SoulHonky

Flipping through channels, I made the mistake of stopping at MSNBC. It only took a few minutes for Keith Olbermann to tick me off. He's now making a big deal about the man who said, at a town hall, that he was proud to be a right wing terrorist and that the Representative who was holding the event didn't dress him down for saying it. However, when you watch the clip (which Olbermann showed on the show), I think it's pretty obvious that the guy was reacting to the media's portrayal of the entire right wing as terrorists. He cited things that he did, like go to a tea party website, and basically just left out one phrase, albeit a key phrase: "If that's what liberals want to call a terrorist, THEN I'm proud to be a right wing terrorist."

Unfortunately, Olbermann is too busy vilifying people to try to find the root of the problem. Maybe he could look at what the right is doing and look at what he is doing on his show and figure out that he is doing nothing to help his cause in the slightest. Glenn Beck preaches fear and tells the American people that the government is out to get them. Keith Olbermann says that people who watch Fox News are loons and racists and assorted other insults. And MSNBC is surprised that they can't get ratings. When will the Left learn that you can't win the people over by insulting them? Too often liberals go into a fight selling Hope but once the going gets rough, they just start bitching about how nobody is as smart as them. Only once in a blue moon do you actually get a situation (like Sen. John McCain's reaction to the fiscal crisis) when the Right actually shows that they don't really have a plan.

Whenever people whine about bailouts, nobody ever reminds them that if it wasn't for the bailouts a whole hell of a lot more of their fellow citizens would be out of a job right now. When the Right says that the government wants to take over health care, the Dems need to say that they are just trying to help people protect themselves against the big insurance companies. If Obama really wants to work with Republicans, make them come up with their own bill and to bring something to the table other than vague notions, plans that can't be funded, and ideas that protect everyone except the actual patients.

Needless to say, the whole thing is still frustrating me.

Posted by SoulHonky at 12:42 AM | Permalink |Digg It!

Arianna Huffington always likes to seem like she's above it all but if she wants to continue that kind of attitude, she really needs to talk to the people running her "Huffington Post". I've had a problem with it for some time because instead of being what a news blog should be, it's just a left wing propoganda machine (basically the mirror image of The Drudge Report). The latest example is arguably the ugliest.

The Huffington Post cited The National Enquirer and their story about Cindy McCain's supposedly having an affair. Making matters worse, "a reader" (not sure if its a reader of the Huffington Post or National Enquirer) pointed out that the charge seems erroneous since the supposed damning evidence (a picture of a blonde making out with some dude) was taken at The Tempe Music Festival which took place while Cindy McCain was on a trip to Kosovo.

When a reader points something like that out, don't you remove the story from your site? Wouldn't you at least make some calls and do some actual reporting? Ah well, I should have known better than to keep going to that website. It's just a shame that someone of Huffington's intelligence and prominence couldn't have found a way to make a difference and promote quality journalism rather than just being a different kind of partisan hackery.

Posted by SoulHonky at 12:33 AM | Permalink |Digg It!

Lost amidst the history of Obama is the fact that Sarah Palin may not be history. In fact, she might be back on the national stage in a matter of months. With Ted Stevens being convicted and then re-elected and probably soon-to-be expelled from Congress, Alaskans will take to the ballot box in the near future to elect a replacement senator. Now who do you think that might be?

It also will help shore up Palin's biggest problems. She's got running a state government on her resume, now she'll be able to work on her foreign policy (and hopefully her geography and current events while she's at it) and be able to focus more time on actually learning about how our government actually works.

Honestly, the only thing that might keep her from the job is her family. But if she was willing to move to Washington to be Vice President, i can't imagine she wouldn't be willing to do the same to become a Senator.

Posted by SoulHonky at 02:46 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

At least the neo-cons can take solace that they can still keep the gay man down. 

Posted by SoulHonky at 09:54 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

Posted by SoulHonky at 05:23 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

Posted by SoulHonky at 06:37 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

Maybe it's the New England pessimism that has me expecting the worst but I really think that Sarah Palin is going to overcome expectations (if you can, indeed, overcome something that doesn't really exist anymore) and do a solid job in the debate. The debate questions should be obvious ground and she won't be thrown on stuff like "What newspapers do you read?" or "Which Supreme Court decisions do you disagree with?" And to be fair, the latter question wasn't as bad as the initial reports made it out to be. I couldn't name a Court decision I disagree with off of the top of my head (then again, I also am not ready to be Vice President).

It should be interesting. Palin is going to play the "Change" card and say that Biden is the old guard that needs to be replaced and there's really no way to respond. It's hard to attack a blank slate besides pointing out that its a blank slate and that will seem condescending. It'll be like arguing with a little kid except you aren't able to say "Because I said so" or "Go to your room!"

I don't know. The bar is so low for Palin that it's subterrainian. It seems like a recipe for disaster, especially with Biden on the other side since he's no stranger to stupid comments himself. Color me concerned.

Posted by SoulHonky at 10:48 AM | Permalink |Digg It!

In his inauguration speech, Bill Clinton said that he still believed in a place called hope. Judging from his recent interviews, it's fairly obvious that he's still still believing. And that's unfortunate because I've been living in that hope place and I can tell you that it's miserable. For instance, I hope I can lose weight. The reason I hope that is because I actually tried working out and hated it so now I'm just hoping something happens. Similarly, I tried eating healthier but now I'm hoping the Papa John's guy will get here because I'm fucking starving.

For Clinton, his place called hope doesn't seem to different than mine. His wife tried to become President and now he's hoping she can get another shot at the Dem nomination in four years.

Posted by SoulHonky at 01:00 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

This debate was like the late round of a prize fight in which one of the boxers was woozy at the previous bell and people expect a knockout punch from the opponent. The woozy boxer, however, bounces off of his stool, lands a few punches while taking a few shots, and survives the round. Suddenly, he seems like he's back in it even though all he did was not get knocked to the canvas. This was John McCain's night. After a week and a half of serious missteps by his campaign, McCain came out, handled himself well enough, and lived to fight another day. 

For Obama, people seemed to expect a knockout punch even though this was a fight he just couldn't win. After Barrack handled himself well in the debate, Sean Hannity complained that Obama gave "book answers" and didn't really have any experience backing it up. Of course it seems that way. The fact of the matter is that Obama really doesn't have any experience backing it up. People knew that before the debate even started. Unless he stepped on stage and said he was FDR reincarnated, there was no way he could have done better than book answers. Sure, he might not have experience but he said all of the right things, had the right ideas, and seemed like he could handle the experience. The fact that he walked out of it in a draw was, in the big picture, a victory for his campaign.

In the long run, this night has to keep Democrats happy. Obama survived the debate that featured his achilles heel and seemed Presidential in answering his questions and providing plans for the future. McCain got to Obama on a couple of issues but didn't make any real dent and also didn't seem to give any indication that his plans for the future were much different than the current flawed policies. But because he held his own and didn't get knocked out of the race, it seems like a victory for McCain.

On a related note, the Sarah Palin choice really came back to haunt the Republicans in this one. While Joe Biden was working the news circuit after the debate, hammering home points for his ticket, Sarah Palin was MIA. The New Republic noted that CNN even made note of this fact because people were complaining about the lack of exposure for both parties:

"We've been getting some emails from viewers out there wondering why we spent some time interviewing Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee and not Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. We would have loved to interview--we'd still love to interview Sarah Palin. Unfortunately we asked, we didn't get that interview...We're hoping that Sarah Palin will join us at some point down the road."  - Wolf Blitzer

Instead the Republicans had Rudy Giuliani who didn't exactly help matters because after he spoke, Dick Morris opined that Giuliani's answers made it clear that the Republicans nominated the wrong person.

(Oh yeah, and everyone who was clamoring that Obama should have taken Hillary, you need to be quiet because if the Clinton name was on the ticket during this sub-prime mortgage debacle, Obama would be done.)

I think that McCain could get a small bump from tonight but with bigger, tougher rounds ahead, it was a small victory. 

Posted by SoulHonky at 09:08 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

Here's a little (well, not little, it's 47 minutes long) primer on how money works. Actually, it's more about how money doesn't work, at least not in its current form. Thanks to fellow message boarder ArquimedezMojo for posting this. After watching this, I highly recommend Knight Rider to get you back into high spirits.

Posted by SoulHonky at 12:21 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

Would McCain stop acting like Americans are complete idiots, please? This whole "Fundamentals means the American people" is just ridiculous. Just look at the speech itself. He says people are scared but the fundamentals are strong. It's pretty clear that the people and the fundamentals are not the same thing unless the people are scared of themselves.

Also, I'm surprised more democrats haven't jumped on the fact that it isn't obvious that McCain thinks the American people are a strong lot. In fact, Phil Gramm, the architect of McCain's economic plan and man who has had his hand in the current mess, called the nation a bunch of whiners. By his account, the fundamentals were strong and it was the people who weren't keeping up.
And yes, I know McCain has distanced himself from Gramm but until I hear a pledge from McCain not to hire Gramm or his lackies, I'll assume that Phil is still on the short list for a key position in the McCain White House.

Not that Obama is innocent of this as well. Anyone with a brain realizes that he made the lipstick remark in response to Sarah Palin's lipstick joke. I don't think he was calling her a pig but he also wasn't just picking that phrase out of the nowhere. In fact, I think he basically admitted what he was really getting at on Letterman (at the 1:37 mark of this clip).

Posted by SoulHonky at 11:23 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

Once again, everyone is focusing on the silliness rather than the important issues. Charlie Gibson's interview last night was very disappointing to me because it featured Gotha! questions while never really pressing the nuances that actually make running the country such a difficult job.

While everyone is focusing on Palin's ignorance over what the Bush Doctrine is, they ignore the fact that she also basically tied American military forces to the whims of Georgia and Israel. When asked about Iran's nuclear potential and whether Israel should be allowed to attack the nuke sites if they felt threatened, Palin said (three times), "We cannot second guess the steps that Israel takes to defend itself." Now, instead of going deeper into this issue, asking where the line is drawn (if it is drawn) in terms of what Israel can get away with in the name of defending themselves, Gibson simply kept asking the same nuclear question over and over. Gibson basically turned the quagmire that is the Middle East into "If Nukes bad, is Israel attack good?"

Charlie pulled the same stunt when discussing Georgia. Rather than go into the intricacies of the situation, he just kept asking if Georgia should be let into NATO and if we should defend them. It's disappointing to see the U.S. and our media focusing on this fight between Russia and Georgia and ignoring the fact that the region it's over doesn't seem to want to be a part of either Georgia or Russia. We'll protect Georgia in the name of democracy but we'll ignore Ossetia and Abkhazia because, well, we'd like to keep Georgia as an ally. This is the same logic that kept the United States from recognizing the Armenian Genocide (and the half-assed thinking that has us arming the Kurds while also looking the other way while our ally Turkey attacks them).

Now I'll admit that I myself don't know all of the details of this story but to simply ask the possible next Vice President of the USA a watered down "So do you think Georgia should be in NATO?" question is embarrassing. If everything was that simple then Sarah Palin could easily be Vice President. Hell, Sarah Jessica Parker could be the VP. But there's more to it than that and we never got the chance to find out if Palin has the chops. While some critics will fault Sarah Palin for sticking with her talking points/pre-scripted answers, the fact is that Charlie Gibson allowed her to by not touchiing on any detail or any nuance.

Even on the issue of gay marriage, Gibson dropped the ball. How? Because he didn't even ask about it. He asked if Palin thought homosexuality was learned or a choice or genetic. First off, that seems like an odd question to someone who subscribes to creationism. Besides that, who cares? It doesn't matter WHY she thinks people are gay, it matters HOW she is going to treat them. Again, Gibson asks a question that has a simple politically correct answer and then skirts the real issues. (And Whoopi Goldberg didn't help matters on The View. When McCain brought up wanting states to decide rather than the court, she brought up the fact that slavery was in the Constitution, rather than the fact that if it wasn't for the Courts, we'd probably still have segregated schools and separate but equal.)

So here we are. Exactly where we were before. The left is ridiculing Sarah Palin while the right is claiming that people are being unfair and picking on her. And honestly, I think both sides are correct.

Posted by SoulHonky at 11:59 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

I can't help but thinking that Sarah Palin is on her way to becoming the next Dan Quayle. Her recent speeches have either half truths (she was for the Bridge to Nowhere before being against it), complete mistakes (saying that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be stopped because they were costing tax payers too much money, which makes no sense because they were never federally funded), or boast a down home way of life in spite of the fact that it cost her constituents millions. Really, who puts a plane on E-Bay? What's next? Defense contracts on cragislist? Even better, her way of side-stepping the "Will you be the VP candidate?" question was to plead ignorance.

The most upsetting thing though is that most liberals seem to be celebrating comments like Matt Damon's "It's like a bad Disney film" which, although true, come off as elitist and definitely off-putting for most of the country. As usual, it seems like the old saying is holding; Republicans and Democrats are fighting for voters whom the Republicans don't really care about and whom the Democrats don't really like.

Posted by SoulHonky at 03:11 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

Just when I was excited for the kickoff of the NFL season, something came along that blew it out of water. Barrack Obama is going to visit the No Spin Zone and get interviewed by Bill O'Reilly tomorrow night at 8 pm Eastern standard time.

Honestly, I'm not sure this is good idea for Obama. O'Reilly doesn't really interview. He tries to bully and he usually resorts to a victory-via-volume tactic of shouting down those who disagree with him. He cuts people off and, even worse, doesn't matter if facts get in the way of his argument. (The much discussed Malmedy mistakes being the prime examples). Bill O'Reilly is a prima donna who is going to be firing on all cylanders tomorrow and the idea that this could even be a discussion is ridiculous since he'll never budge from his points-of-view. Even when his buddy Dennis Miller has corrected him on things, O'Reilly will begrudgingly admit that there could be something redeeming about the other side of the argument but still throws in little jabs and mocking statements to try to support his original position.

Of course, it's not like Bill O'Reilly is alone. Most news shows are just op-ed programs and blogs don't even seem to want to pretend to be unbiased. Pundits want to be celebrities. They don't want people to listen to the news as much as they want people just to listen to them speak. I guarantee every big name news personality is jealous of O'Reilly, not because of the great interview but because he's going to be as close as any of them can be to a rock star tomorrow night. There was nothing more disappointing to me than to watch Arianna Huffington's answer to the Drudge Report turn out to be nothing more than a lefty version of Drudge's site. Rather than trying to show people that she can be better, Huffington just showed she could be as bad as her opposition.

Politically, I get the move; this high profile matchup is going to make McCain's speech an afterthought (especially with many Americans skipping politics altogether to watch football) but this is a ploy that definitely could blow up in the Dems' faces. It probably won' be high minded politics but it'll almost certainly be good theater.

Posted by SoulHonky at 08:14 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

I know the media and a lot of people who needed a fix after the Olympics ended are all excited about the Democratic Convention but isn't it all just a waste of time and money? The Republican Convention in 2004 cost 154 million. I think that money could have been spent on a more worthy cause than just hyping up the candidate.

I understand why we need conventions but when the candidates are usually already selected by the time of the roll call, what's the point? I found it funny that the Obama camp was considering a shortened roll call. The whole reason for these events is supposed to be the roll call and that's what is getting cut out. I just can't get fired up or moved by many speeches that really have no purpose besides being a very expensive infomercial.  

Posted by SoulHonky at 12:07 PM | Permalink |Digg It!

This Presidential Race has been the most depressing of my life.  The campaigns started earlier than ever which is funny because the candidates are all saying less than ever. The only time someone discusses an actual issue is when they need to take a stance to shape their image as dictated by wherever the lastest polls are. And yet the media loves it.

Why? Because it is easy to report. Rather than having only a couple of candidates and actually having to put together thougtful reports on the issues, they can just go on and on about the horse race. Huckabee's an upstart! Hillary with the upset!  Ron Paul is a spoiler!  The Hillary Clinton win in New Hampshire was perfect because it gave them so many stories to discuss, from voter fraud, poor polling, Hillary's tear, was the crying faked (were the "Iron Our Shirts!" guys plants?), etc.  Anything, of course, besides something that might impact the nation.

Bill Maher asked on a recent show if Americans are a serious people.  How can he blame the people?  Politics has become a dog and pony show and the media refuses to play watchdog.  How can you blame the people?  Hell, look at Bill Maher himself. He acts like he's some beacon of truth but he's a comedian. Are we are serious people?  I don't know, is Bill a serious person?  Sitting in front of a TV camera and making wisecracks doesn't make one "serious" in my opinion. If someone was serious, wouldn't they actually be trying to DO something as opposed to commenting on it. (Am I serious person? Of course not, I live in Los Angeles. Nobody moves here to be serious.)

Will Rogers once said that "Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects" and I think the same can be said for seriousness.  Americans are serious about all sorts of different topics, from raising their kids, moving forward in their careers, helping their community, spreading their religion, making money, etc.  If most people aren't serious about politics, it's because it seems like a waste of time. Unless I'm actually going out and running for office or taking part on a community board, how can I really be "serious" about politics? Voting? Campaigning for someone? What does that change/ How can I make a serious decision when all I really have to go off are stump speeches and the alternating coverage of softball questions and muckracking? How can I really make a serious change when the all I'm voting on is why side of the same coin I prefer?

This is why most people focus on one or two issues and that's what defines an election.  Most people are serious about abortion and the war.  Make a stand on those and suddenly people will be serious about your candidacy. (The proiblem, of course, is that they could seriously oppose you and lord knows politicians don't want to tick anyone off, even their opponents, during an election)  As long as people toe the line or dance around issues, how can you expect people to respond seriosly to them? 

Elections have become glorified dating shows.  You say the right things, give off the right vibe, and you'll be in.  Whether anyone will get what they were expecting out of the relationship is anyone's guess.

Seriously. 

Posted by SoulHonky at 01:39 PM | Permalink |Digg It!