Summer Gas Tax Holiday is a Holiday from Reason

On the issue of suspending federal gas taxes over the summer, Barack Obama is the only “conservative” in the presidential race.

John McCain first proposed the tax holiday but didn’t specify how he’d pay for it. That was some pretty transparent pandering (let’s call it translucent) coming from an alleged fiscal conservative.

Hillary Clinton then began advocating the same tax holiday and added that she’d pay for it by taxing the windfall profits of the oil companies. Vintage Clinton; she panders transparently while acting fiscally conservative.

Barack Obama says the tax holiday isn’t necessary or even useful. Considering the fiscal pickle we’re in, his position is wise. If nothing else, Obama knows how to create the appearance of a new politics.

Based on average driving, most Americans would receive a benefit of about $30 over the summer, and that’s assuming that every penny of the tax will wind up in consumers’ pockets. It won’t.

How many Americans would sell their vote to a pandering politician  less than $30? Clinton and McCain intend to find out.

Newsprism

New Twist on an Old Joke: What Do You Call a Liberal Who’s Been Mugged?

The old joke goes like this: What do you call a liberal who’s been mugged?

A conservative.

After seven years of big-spending government and eroding civil liberties under allegedly conservative Republicans, the joke needs an update: What do you call a conservative who’s been mugged by government?

A libertarian.

Independent voters tend to decide national elections, and the largest bloc of independents are libertarian in outlook: fiscally conservative and socially liberal, in effect straddling the two major parties—which leaves them vulnerable to getting kicked in the crotch no matter whom they vote for.

This country was founded on libertarian principles—limited government, property rights, civil liberties, individual responsibility—that have been significantly eroded under both Democratic and Republican administrations. The designers of our democracy wouldn’t recognize what’s become of their experiment today; somehow a design intended to limit government has been twisted into a government with no intention of limiting its designs.

Up until the turn of the millenium, it was Democrats who considered the Constitution a “quaint document.” Now the Republican Party has betrayed its most fundamental animating principle. It is no longer a conservative party.

PJ O’Rourke puts it like this: “It’s going to be hard to do a worse job running America than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it’s the Democrats.”

With a socialist Hillary Clinton or a very liberal Barack Obama set to face off against a big government Republican like John McCain, McCain would seem to be the lesser of two evils. Maybe the late great Molly Ivans had it right: for the third presidential election in a row, we’re faced with “the evil of two lessers.” The only genuine libertarian in the race is Ron Paul, and he’s way too principled, too shrill, too rough around the edges, and too ugly to win the American Idol contest we call a presidential election.

At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of nation had been created. His answer: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Newsprism

FoxNews Fails History Lesson

Mistakes are inevitable in the 24-hour pressure cooker of cable news. Misspelled words, mispronounced names, technical glitches—these are to be expected.

But confusing Stephen Douglas and Frederick Douglass in a story about the Lincoln-Douglas debates?

That’s exactly what happened this morning when FoxNews mistakenly aired a graphic showing President Lincoln and former slave Frederick Douglass (video).

The fact that three news personalities didn’t catch the mistake is bad enough. News broadcasts involve more than on-air talent, however. Editors, directors, fact checkers, technicians, and graphic artists all have a hand in what goes out over the air.

No one at FoxNews managed to figure out that an African-American like Frederick Douglass was unlikely to have been running for office in 1858, when African-Americans couldn’t even vote.

As HL Mencken noted, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

Certainly not FoxNews’s owner, billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

Newsprism

FoxNews’s vapid cheerleading for the worst president in American history reminds Newsprism of another quote from Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Obama Finally Condemns Racist Rants of Reverend Wright

Under mounting pressure, Barack Obama today “clearly and unequivocally denounc(ed)” the colorful rants of Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club yesterday (video). Obama made the statements at a press conference in North Carolina, saying he was “outraged and saddened” by Wright’s behavior. CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews all ran the press conference live.

Obama made clear that the relationship between the two men has been significantly damaged, saying it will “never be the same” and that the two hadn’t talked lately. Obama said yesterday’s performance left him “appalled,” “outraged,” and ”angry” and contradicted “everything I’ve done in my life.”

In particular, Obama called Wright’s statement that the government spread the AIDS virus to harm blacks “ridiculous” and questioned Wright’s praise of Louis Farrakhan.

Obama also said that Wright has been enjoying being “center stage,” suggesting a motive for the increasingly unbalanced and provocative remarks of the Reverend. Many observers are convinced that Wright is purposefully undermining Obama’s campaign.

Wright’s behavior has deteriorated into self-absorbed clowning lately, and he’s been more openly racist in his comments about whites and more openly radical in his conspiratorial condemnations of America.

What Wright will do now that the gloves are off is anybody’s guess. One thing is certain: the media will give it more coverage than it deserves.

Newsprism

Topless Hannah Montana Rewarded with Free Advertising on NBC

What’s the appropriate response to fifteen-year-old role model Mylee Cyrus, also known as the star of the Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana, posing topless for Vanity Fair (photos)?

Free advertising on the evening news. Brian Williams saw fit to give the Vanity Fair photos by Annie Leibovitz a tease and a story on NBC’s Nightly News.

Cyrus feigned embarrassment over the photos while the Disney Channel feigned outrage, accusing the magazine of “deliberately manipulat(ing) a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.”

Newsprism wonders who’s manipulating whom. Cyrus and her father, Billy Ray, have proven adept at playing the media manipulation game as they parlay her marginal talents into a multi-million dollar empire of near Olsen Twins proportions (and who’s more talented than the Olsen twins?)

Sexually suggestive photos by the world’s leading celebrity photographer in the sophisticated Vanity Fair are no accident—more like a cynical attempt to manipulate the mainstream media into publicizing an image makeover just in time for the next, more mature phase in Cyrus’s career.

Cyrus, NBC, Disney,Vanity Fair and Leibovitz will all profit from this ”titillation” and all the free publicity it generates.

American culture, however, just sank a little bit deeper into the sewer.

Newsprism

Voodoo and Voter IDs

By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court today upheld an Indiana law requiring a photo ID in order to vote, opening the way for similar laws to be enforced in other states.

Civil rights groups and many liberal Democrats had opposed the law on the grounds that some voters might effectively be disenfranchised if required to produce a photo ID. Indiana offers free photo IDs to voters and allows those without IDs to vote and then produce one within 10 days.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and David Souter voted in the minority.

Newsprism agrees that exactly one voting bloc will be disenfranchised by the new laws: practitioners of voodoo who believe that photographs steal their souls.

Newsprism

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You—Ask What Your Press Agent Can Do for You

Barack Obama’s now infamous pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, is milking his fifteen-minute flash of fame for all it’s worth. This weekend he spoke with Bill Moyers in a televised interview, delivered a televised sermon in Dallas, gave a televised speech to the NAACP, and this morning he’s speaking (you guessed it—televised!) to the National Press Club.

The Reverend understands the mass media marketplace at least as well as he understands racial division. Controversy sells. Give the media controversy, and you can expect significant media coverage. If that controversy is timely, so much the better, and if it fits into the ideological template of the journalistic pack, you’re as good as gold.

No issue generates as much controversy in the US as race. Liberals in the media love to shine a spotlight on racism, real or imagined, in order to bask in the afterglow of their moral superiority. Conservatives in the media love to shine a spotlight on reverse racism, real or imagined, in order to further their political agenda.

 During his speech to the NAACP on Sunday, Reverend Wright invoked John Kennedy’s famous line, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” and mocked JFK’s pronunciation of “ahsk.” The idea was to “ahsk” why it’s okay for JFK to pronounce a word so oddly, but not for black children to pronounce it, “aks.” That’s a valid, if utterly petty, point.

What should be clear to all is that Wright is no longer furthering a philosophy. He’s furthering his career; a book deal is surely in the works. Mocking a liberal icon like Kennedy is straight out of the playbook of Ann Coulter, who says outrageous things just to keep herself in the media spotlight. A similar dynamic drives Britney Spears and Paris Hilton to do outrageous things. (Paris’s favorite fashion accessory, her chihuahua Tinkerbell, actually had a book published. Ka-ching!)

Give the media something to cover, no matter how trivial, perverse, or cynically self-serving, and they will. Give the publishing industry a low-risk title, and they’ll publish it. With cable news, talk radio, and the Internet lowering editorial standards, and with the demands of a 24-hour news cycle, a critical institution in our society has been dragged down into the cultural gutter alongside Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera.

Jeremiah Wright may have some important ideas to contribute to our national discourse. He holds two master’s degrees and a doctorate, and he served this country in the Marine Corps and the Navy. The cartoon version of the Reverend that’s being bandied about in the media doesn’t do him justice.

The fact that he’s so hard at work capitalizing on that cartoon doesn’t do the rest of us justice.

Newsprism

America’s Dangerous Mis-Spellings of “Ignorance”

How many Americans can correctly spell “ignorance”? How many teachers and bureaucrats?

Two excellent columns by Bob Herbert and George Will came out this week bemoaning the declining state of American education.

At least three root causes account for the sad decline in education in this country.

First, parents have abdicated responsibility for their children’s education to cold, monolithic government institutions that facilitate mediocrity and stifle innovation. Take President “childrens do learn” Bush’s failed No Child Left Behind program. Administered by the pathetically underqualified Secretary of Education, Bush croney Margaret Spellings, NCLB imposes an asinine amount of testing on schools without addressing the underlying problems—as if measuring academic failure enough will turn it into academic success. Heckuva job, Spellie.

Second, the erosion of the nuclear family has left more and more of our children adrift without adequate supervision or an understanding of the value of education. The best predictor of academic performance isn’t social class or school quality; it’s the presence of a solid family structure that inculcates the right values and enforces their pursuit. No amount of government intervention can fix the decline of the American family, though government intervention has surely been a major factor in causing it.

Third, we’re increasingly mesmerized by electronic media, which force us into the role of passive, isolated consumers of what nowadays passes for culture. Today’s American child is lost in an amoral popular culture that priviliges physical beauty over mental acuity and appetite over intellect. Reading is becoming a lost art, one that requires thoughtful deliberation as opposed to passive consumption. Market considerations have all but replaced moral ones, and all too often, mind-numbing gadgets take the place of parenting.

Education is ultimately and essentially the responsibility of each individual citizen, and that requires citizens raised in strong families that value knowledge and wisdom. No teacher, school or government program can provide that.

Henry David Thoreau, America’s philosopher laureate, wrote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Two organizations hacking at the root of our education woes are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the America’s Promise Alliance, run by Colin and Alma Powell (not coincidentally, two devoted couples presiding over strong nuclear families.)

The gravest threat to American democracy isn’t terrorism or global warming. It’s ignorance.

And ignorance can only be cured from within.

Newsprism

Laugh While You Cry—It’s Tax Freedom Day!

According to the Tax Foundation, the average working American pays 31% of his or her income in direct federal, state, and local taxes. That’s more than is spent on food, clothing, and shelter combined.

If that tax burden visualized as a percentage of one year, the average working American spends the first 113 days of the year to pay direct taxes.

According to the Foundation, that means today, April 23, is Tax Freedom Day—the day of the year on which the average working American has finally worked enough to pay his or her taxes.

Congratulations!

As you celebrate the end of this year’s servitude to government, you should ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I get for my 113 days of labor? (You probably don’t want to know the answer, but if you do, check out this, this, and this.)

2. Who are the non-working Americans I’m supporting, and why the hell aren’t they working? (Some are retired or disabled—God bless them—but then there are the millions of parasites, scammers, lazybones, bureaucrats, corporations and assorted criminals we support thanks to misguided government largesse.)

To ease the burden and help you laugh through the tears, watch this witty Tax Freedom Day video courtesy of YouTube.

Newsprism

Hillary Clinton and Monty Python’s Black Knight

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight fights King Arthur to prevent him from crossing a small bridge. After having an arm cut off by the King, the Knight insists, “‘Tis but a scratch” and refuses to concede. After the other arm is cut off, the Black Knight still refuses to concede, insisting it’s “just a flesh wound.” The unarmed knight then loses both legs, at which point he finally agrees to “call it a draw.”

With virtually no chance of catching Barack Obama in either delegates or the popular vote, Hillary Clinton continues to insist on dragging the Democratic Party through a bloody and needless fight to the convention in August. She needs to win around 80% of the remaining popular vote, for example, but is down by 8% in the latest Gallup tracking poll.

Disarmed and without a leg to stand on, Clinton is now asking the question, “Why can’t (Obama) close the deal?“

The answer is simple: because a black knight with no chance of victory is blocking his way.

Newsprism

Bill Clinton Denies Saying What He Said…On Tape

Asked about his comments during the South Carolina primary comparing Barack Obama’s performance there with Jesse Jackson’s—a comment many took as injecting race into the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton—Bill Clinton told WHYY 91FM’s Susan Phillips (audio),

I think that (the Obama campaign) played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign that they planned to do it along.

Asked about the comment today, a snippy and defensive Clinton denied saying what he said (video.) The former president also dodged a question about the alleged memos he denied referring to. (Here’s the whole story from ABC News.)

Later in the WHYY interview, Clinton said his South Carolina comments were “used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign.” Then, off mic, using his genuine voice and vocabulary, he adds, “I don’t think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?”

This is vintage Bill Clinton—cynically spinning and twisting beneath that slick, golly-gee persona of his, then lying and denying about it.

Is Bill Clinton a serial liar? It depends on where your definition of “lies” lies.

Newsprism

Those Arkansaw Bumkins, or, A Gremlin In His Goober (satire)

 

Presidential Candidates Appear on Professional Wrestling Program

It’s basically theatre disguised as a contest. It highlights confrontation and image at the expense of competition and substance.

Flashy graphics and longwinded speeches are prevalent. Spontaneity is scripted and authenticity is packaged. Nothing is quite what it appears to be.

Few take it seriously, but most follow it to one degree or another. Many get hurt, and a few get rich.

That’s right—it’s presidential politics.

Tonight, all three presidential candidates will appear on the World Wrestling Entertainment’s Raw program beginning at 8pm EST. Watch previews of their taped segments here, and watch an animated Hillary and Barack get ready to rumble here.

Newsprism’s question: is professional wrestling demeaning to the presidential campaign, or vice-versa

Update: All three candidates looked completely out of their element on Raw tonight, competing to see how many lame wrestling puns and catch phrases they could fit into their minute-long segments. It was transparent, condescending, and canned pandering to an audience they don’t understand or respect. Newsprism wonders if any of the three knows that Abraham Lincoln was a professional wrestler and a genuine man of the people, or that they were the butts of the joke tonight?

Newsprism

 

Contestants in Cable News Race Run in Opposite Directions, Voters Lose

As three major cable news networks—CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews—compete for shares of the cable news audience, the result may be further polarization of the American voter. So says a new study by University of Georgia Professor Barry Hollander.

Hollander studied the news consumption of self-identified Democrats and Republicans using data from the non-partisan Pew Research Center. His findings: people gravitate towards news sources that reinforce their existing beliefs—liberals to CNN and MSNBC, and conservatives to FoxNews.

While this result is no surprise, combined with other trends in voting and media consumption it may portend further polarization among a less informed electorate.

For example, the more voters are exposed exclusively to opinions they already agree with, the more extreme their views are likely to become. In addition, the less news people watch, the less likely they are to vote. Voters who don’t identify strongly with either party are increasingly less likely to consume news, and therefore, to vote.

The trend is towards polarization and extremism in both red and blue states, while moderates give up on the political process and vote in fewer and fewer numbers.

Our democracy risks significant erosion of participation in, and faith in, the electoral process among voters in the center as two polarized, vacuous ideological camps face off over an ever-widening and increasingly empty ideological schism.

Like Nature, politics abhors a vacuum. What will fill the vacuum resulting from these trends is anybody’s guess.

Newsprism

The Worst of the Wild, Wild Web—from the Right, WorldNetDaily

Far-right fundamentalist news and shopping site WorldNetDaily combines sensationalistic reactionary stories with a glut of self-promotional product pitches and questionable advertisements masked as headlines and text links to produce a formula that attracts a substantial readership within the right-wing echo chamber.

Unfortunately, the twisted news judgment of WorldNetDaily makes TheHuffingtonPost look alomost like a legitimate news source, and the predominance of commercial content makes WND one of the most cynical and mercenery sites on the web.

No other news site does so much to embed ads into the news. As of 4:00pm, six of the first ten “headlines” at today’s WND aren’t news stories; they’re actually ads promoting products and services. These include:

An anti-global warming theory DVD for $29.95—just in case all the other free anti-global warming hocus pocus at WND didn’t satisfy your thirst for irrational propaganda. Publisher Joseph Farah insists that global warming can’t possibly be real because God promised Noah He’d never flood the earth again; why, then, do you need to pay thirty bucks to hear some hack say the same thing?

A full years’ worth of Advanced Artery Solution for just $239.40. This medical “breakthrough” (it’s actually just ethylenediamine tetra-acetic acid, a common chemical used in thousands of products) promises that you’ll feel the difference as your arteries are cleansed of plaque (as if anyone can “feel” their arteries) and toxins leave your body (that you can feel—it’s called urinating.)

An anti-Darwin “documentary” that “proves” that Darwinism “has probably been responsible for more bloodshed than anything else in the history of humanity” (including the Holocaust) for just $4.95. ‘Nuff said.

A year’s subscription toWND’s own Whistleblower magazine for only $49.95. The next edition is devoted to “The secret life” of Barack “Hussein” Obama, “a Manchurian candidate – harboring an ominous secret agenda” who “reflexively, instinctively, will side with what’s wrong and harmful for America, and will oppose what’s right and good and wholesome for America. It’s uncanny.”

Other phony “headlines” include these ridiculous get rich quick schemes:

Turn $200 into $1.2 million with these hidden stocks! Get the 4 stocks you need to own in 2008.

$187,296 in 24 hours! Spare me just 7 minutes to show you how to copy my plan.

As if this shameless schilling isn’t bad enough, WorldNetDaily embeds literally hundreds of text links that look like normal hyperlinks in its news stories. In fact, these links are part of a third-party network called Kontera that promises ads “relevant” to the content. The ads, however, are only relevant insofar as any word in the English language that’s relevant to any Kontera ad can be hyperlinked. For example, when the word “doctor” appears in one WND story, Kontera embeds a link to an ad for health insurance. When the words “medical care” appear in the same story, an ad for Geico car insurance pops up.

Now on to the news.

The lead story this afternoon is tabloid-style sensationalism headlined, “Children’s hospital launches sex change for kids program.” It begins,

A doctor at the renowned Children’s Hospital Boston has launched a new program to drug children to delay puberty so they can decide whether they want a male or a female body … “We don’t think that demonic is too strong a word to describe this,” said a statement from the pro-family Mass Resistance organization. “It brings us thoughts of the Nazi doctors who thought they were doing good things.”

In reality, the “new program”—the Gender Management Service Clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital—is intended primarily to help children born with Disorders of Sexual Differentiation, which are pathologies that make it difficult to tell whether the children are male or female. Delaying puberty in such cases allows doctors to better handle the difficult decisions involved in assigning a gender to such children. (Note: the link above on the word “puberty” takes you to www.DealTime.com, where you can ”Shop Deals from 1000s of Merchants. Find, compare & buy.” How’s that for relevant?)

Another WND story proclaims that “Clinton’s family home reflects Democrat divide” and begins,

A new front has opened in the battle for the deeply divided soul of America’s Democrats - the front porch of the long-time family home of Hillary Clinton’s father and grandparents (where) a “Hillary For President” poster is tied to one half of the fence while an “Obama For President” adorns the other half.

The implication is that the Clinton family is divided over whom to vote for. In reality, though, the Clinton’s don’t own the home and haven’t for many years; a mother and daughter live there now, one of whom supports Clinton and the other Obama.

If all of this sensationalism, sex, spin and snake oil salesmanship isn’t enough for you, some of the nation’s best political minds offer their commentary at WND, including Chuck Norris and Pat Boone. Then there’s this laughable series of smears on Barack ”Hussein” Obama that Newsprism documented earlier this year.

Newsprism “follow(s) news and politics with a big shovel.”

In the case of the massive pile of bull called WorldNetDaily, we needed a steamshovel.

Newsprism

Oops, or Poops? HuffingtonPost Headline Embarrassing Mistake, or Outright Lie?

Hollywood leftist news and gossip site The Huffington Post included this headline today:

Legal Experts Predict War Crimes Prosecutions Over Torture Meetings

The problem? The article excerpted and linked to at HuffPo says exactly the opposite. Published in the Center for Independent Media’s Washington Independent, the story begins,

With nine months remaining in President George W. Bush’s term, virtually no legal analyst expects that anyone in his administration will face indictment and prosecution in connection with the torture of terrorism detainees.

The same story ends,

…the likelihood of retributive measures against the Bush administration for torture remains remote.

And in between? More of the same.

Is HuffPo really that incompetent? Or did the editors choose to utterly mischaracterize the article in their headline for partisan political purposes?

Newsprism’s guess: both.

Newsprism

Stephen Colbert—the Man, the Myth, the Math

Stephen Colbert, named as one of TV News’ Ten Most Powerful people (actually, 13 were listed) last week, has long claimed that guest appearances on his Colbert Report get a “bump” in popularity. Now UC San Diego political science professor James Fowler (read his study) has apparently documented the bump as Democrats who appear on the show raise on average 44% more money after appearing than before. Republicans who appear see no change, however.

The late-night satirist made the so-called “Colbert Bump” famous when Republican Mike Hucakabee’s poll numbers jumped from 1% to 3% after an appearance, a “300%” bump according to Colbert (actually, that’s 200%.)

With a loyal audience of 1.3 million viewers called the “Colbert Nation,” Mr. Colbert exerts an even greater influence via the Internet. His ColberNation.com web site is wildly popular, and fans have put up a number of tribute sites including a ColbertBump.com web site, a wikipedia.com satire site called wikiality.com (here’s wikiality’s take on the Colbert bump), and a Bill O’Reilly spoof called the NoFact Zone. A Google search on his name now produces over 2.5 million results (actually, it’s 2,510,000+, and with the publication of this post, one more.)

Last night, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards (video)—that’s three presidential contenders (actually, 2.5)—all appeared on the Report, which has been broadcasting live from Philadelphia all week, demonstrating that Colbert’s influence goes well beyond the size of his TV audience.

Why? There are at least two reasons. First, media research long ago documented the crucial effect of “opinion leaders,” people with expertise or stature who pass on media messages to others in a “two-step flow” of information. With its superior writing, timing, and satirical edge, The Colbert Report includes in its audience the cream of the crop of politicos and political junkies across the country. Second, Colbert is a master at using and manipulating the Internet, where many of the aforementioned opinion leaders surf and troll, routing his gospel to the wired masses.

Is there really a Colbert bump? Newsprism has investigated and found that concerning the performance of politicians in polls, the “bump” is probably a myth, but among authors who are interviewed on the show, it’s as real as it gets. Not surprisingly, liberal authors get the largest bump in book sales, while conservative authors actually seem to lose sales after appearances.

The bottom line: the funniest man in American politics should be taken very, very seriously.

Newsprism

The Perfect Vice President for Either Party: Sam Nunn of Georgia

Former Senator and conservative Democrat Sam Nunn today endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, eliciting speculation that he could be on Obama’s short list of potential runningmates.

Newsprism has long considered Nunn, a four-term Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and an expert on weapons of mass destruction, among the most credible candidates for the presidency—an office he’s shown little if any interest in.

As Obama’s runningmate, Nunn would shore up the Democrats’ foreign policy credentials substantially and move the ticket towards the center, possibly even putting some states in the otherwise solidly red South in play.

Mr. Nunn would make an equally strong runningmate for John McCain. McCain’s main weakness is the perception that he would continue the utterly failed foreign policy of George Bush, a foreign policy Nunn has challenged with great depth and perspective. Nunn would also pull the Republican ticket towards the center, putting any number of blue states in play.

Nunn  hopes for a sea change in US foreign policy and for political reconciliation domestically. Accepting a spot on either ticket would go a long way towards accomplishing both objectives.

Update: Nunn just told MSNBC that he’s happy in the private sector and not considering a return to public office.

Update: Along with Nunn, former Senator David Boren and former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich have also endorsed Barack Obama today.

Newsprism

Hillary Clinton Uses Wrong ‘Kitchen’ Metaphor

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania today, Hillary Clinton responded to Barack Obama’s criticism of the ABC News debate Wednesday night, saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (video).” She added, “I’m very comfortable in the kitchen.”

This seems an odd metaphor for a woman who once belittled housewives for “bak(ing) cookies and hav(ing) teas (transcript).“

The apt metaphor for the lingering Mrs. Clinton: too many cooks spoil the broth.

More to the point, Obama’s crticism wasn’t about the “heat” of the questions  the moderators, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, asked him—it was about their shallowness, a criticism Newsprism agrees with 100%.

Newsprism

Why Some Democrats and Republicans Should Be Barred from Voting

Have you ever wondered why some people seem impossible to reason with when conversations turn to politics?

A study conducted at Atlanta’s Emory University used sophisticated brain scans to analyze the political reasoning—or lack thereof—of voters strongly attached to one political party or the other.

The results: when faced with information that threatens their pre-existing beliefs, both staunch Democrats and Republicans turn off the rational centers in the brain and turn on the emotional ones.

According to LiveScience.com,

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making … Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.

Emory University’s Director of Clinical Psychology, Drew Weston, put it this way:

The result (of the study) is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data.

The study might go far in explaining the popularity of conservative talk radio and the liberal blogosphere, where reason and evidence are as rare as an honest politician.

The old admonition may hold true that some people—the party faithful, as it turns out—just shouldn’t discuss politics.

Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to vote, either.

Newsprism

President Bush, Pope Benedict Throw Popsicles at Hell

Arguably the two most powerful men in the world spoke yesterday about profound moral dilemmas, and both essentially failed to do the right thing.

President Bush addressed global warming in a speech at the White House, while Pope Benedict has touched on the pedophile priest scandal in several speeches since arriving in the States on Tuesday.

The President has clearly dragged his feet on global warming for over seven years. His administration has worked to suppress scientific evidence of the causes and scope of the problem while his energy policy and foreign policy have brazenly favored Big Oil (the proof is in their profits.)

Meanwhile, the Pope has twice acknowledged his “deep shame” over the pedophile priest scandal that has rocked the American Catholic establishment over the last decade. If any other organization in this country were responsible for tens of thousands of acts of child sexual abuse, those responsible would face the harshest sanctions allowed by law as well as a public outcry loud enough to deafen the angels. Instead, no bishops have been disciplined and the scandal has essentially been handled with cash payments exceeding $2 billion.

Actions speak louder than words; by that standard, both President Bush and Pope Benedict have remained silent on issues that should be producing a chorus from all of us.

Pope Benedict did meet for 25 minutes with “a handful” of victims of pedophile priests today. While his openness on the issue is welcome, as is President Bush’s addressing global warming, their responses amount to throwing popsicles at Hell.

Newsprism

Remembering the Virginia Tech Victims, and a Plea to Journalists

Today marks the anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 students and teachers were murdered. Newsprism would like to honor their memory and send our deepest sympathy to their classmates, colleagues, friends, and families.

Virginia Tech’s campus newspaper, the Collegiate Times, paid tribute today with this special edition.

A special tribute was earned that day by Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who used his own body to barricade the door to his classroom, almost surely saving the lives of his students in the process. God bless you, Professor.

This massacre has been cited as evidence in arguments for and against gun control, which is perfectly appropriate. To those who’ve used it as a prop to attack political enemies or have blamed the victims, shame on you—you’re beneath contempt.

Journalists and editors throughout the country should pause and consider a voluntary ban on publishing or broadcasting the names and images of the perpetrators of such crimes, since fame is one of their primary motivations.

Newsprism

The Worst of the Wild, Wild Web—From the Left, HuffingtonPost

Hollywood leftist news and gossip site The Huffington Post combines a buffet of cheesy far-left commentary from notable writers, politicians, activists, actors, scholars, more actors, and relatives of actors with a daily dish of celebrity gossip. Add in a lively and very functional reader comment section and you have a highly succesful formula.

Unfortunately, the news judgment of HuffPo can best be described as amateurish, and the editorial stance leans so far left it’s staggering.

A quick glimpse at today’s headlines proves the point:

Cindy McCain, The Recipe Thief, Says The Intern Did It—omigosh! Cindy McCain’s intern may have stolen recipes from The Food Network! Hold the presses, hold the presses!

Jenna Bush Tries Not To Flash the Pope—holy Marilyn Monroe moment, a gust of wind almost (almost!) blew Jenna Bush’s skirt up as she shook the hand of Pope Benedict XVI!!!!!

“Dancing With The Stars” Eliminates The Oldest Contestant—that’s right, Priscilla Presley, the “62-year-old actress” (she acts???) was eliminated because her “rumba was dull and technically imprecise…”

Thought Process Flowchart: Dr. Phil—Drs. Freud and Jung take note: here’s a peek inside the mind of Dr. Phil McGraw!!!!

Obama Offers Hanna Montana Treasury Secretary Job—just in case you’re a ten-year-old girl, or have the mentality of one, here’s a serious story about a skit from the Country Music Awards!!!!

Jon Stewart Mocks Obama “Bitter” Controversy—real news about fake news about real news … and the fake news was better than the real!!!!!

In terms of commentary, HuffPo gives our finest political thinkers (Alec Baldwin, Margaret Cho, Norman Lear’s little granddaughter) a platform from which to enlighten us. This sampling should get you up to speed:

Pope Should Start “Spiritual Renewal” With Bisexual God—those sexist Catholics are sooooo paternalistic, they should get God two lovers, one male and one female, or better yet, give God both male and female sex organs, to make up for all those centuries of patriarchy. (Here’s the definition of bisexual, HuffPo.)

The Alabama of Pennsylvania Mirrors New Hampshire—a media elitist slurs working-class Pennsylvania by comparing it to (and slurring) Alabama. To paraphrase Lynyrd Skynyrd, we Southerners don’t need you Hollywood and NYC fly-over types around anyhow.

How Many “Gaffes” Equal Incompetence? and One Candidate Has Failed the Commander-In-Chief Test—Twice—that no-good John McCain accidentally confused Shia for Sunni (and who hasn’t done that?) Then McCain “seemed to say that General Petraeus is the top military commander of our Armed Forces, telling the Associated Press that he wouldn’t shift the focus of the military from Iraq to Afghanistan ‘unless Gen. [David] Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that.’” SEEMED to say? And it took two HuffPo bloggers to make that SEEM like a gaffe.

Then there’s the running gag called “Dickipedia,” described as “a wiki of dicks,” and its latest Dickipedia entry on John McCain. The entry calls McCain “cowardly” and an “asshole” and describes his wife as “freakish-looking over-plastic-surgery’d wife Cindy.” Then there’s this gem: “Though he once called religious bigots like Jerry Falwell ‘agents of intolerance,’ he now eagerly gets on his knees to fellate them to completion ask for their support.”

To top it all off, HuffPo asks the question, Is the Pope Even Relevant? At least as relevant as, say, Priscilla Presley, Hannah Montana, Dr. Phil, David Hasselhoff, Rob Lowe, comedian Keith Olbermann, and a topless Ann Coulter.

So that’s one day in the life of The HuffingtonPost—a big hit on the wild wild web, and a signal moment in the resurgence of yellow journalism.

Newsprism

McCain Proposes Tax Cuts, Curbs on Spending

In a speech timed to coincide with the deadline for filing federal income tax returns and to reach the media covering the Democratic primary, John McCain outlined his economic policies in Pittsburgh today.

McCain’s plan rejects the upper-class orientation of George Bush, embracing instead the populism and pro-growth policies of Ronald Reagan.

The Arizona senator’s tax plan calls for doubling the exemption for dependents from $3500 to $7000, establishing a simplified two-tier tax schedule, eliminating the alternative minimum tax, and suspending gasoline taxes over the summer. In addition, McCain would extend Bush’s tax cuts, reduce corporate taxes significantly, and give tax benefits to businesses for research and purchases of equipment.

In addition to these tax policies, McCain wooed working- and middle-class voters with the promise of readily available student loan funds, government-guaranteed mortgages for homeowners at risk of foreclosure, and a continuation of unemployment insurance for displaced workers.

In terms of government spending, McCain would freeze nonmilitary discretionary spending at current levels for one year while reviewing government programs for waste and fraud, increase Medicare premiums for wealthy retirees, veto any bill that includes earmarks.

McCain’s plan combines tax cuts with curbs on federal spending, a breath of fresh air compared to the irrationally expensive proposals of the two Democratic presidential hopefuls and the equally irrational Bush policy of cutting taxes while dramatically raising spending.

Newsprism finds McCain’s proposals substantive, centrist, and sensible, and therefore likely to be quickly overshadowed by the next irrelevant gaffe or contrived Bittergate.

Newsprism

Who Are the 10 Most Powerful Figures in TV News?

TV often reduces a three-dimensional world to two dimensions for one-dimensional minds.

If there’s anything more shallow than American television, it’s journalism about American television, as demonstrated by the latest TV Week “TV News’ 10 Most Powerful” rankings.

Here are the rankings alongside Newsprism’s commentary:

1. Steve Capus, President, NBC News   Good choice. NBC leads the evening news and morning news ratings, and MSNBC is strong in cable news and stronger online.

2. Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO, Fox News   Another good choice. FoxNews’ Ailes has done more than anyone to even the ideological playing field in American broadcast journalism, proof positive that personality and beauty trump news judgment.

3. David Weston, President, ABC News   Only if managing to come in second or third place in a field of four broadcast networks is considered “powerful.”

4. Tim Russert, Senior VP, NBC News Washington bureau; editor/moderator, “Meet the Press”   Good choice. The best of the influential Sunday morning hosts, also a strong contributor on MSNBC.

5. Jim Walton, President, CNN Worldwide, and Jon Klein, President, CNN/US   Okay, IF you can combine two people, and IF you can compare CNN’s audience share to FoxNews’, and IF you can disregard the laws of mathematics, THEN, good choice. Otherwise, CNN competes with MSNBC for second place in the cable news ratings well behind FoxNews, and all three together don’t add up to one broadcast news show’s ratings.

6. Keith Olbermann, host, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”   Worst…Choice…in the World! Olbermann is highly entertaining, and his verbal skills are the best in the business, but his show draws fewer than a million viewers each night. If this were the 10 most powerful liberals in TV news…well, he still wouldn’t belong.

7. Bill O’Reilly, host, “The O’Reilly Factor”   By far the top dog in cable news personalities, O’Reilly draws nearly three times the viewers as Olbermann. TV Week describes Olbermann’s 900,000 viewers as “about a million” and O’Reilly’s 2,900,000 as “more than two million.”  Sounds like they’re turning a 3:1 ratio into a 2:1 ratio. Despite the voodoo math, O’Reilly belongs at best at number 10.

8. Sean McManus, President, CBS News   Only if managing to come in third or fourth place in a field of four broadcast networks is considered “powerful.”

9. NS Bienstock, Talent Agency   Are you kidding? Maximizing the salaries of on-air talent makes you “powerful”?

10. Amy Pohler, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, Comics   Okay, IF you can combine three people, and IF you consider late-night news satire as TV news, and IF you can disregard the meanings of words AND the laws of mathematics, THEN good choice. Otherwise, you might as well name the list, “Our Most Favoritest Liberal News Satire Hosts!” (Colbert did win a Peabody Award for his brilliant mocking of personality-based news shows like “The O’Reilly Factor,” but that makes him exceptionally talented, not top-ten powerful.)

Missing from the list are notables including Chris Matthews and Brian Williams of NBC/MSNBC; Brit Hume and Sean Hannity of FoxNews; and from the world of news satire, Ben Karlin, the former executive producer largely responsible for the success of both “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report.”

Of all the “Top Ten”-type kudos attention-starved media types give each other, Newsprism ranks TV Week’s “TV News’ 10 Most Powerful” near the very bottom, just beneath Time magazine’s “Top 10 New TV Series” (like CBS’s mind-numbing reality show ”Kid Nation”) and slightly above gametrailers.com’s “Top 10 Video Game Weapons” (the chainsaw is a perennial favorite.)

Also in the running:  yesbutnobutyes.com’s “Top 10 Female Streakers” (WARNING: Not Safe for Work) and urinal.net’s “Top 10 Most Fascinating Urinals” (check out these art-urinals, which are particularly lovely.)

Newsprism