Friday, June 23, 2006

Shorter PowerTools and other right-wing blogtards: Fuck the First Amendment.

Such hatred for America. Tsk tsk tsk.
Shorter Richard Morin: I never want to be taken seriously about anything, ever again.

And: You damn kids get off of my lawn.

In case this isn't substantive enough, here it is, in uppercase letters for the reading and comprehension impaired. MAYBE THE REASON THAT THESE VIEWERS ARE CYNICAL IS BECAUSE CYNICISM TOWARDS OUR GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA IS ENTIRELY WARRANTED.

And, please, talk to some social scientists about causation, please. You haven't quite made the connection between viewers and cynicism and lack of voting. For evidence, permit me to offer this count of the number of weasel words in this short item:

may be - 1
could - 2

Watching the Daily Show COULD also inspire these cynical young hippie pot smokers I said get off my lawn! viewers to get personally involved in politics and government, but then saying that wouldn't get Morin invited on the show, I suppose.
I did not go down the rabbit hole. The rabbit hole came and swallowed me up.

Bank Data Secretly Reviewed by U.S. to Fight Terror

Couldn't the NYT have had the decency to put some quotation marks in that headline? Bank Data Secretly Reviewed by U.S. to "Fight Terror".

We don't get to know how or why the gov'ment does this kind of thing, so why should I give them the benefit of the doubt that it is about terror fightin'? As far as I or anyone else knows, "fighting terror" is defined to mean, snooping on political opponents of the president. In the absence of real information, of course I am going to think the worst.

We should all have a little more, and by "a little more" I mean "a thousand boatloads more," skepticism here.

UPDATE: I should note that the NYT headline now reads: Bank Data Is Sifted by U.S. in Secret to Block Terror. The quotes and skepticism are still needed, I think.

UPDATE #2: OK, now I'm not even sure those are the same article, or if they are two different articles. However, I also don't care, so there you have it.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

With nothing but my sincerest best wishes for their electoral fate, I strongly encourage the Republican party to:

Knock yourself out, boys. (You can take that to mean whatever you like.)