Media Madness

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I don’t know why Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, and I don’t much care. In theory, I suppose, WaPo could suck worse than it already does, but there’s more room for improvement than not.

Somebody’s going to buy the New York Times eventually. It must be running on fumes. But let us go on to other amusing things in the news today.

Per Steve Benen, the ever-amusing PolitiFact finds truth in a lie, somehow. In an interview, Eric Cantor spoke of the “growing” federal deficit, but the federal deficit is shrinking. So PolitiFact says =-

Cantor said that the federal deficit is “growing.” Annual federal deficits are not growing right now, and they are not projected to grow through 2015, a point at which the deficit will have shrunk by three-quarters since 2009. By this standard, Cantor is wrong. However, unless policies are changed, deficits are projected to grow again in 2016 and beyond, according to the CBO. On balance, we rate his claim Half True.

All together now — oh, good grief …

Elsewhere, Ted Cruz reveals that he is confused by this newfangled Internets thing.

The first paragraph of this Kevin Williamson NRO piece is hysterically funny, in a completely unintentional way. It begins, “Conservatives have for years attempted to put our finger upon precisely why Barack Obama strikes us as queer in precisely the way he does.” And then it goes on and on about how there’s something about the President that makes them uncomfortable. (Too blah, perhaps?)

I’ve decided that one of the feature pathologies of that complex of twitchiness that makes wingnuts what they are is a complete inability to perceive projections as projections. There are individual lefties with the same problem of course, but I think most of us over the age of 30 or so can appreciate that the way we perceive a thing has at least as much to do with us as with the thing. But righties are nearly always completely unconscious about this. This has a lot to do with why they think the rest of the world should adjust to gratify their predilections rather than the other way around.

20 thoughts on “Media Madness”

  1. The rest of Kevin Williamson’s piece is pretty astonishing too. Here he is outlining the basic operation of our constitutional system as if it’s an unprecedented usurpation:

    In an important sense, the American people have no political say in the health-care law, for example, because Congress did not pass a law reforming the health-care system; instead, Congress passed a law empowering the Obama administration, through its political appointees and unelected time-servers, to create a new national health-care regime. The general outline of the program is there in the law, but the nuts and bolts of the thing will be created on the fly by President Obama and his many panels of experts.

  2. Kev,
    Dear boy, you can’t put your finger on what you find “queer” about this President?

    Well, let me see if I can help you – maybe what you find “queer,” is that you still can’t believe that your party, and it’s hand-picked team to support your childish Boy King, George W. Bush, were so horribly inept in allowing 9/11 to happen despite warnings, and were so hubristic in starting two unnecessary wars and occupations – and then mishandled both of the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations, costing us precious blood and treasure – and so clue-free in lowering taxes and running those wars and occupations on credit cards, and were also so busy deregulating things and putting off paying for things, to the point where the economy of the whole world damn nearly collapsed, which led the way for our first “Blah” President, with the unlikely name of Barack Hussein Obama, to be elected President – AND THEN REELECTED!!!

    Might that have something to do with it?

    Because, you know, if W and his mis-Administration were any less inept, hubristic, and clue-free, Barack Hussein Obama would probably still be the Junior Senator from Illinois, and someone else would be President – most likely Hillary Clinton. But she’s no, because what lost the Democratic Primaries in 2008 for Hillary Clinton, was her support of the Iraq fiasco – aka: “W’s Fiasco!”
    And who knows, if W and your team weren’t even HALF as inept, hubristic, and clue-free, John McCain, or some other Republican might just have followed him.

    W was the worst President in our history, and that led to the Obama, two-term, Presidency.
    There, did I “un-queer” things for you, dipsh*t?

  3. “I’ve decided that one of the feature pathologies of that complex of twitchiness that makes wingnuts what they are is a complete inability to perceive projections as projections”

    I agree projecting is what really defines the modern “conservative”. Sometimes I wonder if their isn’t some bloated doughy faced teabagger media overlord who recognizes the craziness on the right and immediately issues must read talking points accusing all to the left of Karl Rove of doing exactly what the baggers are up to?

  4. “the basic operation of our constitutional system as if it’s an unprecedented usurpation”

    Stephen,

    It’s unconstitutional because they use the phrase “health care regime” instead of what it really is; just another governmental agency, his argument has no real basis it’s just more Frank Luntz approved word-o-logy!

  5. Righties have zero ability to self-reflect, therefore us outsiders know them far better than they themselves do (much as we know their religion better than they do).

    The term is “willful ignorance.”

  6. “W was the worst President in our history.” –c u n d gulag.

    Dang is that ever true, and it should be repeated frequently. I often fear that with the passage of time, people will forget just how profoundly awful he was.

  7. Gator,
    What’s sad, is that people are already forgetting, and he’s actually been growing in popularity in the last few years.
    American’s have the memories of May Flies.

  8. Pingback: PolitiFaux Says It's "Half True" That Deficit Is Growing - Not the Singularity

  9. MAN, that Kevin Williams piece is amazing! There’s an “alienness” about Obama? Oh, really?

    He seems pretty damn normal to me. But then I’m used to hanging around with college professors and people who can extemporize in complete paragraphs. Oh, and have skin colors other than white.

    Sheesh. He goes on to say that Obama is “something new to the American Experience”, which he follows by saying that Obama’s agenda isn’t really anything new, and he’s not an innovative thinker (he even says “incurious”, as if he’d never heard of Bush), and so then, what, exactly, is it that is so “new”, Kevin? That he likes basketball?

    Wow. Just wow.

  10. If that’s the same Kevin Williamson who wrote the “Scream” movies and created “Dawson’s Creek,” then man, his intellect has really taken a nosedive.

  11. My favorite Politifact Half Truth: Michelle Obama said that her husband “worked for” a law. Ah, but, see, he only worked for that as a Senator, it was George W. Bush who signed the legislation! So it wasn’t entirely true to say that he’d “worked for” it, when someone could clearly think that he’d signed it into law.

    Which makes sense. When I get a paycheck, I never said I “worked for” it, because I didn’t sign any laws that got me that paycheck!

    Um. Wait – no, that’s the absence of true (and sense); what’s that called? Oh, right – bullshit.

  12. a sort of inverse autodidact whose intellectual pedigree is an order of magnitude more impressive than his intellect.

    Is anybody out there who is fluent in Buckleyese? I need a translation. I don’t understand exactly what he’s saying. If he was speaking about Bush it might make more sense to me.

  14. “…a sort of inverse autodidact whose intellectual pedigree is an order of magnitude more impressive than his intellect.”

    Translation: the self-taught besturd ate me alive in a public debate and all I have to fallback on is my Ivy League education and vocabulary, since I realize I’m really not too bright.

  15. The arguments in the Williamson piece are deceptive but persuasive, I’m sure to a receptive audience.

    1) He quotes John Adams, “Democracy never lasts long, It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

    Adams signed into law the ‘Sedition Acts’, which allowed the government to jail journalists critical of the Adams administration. So a president hostile to freedom of speech and freedom of the press and who speaks critically of democracy itself is an authority to be cited in opposition to Obama?

    Much of the article is a vague criticism of all federal power. He sounds like a surgeon arguing against the side effects of medication and the work of physical therapy. He’s not quite to it yet, but the recommendation of amputation is right around the corner. But wait, isn’t amputation the LAST remedy, used only to save the life of the patient?

    I have run into plenty of examples of poor implementation of government programs. But to propose as a remedy to repeal all government programs is sheer lunacy. But the ‘fix’ that conservative authors want is almost always unspoken.. They tapdance around what they want, hinting by innuendo and the occasional anecdote. The solution for programs that don’t work well is pruning and cultivation – not plowing under the whole garden as a way of eradicating weeds.

  16. I had enough of the Williamson drek when he castigated the prez for solving problems by assembling a team of credentialed experts. Yea….. Let’s do what the Right does: turn over all problems to ideologues, wishful thinkers, and faith healers.

  17. Williamson is just another conservative bag of shit.. He blew his whole wad in his first paragraph. There’s nothing like the pleasure verbal masturbation, huh?. Not that I should be accorded any status above that of a basic butthead, but I was not impressed with anything that bloviating bag of hot air had to say.
    I was more impressed with Sarah Palin’s shorter rendition that Obama is going to create death panels.
    What’s with those NRO people? Do they get paid by the word, or is it like Scrabble where words instead of letters carry with them a point system that is credited to their earnings in determining their weekly paycheck.
    Give it up, Williamson!….Oh, and I liked that little modification on word structuring that originated from Rudolf Hess. “Hitler is the party, and the party is Hitler”

  18. He blew his whole wad in his first paragraph.

    But no! To the extent that Williamson ever had a wad to blow, it’s all over the place. I just chose a random paragraph and found this:

    President Nixon’s lawlessness was sneaky, and he had the decency to be ashamed of it. President Obama’s lawlessness is as bland and bloodless as the man himself, and practiced openly, as though it were a virtue.

    There is some kind of talent on display there. Or at least some quality resembling talent. I find myself marveling at it even while I’m appalled by the rabid hostility and bemused by the Looking Glass version of current events.

  19. So a president hostile to freedom of speech and freedom of the press and who speaks critically of democracy itself is an authority to be cited in opposition to Obama?

    I noticed that. I guess that’s the sort of thing you do when your intellectual pedigree is an order of magnitude more impressive than his intellect. But it’s pretty typical of right-wing columnists. The way they go about citing the Founders, they sort of make a fetish out of it. It’s like the mere act of invoking a Founder gives them some kind of authority, so the content of the quotation is pretty much irrelevant.

    Well, it isn’t just founders, is it? More and more, “Ronald Reagan” isn’t even a proper name with these people as much as it’s some sort of mystical incantation.

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