For The Intellectually Impaired

While killing some time this weekend, I decided to do a little research on the ridiculous narratives that conservatives are pushing since the Tuscon memorial service.

This one is not only ridiculous, but hilarious.

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that they were surprised by the applause at the memorial pep rally on Wednesday for the victims of the Tucson shootings.

I will say that I read the speech several times and thought that there wouldn’t be a lot of applause if any. I think many of us thought that. But I think there was a celebration, again, of the lives of those who had been impacted. Not just at that grocery store but throughout the country. And I think that, if that is part of the healing process, then that’s a good thing.

Oh really?
Then why was it printed on the Jumbotron?

Seems that Jim Hoft and several other wingnuts - including the Purse Lipped Princess, Michelle Malkin - were so eager to frame this entire memorial as a "staged event" that insisted that the Closed Captioning on the jumbotron were "directions".

Sadly, yet predictably, lots of conservatives swallowed exactly what they were fed - a heaping helping of bullshit. And not even well thought out bullshit at that.

Brown Hype And Irony

Conservatives, when it comes to citing information in order to push a specific school of thought, often reference material that is too closely linked to their own self-interests. More plainly put, when you reference a poll that you conducted to prove your point, it pretty much invalidated from the jump.

Fox"News" is notorious for doing this. And now, Pajamas Media has a poll out that says the Scott Brown in some 15 points ahead of Martha Coakley in the special Massachusetts election to replace Ted Kennedy in the Senate. However, Nate Silver provides the context to this that shows this isn't something Democrats should worry about.

Worry about Suffolk. Worry about what PPP and Rasmussen are going to have to say over the weekend. But for the love of God, don't worry about the Pajamas Media poll which reports a 15 point lead for Scott Brown, which I'm not going to do the favor of posting a link to.

The poll was conducted by a firm connected with the Black Rock Group, which bills itself as a "strategic communications and public affairs firm" and whose chief spokesman/strategist, Carl Forti, just so happens to be the spokesman for this polling firm that nobody has ever heard of and just so happens (as David Dayen dutifully reports) to be the spokesman for a big pharma lobbying group that's pushed the death panels meme and just so happens to be the lead PR flak for Pajamas Media.

This bizarre bizarre Mobius Strip form of political strategy plagues Scott Rasmussen as well, considering his former ties to the Republican Party.

One important thing to remember about polls is that they reflect a person's feelings at the time of the poll, not what they are going to do once at the "ballot box". As of right now, the race is well within the margin of error, so it's anyone's game at this point.

But let's take a look at what is likely to happen is Brown wins.

One of his key, if not THE key, pillars of his campaign is blocking healthcare reform. If Brown wins and becomes the "41st vote" - his current moral boosting chant - that will in effect help to derail healthcare reform, he will be profiting from the taxpayer due to the healthcare coverage that is offered to elected members of government. The taxpayer pays their salary and that salary is used in part to pay for healthcare coverage. It's a rather ironic place Brown could potentially find himself in - as a member of the government that conservatives continually rally against. Then again, conservatives only rally against government when they aren't in the catbird seat.

Not only that, but Brown is hardly the "man of the people" he claims to be, as his campaign coffers have been filled in these final hours by the financial sector. It seems that those that favor profit over the consumer are more than willing to back a candidate for his stance that would favor them. After all, another conservative pillar is massive deregulation, the same that got us into the greatest economic disaster not seen since the 30s.

As of this writing, it could be either Brown or Coakley. If it's the former, be prepared for more of the same from conservatives, and be prepared for Brown lay willingly in the arms of his masters - the special insists that care nothing about the tea-bagging masses that oppose them. If it's the later, be prepared for conservatives to cry foul play. Either way, there's still a great fight ahead of us that are for the betterment of this country.

Christian Toto Has His PJs In A Twist

Toto is a writer for Pajama's Media.

You remember them. They financed the disaterous trip of Joe "The Gimmick" Wurzelbacher to Isreal as a "war correspondant.

Now, he's taking issue with a new documentary that shows just how hateful the McCain campaign's fanbase leading up to the election of Barack Obama.

...[N]ot everyone was in such a charitable mood as it became clear Obama’s lead wouldn’t go away. And those are the folks documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi sought out for her new HBO program Right America: Feeling Wronged: Some Voices from the Campaign Trail.

The documentary, debuting tonight at 8 p.m. EST, captures the very worst elements of those who climbed aboard Sen. John McCain’s Straight Talk Express.

Close your eyes for a moment. What kind of documentary would you expect given the subject matter and the filmmaker (Pelosi is the daughter of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi)?

If you said the film would show conservatives as ignorant, racist, hateful folk who genuinely cling to God and guns, give yourself a prize. Bonus points go for those who predicted the film would characterize McCain/Palin rallies as hate events.

You wanna see hate? Check out the next anti-war march. Yikes.

Pelosi, who has displayed an ability to walk an unbiased line with documentaries like Journeys with George and, most recently, The Trials of Ted Haggard, lets her ideological flag fly this time ’round. She also proves incapable of revealing some inner truths about her subject matters, something that hurt her Haggard piece as well.

Toto takes issue with the very real fact that there was a healthy does of hatred leveled at not only Barack Obama, but those that voted for him as well.

He doesn't seem to realise that the divisive nature of the McCain campaign was, and still is, very real. Remember these people:





----------------------------------------------------

In all fairness, I have to tell you, I haven't seen Pelosi's latest documentary feature.

So, I'm going to reserve my opinions on the film until after I have seen it.

The point of this post was to show that Christian Toto, and many like him, still can't seem to realize the dividing nature of not just the McCain campaign, but the party that they affiliate themselves with.

Joe's "Media Tour" Just Keeps Getting Funnier

Perhaps Joe doesn't realize that the military does has a PR wing:

I think the military should decide what information to give the media and then the media can release it to the public. I don’t believe they need to be in the front lines with soldiers, I don’t believe they need to, uh, you know, be bothering the military for information or for access to certain areas.

You can view the 13 minute clip at PajamasMedia, but it does require registration.


Here's te mission statement of what it means to be a military public affairs official:

Public Affairs fulfills the Army's obligation to keep the American people and the Army informed, and helps to establish the conditions that lead to confidence in America's Army and its readiness to conduct operations in peacetime, conflict and war.

To learn more about these people that Joe doesn't seem to know exist, visit Army.Mil/Institution.

And the hits keep coming.

Joe The "Journalist"

Crooks & Liars have up the video of Jon Stewart discussing Joe "The Gimmick" and his upcoming trip to Israel.

While it is filled with interesting tidbits that prove the Joe has both no clue what he's getting into as well as his willingness to beused by people that obviously care little to nothing what happens to him - so long as he does their bidding - the far-light loons that are pulling Joe's strings are foaming at the mouth when they see that others are calling them out for being so patently, well, dumb:

My syndicated column today looks at the MSM sneering over Joe Wurzelbacher’s trip to Israel sponsored by PJTV, recounts how The Fraternal Order of the Professional Journalist has squandered its own credibility, and exposes how liberal media elites have attempted to shut out conservatives from membership in the journalism club by redefining their craft based on ideological content.

Soon after I filed the column, yet another example of damaged MSM credibility surfaced in the blogosphere. LGF and Bob Owens broke the story of CNN’s broadcast of suspicious Gaza footage featured two pro-Hamas doctors engaging in medical theater of jihad — by faking a bizarre form of CPR on a Palestinian boy who “died.” CNN, which heaped derision on JTP for taking on the role of reporter, has yanked the video. More on one of the jihadi apologist zealots, Dr. Mads Gilbert, at FNC.

More here - including the video that Malkin and others insist is "fake".

In the context of this video of doctors trying to save a child, as well as Malkin's arguement that it isn't real, I'm starting to wonder if Joe's trip is going to be "real" as well.

To hear Joe put it, he's not afraid. He seems to think that he can just walk into a an Israeli neighborhood and start talking to people about how they deal with such things. Does he honestly blieve that people will want to talk to him? It many be safe to say that there are places around the world that now know who Joe is, but do they lend him even a shread of credibility?

I Am At A Loss For Words

What?

TOLEDO, Ohio — Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter's notebook.

The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com.

Who is PJTV.com, you ask?

Well, thier website has this to say about Joe "The Guy That Has No Clue What He's About To Get Into" Wurzelbcher here.

Michelle Malkin, a PJTV contributor, seems to think that people are going to be praying to Joe's death during his trip.

Predicting death wishes for Joe from the left side of the blogosphere in 3, 2, 1…

All kidding aside, Joe is only being sent to the middle-east because of his comments regarding Barack Oabama and Isreal:



Does this man not realize what he's getting into? Has he the intelletual honesty to tell himself that he isn't a field reporter, that the "average Joe's" that he is bein sent to talk to in Israel more than likely will want nothing to do with him? Does he understand the real danger that he is putting himself in?

There is still a part of me that thinks that this is all hype and no delivery, all foreplay and nothing more - something juicy for the Fox"News" prattle-heads to pat theirselves on the back with . Is Joe honestly going to go to Israel and talk to the "average Jew" that is being affected by this conflict?

I'll believe that when I see it.

Railing Against A Multicultural America

I have been watching a recent webisode of PJTV - it's one of those moderately done conservative web television shows where far-right conservatives can talk to each other and not have to face reality - where Joe Hicks was interviewing the "purse-lipped-one" Michelle Malkin.

What made this particular webisode stand out - to me at least - was that it was dealing with the notion that the GOP shouldn't have to reach out to minorities - which Malkin as links to "the non-traditional-constitancies in America". Or, as Malkin likes to call it, "pandering".



Once the two got the verbal ego massaging complete - and claming that since they know they can use the internet as a communication tool that THAT must mean they have "the pulse of grass roots actvists" - it became quite clear that neither of them thought the GOP had any problems with minorities. It was almost if they were saying that they simply aren't needed and won't be discussed, talked to, understood, or even identified as such.

The discussion of minorities and the GOP got started in reference to a statement made by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, when he stated that the Republican party ought to take care to include them, to ensure that their needs and desires not be ignored.

Each of them laughingly passed off Bush's comments and Hicks even drew a comparison to Donna Brazile's comments during her time on the Al Gore campaign when she stated that the Republican party was becoming the party of "old, white, men".

This left both Hicks and Malkin wide open to talk about their own ethnicity, their own individuality - something that stuck out as quite odd, considering what they are postulating.

It's a rather interesting look inside the muddled mind of the "ethnic-conservative" who says wth one breath that they souldn't be judged by their heritage, and then will drone on about that heritage and how it is important, all within the confines of their thesis that the GOP doesn't need to be diverse.

The piece even features talk about Micheal Steeles bid to be President of the RNCC with a video of him race-baiting the oposition.

How To Read WAY Too Much Into The New Batman Movie

Kyle Smith over at PajamasMedia must use his lower intestines as storage space for all the wild inferences and over-reaching meanings that he likes to attach to things.

That being said, Mr. Smith has just reached up into his ass and came out with this, the subtitle for his latest piece on PajamasMedia's website:

Who would have guessed that the latest Batman movie would have a conservative point of view?

After containing my laughter and cleaning up the coffee I just spat all over my desk, I re-read his article and was literally astounded by how clueless Kyle is about movies in general, Batman in specific.

I've quoted the later half of Smith's ill-informed piece on Batman here to show you where he dives straight off the edge:

There is no pretending necessary to fear the Joker (Heath Ledger, in a role that is already a screen landmark). It is said of the Joker that “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

How to deal with such a figure? There is no easy answer, and here is where The Dark Knight strikes me as a conservative movie.

Liberals live in a world of “and.” Full security and full civil liberties. Universal health care and the best quality with no waiting. A dynamic economy and full welfare and unemployment benefits. Liberals, in other words, live in that scene in Spider-Man in which Spidey, forced to choose between saving a tram car full of innocent civilians and saving his girlfriend, chooses both. Liberals live in a fantasy.

Conservatives, though, live in a world of tradeoffs, of either/or. For having this relationship with reality, conservatives are caricatured as grumpy, stingy and negative. Surely all it takes is a bump in taxes on the wealthy and everything will be affordable? Where’s the Hope? Where’s the Dream? Yes, we can!

The Dark Knight lives on a razor edge of tradeoffs. In the coin flips of Harvey “Two-Face” Dent there is a message that not only can’t you choose both heads and tails, but sometimes you’re up against a trick coin that ensures you lose either way.

Innocents get killed, civil liberties are infringed, and Batman ardently defends lies over truth in the pursuit of propaganda. Extremism in the defense of liberty is Batman’s virtue, and he ventures much farther into the wilds of lawlessness than any politician would dare. Moreover, his Gotham is a place where some believe that chaos can be managed, that giving into a simple demand from the Joker that Batman turn himself in might be a workable alternative in the long run.

Despite his name, the Joker doesn’t really seem crazy. Perhaps listening to him is a better option than a war that will have untold costs for everyone. “I like this job,” the Joker says on one of his many missions of conflagration, reminding us why his type will always be around. The future looks like it may bring a lot more Jokers than Batmen. “I’m not a monster,” the Joker tells Batman. “I’m just ahead of the curve.”

How can Smith possibly speak about Batman's ventures into lawlessness and even equate that with modern conservativism? The two couldn't be more diametrically opposed if you wanted them to be.

True, Bruce Wayne grew up in a world of privilege, of power, of his every want and desire being provided to him. Though this is generally the seed, the catalyst from which most conservatives are born, Bruce Wayne - as Batman - is nothing like a conservative.

He protects the innocent, and defends the freedoms that modern conservative politicians are attempting to usurp every chance they get. Wayne used his corporate ties to sieze control of the empire that his father built in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the corrupt.

How is this "conservative"?

Batman is as much a conservative as he is a liberal. The character cannot be classified as either, as he has removed himself from a society that overtly eager to define things in such narrow terms.

If there is one thing that Mr. Smith is correct in stating, it's that conservatives live in a world of "trade-offs". They will trade another's well-being in order for themselves to be comfortable. They will trade away their individuality in order to be part of the collectively ignorant masses, all for the sake of acceptance.


If Liberals live in the alleged "and" world, it is so that we can see things together like "security" and "freedom", "blacks" and "whites" co-existing, and we are certainly able to see the difference between "the truth" and "lies".


Truth-be-told, I haven't seen the new Batman movie, yet. But, if there's one thing I do know, it's that Kyle Smith's ill-informed opinion is blatantly obvious and makes him appear as stupid on the internet as he probably is in real life.