The News is Abominable: UPDATE 1

     UPDATE 1: Add third paragraph
     I watched some Fox and CNN last night. Even NY1 news was pretty bad.  NY1 ran a segment on Gillibrand, who, instead of the entirely and wholly unqualified Caroline Kennedy, will be appointed Senator for New York by the Governor.  Instead of teaching us anything but a sentence about Gillibrand, NY1 took time out of New Yorker's lives to ask them if they knew anything.  Naturally, like myself, they didn't.  One person said she was very smart and knew her stuff.  I know some people don't think that matters, but for me, this is essential!  If she is smart, and knows her stuff, THREE CHEERS FOR GOVERNOR PATTERSON.

     Except, of course, that he felt constrained to pick someone based on which reproductive organs they were born with.

     NY1 calls Gillibrand a "conservative" Democrat.  She is, according to VoteView, a centrist, the most centrist of all NY Congresscritters, a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, and to the right of all but about 20 House Democrats.

Bulls & Bears on Fox News

     I have been out of touch with the idiot media recently.  These numbnuts actually got me to yell at the TV!  Is Obama bringing us to a command economy like the Soviet Union?  The best way to understand the Soviet Union is a non-democratic government that, in addition to running National Defense, a National Pension, the Education System, the Health Care System... ALSO ran Ford, GM, Chrysler, Exxon/Mobil, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, ABC, NBC, CBS, et cetera, et cetera.  The labels less unimportant.

     Bulls & Bears had four or five guests talk about the issue with State Budgets.  In this discussion, no one mentioned that States are, in most cases, bound to balance their budgets by their own laws.  Four of the five simply hate government.  The "defender" of taxes couldn't get the name of Gramm-Leach-Bliley out correctly, which makes me think he was being fed information.

IDIOTS RUN THIS COUNTRY

     Is there some great stain involved with being a journalist?  Of course not.  Then why are such dumb-asses getting the job?

     I'm watching Fox & Friends this morning, and the idiocy has been non-stop.  Not only have the stories (between multi-minute segments on a single mother-kills-daughter death) been dumb, the presentations have been idiotic. Little of it qualifies as "news."  First they call Joe Biden saying the economy is tanking a "gaffe." What planet are they on?  Biden also said the economy might need another 600-700 billion dollar plan, which the "hosts" talked about for a while, 2 of 3 saying that they heard it might be 1 trillion dollars, suggesting Biden never said anything wrong, and never committed a "gaffe," but they kept going on and on saying that he uses "colorful language" (doesn't that usually mean cursing?) and "hyperbole."  As Bob Somerby says, but doesn't quite understand, they were repeating the script.  Bob, they are idiots, they are lazy, if you tell them that Biden committes "gaffes" and then he says something they don't like, that must be the gaffe.  It's certainly not a plot, it is a consequence of not being smart.  Then they talked about Congressional pay raises.  Rather than just say they hate the Democratic Congress, and Congress in general, they got some idiot from twitter to say it for them, and they read the person's comment on air.  The person's comment was that Congress had done nothing at all, and so didn't deserve a raise.  Nothing?  One of the "hosts" said they should take the raise, and give it all to charity, because that would put it in the economy. 

PUMA Po

     The right wing idiots were all over themselves pushing the idea that millions of Hillary voters would actually lift the lever for McCain.  Undoubtedly, some did.  Was there a "puma" effect?  Almost, yes, a little one, and it is visible here.  In Arkansas and Louisiana, alone of the 50 states, did a lower percentage of people vote for Obama than Kerry.  Arkansas is pretty natural.  Louisiana is close by?

By the way, Your Idiot Press Corps never made a big deal that the Republican party was fractured in three: the religious, the hawks, and the economic conservatives/libertarians.