The New York Times offers up a fun toy, asking people to submit one word describing their feelings about the Obama presidency, and ranking the responses graphically by the size of the font used to display the ever-changing count.
I want to type in “vindicated”, because he certainly is vindicating my worst fears, but I don’t think that’s the way the word would be taken.
Via Tigerhawk.
[Belated update: Thanks to Hecate for the link!]
From Time Magazine’s Notebook/Verbatim/Back & Forth/Media:
‘Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization.’
– STEVE SCHMIDT, spokesman for John McCain, accusing the Gray Lady of being “150% in the tank” for McCain’s Democratic presidential rival, B. Hussein Obama
‘It’s our job to ask hard questions.’
–BILL KELLER, the newspaper’s executive editor, saying candidates are “not always comfortable with that level of scrutiny”
Bill, you lying apparatchik .
The problem isn’t that you’re asking hard questions of McCain/Palin.
The problem is exactly and precisely that you are not asking hard questions of Obama/Biden.
Next question: Does Time think that they have exposed the hypocrisy of the Fishwrap of Record?
Or does Time think Bill has squashed the objection?
‘Why Obama Could Be the Next President’
Time covers for Obama: 7. For McCain: 2 [as of 21 August]
‘The Incredible Ignorance of White Americans’
That probably means there aren’t really any hard questions to be asked about Obama, correct?
It’s not like he’s some kind of socialist radical, right?
No, seriously, the idea that Obama is being backed by hard core subversives is just right wingnut crazy talk, not worthy of serious media scrutiny, isn’t it?
It’s not as if Obama, his colleagues, and his mentors are deliberately pursuing the Cloward-Piven “strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis”, and “[hastening] the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse”, is it?
I mean, that’s the sort of paranoid thinking that results in hard-to-understand diagrams that make your head hurt, isn’t it?
Of course, when questions are asked, Obama is completely forthright with documentation, right?
1. Occidental College records — Not released
2. Columbia College records — Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper — ‘not available’
4. Harvard College records — Not released
5. Selective Service Registration — Not released
6. Medical records — Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule — ‘not available’
8. Law practice client list — Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate — Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth — Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published — None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles — None
12. Your Record of baptism — Not released or ‘not available’
13. Your Illinois State Senate records — ‘not available’
His media buddies at Google and, my gosh, Time/Warner wouldn’t be so petty as to quash a YouTube video linking Obama and his comrades to the credit crisis because of copyright claims on the background music, would they? [Here's a version without the disputed music.]
And certainly, if hard questions were asked, Obama wouldn’t pursue a scorched earth policy of muzzling critics through smears, intimidation, and censorship, would he?
Yes. They. Can. And Did.
Follow the links. Read the articles.
And understand: If you vote for Obama, and lose your home, your money, your investments, and your freedom, I will not just laugh at you. I will blame you.
Be careful what you wish for.
As I’ve said before, my Mom, an Illinois native and a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, will not be voting for Obama because she simply can’t believe he got to where he is without being beholden to Mayor Richard Daley. She’s right, of course, but I still have had a very hard time understanding why, exactly, Daley would support a socialist radical who promises to bring down capitalist power mongers like Daley.
Today I finally realized: Daley has no politics. Democrat, Republican, capitalist, socialist, Nazi, Communist — Daley doesn’t give a sour dog fart for any of it.
The key thing about Daley is that he is utterly corrupt. That means that he can be bought. All you have to do is promise Daley that you will leave him Chicago as his personal fiefdom, that you will not allow the rest of Illinois to rid itself of him and his Machine, and that you will see to it that he will receive an obscene amount of pork, which he can then plaster with “A Gift From Your Beloved Mayor” stickers and dole out to friends and cronies.
That’s why Obama’s puppet masters ran him through Daley’s Sausage Grinder: Daley is apolitical, corrupt, and has no ambition beyond the Illinois borders, but his Machine is capable of launching a robot onto the national stage.
Daley will make a fine member of the Nomenklatura.
This young lady is considering enlisting in either the Navy or the Marines. (The Air Force, apparently, has ugly uniforms, and is right out.)
All of us who know her, even me, have done a double-take: “The Marines? The Storming Iwo Jima Marines? Squeem Queen Larz in the Marines?”
We are wrong to have done so. Indeed, to my burning shame, I find myself having fallen for the same stereotype as, gack, the Puppy Trainer of Record, the New York Times. From Subsunk over at Blackfive comes this very reassuring take:
Really???? “Potentially misleading”, “selling war”, “She’s supposed to look like she’s being empowered”, “hard to think of it as empowerment”? What’s misleading about female Marines being in charge? What’s misleading about female Marines knowing how to pick up a rifle and use it? What’s misleading about portraying female Marines as Leaders. Where is selling the Iraq war mentioned in the ad?
I don’t know about you, but if a female Marine Officer struck a defensive martial arts stance on me, I wouldn’t think of it as anything other than a prelude to getting my ass kicked if I laid a hand on her. If that’s not “empowering” (God, I hate that word…it is too PC and wimpy for me), then I don’t know what is.
He corrects a few other misconceptions which, I’m pleased to say, I don’t share in the least:
It would seem [from the Times article] that our forces are taking a pounding from the enemy. While I am reasonably sure Ms. Thompson [a quoted "expert"] didn’t actually mean it that way, it is the quote the reporter chose to use, and it conveys facts which are not in evidence. The only “pounding” our guys take is the pounding their morale takes due to long deployments away from home, and the MSM characterizing them as murderers of innocents, and uneducated grunts with bad table manners and horrible breath. In the context of actual combat, while I am sure they do not appreciate incoming fire, I am equally certain that “taking a pounding” is not a sentiment that they would choose to use in describing their situations. “Giving a pounding, ass kicking, meting out excessive punishment, “getting some”, or just generally beating the living sh*t out of some assh*les who desperately deserve it” might be a more accurate portrayal of their language.
Anyway, Larz, my anxiety and doubt is relieved. Take the aptitude test, pass your physical, finish high school, sign the contract, take the Oath, get through Basic, and Kick Ass.
Remember the one thing Blackfive says the Times got right:
(And I hope it’s clear that the title of this post is meant to subvert the idea of “girly”, not to denigrate the Marines.)
Update:
Be sure to read the comments at Blackfive. Some note that the Times article can be seen in a very positive light.
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