Ohio Primary Update

0% reporting

Clinton 2,029 56%
Obama   1,526 42% 

oh and by the way haloscan is losing it's mind, which is i guess par for the course.

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Obama Wins Vermont

In a not unexpected result, Obama picks up Vermont. That 13 unanswered wins and in a unrelated event my server needs a reboot. brb.

and... we're back...

oh by the way, the geezer won Ohio, on the other team. and Vermont.

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Hold On!

THIS is why pilots are trained relentlessly.

And trained and trained and trained.

So in that sudden moment when everyone's lives are at stake, they will act correctly, reflexively, from their brain-stem out all the way to their automatic mental checklists, thoughts and actions.

March 1, 2008. Hamburg, Germany. Cross-winds gusting at 150 miles an hour.

The left wing strikes the runway, and the pilots still get the Lufthansa Airbus 320 (Flight LH44) inbound from Munich with 137 souls on board back into the air.

The plane landed safely afterwards on another runway.

The pilots are being hailed as heroes.

Bravo. Bravo. Bravo.

As flight crew, I've been in more than a few declared emergencies. These pilots have the right stuff.

Bravo.

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WORLD PREMIERE—Get Ready To Shake Your Moneymaker—It's A NEW Group News Blog Video Production!

But first...some background...

When the GOP picked its logo for the '08 Convention in Minneapolis late last year, I wrote the following:

“As I work in graphic design, I'm highly sensitized to...oh, how do you say...gaffes of the graphic sort. I was on vacation once, and wasn't able to supervise a promotional brochure my company was sending out. It was a book promotion featuring the Judy Blume series of “Fudge” books. (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Superfudge, Fudge-a-Mania, and Double Fudge—all about a kid named Peter Hatcher whose little brother was nicknamed “Fudge”) It was bad enough that the marketing division had myopically given my department copy—that no one caught—calling the asssortment of books a “Fudge Pack”, but then, the designer for the ad depicted the books on a brown “splash” field with the words “Fudge Pack” on what appeared to be a dark hole. Ostensibly done to pop the letters out, but you can imagine what it looked like.”

I've worked in advertising and graphic design for close to thirty years, and in TV and radio for twenty. Been in the office when a goof came back from the printers—been on set when things got shot and we looked at them later on air and said “Oh my God...how did we miss that?” There is an amazing level of planning that goes into producing content, and simultaneously a lot of by-the-seat-of-your-pants flying.

There's the contrived, shoe horned-in, subtle “message”.

There's the “What the fuck were we thinking?” myopic miss of a gaffe.

And lastly, there's the “Um...have you been hitting the Goddamn rubbing alcohol again, dude? You are fucking seeing things!” delusional moment of making something out of absolutely nothing.

Our exclusive video today is a response to one such recent example of the barking mad latter.

I wanted to think this was a joke, but it wasn't. Evidently, everyone's favorite lunatic midwestern law professor (who's unfortunately doing a semester here in New York at Brooklyn College) took the time to watch Senator Hillary Clinton's latest ad, the controversial “3.a.m. Phone Call” spot meant to promote her readiness in the event of late-night craziness on the part of foreign threats. Call it what you will—a play to fear, a call to “security moms”, “Goldwater's Revenge”—in the end, it's a hardball ad that tries to burnish her national security image. Whether it passes or fails at that is purely subjective.

Law Professor Ann Althouse however sees something in the ad so sinister, and so destructive that she found it necessary to blogospherically ride through the streets alá a buck-nekkid, keening Paul Revere and call our attention to...

“Gasp!”...a subliminal racist dig in the ad on campaign Clinton's part at Barack Obama through...I'll give you a moment to swallow any liquids you're drinking now so you don't ruin your computer screens...

...The shocking appearance of the letters “N-I-G” on the sleeping child's in the ad's pajamas.

Mind you, the pajamas read with the words “Good Night” repeated all over them everywhere (and part of the word night is those three letters), but...somehow, only the eagle (and bloodshot) -eyed Professor Althouse has sussed out the deep, mean-spirited racist code-ology of the artful cropping of the frame so that the word—or word-let “N-I-G” (actually reading “N-I-C” as part of the “G” is obscured)—is left there, all out-in-the-open to inflame...

...what exactly in the flying fuck?

I swear I thought this was a joke. A piece of parody on the oversensitivity of this campaign season that was rejected by the fine folks at “Sadly No!” because it was too off the wall to even get a laugh—instead, just a head-cocked “Ehhhhhh?” But no, Althouse is deadly serious with this—down to posting screen grabs and digital enhancements that would get laughed out of an “I Shot My Own UFO Pics” convention as being “Uh..pretty fucking dubious, man.” I mean...this is straight-up hate-fueled hallucination—all wrapped up with a bugfuck concern-troll bow garnishing the top. Wingnut projection-slash-race baiting--slash-delusions--slash-hide all the sharp stuff when you see this kook coming near—please!

I can't...I won't link to it—because I just have a personal policy of not doing direct linky-love with batshit stuff. Kind of how I vowed in my early twenties to not sleep with people I knew were certifiable. Instead, I leave it to Kevin Drum to say his piece...

BAD DAY TO STOP SNIFFING GLUE... This is one of the most harebrained posts I've ever read. I guess that means it's bound to get a link from Instapundit, right? Chris Matthews might want to investigate too.

...As do the fine folk at Lawyers, Guns & Money, and the estimable Thers at Whiskeyfire.

I mean...I know it's the so-called “Silly Season” politically, where a cartful of hay can be made from a stray fluff of kitten down, but sweet Jesus—this is simply one of the most batshit, glass-chewing lunatic blurts of hot, blogospheric air I've ever had the chuckling pleasure / deep, pitying regret to come across.

And it's NOT the first time for the professor—thus rendering the “Silly Season” moniker inoperative for her. This kind of crazy is year-round' for her. It's fucking evergreen.

She's the one who spazzed out over the “Bill Clinton meets the bloggers” photo-op a year and a half ago—freaking out about one attendee's breasts in the picture and basically...crazily accusing the woman (who she didn't know from Adam or Eve) of posing to entice President Clinton”. All in the guise of “I'm here to call bullshit on feminism”, when her dim, retrograde ass was bent on raw, unfettered Clinton hatred—of Bill and Hillary. And then when called on that hatred proceeded to simply wig the fuck out—and have it captured on internet video for-ever.

She's also the one who upon seeing Senator Clinton's Sopranos finale-inspired “Choose the campaign song” ad, mixed warmed-over Freud and peyote buttons and came up with and promoted a weird psycho-sexual angle involving the absence of onion rings in the spot, how they (somehow)represented vaginas and carrot sticks as phalluses.

I shit you not.

I let those examples of mad-cow brain-nibbled raving slide—as well as a few others, but this one...The crafty subterfuge of the “N-I-G” pajamas” is just too fucking much. It is...a desperate cry for help...followed by a nose-stinging burp, and then a projectile spewing of the deep purple contents of an entire box of wine. For the sake of those poor law students under her tutelage—who could learn more about jurisprudence from a tryptophan-hazed half viewing of a TBS-chopped showing of “My Cousin Vinny”...I am forced to act.

Thus, with apologies to the Ray Bryant Combo (doing one of my all-time favorite oldies), filmmaker John Waters, and all you old-school tail feather-shakers out there, I give you this toe-tappin' rebuttal to all things utterly insane from the mind and keyboard of our dear, “Nutty Professor”...

“It's Batshit Fool From Madison Time”

What can I say, save for...POST IT!

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Secrets and Lies

I Am The Eggman. I Am The Eggman. I Am the Douchebag!

“You know, just when I think you're the shallowest man I know, you somehow manage to drain a little bit more out of the pool.”
Elaine to Jerry—Seinfeld, Episode #59, “The Implant”

I know not to expect anything remotely resembling class from a bottom-feeding miscreant like Matt Drudge, what with his track record for blaring, and then cowardly running away from self interest-serving lies, operating as an unabashed smear hit-man for the right, and of course covering the asses of his wingnut benefactors through widely disseminated push-back (written by them). He's a disingenuous hack, masquerading as some sort of next-wave “journalist”, when in the end he couldn't write his way out of a wet paper back if his pen had a diamond tip. The key to his “success”? It is in no way related to the quality of his “reportage”. It merely is the manifestation of something my father used to tell me all the time about seeming unfairness and how merit oftentimes does not win out.

“Sometimes son...it isn't about being good. It's about being FIRST.”

Drudge? Merely the dude with an idea and a faster baud modem than his pre-histor-internet peers.

Add to that good timing a petty, and vindictive personality and his having all the scruples of a rabid jackal loping about the unguarded newborn wing of a hospital and you get the man in whole.

However, give the devil his due. The one thing the marble-mouthed cyber-thug has going for him is a well-cultivated network of snitches and lapdogs waiting with bated breath for his every gutteral utterance.

Thus, when he breaks a story—regardless of how damaging—it can hit with the force of a stray spark in a vapor-filled gas main.

He did just that late last week when he blared in a banner headline the till-then-clandestine presence of Britain's Prince Harry's serving with his fellow British troops in Afghanistan. Clandestine because of known threats against the young Royal's life, and his unit should his location become known.

Just...wow. (via Crooks & Liars)

Tsk...tsk...tsk...
The 23-year-old prince was posted in mid-December to the restive Helmand province of southern Afghanistan under a cloak of secrecy following an unusual agreement reached between the media and the army.

However, the arrangement collapsed after news was leaked on the US website, the Drudge Report, yesterday.

The ministry said the decision to withdraw the prince, who is third in line to the throne, was taken primarily because “the worldwide media coverage of Prince Harry in Afghanistan could impact on the security of those who are deployed there, as well as the risks to him as an individual soldier.”

So, this lunk-headed bomb-tosser basically jeopardized not only Prince Harry's life, but that of his unit-mates just-fucking-because? I am no fan of war—it's a disgusting, life-coarsening thing whether justified or not, but I will give serious credit to those who put their asses on the line to fight—for the poor grunts humping it for college money, or a sense of duty or family tradition. And for someone like Prince Harry who deigned to serve when he—unlike the VAST majority of the children of political privilege here in this country—could have sat on his ass, sippeing at Pimms and Sevens till he was a silver-haired do-nothing King. Via birthright he could have ducked anything—he could probably garotte “Who Want's To be A Millionaire's” Chris Tarrant in the middle of a programme and in the end, walk away unscathed.

But...he chose to serve and was doing so with an understanding that it would be kept secret as a matter of national security until apparently Matt Drudge ran out of unflattering Hillary pics to run and ran dry of synonyms for ragheaded darkie to pillory Obama with—so, he went with a stupid, attention-getting, red-cheeked shit-in-the-street leak of confidential and potentially danger-increasing information.

You know Goddamned well that were it one of President Bush's responsibility-phobic daughters' Apple-tini sodden asses on the line in a secret war-zone location, Drudge would've made the Sphinx look like a sodium-pentatholed Chris Tucker with not only his silence, but a vicious lashing out at anyone daring to break that silence.

And that's the crux of it—his naked partisanship and a-moral “fuck propriety—I'll run with any manner of story about anyone who isn't fellating me with deference and perks” style. He'll trash you not out of any sense of wrong or right (or whether what he's pushing is actually true or not—as Sidney Blumenthal, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton all would painfully find out), but just because he can, because it serves his wingnut masters, and because dirt fucking sells.

The ultimate irony is that for all his incessant muckraking on others, he's often the first to rail about someone or some entity endangering national security or his backers' interests through their actual tough investigative reporting. And the right-wing media he funnels his swill to join him in that double-standard. “How dare you release the Abu Ghraib pictures! They're inflammatory!” “We need to prosecute those in the press who leaked about this goverment's illegal secret prisons!” “Someone must pay for daring to talk about the depth of our illegality in spying on Americans”. But of course, you've barely heard a word about Drudge's shitty little line-step because he's “their boy”. Add into the mix the fact that Drudge has some nasty “secrets” about himself that he litigiously fights with all of his hypocritical, indignant might—via Crooks and Liars:

Many have asked about the egg reference in my earlier post. It comes from an article in Salon back in 2000. Jeannette Walls had a spat with Drudge over her book entitled “Dish” in which she revealed some of Matt Drudge’s preferences. She actually never mentioned anything about eggs in the book. Matt brought it out into the open:

After a mutual friend of both gossips tipped off Drudge as to just what these “lurid allegations” (about him—LM's note) were—a nasty case of pubic lice, a penchant for fully clothed sex in the shower and a bizarre egg fetish—he began to spread them himself….

“He likes to have sex with eggs. He likes them smeared all over naked male bodies.”

“It’s all very well sourced,” she told the New York Post’s Page Six. “If he offers you a bite of his omelet, take a pass.”

Splat!

And here, via Raw Story:

Drudge is a fine example of a nut-job. He’s obsessed with being known—starting non-gay rumors about himself, pestering big papers to get coverage—but wants absolutely nothing “out” about his personal life. Certainly not the kind of details he’d splash across his page, anyway. Unless it’s a rumor he tried to start about himself and Laura Ingraham. He even reportedly asked the New Times that no full body photos accompany that interview. That is either one of the gayest things I’ve ever heard or one of the craziest.

Pretty secretive little panty-sniifing (or should I say,“tighty-whit-ey sniffing”), garbage-picking parasite...ain't he? He uses his contacts and “ins” all over the place to gather dirt on pissed-off, would-be retaliators to keep them from ratting out his own creepy-fuck behavior. The day's gonna come though when somebody bigger, badder and with a more powerful “gun” than him will cut him off at the knees and leave him choking on the refuse cloud in history's dustbin. It happens to 'em all. His political and temperamental forefather Walter Winchell saw his once-mighty influence first blunted, and then quickly drained away as people finally tired of his knee-jerk reactionaryism and then saw himself mocked mercilessly in the media—particularly the scathing classic film (One of my all-time favorites) “Sweet Smell Of Success”...

“The real Walter Winchell, no longer as powerful as he'd been in the 1940s but still a man to be reckoned with, went after (screenwriter) Ernest Lehman with both barrels upon the release of Sweet Smell Of Success. Winchell was not so much offended by the unflattering portrait of himself as by the dredging up of an unpleasant domestic incident from his past.”

In the end, the once omnipotent and widely read Winchell was reduced to standing on a Hollywood street corner handing out mimeographed copies of his “column” for free to disinterested passers-by like some sandwich-boarded, nudie-show barker passing out coupons for “Live Girlz!” Drudge's years of hypocrisy—just like Winchell's—and rank amorality will certainly bring him low when the worm turns, as it always does at some point. It'll be the ultimate comeuppance for a turd-gobbling little cyber-thug like him. Countless people unfairly outed. Security and highly sensitive relationships fatally compromised. Reputations...trashed. Lives actually endangered.

All for the sake of a nasty addiction to running people down, spreading gossip, and shilling for parties who mean no one well. All that and what cheap, fleeting fame it grants. That day of payback's pimp-slap'll be a sweet and vicious one...as it is for all “can't take it” bullies.

The prescient words of a then-Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson come rushing to mind...

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

How true those words rang...especially when the bullying Tyson would ironically find himself on the receiving end of a sea-changing “punch in the mouth.”

Do “dirt” and you set yourself up for a “dirt-nap” Trade in shit, and you'll find yourself eating it. Callously play around with people's lives and you'll eventually see your own ruined.

Pimp a secret...push a lie. When fate bites back...don't wonder why.

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