Friday, November 14, 2014

Friday Stuff

By the way, Karen Silkwood died under mysterious circumstances 40 years ago yesterday (the clip below has to do with her upbringing before she worked at Kerr-McGee - the story from this link tells us what happened to her; landmark reporting from Rolling Stone many years ago on this)…



…and Cenk Uygur tells us that the fight goes on when it comes to campaign finance reform (nice work here, even by some conservatives, believe it or not)…



…and sometimes I just have no words…fortunately, Jon Stewart just about always does (here - and I heard his new movie is pretty good too)…


...and I genuinely apologize for not including this video last Tuesday as I should have.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Thursday Stuff (update)

For a change of pace, mainly because recent political events are so putrid for the most part, I thought I'd present this Alex Wagner interview with Dick Cavett – you can Google him (sad that there's apparently no place for Cavett or someone like him on network TV anymore)...



...though I suppose Stephen Colbert is cut somewhat from the same cloth, as they say (here)...


...and this report by Rachel Maddow is stunning as far as I'm concerned; as anyone who knows anything about this site whatsoever has figured out, I routinely take what I consider to be well-deserved shots at the Repug Party...but at least THEY know who constitutes their base.

As for the band of well-compensated Beltway losers who don't know a thing, apparently, about what truly constitutes the base of Team “D” (based partly on this), it looks like they're absolutely refusing once again to present themselves as an alternative, to say nothing of defining enough of the voters they need and recruiting/promoting someone to speak to those voters (yeah, it's nice that Mikey the Beloved is being true to his word and apparently his PA-08 seat is going to open up, but that won't mean a thing unless we figure out which voters we need to target, field a candidate to speak to those voters on the issues they care about, and then get those voters to show up on election day)...



...and I heard this on the way home tonight, and this to me goes out to the national Democratic Party organization – they got rolled last week because they didn't show any backbone first and foremost...don't piss all over the base and tell us that it's raining (team R must be laughing their asses off).



Update 11/14/14: This is a wholly other tangent I guess, but I think it ties into the theme of cluelessness on the party of Democrats (at least the national organization and some in the media, including the otherwise respectable Joy Reid).

Remember the business earlier this year in Mississippi, where incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran was challenged in a primary by Teahadist Chris McDaniel? And remember how some Democrats said, “Oh, gee, we have to support Cochran because McDaniel is just too crazy?” And filthy, unkempt liberal blogger types such as yours truly said, “Hey, wait a minute! Why the hell are we defending Cochran when supporting McDaniel in the general election would help the Democrat, Travis Childers? Why aren’t we thinking about this in solely political terms like the Repugs do?” And the response from people like Reid on “Real Time With Bill Maher” was, well, there just aren’t enough Democrats in Mississippi, and we should be forced to settle for the least bad Republican?

So now, we have Cochran getting ready to settle in comfortably with the incoming Repug Senate majority next year, and McDaniel is still carrying on like the nut that he is (and does anyone seriously think that Cochran is going to give a fig about doing anything to help Democratic voters who “crossed over” to help him)?

Here is my question: does anyone seriously think that McDaniel would have been any worse than what we’re going to be looking at next year, including Joni Ernst, Tom Cotton and Cory Gardner in the Senate, and life forms like Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin in the U.S. House?

We don’t need to do more to utterly deflate our own base, people! We need to do a much better job of standing up for what we believe in and presenting ourselves as a serious, sane alternative to anyone who would still consider voting for our party in the immediate and longer-term future.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Wednesday Stuff

I was honestly wondering if anyone would take on ESPN for what they’ve done to the cult of sports celebrity (though I don’t recall the athletes complaining about it, of course), but kudos to Daniel Tosh for doing so here (NSFW); even the legendary K.O. himself has now been reduced to commenting on episodes of flatulence involving Cliff Lee of the Phillies (yep, I’ve done stuff I didn’t want to do to pay the bills too…sometimes I still do)…



…and from the “better late than never” department, I give you this from Joy Reid (nice to replay this video sometime around, oh, say, the summer of 2018, huh? And with a Dem in An Oval Office – wishing, hoping…)…



…and by the way, as you stew over what Cenk says here (NSFW), read this to find out the following towards the end…


"I could argue that we're much safer without Saddam," he added. "And I would argue that the people of Iraq have a better shot at living in a peaceful -- a peaceful state."

A "hypothetical" where Iraqis have "a better shot" at peace is a far cry from democratic nation-building, given recent developments -- the rise of the Islamic State, for one -- that have yet to give way to stability.

But Bush argued that his successor was to blame, because the U.S. failed to maintain a troop presence in the country. He noted that "in 2009 and 2010, the violence in Iraq was settling down. And the democracy, even though it was not perfect -- kind of like ours was initially not perfect -- was beginning to work."
Former Commander Codpiece is wrong as usual, bringing to mind this tune once more.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Tuesday Stuff

Happy Veterans Day (here – thank you, Mr. Starr)...



...and Rachel Maddow takes us deep into the coal-black heart of the right-wing noise machine...



...and before we laugh at the typical mind-numbing idiocy of our corporate media on the whole Ebola thing, just remember once more that this garbage helped to elect Republicans while younger voters stayed home, and yes, I plan to point out that fact on a continual basis...



...and I never saw the movie, though I heard it was good, but damn, I like this tune.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Monday Stuff

I thought this was a really interesting segment on the difference between how The Big Dog handled the loss of Congress 20 years ago and how Number 44 handled the same thing recently, and I have to say that President Obama stands taller in my estimation…



…and I give you the latest from FAIR TV (God, our corporate media is pathetic!)…



...and believe it or not, it's been 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall (and please don't give any credit to The Sainted Ronnie R for his damn speech)...



..while we awaited genuine economic growth and prosperity from the '90s (sigh) and listened to this tune.