● Williams Goes Down: It looks like the ever-growing list of lies Brian Williams told has become too much. NBC has now suspended him for six months. Interestingly, I see this as NBC hedging their bets. If they can find a replacement within those six months, then they will fire Williams after the suspension ends. If they can’t, this leaves the door open for NBC to let him return to his job. This delay also has the added benefit that whatever NBC finally does will happen long after the public stops paying attention. Smart moves by NBC.
● Hillary Keeps Hurting: The left has never warmed to Hillary, and her campaign to date has kicked off very poorly. Not only did she sink in a sea of gaffes, but her obvious manipulations seem only to have angered the left further. In effect, she’s become the inevitable candidate who needs the election to get here fast before she implodes completely. Interestingly, she has all but vanished during the Williams scandal because she has a similar problem, and now we hear that her fundraising skills are proving to be quite poor too. Hillary already feels like damaged goods and every day the damage seems to grow.
● Bruce Jenner Is What?: Apparently, Bruce Jenner is turning himself into a woman. Uh, ok. Frankly, anything is better than the mummified-Kardashian-sex-toy he had become.... but that’s not the point. The point is this: look, I don’t even pretend to know what is going on in the minds of transsexuals. Maybe this urge to change is as strong as they say... don’t know, don’t care. But let us be Frank (or Frieda): you aren’t changing your sex. What you are doing is surgically remaking your body to appear more like the other gender, just as someone may undergo surgery to make themselves look like a vampire or a dachshund. But no matter how many surgeries you have, you still have the same DNA. Why this bothers me is that the press runs with this idea whenever some transsexual “man” suddenly gets pregnant. The headlines scream “Pregnant man!” But that’s BS. An honest headline would be “surgically enhanced male-impersonator pregnant!” But that’s not as sensational.
As an aside, I find it interesting that we are told to accept gays and the transgendered as normal, but then the liberals in the MSM go all orgasmic over outing these people and holding them out like they are freaks.
● Crazy Obama Criticism: I like to check in on some crazy bloggers now and then to see just how stupid they can get, and boy can they get stupid. Awash in conspiracy theories and vast amounts of hate aimed at anything establishment, these guys never miss a chance to buy into any outrage, no matter how obviously false or how hypocritical. The latest example involves Obama’s attempts to fight ISIS.
Naturally, these armchair uber-fuhrers have been savaging Obama for months now on his unwillingness to fight ISIS because Obama is a Bruce-Jenner-grade sissy. Well, now word is leaking out that Obama will seek an amazingly broad authorization from Congress to go to war with ISIS. You’d think these bloggers would be pleasantly surprised, but you would be wrong. To the contrary, now they are freaking out that Obama (and Boehner... always the evil Boehner) intend to plunge us into a war with ISIS. Huh? First, these people blast Obama for not going after ISIS militarily and they specifically mock Obama by accusing him of not “getting” that ISIS is at war with us.... and now they attack him for using the military and they mock Obama by accusing him of not getting that this could start a war. Hypocrites.
● Spent Force: Speaking of ISIS, has anyone noticed that ISIS no longer scores any victories? Interesting, isn’t it? The problem is that their victories came in regions where the locals had similar religious preferences and were happy to join them against the central governments. Now that they are facing Kurds and Shia and other unfriendlies, this unstoppable force has been complete stopped. I guess they weren’t as unbeatable the MSM wanted us to believe.
● Roy Moore(on): Down in Alabama, Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore just won’t quit. This guy lives for headlines and he loves to wrap himself in his Bible to help him score that attention. You might remember Moore from refusing to remove the Ten Commandments from the Alabama capital. Now he’s told Alabama’s lowest level of judges to ignore a Federal court order to start offering gay marriage. He claimed that Alabama was not bound by federal judicial orders unless they come from the Supreme Court itself. Well, the Supreme Court called his bluff and approved the order, but that didn’t stop Moore. Nope. He’s still telling state court judges to ignore the federal orders. Uh, this issue was solved in 1865 and again in 1965, Roy.
The problem with Roy is that he takes sensational positions just to draw attention to himself. And while some may applaud him for whatever stance he’s taking that particular day, the problem is that he knows he will lose, yet he misleads his weak-minded followers into thinking they are right, and his conduct is guaranteed to hurt the causes he adopts. It’s like having endorse your party. In this instance, Roy has simply reinforced the idea that the GOP is obsessed with gays and will shatter the Constitution to fight that losing battle. Ug.
As an aside, the Supreme Court’s involvement in this was highly unusual – it only acted because Moore is a jackass and it wasn’t going to let his challenge go without a response. That response, now suggests that my prior speculation about the court was right. Basically, they intend to call gay marriage a right very soon.
● Robots Took My Job: Finally, there has been a lot of discussion lately that a quarter of the current jobs in the US will likely vanish in the next few decades to automation. This should come as no surprise as automation has been crushing the job market ever since the industrial revolution. And with the tech revolution, things only got worse. How much damage this does to the middle and working-poor classes is unclear, but it would certainly help if our tax code were re-written as I suggest in my book to make labor cheaper.
Thoughts?
18 comments:
Andrew, the Williams saga reinforces our obsession with the the cult of personality. NBC has become the TMZ of national networks. Once the boomers die off these alphabet dinosaurs will too.
Hillary kicked off her 2016 campaign with her book tour to "test the waters" on her national viability. Crash and burn, so now she will lick her wounds and rely on her faithful media to prop her back up. Sorta like the old saying "absence makes the heart grow fonder." The less we see of her the more the media and the left can make her appear inevitable. As soon as she pokes her head out in public the rest of the country remembers why they can't stand her. It will be interesting to see if the left still has the power in the age of open internet, to morph her into a viable candidate.
Bruce Jenner the (fe)male Kardashian. Such a waste.
I don't think your criticism of the right for Obama's ISIS policy is justified. The criticism I hear/read is that his tact to now ask Congress for AUMF for the "war" against them is more to get it off his shoulders and place the blame on Congress. "Hey, I'm only enforcing what Congress wants. Don't blame me. In fact, that could be the epithet for Obama's administration..."Don't blame me!" I agree with the ISIS movement being spent. I'm sure we'll see their atrocities ratchet down once Iran starts cleaning mosque and controlling those areas.
Roy Moore - I for one and glad to see one judge still pushing back against the tolerant left. I think he does these to show that not everyone is part of the flock of sheep mewling idly by while we move further "progressive." Will we say the same when 20 years from now the rights of NAMBLA are spreading across the land? Where does it end? So I say, keep up the fight Judge.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. As long as they finally get us our flying cars.
Bob
Hey, if I had known that we could talk about the Kardashians, I would have been doing that all along! I know more about the Kardashians than just about any other group of people in all of human history. It's like their lives are attached to nano-K-bots that just go directly into our brains without our even being aware...;-)
On Obama and Congressional authorization - I think that this is just one more case of "about time" criticism. I just find it ironic. He hasn't felt the need to include Congress in any of his military actions since the very beginning. I am suspiciously guessing he is trying to bring Congress in because he doesn't want to take the heat alone. And since Jordan has pretty much taken the lead with ISIS, Obama can just glom on to Kind Abdullah's success. I also suspect that this has less to do with ISIS and more to do with Russia/Ukraine situation.
Btw, is anyone else nervous that Germany taking the lead in the Ukraine conflict and activating their actual military outside of their borders? I was reading the transcript from Obama/Merkel's joint speech and it just gave me a shiver. Call me paranoid, but the last time Germany was allowed to send their military outside their borders (with guns and tanks and stuff) it didn't turn out so well for most of Europe and Northern Africa. And in conjuction with the rapid rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Netanyahu speech snub from Obama/Democrats in Congress, it makes me go "Hmmmm...."
Bob, I think it will be interesting to see what happens with the networks when the Boomers are gone. They seem to be all that is left of the network's audience.
On Hillary, I think there is a genuine problem... she a horrible campaigner with no ability to create enthusiasm. At this point, she surviving by staying hidden, but once the campaign really starts, she's in trouble.
On ISIS, I'm not criticizing the right, I'm criticizing these whacko bloggers I have followed for a very long time. In their world, we are one minute away from the Soviet Union conquering Europe as the rest of us are forced to convert to Islam, and they see ObamaBoehner as the person behind this evil plan... well,ObamaBoehner and THE FED. These guys are actually quite amazing: there isn't a headline they won't misconstrue to feed their outrage (I'm sure they don't read beyond the headlines), there isn't a story minor enough not to spin it into the end of the world, and they absolutely don't care about consistency or hypocrisy.
In terms of Obama's ISIS policy, it has actually been the GOP that has been pushing Obama to do this resolution because they have been claiming that he's violating the law in what he's doing by exceeding the authority he has.
Sadly, Roy Moore is an idiot and an opportunist. He's like one of the phony televangelists in the 1980s who was begging for money so he could build a new wing on his mansion. He has misled his followers about the state of the law, misled them about what could be done about, and caused enough blowback each time to ensure that the left got its way.
Hopefully, the robots will understand the idea of vacation! ;-)
Bev, The amount we know about the Kardashians is truly disturbing. Think of all the wasted braincells.
On ISIS, I think that is a valid criticism: if you really had the authority before, then why do you need this? I also think it's absolutely fair to attack Obama for not taking this seriously enough, for not doing enough, and for (still) not understanding the nature of the threat.
That, however, is not what these bloggers are whining about. They were attacking secret-Muslim ObamaBoehner for refusing to "do anything" about ISIS and now they've flipped that around to attacking ObamaBoehner for looking to start a war. I just find it amazing how easily these guys will take both sides of any issue and attack ObamaBoeher for both:
"He ordered pizza! It's unAmerican to order pizza! Clearly, he has secret plans to surrender our government to Italians! He's unAmerican!"
... correction, no pizza was ordered
"He didn't order pizza! It's unAmerican not to order pizza! And why won't he surrender our government to Italians? It's unAmerican not to!"
Believe it or not, the Germans don't scare me. Their whole society has changed and they don't have what it takes to be militaristic anymore. (Said differently, Germans have become wimps.)
Re: Germans -
Okay, I won't be nervous...but the irony does not escape me that 75 years ago all of Europe was fighting to defeat the Germans and now those same countries are begging Germany to save them...
On Robots - I forgot (maybe it is the way the nano-K-bots work on our brains) to mention the robots. They are devastating not just to manufacturing jobs, but middle-class office jobs - secretaries, clerks, assistant anythings etc. With computer technologies making it easier and easier to do just about every job, they have rendered secretaries a thing of the past. What once may have taken hours, now only takes minutes. And, if you don't develop really great computer skills, you will not be able to compete. Especially older workers. Even in entertainment jobs like animated features, most of the animation, where once drawn by hand, is all created by computers.
But all that being said, we managed to move forward and inventors/entrepreneurs found ways to keep everyone employed. Like remember when all those buggy whip makers lost their jobs when the automobiles came in to common use? Now look - "50 Shades of Gray" opens this weekend...yeah, see buggy whip makers never really went away...
Speaking of 50 Shades, I like that we live in a country where the top 3 movies this weekend will most likely be an S&M flick, a movie based on a cartoon about a talking sponge and his underwater friends, and a Clint Eastwood war movie. You know what I call that? America. :-)
In other news, Sam Brownback's a dick. (Uh, that's all I had about that.)
As for robots, I recently watched a short video - I think it was one of Amazon's warehouses and it literally looked like something out of Michael Crichton: small robots maneuvering around shelves, that sort of thing. Contrast that with my nutjob aunt who asked me (not for the first time) if her smartphone had Internet on it, a minute after I showed her a website!
And to quote Kevin Smith: "I know more about the Kardashians than I do about my own blood relatives."
Scott - I have just read very little about Brownback's executive order rescinding special treatment for transsexuals. I am not so sure that he is wrong. He rescinded it because he thought that it should by legislative vote, not by edict of the Governor. And frankly, one cannot achieve "equal treatment" if one is given blanket "special treatment" and by which that usually ends up meaning that they cannot be fired even for incompetence just because they are in a government approved "victim".
never underestimate the power of the Clintons. The left will rally around her when the time comes. I could not summon any sympath for Brian. This is 100% self-inflicted. When you make 10-13 million a year, the "without pay" is a slap in the face to most people when used in the same sentence with "severe punishment". As for the robots taking the job, you are dead on the money. Ultimately, anyone who wants to live well needs to get educated and figer out how to get a skilled job that adds economic value. the Occupy 99% crowd gets it wrong when they think the purpose of business is to make jobs. As my dad taught me: :son, never assume the world owes you a living."
oh, and regarding Bruce, I think liberals in the MSM sensationalize and "out" gays or trannies because they believe those people have a duty to come out and "fight" the hate mongers. They don't give a shit if the person doesn't want that. It is kind of like the media getting ticked that Michael Jordon and Tiger Woodw would not "get on board" and help fuel black resentment and anger. Jordan's reply?: "hey Republicans buy sneakers, too!"
Jed, On the robot, that's exactly right. What this means is that anyone who wants to remain middle class or higher will need to learn the skills it will take to take the new jobs that are created in the new economy. And those will tend to be professional jobs (e.g. lawyer, doctor, teacher, nursing) or high tech or creative. Otherwise, you will end up retail. The old economy isn't coming back.
Agreed about Williams. It's hard to see any sort of suspension as punishment when you get that kind of money.
On Clinton, I don't underestimate the Clinton machine, but if I were a supporter, I would be very nervous about Hillary's demonstrated lack of skill.
I think you're right about the MSM outing gays because they want them to support the cause. But I also think that their behavior in the way they out them shows that they don't see them as normal either.
Bev, Very true. Technology is crushing the middle class right now because it's middle class jobs that are most easily replaced by computers and robots. And the only way to compete with that is to keep learning new skills and keep moving to new areas that haven't been automated yet. And kids starting college really better think about the future before they decide to follow a traditional path.
As for the Germans, my concern is actually that the Germans are just bluffing and the Russians know it. Basically, they can be forced to back down very easily and that makes them unreliable problem solvers.
Scott, Smith is sadly right!
I think it's great that American consumers choose such a variety of things. That is the cool thing about America, that we have the freedom to demand and to satisfy a nearly infinite variety of choices. That is what feeds our innovation and what makes America so resilient.
I agree with Bev on Brownback. Special rights are not equality.
Re: Brownback, I can keep going but I won't. :-)
I also agree with Jed: if you're gay and not fighting for the cause, then you might as well be the enemy, according to the media.
As for Smith, he and his cohorts have a regular segment on their hilarious Hollywood Babble-On podcast where they discuss the Kardashians. Smith's co-host, radio personality Ralph Garman, referred to her as "porn star Kim Kardashian" until a listener chimed in and said that was disrespectful... to porn stars.
Now she's known as "f--- tape star Kim Kardashian."
"I know more about the Kardashians than I do about my own blood relatives."
I want to proudly state that with me, that is not the case. I make an effort to avoid hearing about the Kardashians.
This summarizes a fair amount of my attitude to celeb-related pop culture these days.
LINK
"I like that we live in a country where the top 3 movies this weekend will most likely be an S&M flick, a movie based on a cartoon about a talking sponge and his underwater friends, and a Clint Eastwood war movie. You know what I call that? America."
As Team America said, "AMERICA, F--K YEAH!"
Speaking of guys who want to be gals I just read the military has approved hormone therapy for Bradley Manning. Our tax dollars at work...
The problem the right wing nuts have is they give Obama way too much credit. I doubt the guy could put together an IKEA table let alone a world wide conspiracy to take over the world. What these idiots don't get and won't admit is that it is their fault he got elected in the first place.
In my opinion, the best way to handle ISIS is to support those groups and countries over there fighting them such as the Kurds and Jordan. The same with Ukraine.
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