Rummy.

Joe Gandelman's Moderate Voice points to this Debate evaluation in BusinessWeek, See Bush Debate. See Him Squirm, as a devastating screed against the incumband president. It is, and so are the other critiques Joe examines.

While I usually find Joe a moderate in the sense that I find Ghengis Khan lovable because he didn't really eat small children, and Joe's adoption of Blog-a-tarian comment policies tells me he's been in the echo chamber too long, he does know his audience and when on his own blog supresses the WingNuttyness I see when he's blogging where the "Liberal Tradition" is usually squashed mercilessly.

I was trying to convince a 48 year-old mother of a 16 year old boy how important it was to register and vote this year, at least for her son and the possibility that he might be drafted over the next few years, thinking that maybe that would finally motivate her to actually become a responsible citizen for the first time in her life.

I doubt even that worked on her, but in her unfailing ignorance of all things newsworthy, she asked about Therasa Heinz-Kerry, saying that she had seen something or other about her being a communist or that the Heinz fortune has a connection to terrorists.  I was seriously flabbergasted and have absolutly no idea what the hell she was talking about, and understand how often confused this woman is that it borderlines on the insane -- but I do have a question?

Where would someone get the idea that the Heinz money is "dirty," like in the sense that there is a link between the Bush money and the Nazis?  Is there some strange conspiracy theory out there about Mrs. Kerry? 

Or did this autistic ShirleyLocks get the idea from a bottle of "W" Ketchup?
  
Did this misguided mother come across this FReeper spoof?

Just a skimming of the web gives me every reason to believe that Therasa would be genetically programed to hate all things associated with communism, and should be well to the right of her current husband.  In Mozambique her parents had also "lost everything to the Communists."

What is so disturbing that that there really are people out there who buy this drivel as truth.  It's a shame and actually it's best that they don't vote, even for our guy.  She probably was a victim of this Internet Whispering Campaign.  Some people will believe anything.  If it weren't for fear and ignorance, there would be no GOP.

UPDATE: It seems Faux News has been a "Fellow Traveler" in spreading the FReeper "Commies for Kerry" smear too. Here's Atrios' exposé:

Fox News - Snookered Again
Is anyone ever going to hold this network to any standard?

* * *

"We're trying to get Comrade Kerry elected and get that capitalist enabler George Bush out of office," said 17-year-old Komoselutes Rob of Communists for Kerry.

"Even though he, too, is a capitalist, he supports my socialist values more than President Bush," Rob said, before assuring FOXNews.com that his organization was not a parody group. When asked his thoughts on Washington's policy toward Communist holdout North Korea, Rob said: "The North Koreans are my comrades to a point, and I'm sure they support Comrade Kerry, too."

It is unclear whether the Kerry campaign has welcomed the Communists' endorsement.

All Fox had to do was click on the "About" link:

"Communists for Kerry" is a campaign of the Hellgate Republican Club, a tax exempt non-partisan public advocacy "527" organization * * *

* * * Communists For Kerry is separate and distinct from the Communist party of America and any of its organization. None of it's members are members of any communist organizations.

(thanks to reader g) [Eschaton]

Other than the Usual Suspects, here are a couple more places to get the dope on the dummy who just had to do the Gerry Ford Polish Polka.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes [From Pandagon Via Matthew Yglesias, through . . . ah hell, just keep sending this around to the Blogtopians till it sticks.] finds a majority of Bush supporters, sadly after 4 full years of the guy, have no clue about Bush's actual stand on a variety of policy issues, and undecided voters aren't too clear either,  This stands in stark contrast to Kerry supporters who, in a few short month, grasp very accurately what the Senator stands for.

Try the Newsdesk at Reuters AlertNet for some quick hard facts on Iraqi troop and police training plus their elections and reconstruction.

This probably explains the exasperation of so many of us on the left.  The constant fight against lies, spin and outright ignorance is exhausting.  It's a very difficult thing to pierce the world-view bubble of someone who is convinced yet absolutely wrong on what they believe to be true.  It's an ego thing and is a difficult thing, yet not impossible to overcome if one is aware..  So resist the urge to simply say, "Hey Asshole, you're a misinformed, confused, militant, shallow, pretentious, pompous, self indulgent, partisan, liar who will believe anything, even this" Unless of course it makes you feel good.

Hey guys, don't be pissed, really, or tell me that I'm a sexist for not including the Evil Polish Princess in my screed.  At least you all know I at least read your blogs and not just ones that I agree with.  And besides, hormonal pregnant conservatives are capable of more mayhem than the rest of you combined.

Oh, and even with a quick retraction Fox still sux.  Don't play the moral equivalence game with CBS.  A quick retraction of outright fabrications is not the same as hiring a former GOP Attorney GOP to investigate how they let a source's lies get on the air.  Making shit up out of whole cloth, photoshoping shrub's height:





Hannity and O'Really and just plain sucking . . . just pain sux.

UPDATE: Just to prove the point, O'Reilly said that getting 29% of viewers to say that Bush won the Debate was a "whopping number" which could not be discounted. Feh!

And I take back the nice things I said about Evil Polish Princess, click here, and you will put to rest any doubt that she does nothing more than repeat GOP Squaking Points.