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Argh! New Parenting Advice? Follow the Dog Whisperer

11-27-09 3:56 A GMT-08
Because you want to have to support and control your kids all their lives like you do your dog. So don't explain things, just control. So much missing in this article. I'm wondering where that rolled up newspaper is hidden. You can't just get kids to obey without question without something to back your up. That back up is usually the threat of punishment or previous bouts of explanation lacking in dog handling because they don't understand us.

Rightwing uproar over Best Buy’s ‘Happy Eid al-Adha’ wish to Muslims

11-27-09 3:49 A GMT-08
RWNJs furious that store celebrates November Muslim holiday instead of December Christian one, RIGHT NOW! Oh dudes? What about Chanukah? Christians don't care as long as they can impose their will.

Sandra Tsing Loh:

11-27-09 3:36 A GMT-08

Thanksgiving Held After Massacre of Pequot Indiians

11-27-09 3:33 A GMT-08
@blogdiva linked to her blog post about a thanksgiving feast held after a massacre of Indians in 1637, after which a day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed. I'm pretty sure that there was an earlier one, but the 1637 incident shows how negligent in feeling white Christian societies have been towards others.

The Nation: Why Not Tax Wall Street?

11-26-09 9:06 P GMT-08
Proposals to reign in Wall Street start to emerge says William Grieder. I certainly hope something in that direction is accomplished before the fever fades.

9 Insider Secrets to Getting Hired

11-24-09 7:07 P GMT-08
I don't know if these tips work, but this US News report at yahoo.com sounds like the extra effort will pay off. Good luck if you're out there searching for a new job. I'm going to put a copy in a personal spot, in case I even need these hints.

WP: Hasan Had More Contacts with American-Yemeni Iman al-Aulaqi (al-Awlaki)

11-21-09 8:04 P GMT-08
Report says the Major and the cleric discussed money transfers and other actions (that has Sen Levin calling the Ft. Hood shooting spree a terrorist action.) Still, there were two terrorists in Massachusetts who never acted because MA has strict gun laws. Texas has very lax codes. Another factor is the lack of full and complete checks of anyone who buys the most dangerous types of guns, like the cop killer that Hasan used.

Lies about ACORN set off Twitter Mob with #acornfacts

11-20-09 5:36 P GMT-08
Twitter is the most fun when the Tweeps start a big mob action themselves. And this one was glorious. Actually better than the Swine Flue mob that erupted last spring.

Washington Post- ABC News Poll President's Numbers Mostly Positive

11-20-09 5:05 A GMT-08
Seeing all the lies told about him, just staying in the plus column is a major victory.
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Goldmans Sachs to Give "A Good Trading Day's Haul" Back to American Public

11-19-09 9:33 A GMT-08
$100m for each of 5 years, or 2.3 percent of 2009 bonuses will be "tithed" out to small businesses over the period.

Poll: Americans Want a Surcharge on the HIghest Earners in US To Help Fund Health Care Reform

11-19-09 9:02 A GMT-08
Oh that's a poll that has to be redone so that Mainstream news can use the second, doctored one as proof that this one was wrong.

Too Many Breast Cancers Diagnosed by Mammograms?

11-18-09 8:08 P GMT-08
LA Lady: I've seen this in my own family. My sister found a series of "lumps" by self examination as promoted in the 80s. Each one caused extreme stress and expensive medical bills as it was removed and examined though we haven't had breast cancer in our immediate family whether post or pre-menopausal type. Luckily, she had good employer based insurance for it. So I'm for the new guidelines. Why get women into unnecessary "pre-existing condition" problems for lumps, even cancerous ones that disappear rapidly. Eat lots of fruit, veggies, whole grains, and other whole foods you can find at a local farmer's market.

The Nation: Newsweek Taps Bush Aide For Obama Reporting

11-18-09 6:53 A GMT-08
If it seems like Republicans are pushing the news, that's because they are.
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Alert Net at Reuters: Why boosting food output is not enough to beat hunger

11-18-09 6:36 A GMT-08
Inequality, not lack of supply creates hunger as food is priced out of the reach of the poor according to report. Thanks to @Liam_Fox at Twitter.com

Huffington Post: 18 Biggest Falsehoods in Sarah Palin's book

11-18-09 5:55 A GMT-08
You can also vote to tell them which whoppers you think are the worst.

Palingate: So how many abortions do these people claim Sarah had?

11-18-09 2:47 A GMT-08
I get lost in the long winding narrative. But they seem to imply that Trig is a rent a baby. But if a woman has an abortion why rent a baby about the time hers was to be born?

Exxon Gets their Iraqi Oil Field Deal

11-16-09 12:45 A GMT-08
Exxon gets 80% of "one of the largest" oil fields "in the oil rich south" according to the UK Telegraph. I know this is old news to some, but I just wanted a record here of the fact, and to inform anyone who hadn't heard yet. It did happen as we said it would. bTW, Telegraph, isn't the name of the largest partner usually first in news about a partnership? WTF?

Jenny Sanford Endorses Opponent to Husband For Next Year's Governor's Race

11-12-09 6:12 P GMT-08
Mrs. Sanford is no political lightweight either. This could send ol' Mark off to Argent... Oh wait. The pretty journalist isn't going to need a washed up old pol. Well maybe he can pitch a tent on the Appalachian trail, or join the soup lines with the rest of the unemployed homeless, the folks that Republicans usually ignore.

Massachusetts Man Says He Was Fired for Telling Colleague Her Gay Marriage Is Wrong

11-11-09 8:08 P GMT-08
Link goes to Fox News. Just wanted to make a comment. I've been there. You're taught by the fundie church that by standing up to "the infidel" you're going to win brownie points with God and get ya closer to the big man on that sea of glass when you die. And in the meantimes you're earning creds with your Christian buddies, a war story to tell and make yourself look good. Or maybe you know you're a tool for the Christian dominionists. Don't play martyr, now. I'ts just makes you look like a fool.

Examiner.com -- Robert Taylor: The Fort Hood massacre: more blowback from America's interventionist foreign policy

11-10-09 9:17 A GMT-08
Good piece. Agrees with the Bible that They who live by the sword will die by the sword.

Health Care Around the World: Why American Health Care for Uninsured is Like that Of 3rd World Nations

11-07-09 7:39 P GMT-08
Interview with TR Reid on the 4 methods of health care in the world and the types of insurance and other bundled medical programs in the developed world found in the nations of the world.

Neda's Mother: She Was Like an Angel

11-07-09 7:16 P GMT-08
Her mom, talks about Neda's life. New: Neda found it impossible to get work because she was divorced.

Why negative thinking makes the world a better place

11-07-09 5:32 P GMT-08
Writer's brush with positive thinking program illustrates how focusing on a positive outlook can hurt in the long run. 'come to think of it, positive thinking started out as a busineess ploy, didn't it? A ploy by already powerful and rich white men to ingnore the harm their business practices have on the world. Maybe they should go back to the EST scam. Oh yeah.that was for underlings. h/t @R_A_W at Twitter.com

Jake Tapper Interviews Roland Hedley Jr. On Twitter

11-07-09 7:03 A GMT-08
Over his new book based on his Twitter posts. (Has to be a first.) The Insufferably sufferable journalist opens up to the ABc's Political Punch columnist, or not. Now I know what I want for Christmas.

Focusing on Ft. Hood Killer's Beliefs Are an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre

11-06-09 9:19 P GMT-08
Fort Hood and it's vicinity have have a lot of problems with killings and low morale. The fact that Hasan did not act until the day before he was to be deployed shows his actions were more about being denied his right to avoid war than because of his religious beliefs. Hat tip @ontd_political at Twitter.com for link

New book tells how Right Wing and business push mainstream news media into a right wing bias.

11-05-09 4:18 A GMT-08
Calls liberal bias of news media "and urban legend" and shows how the right forces news media to back up their own propaganda. Hat tip Twitter colleagues, probably either @maafa or @mparent77772

Meg Whitman's radio whoppers

11-02-09 5:04 P GMT-08
Right Now Ms. Whitman is a California concern, but such things go on in your state as well, and it's good to see some reporting on them which we do this far from the election. Beside should she win the governor's seat she's likely to be running for president by 2016 at the latest.

ROFLMAO Slate Imagines Barack Obama's Facebook Wall

11-02-09 4:26 A GMT-08
Must read. No registration required.

The Above Linkblogs Might Contain "Borrowed" links.

Linkblogs do not substantially contribute traffic to my blog that I can discover. They all go offsite, and are often accessed from my blog. It's possible to access them from the RSS according to my settings. Still, even if I were to get ads clicking on a linkblog from the RSS won't drive more people to my blog than otherwise because they leave my resources. (Note to self, do more posts, less LBs with sources I find). I explain because I sometimes borrow links from people at Twitter, and often forget who put them up. (To fellow Twitterers: If you have a link to your blog, I will point it there, but Twitter, being impermanent, cannot hold your link for people to discover from there. I only 'borrow' them to get news out to as many people as I can who might not have seen the reports and videos found by the smart people I follow at Twitter or find in search rooms.

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Washington Post Report Shows Off Some of the Republicans' Strong Arm Tactics of the McCain Camp

posted 09-08-08

Well, in fact, what Howard Kurtz is doing is giving McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt some ink in his complaints against the media.  With it Schmidt exposes the sleaze tactics the Republicans, especially he himself, are using in ":Top Aide Says News Organizations Are 'on a Mission to Destroy' Palin".

Interestingly,  last year through early last month the National Enquirer exposed the affair of John Edwards without confirmation and they were the darlings of the right wing.  

This month it's Sarah Palin and they're dogs.  And yes, the  Sarah Palin story has not been proven true or admitted and is as likely to be false as true, but that was the same situation the tabloid faced with Edwards as far as the rest of us knew for a long time.

But Steve Schmidt is up in arms about "personal" attacks on Sarah Palin and having such a fit that newspeople are assuming that he also wants them to back off on legitimate subjects, too , it seems.

Excerpt:

Schmidt spoke on the record in denouncing as "an absolute work of fiction" a New York Times account of the process by which the McCain campaign vetted Palin. He also charged that Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman was predicting that the governor might have to step down as McCain's vice presidential choice.

Fineman said that he has "never, ever said that," and that he has pointed out positive aspects of Palin's candidacy. "They decided a long time ago that they were going to work the refs," he said.

I didn't know what "work the refs" means so I yahooed it.  It's used a lot by journalists especially in the context of political campaigns, but seems to come from the world of sports, and be about bullying the referees so that they are afraid to call against your team in the future.  

Even in the sporting world it's looked down on by a number of people.  When used against journalists who work to bring us an accurate information, especially news that will help us decide whom to choose to lead our nation, it can be downright scurrilous if done in a threatening manner.  Making sure information coming out is accurate is one thing, but trying to intimidate 4th estate is another.  They're already dragged along on a chain by their fat cat advertisers.

The Post continues:

Elisabeth Bumiller, the lead author of the Times report, said she is "completely confident about the story." As for the campaign's criticism, she said: "This is what they do. It's part of their operation."

McCain also canceled a scheduled appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Tuesday in retaliation for an interview a day earlier in which prime-time host Campbell Brown repeatedly pressed campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds to provide one example of a decision that Palin had made as commander of the Alaska National Guard.

"The interview was totally fair," Brown said. "I was trying to get an answer. I was persistent, but I was respectful. That's my job. Experience is a legitimate issue when John McCain raises it about Obama, and it's also legitimate for us to raise it about Palin."

Schmidt, a former spokesman for President Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, talked openly about his frustrations in an interview with The Washington Post. He said the McCain camp is in the middle of the worst media "feeding frenzy" he has ever seen.

Well, there's a lot of chum out there, friend.

(For non fishers, chum is free food for the fish floating around in the water.)

I also remember that after Biden was chosen by Senator Obama a flood of reports came out immediately about everything he'd done in the Senate and a lot of his personal life, too.  We all know that Biden first won a Senate seat when he was 29 too young to take office, though he would be 30 before installation.  We also know that his wife, and daughter were killed in a car accident between the time he was elected and the time he took office, and his sons were badly injured by the crash leaving him with stronger than normal nurturing attactment to his children.  I believe I remember correctly that Joe Biden remarried about 5 years later.

We know that Joe Biden is catholic, and grew up in working class Pennsylvania. 

After Russia, in a reprisal, invaded Georgia, Sakaashvili called Joe Biden before he called President Bush.

It all came out, personal and public.  

Why should Sarah Palin be treated any differently?

Notice that the Republicans thought, are not above taking away chances to talk to their major candidates from a network if just one of their journalists steps over their line and abandons kid glove treatment of their candidates.

Kurtz's piece goes on to pretend this is all about "fishy" stuff first brought up by tabloids of which it says:

Bloggers on the left and right increasingly drive media coverage by turning up the volume on questions until they are difficult to ignore.   

...

Major newspapers, magazines and networks no longer play their traditional gatekeeper role in the digital age, as was evident during the eight-month period when the National Enquirer was charging former senator John Edwards with fathering an out-of-wedlock baby. Most national news outlets did not report the allegations until last month, when Edwards acknowledged an affair with a former campaign aide but denied being her child's father.

Still, traditional media outlets can amplify and legitimize such reports, which may be why the McCain campaign is fighting so hard to keep the Palin allegations confined to the Internet. Denouncing the news media as biased also plays well with many Republican voters.

IMHO: The Palin people hope to instill fear, also, about reporting on the many very legitimate questions, like whether her religion which seeks to reduce the freedom of many Americans, first and foremost those of women, children, gays, and lesbians, what she did while in Alaska government, and her working style.

But then this is business as usual for the Republicans.

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