Excerpts From Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

Here are excerpts from San Francisco Judge Richard Kramer’s ruling that California’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional:

"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners."

"The state’s protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional."

"One does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to be married. Thus, no legitimate state interest to justify the preclusion of same-sex marriage can be found."

"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts – separate but equal."

"The parade of horrible social ills envisioned by the opponents of same-sex marriage is not a necessary result from recognizing that there is a fundamental right to choose who one wants to marry."

No duh.

Kaye Grogan Outdoes Herself

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Grogan2 Kaye Grogan (pictured here) is just plain sassy and scary.  A regular columnist for Alan Keye’s Renew America website, her opinion pieces are routinely and savagely lampooned at World O’Crap and Sadly, No.  Although, to be frank, her opinion pieces hardly need any satirization — they are unintentionally hysterical to begin with.

Take this recent column of Grogan’s on the death penalty.  In it, we find this little gem of a paragraph:

Innocent victims that were murdered — deserve to have their self-defense carried out by the states. Then and only then . . . will justice prevail.

Oh, I just love Kaye when she writes like this.  But someone should tell her:

(1)  It is too late for dead people to engage in self-defense.

(2)  Even then, when the state carries out self-defense on behalf of murder victims, it is not self-defense.  You see how that works, hun?

And the paragraph before is a little gem too:

If the death penalty is not a deterrent to potential murderers . . . think how much less a deterrent it will be — to not have the death penalty in place period.

I think my head (as well as the head of every English teacher) is going to explode.

What I Heard About Iraq

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Please read in its entirety.  It is by Eliot Weinberger, copied from here.

What I Heard about Iraq

In 1992, a year after the first Gulf War, I heard Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense, say that the US had been wise not to invade Baghdad and get ‘bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq’. I heard him say: ‘The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is: not that damned many.’

In February 2001, I heard Colin Powell say that Saddam Hussein ‘has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.’

Read More

JeffJim Journalism du Jour

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

Hey, maybe I will make this a daily thing. 

From today’s fake news reporter website:

While I am on hiatus from the White House briefing room, I’m going to post the question I would have asked had I been there.  It will be interesting to see if anyone else asks it.

March 14, 2005

"On Sunday, the New York Times reported that weapons sites were looted in the weeks following the invasion of Iraq.  If there were no WMDs and the regime posed no threat as the media continues to emphasize, isn’t this an insignificant revelation?"

Well, JeffJim, I think you are referring to this New York Times story from Sunday which says this:

"In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein’s most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government’s first extensive comments on the looting."

Now, I know this is going to addle your bold little head, JeffJim, but there is a difference between (1) WMDs and other unconventional weapons; (2) machines capable of making WMDs, but not being used at all; and (3) machines capable of making WMDs which are actually being used for that purpose.

You see, JeffJim, Iraq had none of #1, but some of #2.  And the concern is that #2 got looted and now they are all #3.  Got it?  Of course, you would have figured that out . . . if you had only bothered to read the New York Times article that you use as a source.

Why Jeff Gannon Is A Moron

Ken AshfordAssisited Suicide/Schiavo, Right Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

What JeffJim GannonGuckert would have asked the President, if he could have gotten a day pass to the last White House press briefing:

Today’s Briefing Question

While I am on hiatus from the White House briefing room, I’m going to post the question I would have asked had I been there.  It will be interesting to see if anyone else asks it.

March 11, 2005

"Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman in Florida is due to be starved to death now that a judge will allow her husband to remove the feeding tube that has been keeping her alive. The President’s brother, Gov. Jeb Bush has been trying to prevent this from happening.  The President has the absolute power to grant pardons.  Will he intervene to save Terri Schiavo from what is essentially a death sentence?"

So if we say that a "mercy killing" is like a "death sentence", then it follows — legally — that the President can pardon her?

Bwwwwaaaaaaahaaahaaahaaahaaahaa!!!  What an ultra-maroon!!!

“We Report, You Decide”, My Ass

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

Not that this is "news", but . . .

On Fox News, No Shortage of Opinion, Study Finds

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 14, 2005; Page C01

In covering the Iraq war last year, 73 percent of the stories on Fox News included the opinions of the anchors and journalists reporting them, a new study says.

By contrast, 29 percent of the war reports on MSNBC and 2 percent of those on CNN included the journalists’ own views.

These findings — the figures were similar for coverage of other stories — "seem to challenge" Fox’s slogan of "we report, you decide," says the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

In a 617-page report, the group also found that "Fox is more deeply sourced than its rivals," while CNN is "the least transparent about its sources of the three cable channels, but more likely to present multiple points of view."

The project defines opinion as views that are not attributed to others.

Last March, Fox reporter Todd Connor said that "Iraq has a new interim constitution and is well on its way to democracy."

"Let’s pray it works out," said anchor David Asman.

Another time, after hearing that Iraqis helped capture a Saddam Hussein henchman, Asman said: "Boy, that’s good news if true, the Iraqis in the lead."

Fox legal editor Stan Goldman challenged the hiring of attorney Gloria Allred to represent Amber Frey (Scott Peterson’s mistress), saying: "If you want to keep a low profile, Gloria is not the lawyer to represent you."

In an interview, Fox’s executive daytime producer, Jerry Burke, says: "I encourage the anchors to be themselves. I’m certainly not going to step in and censor an anchor on any issue. . . . You don’t want to look at a cookie-cutter, force-feeding of the same items hour after hour. I think that’s part of the success of the channel, not treating our anchors like drones. They’re, number one, Americans, and number two, human beings, as well as journalists."

CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson says the study "reaffirms what anyone watching CNN already knows: CNN’s reporting is driven by news, not opinion." MSNBC declined to comment.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington-based research group, offers a three-part breakdown of cable journalists voicing their opinions. From 11 a.m. to noon, this happened on 52 percent of the stories on Fox, 50 percent on MSNBC and 2.3 percent on CNN. Among news-oriented evening shows, journalist opinions were voiced on 70 percent of the stories on Fox’s "Special Report With Brit Hume," due in part to its regular analysts panel at the show’s end; 9 percent on MSNBC’s "Countdown With Keith Olbermann"; and 9 percent on CNN’s "NewsNight With Aaron Brown."

As for the most popular prime-time shows, nearly every story — 97 percent — contained opinion on Fox’s "O’Reilly Factor"; 24 percent on MSNBC’s "Hardball With Chris Matthews"; and 0.9 percent on CNN’s "Larry King Live." King devoted nearly half his time to entertainment and lifestyle topics, twice as much as O’Reilly and more than three times as much as Matthews.

The project describes cable news reporting as pretty thin compared with the ABC, NBC and CBS evening newscasts. Only a quarter of the cable stories examined contained two or more identifiable sources, compared with 49 percent of network evening news stories and 81 percent of newspaper front-page stories.

This, says the study, is in part because cable leans heavily on live reports, 60 percent of which are based on only a single identifiable source ("the White House said today," etc.). What’s more, cable news is far more one-sided than other media outlets, with only a quarter of the stories involving controversy making more than a passing reference to a second point of view. By contrast, says the report, the network morning shows, PBS and newspaper front pages were more than three times as likely to contain a mix of views.

Cable networks "have gravitated, particularly as Fox has surged in the ratings, toward programs and somewhat less toward reporting," says Tom Rosenstiel, the group’s director. He says opinion-laden journalism "probably is part of Fox’s identity, but it’s not true of all the programs."

As for the tone of Iraq coverage, 38 percent of Fox stories were positive, compared with 20 percent on CNN and 16 percent on MSNBC, the report says. But war stories were about as likely to be neutral on Fox (39 percent), and more likely to be neutral on CNN (41 percent) and MSNBC (28 percent).

Despite its 24 hours of available air time, cable isn’t exactly bursting with new news. Seven in 10 reports involve recycling of the same subject matter, with only 10 percent adding meaningful updates. "The time required to continuously be on the air seems to take a heavy toll on the nature of the journalism presented," the report says.

On the broadcast front, journalists offered no opinions on 83 percent of the evening news stories, 89 percent of the morning news reports and 97 percent of the pieces on PBS’s "NewsHour." The biggest exception: campaign stories, where nightly news correspondents felt comfortable offering horse-race and other opinions 44 percent of the time.

One interesting contrast among the nightly newscasts: CBS was 50 percent more likely than NBC and twice as likely as ABC to air reports on disasters and other unexpected events (Dan Rather loved hurricanes). The "CBS Evening News" was also twice as likely to carry feature stories (such as the ethics of using high-tech duck decoys, or rising credit card debt) unconnected to breaking news .

The morning shows, which run at least two hours, still covered major stories less than the evening newscasts, the project says, devoting much of their time to Martha Stewart, Laci Peterson and other crime, lifestyle and celebrity topics. The morning programs were also more upbeat than not in their Iraq coverage, with positive reports 31 percent of the time and negative 19 percent. By contrast, 32 percent of Iraq stories on the nightly news casts were negative and 18 percent positive, while half were deemed neutral.

The project, which examined 16 newspapers — from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to the Bloomington, Ill., Pantagraph — praised them for offering longer and more deeply sourced stories. Overall, 7 percent of stories contained anonymous sources, down from 29 percent in 2003. But the figure was 20 percent for front-page stories at the biggest papers, compared with 7 percent at the smallest. Stories about the Iraq war were more likely to be negative (31 percent) than positive (23 percent), but just as likely to be neutral in tone (33 percent).

The newsweeklies continued a drift toward softer and broader coverage, the report says. Newsweek did six celebrity and entertainment covers last year to Time’s one, while Time did two covers on sports, two on history and one on the environment (the thinner U.S. News & World Report took a more traditional hard-news approach). Newsweek ("The Secret Lives of Wives") and Time ("Low Carb Nation") also ran a number of covers on what the project says might be called "faux trends."

(Source)

Love Me Dooce

Ken AshfordWeb RecommendationsLeave a Comment

I just noticed that Dooce.com won the 2005 Bloggie Award for (1) Best American Weblog; (2) Most Humorous Weblog and (3) Best Writing of a Weblog.

All well-deserved.  Dooce.com is the personal journal of Heather Armstrong, an ex-Mormon and all-around cutie.  Her blog has the rare distinction of becoming a generic word — "dooced" means "to be fired from one’s job because of what one posts on one’s weblog".  Heather Armstrong, as you might have guessed, got "dooced" herself.  Fortunately, that didn’t stop her from living her life and sharing it with the world.  She subsequently married a nice geeky guy named Jon, and they recently had a baby named Leta.  All of this wonderfully preserved in her weblog.

So if you want to see why Heather won the Bloggie for Best American Weblog, Most Humorous Weblog and Best Writing of a Weblog, visit dooce.com.  For starters, I suggest this post, where we get the blow-by-blow details of Leta’s birth.

Block That Metaphor!

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

Stupidity from Doug Giles:

God designed Christianity to be a 4WD spiritual vehicle with mudders, a truck that brings life to the outback.  It is not a sensitive Miata that must be preserved from going offroad and into the bush.

I’m just wondering . . . why didn’t God give Christianity bigger cupholders and DVD players for the kiddies in the back?

Spamming God

Ken AshfordAssisited Suicide/Schiavo, GodstuffLeave a Comment

Mel Gibson wants us to "hammer God with prayers and hammer him hard." (Source).  All this to keep Terry Schiavo alive.  Now, I have many thoughts on the Schiavo case, but that’s for another day. 

My point here is that I don’t think we should be "hammering God" with prayers, the way Viagra companies hammer me with ads for penis assistance . . . or the way consumer advocacy groups target their Congressman. 

I just don’t think He works that way.  I don’t think He responds to massively organized pleas, and prayer spams.  In fact, He might find the act of being "hammered" rather annoying.

Freedom on the March

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Via Oliver Willis, who reminds us that the Bush Legacy marches on.

War notoriously robs parents of their sons, but it also steals husbands and fathers, and increasingly wives and mothers. The Pentagon doesn’t keep these statistics, but using figures compiled by the Scripps-Howard News Service and other sources, NEWSWEEK has calculated that as of last week 1,043 American children had lost a parent in Iraq. To put it another way, nearly two years after the invasion on March 19, 2003, among the 1,508 American troops who have died as of March 11 were an estimated 450 fathers, and 7 mothers.

Revisionist History

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

From dribbleglass.com:

The following are actual excerpts from history reports and tests from America’s finest high schools and colleges. Spelling has been preserved.

Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics.

The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of huge triangular cubes.

They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot.

The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t have any children.

Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.

One of their children, Cain, asked, "Am I my brother’s son?"

Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients.

Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.

The airplane was invented and first flown by the Marx brothers.

Hitler’s instrumentality of terror was the Gespacho.

Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah."

Noah’s wife was Joan of Ark.

Middle Eastern history was written by Florence of Arabia.

The Soviets erected the Berlin Mall?

Plato invented reality. He was teacher to Harris Tottle, author of The Republicans.

Germany’s William II had a chimp on his shoulder and therefore had to ride his horse with only one hand.

The Germans took the by-pass around France’s Marginal Line. This was known as the "Blintz Krieg."

Corruption grew especially ripe in Zaire, where Mobutu was known to indulge in more than an occasional little armadillo.

The plurious of wealth was therefore uneven. The rural populous was reduced to tenement farming.

The Boston Tea Party was held at Pearl Harbor.

Americans wanted no involvement in the French and Indian War because they did not want to fight in India.

Moses was told by Jesus Christ to lead the people out of Egypt into the Sahaira Desert. The Book of Exodus describes this trip, including the Ten Commandments, various special effects and the building of the Suez Canal.

Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. This was a duelist religion.

During the Dark Ages it was mostly dark.

Christianity was just another mystery cult until Jesus was born. The mother of Jesus was Mary, who was different from other women because of her immaculate contraption.

The fall of empires has been a good thing, because it gives more people a chance to exploit their own people without outside interference.

Roman girls who did not marry could become Vestigal Virgins, a group of women who were dedicated to burning the internal flame.

Machiavelli, who was often unemployed, wrote The Prince to get a job with Richard Nixon.

History is nothing more than the behind of the present.

This gives incites from the anals of the past.

The British Empire is in a state of recline. Its colonies have slowly dribbled away leaving only the odd speck on the map.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther Junior was slain in the 1960s, shortly after making his famous "If I Had A Hammer" speech.

World War II began turning around when the Allies landed near Italy’s toe and gradually advanced up her leg.

Hitler shot himself in the bonker.

When the Davy Jones Index crashed in 1929 many people were left to political incineration. Some, like John Paul Sart, retreated into extraterrestrialism. The New Deal was an idea inspired by Franklin Eleanor Roosavelt.

Satan Husane invaided Kiwi and Sandy Arabia.

Spartacus led a slave rebellion in ancient Rome and then appeared in a movie about it later.

Judyism had one big God named Yahoo.

Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, and comedies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet.

Romeo’s last wish was to be laid by Juliet.

Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote.

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.

Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim’s Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress.

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence.

Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand."

Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility.

Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands.

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation.

On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.

The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

The Greeks invented three kinds of columns, Corinthian, Doric and Ironic.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.

Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.

Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus."

Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw.

Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.

Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.

It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible.

Another important invention was the circulation of blood.

Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.

Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.

Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic.

Bach died from 1750 to the present.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel.

Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he rote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.

Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis.

Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species.

Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.

The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

How To Write Like Conservatives

Ken AshfordRepublicansLeave a Comment

From the Tufts Daily (which I used write for):

How to write like conservatives

In honor of Ann Coulter’s visit to Tufts last night, here are some helpful hints for all of you aspiring right-wing pundits out there. Follow these carefully, and soon you too could be a syndicated columnist dumbing down political discourse in the pages of America’s newspapers.

First, you have to choose what type of article you would like to write. While there are many types of conservative opinion pieces, three common categories are the following:

1. The Michelle Malkin Rantathon. First, choose an aspect of popular culture that you find offensive. This can be anything from Janet Jackson’s breast to "Desperate Housewives" to low-cut jeans. Label it un-American, and claim it is a symptom of the downfall of society. Then completely ignore the fact that popular culture is created by market forces and that most large media and entertainment corporations are owned by conservatives and contribute heavily to the Republican Party. Now you are free to blame popular culture, and by extension, the downfall of society, on liberals.

2. The Ann Coulter Two-Step. Step 1. Choose a topic. Step 2. Write whatever crazy thing pops into your head as long as it is demonstrably false.

3. The Generic Conservative Student Opinion Article. Anyone who reads the Daily is familiar with these. The process begins with intense viewing of President Bush speaking. The writer must fully open his mind and allow the President’s rhetoric to overcome his sense of reason. When the writer can take no more (allow plenty of time, this may take a while), he must quickly get out a piece of paper and regurgitate as much of what he has taken in as possible. The end product should include many uses of phrases such as "freedom is on the march," "ownership society," "culture of life," "compassionate conservatism" and, perhaps, "don’t mess with Texas." Remember to read your work, carefully checking to make sure that no well-constructed and empirically supported argument has hidden itself amidst your beds of flowery rhetorical nothingness.

Now that you are well on your way to becoming a right-wing pundit, here are some additional tips. These can make all the difference in determining whether you turn into the next Bill O’Reilly or become the Alan Keyes of the media world.

Get your history book. Throw it out the window. Now, as an exercise in Academic Freedom, write your own history book. Do not include references to separation of church and state, deism, slavery, the Great Depression, McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, Watergate or the Clinton surplus. Include only one chapter on the 1990s and instead of writing it yourself, simply copy and paste the entire text of the Ken Starr Report.

Now get out your Bible. With your Sharpie, black out all the sections which do not specifically mention homosexuality. Now print the remaining passages on a three-by-five inch note card. This is your new Bible. Have it laminated.

Pose nude and post the pictures on the internet. Start a male escort service. Do not attend journalism school and do not pay your taxes. Change your name. Congratulations, you are now qualified to be a White House press correspondent. If anyone has the audacity to question your qualifications or the process by which you received your White House press credentials, he or she is clearly a raging homophobe. And, quite obviously, a slandering, treasonous liberal. If you can find any patriotism within this person (which is unlikely, considering the fact that all liberals are French-terrorist-communists who hate America) be sure to publicly question its authenticity.

Take quotes out of context to support ridiculous claims. Lie incessantly. When people object to your methods and disagree with your point of view, attack their patriotism.

Insist that all sectors of society, the media and academia for instance, which value objectivity have a liberal bias. Now use this claim to demand balance, in the form of ideological rants from the right. If someone does not agree that the media and academia are the two great cogs in the liberal/terrorist machine, attack his or her patriotism.

Sometimes journalism does not pay as well as you would like. Do not worry. If you run short of cash, the government will be happy to support you financially as long as you support it. Just make sure you vote Republican. And if anyone attacks you or the government for what may seem like unethical behavior, this person is probably either a racist or a terrorist, and of course, a dirty, dirty liberal. In any case, vehemently question his or her patriotism.

If you ever run out of things to write about, return to the basics. Ask yourself, what is the root of all that is un-American? Who embodies terrorism, communism, socialism, and fascism? No, not Osama Bin Laden, Josef Stalin, or Adolf Hitler. The answer, of course, is Bill Clinton. What other man would have a quadruple bypass to boost his favorables?

These guidelines were garnered from observing the very best: America’s right-wing punditry dream team. Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and many others have proven just how much they love America by transforming public political debate into something truly American – show business. You, too, can share in the continued fictionalization of the media. Just keep this list close to you and keep anything resembling an objective fact very far away. Don’t believe me? Maybe you just don’t love America enough.

iPotato

Ken AshfordPopular Culture1 Comment

One of the few times I was ahead of the culture curve was about two years ago when I bought my 40G iPod.  This was waaaaay before the latest Apple advertising scheme, with silohuettes and U2 and wild dancing.  That’s right — I (for once) was a trendsetter (and I still love my iPod).

But apparently, I was outdone by Nostadamus, who wrote about the iPod (some say) here:

Behold a great thunder in the ears; an orchestra in a deck of cards,
Falling from the wondrous tree of fruit.
The empire of the gates trembles at the white spaghetti noodles of the head.
Futile is the resistance, the base of all your earth harmony, belonging to a potato.

Well, that’s this guy’s theory.