whose toughest real job to-date seems to have been hanging onto Mommy's teat like grim death into his 30s, you'd think that before writing a whole book called "Liberal Fascism”, Doughy Pantload would have bothered to find out that this
(CNN) -- Sen. Joe Lieberman is crossing party lines and endorsing Republican Sen. John McCain for president. "Being a Republican is important. Being a Democrat is important. But you know what's more important than that? The interest and well-being of the United States of America," the Democrat-turned Independent said in announcing his decision Monday morning in New Hampshire. "Let's put the United States first again, and John McCain is the man as president who will help us do that," he said. Lieberman, the Democrats' vice presidential nominee in 2000, said the next president needs to "break through the reflexive partisanship that is poisoning our politics today and stopping us from getting anything done in Washington." ... He still caucuses with the Democrats, giving them their razor-thin majority in the chamber. Lieberman chairs the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, and he still attends weekly Democratic strategy meetings. But his adviser said the endorsement appears to be a "hangover" from the 2006 race, when top Democrats backed the Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, rather than support Lieberman's Independent candidacy. "I have the greatest respect for Joe, but I simply have to disagree with his decision to endorse Senator McCain," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN in a written statement. Lieberman's office called Reid's office Sunday to inform the Democratic leader of his decision to endorse a Republican, a Reid spokesman said. In response to the endorsement, Al From, founder and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council, said, "I am very saddened by Senator Lieberman's choice, and profoundly disagree with it. We need to elect a Democratic president in 2008." ...
Ah, poor Kapo Joe. Just can't help but flash those those true colors.
Can't be bothered to wait for the primaries to even begin.
Hell, just for the sake of holding one little hankie modestly over the his oozing, Republican sores, The Last Honest Man couldn't even be bothered to whore out his two-bucks-a-go ass endorse the "best" in both Parties as a token gesture in the direction of the faux "bipartisanship" altar at which he sacrificed the last shred of his character.
Betrayer of colleagues, conscience and country all in the never ending pursuit of the greater glory of...Joe Lieberman.
Sadly with Holy Joe, it will always be Lieberman First, Lieberman Last, Lieberman Always.
Happily, I cannot think of a single soul who gives two fingers of otter droppings what this political used condom has to say about a damned thing.
“B…b...but don't none 'a these words make any sense.”
“Girl you thought he was man, but he was a muffin...”
In honor of Zappadan (Ristocrats ™), I hereby relate this mostly /nearly /roughly /slightly true Zappadan Heresy to test whether it is possible to mix a drink which
A) Dangerously blends one part Andy Griffith and three parts Frank Zappa, and yet,
B) All at the same time goes down smoove, finishes clean, and gets those libidinous liberal lasses to thinking that, why yes, it would be a good idea to ditch these pesky pants wouldn’t it?
See, once upon a time when I was but a wee little shotglass, some of the more brilliant reprobates and public school pariahs out with whom I hung fell all madcrazyjunkie in love with Frank Zappa.
Now this was not a summer fling or a little occasional backseat nooner tumble; it was full-on obsession. And like your boy-tribe world after your pal starts bringing along his new, weird girlfriend -- because he cannot stop talking about her -- at some point all conversation will inevitably circle ‘round to the time she lived in Burkina Faso, or the amazing things she could do with her tongue, a soft-serve yogurt machine and a timing belt.
And so, by degrees, we made room for “Roxy & Elsewhere” and “Apostrophe” around our table, and made polite if awkward and noncommittal banter about this force of absurd nature that had somehow ensorcelled some of our friends.
The dividing line seemed to be the convergence of band and math; the higher-order math and music-reading geeks fell for Frank like Ali dropping Liston.
“Look a this block of musical notation. It’s, like, black. For eleven pages! You know what that means?”
No.
“It means to play this, he’ll need, like, 13,000 Taiko Drummers. Wearing hand-woven seaweed panties on their heads! All seated in a straight line from Philadelphia to Tulsa! All playing the same note for two hours!”
About such things they grew very excited.
Now at the time, the only blots of ink-on-paper that interested me were words, and the only words that really held my attention either began something like this:
“TRUE! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been, and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them. …”
Or something like this:
“Dear Penthouse, I never thought I would be writing you, but…”
I had a blunter palate, whetted for other things, so while I accepted on faith that a long wiggly slab of black ink on lined paper could be the spoor of genius, it didn’t move me.
And when yet another fire-hose of tin-whistles, woodwinds, hemostats tapping cat skulls and so forth was offered up to maybe, finally, get po’ slow me to understand the sheer fucking perspicacity of it all
(Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok, I believe you; I’ll do whatever you want.
Sure, “Debra Kadabra” makes Samuel Coleridge sound like Wimpy, drunk, with a mouthful of chipped concrete and YooHoo.
Captain Beefheart is the Titan from whom Frank Zappa sprang fully formed.
Or maybe the other way around.
Just please don’t make me listen to "Bat Chain Puller" anymore…” )
I could only think “Yes, this is indeed exactly what the London Philharmonic would sound like if they were all simultaneously pushed down a flight of stairs by Richard Widmark in ‘The Kiss of Death’."
In the end and over the years, I came to very much appreciate Zappa’s lively intelligence, splendid politics and outlook, and much of his music.
But I missed my chance to love him. To luuurve him.
For I was not the lad who found his passions and perversions being exuberantly everted and conjured by Frank.
Instead I was the lad who was swept along into a cow pasture where they was a’playin’ at some kinda contest I never quite understood, with some kinda peculiar rules I could not fully comprehend.
I was the musicological hick, standing with my Big Orange drink in hand -- as people cheered knowingly all around me -- straining like Hell to make an ounce of sense of the game.
Former NBC Jounalismist and current professor of All Things Jounalismish at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalismosity thinks the grubby proles and pamphleteers should keep their fucking hands off of his Fourth Estate.
Emphasis has been added…mostly just to keep my hand from punching right through my screen…
Unfettered 'citizen journalism' too risky
By DAVID HAZINSKI Published on: 12/13/07
You're beginning to get a lot more news ... from you.
It ranges from the CNN YouTube debates to political blogs to cellphone video of that sniper who opened fire at an Omaha Mall. These are all examples of so called "citizen journalism," the hot new extension of the news business where the audience becomes the reporter.
Supporters of "citizen journalism" argue it provides independent, accurate, reliable information that the traditional media don't provide. While it has its place, the reality is it really isn't journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse. The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.
The premise of citizen journalism is that regular people can now collect information and pictures with video cameras and cellphones, and distribute words and images over the Internet. Advocates argue that the acts of collecting and distributing makes these people "journalists." This is like saying someone who carries a scalpel is a "citizen surgeon" or someone who can read a law book is a "citizen lawyer." Tools are merely that. Education, skill and standards are really what make people into trusted professionals. Information without journalistic standards is called gossip.
...
So without any real standards, anyone has a right to declare himself or herself a journalist. Major media outlets also encourage it. Citizen journalism allows them to involve audiences, and it is a free source of information and video. But it is also ripe for abuse.
...
Having just anyone produce widely distributed stories without control can have the reverse effect from what advocates intend. It's just a matter of time before something like a faked Rodney King beating video appears on the air somewhere.
Journalism organizations should head that off. Citizen reports can be a valuable addition to news and information flow with some protections:
• Major news organizations must create standards to substantiate citizen-contributed information and video, and ensure its accuracy and authenticity.
• They should clarify and reinforce their own standards and work through trade organizations to enforce national standards so they have real meaning.
• Journalism schools such as mine at the University of Georgia should create mini-courses to certify citizen journalists in proper ethics and procedures, much as volunteer teachers, paramedics and sheriff's auxiliaries are trained and certified. …
…and Blogger Ethics Panels For All. Amen.
Because a “fettered” citizen journalism has an ever so much nicer, tamer, more gelded ring to it, doesn't it?
I am tempted to opine that somewhere in the Ben Hecht wing of Style Heaven, Mike Royko has put his beer down long enough to roll his eyes and pick out just the right gauge thunderbolt to drop on this truckling chufflicker. Tempted, but that would mean that I take this article seriously, when it’s so obviously a hoax.
I mean, here we have an article in which a gen-u-ine professor takes time out of his busy day to inveigh against The!Direst!Threats!to Journalissimo, and yet when I go to search it, I can’t find the word "Fox" mentioned anywhere.
Couldn’t find "Hume" either.
Or “O'Reilly".
Or "Broder".
Or "Friedman".
Or “Limbaugh”.
Or “Savage”.
Or "Matthews".
Or “Russert”.
Or “The collapse of ‘Nightline’”.
Or “Roger Fucking Ailes”.
Or “The shuttering of foreign bureaus”.
Or “The Rise of Corporate Media”.
Or “The Firing of Phil Donahue”:
Or “Media Consolidation”.
Or “The killing of the Fairness Doctrine”.
Or “Tony Snow”.
Or “Charles Krauthammer”.
Neither “Joe Klein” nor “Joke Line”.
No “Jonah Goldberg”.
No “Karl Rove getting his journo card punched by Newsweek”.
No “Jeff Gannon” or “James Guckert”.
No “Michele Malkin”.
No “Lou Dobbs”.
Judith Miller was nowhere to be found.
Bob Novak? MIA.
No “David Gregory”.
No mention of “Downing Street” or “Macaca” or “Justice Department Political Purges” or any other of a dozen stories broken or kept in the public eye by citizen journalists because The Villagers did not want them in the store window of the MSM Outlet Mall.
No mention of “The Gaggle”.
Or “Rolling over for Tony Snow”.
Or “Rolling over for Scott McClellan”.
Or “Rolling over for Ari Fleischer”.
Or “Hardball”.
Or “Cross Fire”.
No “Chris Wallace”.
No “Bill Kristol”.
No “Neil Cavuto”.
Didn't find a-one of 'em mentioned; just the perils of letting the Great Unwashed paw at Lady Media's Fun Bags without a J-school degree and a moist towelette.
Which is odd, because frankly, Professor Hazinski, if Journalomysticism had not failed the citizens of the United States so utterly, callously, completely, conspicuously and spectacularly over the last 30 years – if your profession had not deserted its post and let a great, rotting, pin-head-infested abyss take over the sacred real estate once tenanted by a robust and fearless American Journalism – then maybe there would not be so many Smelly Citizen Journalists, desperately tossing their little torches into the Vast Darkness your colleagues and owners left behind when they turned tail and ran away.
Kevin Drum has the actually story, and not my irresponsible speculations: WHO KNEW?....A "former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the episode" tells the New York Times that lawyers within the clandestine branch of the CIA approved the destruction of those videotaped interrogations in 2005:
The former intelligence official acknowledged that there had been nearly two years of debate among government agencies about what to do with the tapes, and that lawyers within the White House and the Justice Department had in 2003 advised against a plan to destroy them.
....In describing the decision to destroy the tapes, current and former officials said John A. Rizzo, the agency's top lawyer at the time, was not asked for final approval before the tapes were destroyed, although Mr. Rizzo had been involved in discussions for two years about the tapes.
...."Although unlikely, it is conceivable that once a C.I.A. officer got the answer he wanted from a D.O. lawyer, he acted on that advice," said John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer between 2002 and 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota....Mr. Radsan added, "I'd be surprised that even the chief D.O. lawyer made a decision of that magnitude without bringing the General Counsel's front office into the loop."
Let me get this straight. The White House had been in the loop for two years. The CIA had received letters from both the Justice Department and congressional leaders arguing that the tapes shouldn't be destroyed. ...
Really? Does anyone actually believe this story?
Countdown to Dubya's own tousled Tokyo Rosegarden -- Dana Perino - declaiming "No one could have predicted the destruction of the evidence..."
