calimary
calimary's JournalWelcome to DU, Please proceed!
Glad you're here! LOVE your screen name!
This is indeed somewhat unclear. Hard to tell if it was metaphoric or actual. Neither would surprise me. Just proves how urgently we need to prevent people like this from gaining a foothold in ANY power position. She's failed at both the gubernatorial AND the Senate level. Wonder what's next? At least megabucks meg whitman seems to have gone away after flushing away more than a hundred million of her own dollars on a waste of time. She hasn't been back to try another way in the way this Connecticut clown-ette has.
I'm glad to see this. He's always been kind of a nerd. I greatly appreciate ANYONE
who's famous who uses his/her fame as a platform for good messaging. I hope to see a LOT more messaging on this issue, and by WAY more celebs of all different stripes, beyond just Prince Charles. People were laughing at him when he was talking to his plants. If you're lucky enough to have some sort of bully pulpit, you should damn well make use of it for the greater good!
Good for him! More please, sir! It'd be even better if Wills and Kate could join in and add their youth and star power as well.
Welcome to DU, Agschmid! GREAT Stuff! Thanks for posting this!
Love the photos! That bear does seem to be enjoying the snow!
Glad you're here! Even though the election's over and we got our early Christmas present from the voters, the work is NOT over and we CANNOT afford to rest on our laurels. We need to build on the ground we gained earlier this month so we can HOUSECLEAN the House in 2014 - AND keep the White House in 2016! We CANNOT let the bad guys get a leg up!
Been sleeping it off most of the day.
Had to take our daughter to the airport for her 6am flight - GAK! - back home (she had to work today at her little neighborhood boutique). I was up most of the night washing the pots and pans and stuff, and by the time I was finished, it was only a half-hour til checking on her to make sure she was awake.
I've already ordered most of my Christmas presents online from various craftspeople and other designers and artisans. SUPPORT THE ARTS - BY SUPPORTING THE ARTISTS! Hint: etsy.com (!) You can be certain your recipient WON'T have anything like it.
Also - HERE IS A GREAT GIFT IDEA if you don't want to add any more clutter to somebody's Christmas, and it will really help a worthy cause. Defenders of Wildlife! For as little as $15 you can adopt a sea turtle or wolf or polar bear or other endangered creature in the name of the person you're honoring. This is PERFECT for friends or in-laws or siblings - with small children. Because for $25 you can get an adoption in their name, plus a little plush toy. Sent 'em to my nieces and nephews when they were little. Each year I'd pick a different animal and they'd get a new toy for their collections.
https://secure.defenders.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=wagc_seaturtle
Welcome to DU, titanicdave!
No kidding! How the alleged mighty have fallen. Lawrence O'Donnell is beating her now? Rachel and Lawrence make a good combo. I haven't looked at the numbers lately, but it does mean her lead-in is sustaining in his timeslot.
Glad you're here! You've come to the (well, I HATE to use the word "right" because that side of the aisle has totally perverted its meaning - they are ANYTHING BUT "right" about ANYTHING!!!) BEST place on the internet for us good guys! You will thoroughly enjoy and benefit from hanging out here. You'll learn TONS. And you'll be a very well-informed voter, capable of answering any misinformation offered by Pox Noise-schooled friends, family, and coworkers. Heck, you may even win over a few who may be growing more and more uncertain of the crap that's been force-fed to them for years by now. Certainly has helped me understand issues and players much better, hanging around here!
Lost his mind, maybe?
It really does look like he just woke up. Or maybe that mental instability her ladyship mentioned is kicking in again? Maybe we're seeing him in the stages of giving up and losing interest. When one's self-esteem is battered, as his certainly was, sometimes one stops caring. Not taking an interest in one's appearance, not giving a damn. I wonder if we're seeing it here?
After all, our friend mitt hasn't known many reversals of fortune in his long and comfortable life. Damn straight he's never had a reversal like this one, or one this big. World-wide, and public as all hell.
Thank you!
A special honor coming from you, coalition_unwilling!
But shit - it just freakin' burns me up! I take this probably a little too personally, but I just absolutely, positively, utterly, and unquestionably HATE what's happened to the industry in which I was so proud to work. I got in on the fired-up-by-Woodward-&-Bernstein wave during Watergate, and I marveled at what a powerful and awesome tool the news world was. I was so proud to be part of it. And look what these bastards have done to it! NO WONDER so many polls show so few Americans trusting the media anymore. These assholes deliberately shit all over it and left it out in the fresh air to dry out and cake on permanently. We used to expose this shit, rather than give it top billing on "Meet the Press" every Sunday - while genuflecting.
Thank you!
The frustrating thing is - there's SO MUCH MORE!!!
I didn't even get into how that side (led, I believe, by kkkarl rove) deliberately and resolutely went about destroying the credibility of the press. They had a multi-pronged approach, and it was, sadly, rather impressive, pretty damned effective.
1) They installed their own stooge, jeff gannon from the whack-job dude-at-his-computer-in-his-mom's-basement "Talon News" (excuse me, WTF is fucking "Talon News"???? I'm a retired journalist and I worked with a few of the people in the White House Press Corps, and this was blatant CRAP) IN the White House Press Corps who'd feed scott mcclellan and I think ari fleischer before him extreme softball questions, sometimes they were just statements he was venting. And he was thus able to help mcclellan or fleischer steer the line of questioning and manipulate or otherwise influence what other reporters might ask - and they'd hit paydirt every time somebody might take the bait and ask a follow-up. He was a phonied-up rogue, with NO credibility, background, or credentials, but somehow he got White House Press Credentials, AND rather liberal access to visit people in the White House, seemingly every time he wanted them. Secret Service logs often couldn't account for how long he was there, when he actually signed out (sometimes he didn't), where he went or whom he saw. But they sure had soundbites to sink their teeth into - that everybody else in regular and cable TV and radio dutifully took the bait and ran with in all subsequent news cycles.
2) judith miller. What a machine THAT was! New York Times reporter who'd built some prominence already, and she was let in on the stovepiping directly from unvetted intel to the Vice President's office because cheney and libby and his other little friends were routinely going over to the CIA, harrassing them and intimidating them for not coming up with enough credible intelligence to support their wish to go to war with Iraq. They developed the Office of Special Plans, and other entities to stovepipe any and all miscellaneous crap that came in (much of it, I'm sure, already rejected by well-trained career intelligence analysts as bogus or not reliable or from worthless or flaky sources) and bypass the hurdles that info ordinarily had to pass through. Then cheney or libby or somebody would call up judith miller and give her the latest "scoop." They'd time it with an eye toward the weekend. Then she would write it up, citing unnamed high-level White House sources, and there it'd be, on the front page of the SUNDAY New York Times, two-column, above the fold. So then you have this loud, sensational headline in the SUNDAY MORNING New York Times that all the bookers with "Meet the Press" and "This Week" and the other Sunday chat shows would want to jump on. And soon enough you'd have dick himself or contradicta or wolfowitz or rumsfeld or some other White House asshole booked on the shows, and they'd of course be on there to comment/react to the big lead story in the New York Times. And they'd say exactly that. "Well, it's reported in the New York Times and..." So then it would become, if you will, a defacto fact. Instant manufactured alleged "facts." And then the news cycle for the rest of Sunday and into Monday would be all about that manufactured, phonied-up story that they planted with their friendly reporter, the collaborator judith miller, who then got bragging rights for another scoop and another front page byline, so her stock automatically went up in the pecking order around the Washington press corps. Corpse is more like it. And they had lots of friends of lesser stature in the press corps.
3) Astroturfing. Fortunately a few people got wise to this one. Anybody seriously keeping track during that era could not help but start noticing how all these "random" letters to the editor were turning up, written allegedly by concerned taxpayers or citizens, that all said the same thing about whatever issue it was. It'd always be signed by a different name in each paper. But the wording, phrasing, whole paragraphs even, were cut 'n' pasted from one original. BUT IT LOOKED LIKE there were all these citizens, unrelated to each other, who were "concerned" about the same thing - in all kinds of small and medium-sized papers across the country, that editorial boards would see and conclude - "hey, this is a big issue," and "wow, look how many people oppose/support it..." and THAT THEN would be used as "proof" that large swaths of America really DID support the war, or really DID believe women didn't have the right to choose, or some such. It was only thanks to sharp eyes on the internet who started noticing how many Xeroxes these actually were, and how bogus they were.
4) As I referenced above, the "you get your psychiatrists, I'll get mine" ethic. Got lots of scientific data coming out about this global warming thing? Hmmm... the oil companies don't like it much. Well, there's two things we can do: one - opposition research to single out and discredit those in the scientific community, thus costing them legitimacy and credibility; and two - get our OWN "scientists" to come up with rebutting information. And conveniently enough, some of these were already on the payroll at the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute, or could be bought, or had graduated from some cockamamie "university" like Liberty "University" or Regent "University" where they teach subjects like science and law through a Bible filter. And their own cook-the-books scientists come out and are offered to talk shows for bookings, and do get booked, they get their crank messages out and that becomes part of conventional wisdom to the angry old white crank crowd and the ostrich crowd (Proudly Keeping Their Heads Buried In The Sand Since 1978!) who are gullible and have come to rely on these bogus information streams as truth.
5) Pox Noise. Need I say more? Awfully easy to manufacture and sell your own version of "news" when you've got a whole 24/7 cable network to play with! That ground was laid starting at the end of the reagan era in 1987, when the restrictions on corporate ownership of media properties in any one market were lifted. Used to be, while I was still working, an individual or corporate owner could own no more than three properties per market - usually it wound up being an AM radio station and an FM station and a TV channel. They removed the restrictions before reagan's time went out, and that allowed all Hell to break out. Same thing that allowed limbaugh and others to flower. These owners could then own as much as they could afford to snap up, which is how we started getting mega-monopolies like ClearChannel...
It goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...
And we've GOT TO STAY VIGILANT!!! A lot of America still doesn't realize, or accept, that they're being manipulated and lied to. More do by now. Many more in our country are slowly starting, to wise up. But back then, it was utterly HORRIBLE. Almost literally an information brokerage ICE AGE. EPIC snow job. Real true facts consigned to the deep freeze. We're only beginning to thaw.
Welcome to DU, Prometheus_unbound!
Glad you're here. Interesting - a different side of mitt.
Never mind. I'm just grateful and relieved that he didn't win. Guess hair pomade won't be coming back into style in January after all. If that's how his hair looks, "unplugged" shall we say, no wonder he feels he has has to use hair-slick to keep it in line. Too bad the voters were disheveled-beyond-control... they turned out to be even more unruly than his hair!
Let's make sure politicians like him are kept OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!!!!
Welcome to DU, MyOpinion-2!
Glad you're here! I went back and found this after seeing another wrongney photo taken from his Facebook page, where he's hugging her ladyship and he looks all rumpled - hair disheveled and in a t-shirt, as though he just woke up. Not a 10,000-dollar suit to be seen, and there's no hair-slick or starched creased jeans. I'm wondering if this is the real mitt around the house. A slob. We all only got to see his boardroom-to-private-jet side. Or maybe this is his "fuck it, I don't give a damn..." costume?
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