Sunday Morning Sit Down Stand Up Comedy

[enhanced_deficit]

Not convinced that MSM owners/Hollywood going out of business will completely cripple MIC war adventurism.. even if it puts a serious dent on SWCbaggery in US politics.
Circus must go on.

[acptulsa]

It's pretty cookie cutter so far this morning, and hard on the old system.

TERRORISM! TERRORISTS ATTACKING SATARISTS! SHARIA! SCARY TOWELHEADS! HIDE UNDER THE BED! BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID!!!

*yawn*

Oh, and good news! Romney's running for president again!

AAACK!!

Oh, and Fox mixed things up a bit by becoming a paid commercial program for the Keystone Pipeline in the middle.

Best line, This Week: 'The Republican establishment doesn't want Ted Cruz or Rand Paul...'--Robert Reich

Best line, Meet the Press: 'There are some things you can't talk about in France...'

Best line, Fox: 'Am I being micromanaged? Let me check with the White House and see.'--Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs

Best line, Faze the Nation: 'Are you [Eric Holder] going to make the decision whether to prosecute Gen. Petraeus or are you going to leave that to your predecessor?'--Bob Scheiffer

Bottom line: Because a couple of guys with no ties to ISIS attacked free speech in a country that doesn't even really pretend to have free speech, and about the same time in the same country, some guy who robbed some random grocery store has no ties to ISIS in Yemen either but allegedly pledged alliegence to it anyway, we should attack ISIS in Syria. Oh, and Romney is going to help split the conservative vote along with Cruz so no Pauls muck up the upcoming rub-our-noses-in-their-royal-status Bush against Clinton election.

Time for football yet?

[acptulsa]

This Week: BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID! ROMNEY IS RUNNING!!

No, wait. We meant, be afraid of terrorists and be glad Romney is running...

Meet the Press: Thousands of Europeans are going to Syria to fight for ISIS!

No calls for us to do right what was started in Paris and attack France--yet. But they are admitting that Charlie Hebdo works at being offensive.

Lindsay Graham is saying that thousands of people are dying in Syria because Obama isn't vigilant enough. Gee, I thought it was too much American diligence that was getting Syrians killed...

Anyone who's interested in making a vid wherein Fox is shown saying Romney was electable and Rupert Murdoch saying he was a terrible candidate will do well to capture Meet the Press today, as Rupert Murdoch did say that Romney was not a good candidate and NBC was pointing a camera at him at the time.

As for Fox, at least they're breaking the terrorism-Romney monotony by talking about same sex marriage. Or, rather, they would be, if that discussion weren't completely grounded on familiar ground and extraordinarily boring.

'It's very hard to achieve unanimity in American politics, especially among contentious Republicans, but this week Mitt Romney did so. No one is expressing a pent-up desire to see Mitt Romney run.'--George Will

Faze the Nation has nothing different to say, but brought in David Cameron and Marco Rubio to say it. He says categorically that Obama's talks with Iran will go nowhere, seemingly simply because the people in charge of Iran are radical and Muslim. Which, I guess, means he doesn't think Obama is a Muslim after all, or he'd think they'd have common ground...

And speaking of common ground, I think everyone can agree on a bipartisan basis that White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer is very good at talking a lot but saying nothing. About the most controversial thing he had to say is he wants to see if Republicans and Democrats in Washington '...can find agreement on the things we agree on.'

Earth-shattering revelations of the week: The powers that be apparently think they've made us sick of them playing the race card, because MLK Day is tomorrow yet they hardly mentioned the guy. And those used to hearing Obama raise taxes, pretend to soak the rich, and pretend to give it to the poor will be pleased to hear of a bold, new, unprecedented departure from business as usual during the State of the Union address. Obama will raise taxes, pretend he's going to soak the rich, and pretend he's going to give that to the middle class.

For those who slept through all this, good job. For those who wanted to sleep through this, but woke up--you should have tuned in. You'd have been asleep again in no time.

[acptulsa]

So far the Sunday Morning Blather Shows are all right out of the cookie cutter. If Fox News Sunday Morning and Meet the Press really are both done live, then White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has been cloned. To jump in the middle of Yemen's civil war would 'not be sustainable,' so we're not going to do it--but since we're already there trying to bomb ISIS, it's doubtful that anyone will notice that we're pretending to honor their sovereignty. In spite of considerable evidence to the contrary, Obama really does love Israel and Netenyahu. And though everyone admits that what is happening to the middle class is that their wages are stagnant while prices are not, the notion that a solid currency could put a stop to that isn't even worth mentioning.

Each network followed up coverage of the potential Republican presidential candidate get together in Iowa with an interview of a potential Republican presidential candidate. NBC decided to stand out from the crowd by having someone on who was actually there--Huckabee, who insists that he hasn't flip-flopped on various issues like Common Core, but rather various issues like Common Core have flip flopped on him. Fox decided to stand out from the crowd by allowing their Republican guest (Ohio governor Kasich) to talk about something besides gay marriage for more than half his allotted time.

We all got to take a break from football to focus on important things--for a minute. But apparently football is politics, because every one of the esteemed outlets for important and meaningful adult conversation covered the subject. And apparently the highly questionable bit of science that allows a drop in temperature to shrink the air in footballs enough to decrease the pressure inside one one side of the field but not on the other was 'very educational'.

And we got some free elective time, which This Week spent talking about how Guantanimo Bay isn't closed yet, Meet the Press spent with Kareem Abdul-Jabar making some really good points about Islam with all the erudition you'd expect of a retired basketball player, and Fox spent in praise of Ernie Banks, the first Cub of color and one of that team's best sluggers ever. If their credibility can be measured by seeing how much time they didn't spend talking sports and/or talking to sports stars, then for once the new home of Billy Kristol, ABC's This Week, win's this week's prize.

Stay tuned! A thrilling hour of Faze the Nation is on the way!

God I hope Faze the Nation broke the cookie cutter. After giving Denis McDonough eighty or ninety seconds, they had a Republican on, just like everyone else. But if John McCain is throwing his hat in the ring again, just shoot me.

Fortunately he didn't say so. He just told us to be afraid, be very afraid. As usual.

Now they have Dianne Feinstein on. Maybe she heard all three of the panels we've heard from this morning saying that even though neither McCain nor Romney were ever conservative, Republicans keep losing because the conservatives in the party keep beating up their nominees for not being conservative and they're then too battered to win. So, maybe Feinstein is thinking of running for the presidency on the Republican ticket. Which might cut down on the charges of hypocrisy. But won't tell us if Republicans keep losing because Americans are past ready for a conservative president.

So far, though, all she has to say is that we should be afraid, very afraid...

Well, they definitely broke the cookie cutter. No deflated balls on Faze the Nation. It would have taken too much time away from the Westinghouse-approved fearmongering. Besides, if they had talked about that, they'd have had less time to eulogize SkyMall. And if they had talked about Republicans in Iowa, they'd have had less time to talk about Republicans who weren't there--specifically Romney and Bush.

But in one way, CBS stuck right to the script. The Son of He Who Must Not Be Named must not be named...

[enhanced_deficit]

There was a link for "nbc promo monkeys" around.

[surf]

thank you

[acptulsa]

This Week With George Stephanopolous without George Stephanopolous says we should be afraid, be very afraid! We should be terrified by measles, we should be mortified by terrorism, and we should be afraid of Gov. Scott Walker, too!

Well, all right, we shouldn't be afraid of Scott Walker--hell, he's right here in our studio, telling us he wants to fight any terrorists anywhere, telling us he wants to grow the economy from the ground up, and just generally telling us all kinds of things some Republicans want to hear but never once telling us any specifics about how he intends to pull it off. About the only specific thing he said is he thinks people 'don't want to go back' to the past. He was pretending to talk about Clinton...

But you are afraid of Scott Walker, if you're a Democrat. The Des Moines Register did a poll, and Walker won by a point over second place Rand Paul (whose name was mentioned, if briefly, between Walker's and Romney's). So, Democrats are afraid of him, but Republicans should be. Apparently Fox no longer has a monopoly on telling Republicans how to lose.

Meet the Press is the one advertising itself as the Super Bowl Prepreprepregame Show. If you want a rousing review of brain damage you have only seconds left to get tuned in, assuming you don't figure Meet the Press talks about brain damage every Sunday. They opened by trying to get Paul Ryan to do some Monday morning quarterbacking concerning Romney the dropout. He declined. He wanted to talk abut the tax code. Not spending, mind you. But Chuck Todd did talk about the Register poll. Oh, aren't those Republicans amusing that Romney had to drop out for Bush to make the top five--under Ben Carson--by 'second choice redistribution'.

I think Meet the Press is slightly better since Chuck Todd took over. But it's still funny. They're covering the Super Bowl only because Commissioner Goodell is a whole lot like a politician. Oh, and this very network's five boring hours of Super Bowl coverage starts right after this show so stay tuned!

Fox, meanwhile, opened by talking about how disorganized the War on Terror is, and when they talk about how we negotiated with the Taliban because it isn't a terrorist state but not ISIS because it is a terrorist state one minute, then tell us that the Taliban and ISIS are starting to work together the next minute, it's easy to believe. Now they're apologizing for the Common Core by trying to pretend they're simple standards, and the Department of Education isn't really trying to micromismanage our schools. In a 'fair and balanced' manner, of course...

Faze the Nation wants you to be afraid, be very afraid of terrorism. They called Jordan to find out why we should hide under our beds. They called South Carolina (of course). They called in a Reagan Administration fossi--er, I mean former official. They called in Dickie Durbin to show us Democrats think we should hide under our beds. If they keep this up much longer, they won't be able to keep their promise to convince us to hide under our beds from measles.

Well, they didn't spend much time on measles. Faze the Nation has more important things to do, in light of the fact that Walker and Paul finished one-two in the Des Moines Register poll, and Bush couldn't beat Carson. The important message? Simple. Iowa has no desire to see an establishment Republican nominated for president. Oh, and as a completely unrelated aside, and completely by coincidence, we've now determined that it used to be the conventional wisdom that a candidate had to finish in the top three in Iowa to win the nomination, but suddenly and mysteriously that just isn't true any more.

With the notable exception of Gov. Walker, who voted for Russell Wilson but not for his team, and Gwen Ifill, who voted for nachos, most of the talking heads are boldly proclaiming that New England will win. Which just goes to show, as far as the talking head class are concerned, that cheaters always prosper. Or, at least, they should...

[acptulsa]

With the notable exception of Gov. Walker, who voted for Russell Wilson but not for his team...

Well, I guess Gov. Walker isn't terribly prescient. The Seahawks had it won until Wilson threw it all away.

[acptulsa]

This Week With George Stephanopolous without George Stephanopolous says we should be afraid, be very afraid! Be afraid of ISIS because it's more scary than al Qaeda ever was! Be afraid not to tackle Russia because even though the Ukraine went through three or four governments in, like, two years, Ted Cruz says we have a treaty with them and Obama's violating it! Be afraid of Hillary Clinton--no, that's not right, you have nothing to fear from sweet, lovable, grandmotherly Hillary Clinton, unless you're foolish enough to run against her. Be afraid to back anyone on the Republican side but Bush because no one can beat the Bush Machine. And be afraid that the Baby Santorum piece will send you scrambling for your insulin.

But don't be afraid that there are writers out there today who were as erudite as Rosa Parks was, but like Rosa Parks, will never be heard. Because it may have taken sixty years, but we're finally letting you hear a few good, choice phrases by Rosa Parks, so the deep thinkers today are bound to be heard fifty or sixty years from now.

Why not now? Sorry, used up three minutes on Rosa Parks, and we gotta go...

Both Fox and Meet the Press are leading off by showing Susan Rice warning us not to be susceptible to alarmism from the 24 hour news cycle, then filling up the first part of their portion of the news cycle with alarmism--courtesy of the requisite retired general on Fox, and Kerry himself on NBC--who aren't telling us why Rice is wrong, but are instead trying to lose us in tactical details. By the way, Ben Carson fans will be interested to hear he scored himself a Fox interview (coming up shortly) by agreeing to disagree with Rand Paul about vaccinations.

And while Fox explores the idea that the war on terror is being as micromismanaged from the White House as Vietnam was, Meet the Press showed a short Rand Paul clip--and are now defining those who question a vaccine or two as 'fringe' and pinging on Paul and Christie for pandering to them. But, of course, his position was quite reasonable, so they've stopped playing clips of him, started playing clips of Beck, and are slamming Paul for what Beck said. Beck gets a pass for his whole rambling rant because he's not a doctor, but Rand doesn't get a pass for suggesting Beck might have buried one valid point in there because Rand is a doctor. And best of all, they seem to have already forgotten that Christie said something similar.

'You don't have to be a lifelong politician to have common sense. Sometimes I think the longer you're in there the less common sense you have.'--Ben Carson

NBC came out of commercial and started talking about their own Brian Williams quitting, so I went to fill my coffee cup. By the time I got back they had already gone to another commercial...

'This [race without a clear frontrunner] is unlike anything we've seen in fifty years on the Republican side.'--Karl Rove

Faze the Nation: Be afraid of ISIS! Be afraid of measles!! Be afraid of everything but that strong feeling of deja vu you're getting right now!!! Yeah you heard all this earlier today, and from us last week. And the week before. And the week before that. But trust us! This is news!! Because ISIS is "more better organized" than al Qaeda ever was, and OMG ISIS makes better youtube videos!!

Not that they have no new twists at all. If you're a Russian national, you should be afraid that Putin's opportunism in exploiting a 'Western' weakness and glomming onto the Crimea means you can never, ever join the EU. And since there are people on the internet who distrust vaccines, you should be afraid of the 'net too. After all, newspapers have someone on staff who knows which corporate client is pushing the Official Agenda. On the internet you don't know where that stuff comes from!

Scheiffer is now asking if this will cease to be an issue now that he is drumming up all the blowback he can to scare all the candidates into getting on the same page. Seriously, except he's not taking as much credit for it as I make it sound like he is.

And while the Faze the Nation panel admits that ISIS isn't an existential threat to the U.S. but it is a threat and it does exist and just generally chases its own tail, I am going to suggest that whether you like Dr. Ben Carson or not, he said some things about the politics of division on Fox this morning that we would do well--both tactically and strategically--to make viral this week if we can. They invited him on to talk nice about vaccines, but he slipped that in and we should get it out there.

Sure beats t00bing the hours they spent trying to convince us that if you let your neighbors have a little liberty, your children will die.

[acptulsa]

Is it just me, or is This Week taking on an air of desperation? Dead cartoonists in Europe! They drew Mohammed! What? No, it isn't old news! This isn't in Paris, it's in Copenhagen! Really! ISIS is more frightening than al Qaeda! Al Qaeda merely allegedly brought down two of the tallest buildings in the world--ISIS dresses Japanese people and pudgy American girls with cute smiles up in Huntsville-surplus Prison Orange and cuts their heads off in front of photoshopped sand! Barbara Bush decided it isn't bad that we can only choose our president from one of two families! There might be some Democrat who isn't afraid to run against The Hillary Clinton Machine! There might! Wh don't know who, but it could happen! Jon Stewart retired!! OMG!!!

Your excitement is underwhelming. *sniff* We do and do and do for you and you sit there with your Sunday Morning coffee in your hand and your eyelids just droop. It isn't like we get to choose what we present here. We get paid well to convince you to either go to church or sleep in on Sundays. Only interesting moment: Rep. Adam Schiff said the Congressional authority to declare war is an anachronism.

NBC and Fox are saying pretty much the same thing, but without sounding quite so desperate to seem relevant and interesting. Of course, The Left Channel has McCain and The Right Channel has Boehner. The best This Week could boast was ever stupid yet arrogant Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. Besides, they're both covering a different angle--'Yes, we got along just fine without a Department of Homeland Security for 225 years, and it has clearly not done what it was supposed to do with regards to making the thirteen law enforcement agencies play nice together, but what if it loses funding?! Be AFRAID!! It's amusing to see them trying to wriggle out from under the blame for DHS losing funding while sitting here thinking how much credit the responsible parties would deserve for that.

But at least Boehner is on Fox criticizing Clinton for Benghazi.

This hour of Sunday morning gets interesting sometimes for the contrasts. NBC has the new head of the VA on trying to make the liberals cry for poor, victimized, homeless veteran soldiers, perhaps to convince them to send them back to war where they belong, and Fox has Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on shouting and drawling and sticking his fingers in his ears to make Republicans wonder if they're on the right side of the gay marriage issue.

Now Fox is trying to sell us another war in another indefinite country against another paper terrist tiger. On a far more serious note, NBC is interviewing Dana Carvey. Which makes the second time this month that Meet the Press has largely been a commercial for a show on NBC later in the day, in this case a 40th anniversary SNL recap. Isn't that special?

'We're going to have a robust set of hearings.'--Sen. Bob Corker

A robust set of hearings? Why do half these suited clowns sound like English is their second language?

And after Corker's gobbledygook? Faze the Nation did a twenty minute lesson by Rep. John Lewis of Georgia on how to turn one scar from a billy club into a fifty year political career. Just make sure you get that scar on the Edmund Pettis Bridge.

'They're investigating the predicate of the killing.'--Brainless Faze the Nation talking head

They're investigation the part of the killing after the verb? It isn't just Faze the Nation's guests who have some difficulty with English. Why does all political talk in this nation these days misuse words? Just a good way to appear to say something but say nothing?

[acptulsa]

Well, George is back on This Week. I liked his vacation more.

Leadoff: ISIS! After vilifying Muslims, ABC actually talked nice about a few Muslims, and talked about how ISIS is doing more recruiting from Europe than the U.S. because we treat Muslims better. Then we got the Lindsay Graham Cliche' Show. Why vote for Graham for president? Peace Through Security! Why do 58% of the people in South Carolina think he should give up on the presidency, stay home and shut up? They're Democrats! What should be done about the economy and the debt? Do what Tip O'Neil and Ronald Reagan did--triple it! Oh, wait, that's not what Graham said, he said do like O'Neil and Reagan did, tackle entitlements. But tripling the debt is, in fact, what O'Neil and Reagan did...

At the end of the first half hour, Billy Kristol finds himself defending the Iraq War. He actually says Iraqis were safer at the end of that war than they were under Saddam Hussein. It was amusing, in a rubberneck at the wreck kind of a way.

It would seem they want to keep the Democrats busy, lest they cross over and vote for Rand Paul in the primaries. So, how are they going to do it? Bernie Sanders! And they're playing him up! Prepare your memes of liberals trashing Ron Paul because of his age--you're about to see those same people get awfully sanctimonious about ageism.

Now we get Billy Kristol trying to deliberately torpedo the GOP. Sanders' populist message got one panelist talking about how the Democratic Party is the party of Washington and Wall St. and people are finally figuring that out. So, right on clue, Kristol starts talking about how Cruz and Walker are just average, middle class Joes. And that was the end of this week's This Week panel discussion.

This Week just came amazingly close to having an intelligent discussion of race. They had a young and an old African American on, and after the young one foamed at the mouth about what needs to be done to force the playing field to be level, the older gentleman said that all this focus on it makes it worse, not better, and what certain people need is what everyone needs--liberty and a focus on getting on with their lives. I don't know if he was specifically chosen because he spoke slowly and was kind of hard to listen to. But he made an amazing amount of sense for someone on the This Week soundstage.

'So, President Obama doesn't sound any different than President Bush or Vice President Cheney.'--Chuck Todd

Yup--he said it, in the first five minutes of Meet the Press. And if you take it out of context, it isn't any less truthful. Snag the clip before it gets flushed down the memory hole. Oh, and Fox is also talking about how America doesn't hate the Muslims it's killing wholesale.

So after Fox talks strategy against ISIS for a while and NBC talks about how wonderful it is when 9iu11iani makes an ass of himself--again--NBC announces that after the commercial it will be talking about whether the Mall of America is safe from terrorism. Considering how soft the market for mall space is right now, I wonder which side the owners of that white elephant are on? And I can't help but wonder if America would be a better place if it were converted to rubble...

After blathering about voters and ID cards, Meet the Press is now threatening to try to mix politics and the Oscars. I guess the awards show, like the Super Bowl, is on NBC this year and now the former Super Bowl Pre-Pre-Pre Game Show and Saturday Night Live Pre-Pre-Pre Anniversary Show is about to become the Pre-Pre-Pre Academy Show. Which beats listening to Mike Pence telling us how we have to eradicate ISIS for the health and welfare of Indiana.

'If you're running for president, there are certain questions you know how to answer no matter what you think. Do you believe in evolution? Yup! Do you think the president is patriotic? Yes!'--George Will

Chuck Todd is literally having the Meet the Press panel tell us who their favorite fictional presidents are. If Obama really was born in Kenya, he's probably the whole panel's favorite fictional president, but his name didn't come up.

Well, after having a spokesman for the DHS on to say we shouldn't shy away from the Mall of America, but should risk death to preserve American mercantilism, Faze the Nation is giving us Johnny McCain telling us ISIS is the scariest terror group ever, presumably even scarier than the Christians who went to the Middle East during the Crusades. Boogity boogity! McCain is ashamed of his country, because it isn't propping up the Ukrainian army. He's ashamed of himself, too. We're getting some interesting sound bites this morning.

Texas Gov Greg Abbott, invited on to Faze the Nation to talk about immigration and the border, was kind enough to give a shout out to Rand Paul. One of their panelists, Danielle Pletka, just stole my He Who Must Not Be Named meme, but applied it to Muslim extremists apparently in support of hating Muslims for being Muslim. I wish I could claim copyright and sue her; I didn't coin that phrase to be used to divide and conquer We, the People.

[acptulsa]

Here's why you should blame the DHS shutdown on Republicans (Fox not excepted), here's a break from ISIS fearmongering because we need to do some Iran fearmongering, Putin = Stalin, all Sunday Morning shows have a CPAC speaker on but somehow no one wound up with the winner, and most of all, here's why it just doesn't matter that real, conservative people showed up at CPAC and Rand Paul won, and why it does matter that Jeb Bush was able to spend millions busing in astroturf and buy fifth place--because God forbid you mundanes overestimate the power of the people in this republic and underestimate the power of the purse.

P.S. If I told you that when John Dickerson conducts and interview, the questions are longer than the answers, would you be at all surprised?

[enhanced_deficit]

Very good points there.

Media circus used to be a good drama, don't watch it anymore.

Feb 15th Headline: Boehner Says Homeland Security Could Go Unfunded

[Mach]

Then comes Graham, who as a senator from the Carolinas is obviously an expert on the NYPD. Did he say he blames only the shooter or 'the $#@!ter'? Hacking a Japanese company's emails is an act of terrorism in Graham's world and not going to war with them is a huge boon to Iran. Oh, and he almost said there will be an ambassador to Cuba only over his dead body--and I almost got my hopes up, too. I've heard worse ideas.

LOL!

Lots of good stuff up there, I'm commenting here to use you to be informed of further updates.

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

[acptulsa]

Dear This Week: Do you really expect us to believe that racism is strictly a Republican Party phenomenon, despite the fact that segregation was invented after the Civil War by Democrats? Does Colin Powell really expect us to believe he was lied to about yellowcake uranium because he was the token black cabinet member, not because he was black and Dubya and Cheney hoped to accuse anyone who found out about their lies of racism? Did you put a tack in Halpern's chair so he could say that reporters think they're protecting us with a straight face?

Fox, do you really consider Huckabee an authority on State Department email protocols, or did you just smell a rare opportunity for this RINO to disagree with a Democrat? Meet the Press, do you really think Feinstein is an authority on State Department email protocols, or can you merely not think of a more reliable Democratic stooge? Chris Wallace, why did you invite Lanny Davis onto your show if you had no intention of letting him finish one single sentence? Do you think you're Mike Wallace? Were you really that interested in making him look like a reasonable person and a sympathetic figure?

'You conceal in order to control and that's what makes this literally Orwellian.'--George Will on Clinton's email shenanigans

Dear Faze the Nation: Did you try to sell the idea of having Chuck Schumer vouch for Hillary Clinton's character to Saturday Night Live before you ran with it? Because it isn't very funny with the real Schumer, but the concept is absolutely priceless.

Well, I've seen the replay of the Selma speech four times now, and all I can say is Obama wants to imitate MLK's style so bad. And that's how he does it--so bad.

[edward222]

Of course, everyone is talking about Bill Cosby, because we all know by now that the Sunday Morning political shows are just the place to talk about entertainers. This is the first time I remember the subject of Cosby being the unfunniest part of a conversation in my life. ABC, NBC and Fox all drove their nails; old Dr. Bill still has one foot hanging out there off his cross waiting for CBS's nail.

At least one or two of them acknowledged that the man did quite a lot to improve race relations in this nation--before his crucifixion.

Bill said: "Dear Fans: For 53 years you have given me your love, support, respect and trust," his statement began. "Thank you! I can't wait to see your smiling faces and warm your hearts with a wonderful gift — LAUGHTER. I'm ready!

[acptulsa]

Retrenchment week. We can't convince you to Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!! (TM) of IS, then we will go back to trying to convince you to Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid!! (TM) of Iran. If we can't convince you to stop asking questions about Benghazi then we'll distract you with emailgate. If you won't buy another Clinton, we'll present you with Alternate Approved Candidate Jim Webb. If you won't buy another Bush we'll inundate you with Alternate Approved Candidate Scott Walker. If we can't stir up enough racial strife by shooting a brown youth named Brown, we'll leave a couple of Ferguson cops out on the firing line to get popped--and tell you that Ferguson should become another federal protectorate like D.C.--or, at least, get its charter revoked in favor of the county, because if one small government is bad then obviously all small governments are bad.

Nothing to report this week--nothing I can do so far but provide reflections of serious deflections.

[acptulsa]

This Week: Iran, Yemen as innocent victim, we have permission to listen to Monica Lewinsky talk about being cyberbullied because she doesn't trash the Clintons, Hillary needs someone to run against her because that might get someone besides Hillary Clinton rooting for her.

Fox: They want to go to war with Iran so bad the Head Spook in Charge, John Brennan, is allowing a camera to be pointed at him. Feed the Press: They will actually talk about something else--namely catastrophic climate change--as soon as the Israeli ambassador is through beating those same war drums. If anyone is putting together a war drums compilation for youtube showing Dubya trying to stir the $#@! and moving up to the present, today is the morning to capture video. The main difference is, for the first time in my memory, the ambassador is actually taking a little time away from warmongering to try to repair strained relations between Israel and the U.S. He's doing it, of course, by playing the victim card. Be Afraid Be Very Afraid (TM) for Israel!

'The discomfort associated with that is becoming more uncomfortable.'--Head Spook In Charge John Brennan

'Obama is doing the same thing to Israel that he does to the Tea Party, and in this case it's incredibly immature and dangerous.'--Laura Ingraham

It was pretty funny watching Chuck Todd try to keep a straight face while he said that the fact that 95% of Republican primary voters are white, only 62% of Democratic primary voters are white, and about 70% of general election voters are expected to be white means the GOP is fated to automatically lose the general election. Seems to me NBC would not only be more accurate, but would serve its ostensible interests better, to point out that the GOP' surest recipe for failure would be for all those white people to listen to Fox before they vote in the primaries.

Faze the Nation broke the mold--sort of. They started out selling us on the notion that we should Be Afraid Be Very Afraid (TM) of Iran, and we should Be Afraid Be Very Afraid (TM) of the notion of losing Israel as an ally, which is kind of a new twist. But the second half of the show seems to be dedicated to telling us we should Be Afraid Be Very Afraid (TM) of playing football.

Not quite. Peggy Noonan just admitted that U.S.-Israeli relations are the worst they have ever been since '...the U.S. created Israel.' Interesting end to the Faze the Nation panel discussion. Yeah, Hillary Clinton is scandal-ridden and downright Nixonian in her seeming belief that the rules don't apply to her. But Republicans can not capitalize on that unless they actually get their own house in order. Certainly a departure from the usual 'lesser of two evils' convention.

[acptulsa]

That German co-pilot was on the downside of a short career--he had some kind of degenerative problem with his eyes, and would soon be too blind for the cockpit. What his doctor prescribed for the natural resultant depression was not discussed, though 'Sully' Sullenberger did admit that pilots can be certified to fly on anti-depressants. And there was a key to the cockpit door--the Germans keep an axe hidden in the passenger section of each aircraft.

And that was as close as we got to news. It would seem somewhere during the course of this year, the propagandizers got concerned about whether anyone was continuing to listen to and believe them. Admissions are now being made that, even as we arm people to fight Iranian elements in Yemen, we have also allied with them in that nation we fought two amazingly expensive wars to straighten out for all time--Iraq (though they did not emphasize our spectacular failure to stabilize the nation whose ass we just kicked twice). ISIS/ISIL is no longer talked about at all, now that everyone knows it was created by the CIA, though the Saudi ambassador and the Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee seem to have been left off the list to get that memo.

And best of all, they seem to have figured out that a reprise and rematch of the Clinton v. Bush 1992 election would piss us right off. But they seem uncertain what to do about it, since they seem to understand that it would take an awfully silly choice by Republicans, like Cruz or Rubio, to arrange for Clinton to win if Bush is not her opponent.

A new museum named for Teddy Kennedy in Boston got far more mention than it could possibly deserve (except on Fox, of course) considering its main attraction is a copy of the Senate Chamber in the Capitol. But only CBS considered it a good excuse to run a fifteen minute eulogy for the guy. The others missed a bet. There's a lot of comedy potential in having John 'Keating Seven' McCain on to talk about how he misses the integrity that Teddy 'Chappaquiddik' Kennedy brought to the Senate.

Otherwise, we had Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee and a lot of blather. Oh my.

[enhanced_deficit]

ISIS news views quota seems bit low this week.

[acptulsa]

ISIS news views quota seems bit low this week.

This week, too. In fact, only Fox continues to talk about IS. Either they figure Fox viewers are the only ones who have not yet heard that the CiA created it, or they figure Fox viewers are the only ones who don't care.

But we heard a lot about the framework for the Iranian deal. Netenyahu appeared on both ABC and NBC to badmouth it and tell us how much closer Iran is to having ICBMs than it actually is. Fox had Sen. Corker on to do the same thing, giving rise to some interesting comparisons about which man's version of English is easier for actual English speakers to understand. CBS, on the other hand, had Lindsey Graham on to trash the agreement. He thinks there should be no agreement at all until we get a new president. He thinks Hillary Clinton would produce a fine agreement, as would '...any Republican except perhaps Rand Paul.' Which gives rise to an interesting question--is an endorsement by Graham more of a liability for a Democratic candidate or more of a boon to a Republican?

In any case it's nice of the guy to help us break down the false left-right paradigm. I hope we got a good video capture of that (on Faze the Nation) because when we pit Paul against Clinton in the general election, I can't imagine a better selling point than Graham's endorsement of Clinton over Paul.

The Indiana freedom of religion law got plenty of attention. Three networks had Catholics on to talk about it. None of them said much, but it gave each network a chance to run footage of the pope's photogenic Mass this morning.

Other earthshattering political news this morning includes the opening of baseball season--and renewed calls to call Pete Rose in from the wilderness--and basketball.

Hard boiled eggs and circuses.

[acptulsa]

Rand Paul is going to be on Faze the Nation (CBS) Sunday morning.

He's getting equal billing with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). Anyone ever hear of this person who gets billing equal to Rand Paul's?

[surf]

Anyone ever hear of this person who gets billing equal to Rand Paul's?

anyone heard of Sen. Amy Klobuchar? seriously and embarrassingly, I had not.

[acptulsa]

This Week this week was about the same as last week. Except that Stephanopolous was in da house.

Hillary Clinton needs competition to force her more to the left and force her to sound less like the hawk she is. Kerry assures us his description and Iran's description of the 'framework' do not differ because Kerry is lying, even though that doesn't mean that Iran is lying. More people are dying of militarized police because RACE! not because the police are militarized. Billy Kristol hates Rand Paul and loves Marco Rubio. Only Tavis Smiley decided to go off the page.

'The only one talking about this stuff is Rand Paul... And they're swiftboating the guy already.'--Tavis Smiley

Guess we won't be seeing Tavis Smiley on Sunday morning any more.

Mike Lee is on, and Stephanopolous is daring him to choose between Cruz, Rubio and Paul.

'Rand Paul is a lifelong devotee of limited government.'--Mike Lee

'Ted Cruz memorized the Constitution when he was about six months old.'--Mike Lee

Oh, and Laura Bush, the airhead's airhead. Yee haw. The earthshattering revelation? Barbara Bush is a bitch.

[acptulsa]

Meet the Press is making us wait for Rand while they blather about Clinton. And blather about Clinton. And blather about Clinton. Seldom has anyone gotten so much free campaign advice in one sitting. And most of it is worth every penny. Bill di Blasio was asked to comment on Rand Paul's ad attacking Clinton, and said that all any Republican has to offer is trickle down economics. Trickle down? Really? If our opponents are going to recycle that phrase, I think it's time we coined a silly-assed phrase to describe the Fed. How about Suck it Upstream Economics? Because every time we save a dollar or get a raise, the dollar is made worth less than yesterday and our gains get sucked up by the biggest banks in the world.

Fox, meanwhile, has Romney on to disparage the woman who '...hasn't driven a car in eighteen years.' It's funny. Other men their age suck their guts in when a camera is pointed at them. Romney arches his eyebrows so those Nixonian dark brow shadows don't make his eyes look beady.

Rand is cooling his heels while Kerry claims he's out of politics. Fox is saying police shootings are being politicized. Which is what Meet the Press will talk about next, while Rand cools his heels some more. Meanwhile, Fox has moved on to Rand Paul's 'gawkiness' and is talking about how they think he is '...making up his positions as he goes.'

Meet the Press is actually doing a fake news broadcast demonstrating how the press would have '..had to cover...' the Walter scott shooting in South Carolina if no citizen had been there to film what actually happened. Their bottom line? Cameras are good, but '...the Feds have to be involved for it to be a meaningful program.' As if only Washington can buy our cops body cameras.

Meanwhile, Fox actually has Bob Menendez on. He's looking forward to his day in court, of course. And talking about his record on flood insurance, autistic children, Iran and Cuba instead. It's amusing to see someone under indictment being quizzed on his foreign policy views. Are criminals really the best diplomats we can muster?

'...before we put GIs in a position where their lives are on the line we should think it through.'--Rand Paul

'I would expect Hillary Clinton, if she's concerned about women, to be boycotting Saudi Arabia; instead she's accepting tens of millions from them.'--Rand Paul

Good interview. And he wasn't cooling his heels. It was taped. They started by showing part of his new commercial. Props to the campaign for turning the 'party of the past' rhetoric on its head by laughing at Democrats for wanting to vote for a Clinton like they can bring back 1992. Guess defense contractor General Elect--er, I mean NBC thought it a good interview, too, because they aren't talking about it. They're talking about Hawkary Clinton.

Everyone is shouting out to Bob Scheiffer, who will apparently try to steal Rand Paul's thunder by announcing his retirement here in half an hour or so.

[acptulsa]

And Faze the Nation opens with John Kerry not responding to McCain's charge that he's delusional. Just like everyone else but Fox.

'I think precisely what some will say is [Hillary Clinton's] strength is her weakness.'--Rand Paul

Good points on Benghazi and the brib--er, I mean campaign contributions from Saudi Arabia.

'There's not much support for walking back any foreign aid in Washington. So I said, why don't we start with those who burn our flag? ...I think eventually every nation is going to have tos tand on its own two feet.'--Rand Paul

It was no longer than the NBC interview, but also a good one. It was mostly a different set of questions. So, you could combine the two and get an interview almost as long as Fox's interview with the indicted Menendez.

Amy Klobuchar is on now talking about her high school Life Savers lollypop drive. Equal time for rainbows and unicorns, I guess. She did give Rand Paul a shoutout for helping her work to end the Cuban embargo.

John Dickerson is slated to replace Bob Scheiffer as host of Faze the Nation. They'd have been more honest if they had found someone else with the initials B.S...

Preibus just gave a shoutout to Rand Paul as well, for trying to grow the GOP instead of acting like it should be a private club. A few more comments like that and Fox is going to have a real uphill battle trying to convince Republicans that he is 'unelectable' in the general election.

Amusing to see Preibus claim tht Clinton has not been paying her female staffers equal pay for equal work. Dickerson said this is all public record, and easy to check up on. Other panelists say this isn't the first time this charge has been aired. But strangely enough, not one of these seasoned, respected Washington beat reporters has checked up on Clinton, and not one knows what the facts are. Nice to have an independent and vigorous press corps, is it not...?

Faze the Nation is actually allowing the panelists to talk about Rand Paul. They like him but think women will destroy his candidacy and that the neocons will destroy his candidacy. None of them are talking about how many Americans will wake up when the women find the neocons on their side. Especially with Rand Paul getting comment for being Republican and not warmongering. They seem to find it a very novel approach.

[acptulsa]

This Week With George Stephanopolous without George Stephanopolous opened with seven hundred Libyan refugees on a sinking 'boat' (I always figured any vessel with seven hundred people on it qualified as a ship). But they had no footage, so they moved right along to Hillary Clinton. This gave Sen. McCaskill a chance to sit and give us some stand up comedy by talking about how Clinton has experience, and some of the Republican candidates seem to be reading Cliff' Notes when it comes to foreign policy. Which wouldn't have been funny had she not answered the very next question by saying her decision in 2008 to endorse Obama was a tough choice, even though he seemed to have a tough time saying, 'Hi, my name is Barack,' without a working teleprompter.

They then moved on to the postman who landed a gyrocopter on the Capitol Building lawn. Did they take the opportunity to say what the man's message was about campaign finance reform? Did they even take the opportunity to tell us what a gyrocopter is? No! Terrorists! Boogity boogity!

By the way, a gyrocopter uses rotating blades like a helicopter for lift, but they aren't powered. A small propellor moves it forward, and the act of dragging the blades through the air causes them to rotate. Just because ABC didn't tell you.

More Hillary Hillary Hillary. She's riding in a van, hand picking small groups to kiss her ass, and running from press questions. Which is supposed to somehow make her a different Clinton. Round it out with a piece on how well the Gulf Coast is recovering from the massive oil spill, which was about what you'd expect to see sandwiched in between BP commercials (literally), and let us be moving right along...

To Fox live coverage of the doings in Oklahoma City this morning, or Meet the Press talking about Hillary Clinton. Or are they? So far Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, the only politician ever elected because he has basically the same name as a dead female astronaut, is being asked questions about Clinton but keeps talking about himself and talking about himself and talking about himself. I have no doubt that she'd be better off running on his record than her own, but I don't think she will be able to.

Then, with nineteen Republicans already in the race, NBC decided to have John Kasich on and ask him if he was going to join them. But, silly as they are, Bleats the Press deserves a little credit. Upon talking about the gyrocopter, they actually did talk about campaign finance instead of terrorism. For abut two minutes.

Bill Clinton is talking down in Oklahoma City, in his usual rambling style. My, he's getting old.

Chuck Todd is talking about legalized marijuana. The jury is out on addiction, revenues from legalization are less than the governor projected, and marijuana might therefore just be a passing fad. Of course, the more than seventy years of attempts to 'discover' that the stuff is physically addictive have always produced that 'hung jury', which pretty much has to mean it isn't addictive. If the numbers were to include savings on law enforcement attempts to keep weed out of Colorado, then we'd see that the residents of the Centennial State are even farther ahead monetarily than the wildest politician estimates from before the fact. And we have writings from the sixteenth century about the advantages of that particular plant, which probably takes it out of the 'passing fad' category. Just in case anyone was hopeful that replacing Gregory with Todd might result in less propaganda on Bleats the Press...

But they do have Mike Lee on right now. It was too short. But he made some nice comments. Senators are good to choose a president from because they have records on federal issues. The Constitution is not set in stone, but if it needs to be amended it should be, and otherwise it should be obeyed. I wish they had given him the time they wasted laughing at Hillary Clinton's logo.

Bill Clinton is getting very old. He spoke for less than an hour. Much less. I remember when no one could shut him up.

Well, now that I see that the local Fox affiliate is showing their own logo on the Oklahoma City ceremony, I'm not so sure this was Fox News Sunday Morning after all; maybe the local preempted that. And the local CBS affiliate is showing it, too, so it'll be interesting to see if we get Faze the Nation today. Brings back memories of dialing and redialing the phone at work, trying to get through the busy circuits and find out if any of the relatives of mine working in downtown OkC were too close (none of them were). I need to get around to converting the pics I took about a week later to digital, and post them here. Some of them are pretty interesting; I worked at getting a view from the ground around the edges of the cordoned off area (which had to be more than half a square mile) that one did not get from the television coverage.

Well, that wasn't Fox News Sunday. Bernie Sanders is on that, delayed in this market, talking about how the middle class is now poor, but not saying the Federal Reserve is the reason they got that way. And saying, ISIS boogity boogity!

OMG. Jackie Kucinich just mentioned Miriam Carey on Fox. She couldn't remember her name, but she did bring the subject up. Why do I suspect her career as a commentator will be somewhat brief?

'There's only one tier in the Republican Party and no one has really broken out.'--Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank gives Lindsay Graham way, way too much credit. And anyone who tuned in to Faze the Nation to learn something gives CBS too much credit. The pundits are looking forward to the day when the nearly two dozen GOP candidates stop beating up Clinton and turn on each other. What a shocking revelation.

[H. E. Panqui]

...i too have been a 'sunday morning junkie'...i have watched for years as these POS teevee republicrats have foisted a fraudulent dialogue...

...rand paul seems to be doing ok among this stinking republicrat filth...another strike against him...

[acptulsa]

This Week--actually with Stephanopolous this week--opened with the earth-shattering news that the U.S. government will continue to refuse to pay terrorist kidnappers ransom, but now that the CIA has invented ISIS, the government will allow private citizens to pay ransom to terrorists. Shocking, isn't it?

It was amusing to listen to Donna Brazile dutifully trying to excuse Hillary Clinton for taking huge donations to her foundation from foreign governments. According to Brazile, the only difference between Clinton and certain unnamed Republicans is that the Clintons are more transparent. Of course, another difference is none of those Republicans have been Secretary of State lately, and if you're crooked, transparency is a sure sign of stupidity. But Brazile has always been better at doing filibusters than making sense.

Their equal time for Republicans this week consisted of--with a dozen and a half candidates already in the race, was mostly speculation about who else will get in--as if they don't have enough people already to talk about. The closest they came to talking about their various positions was to give Jeb Bush a shoutout for being the 'most ready to be president'. But is the country ready for Iraq War III?

Gay marriage gay marriage gay marriage. Broke, with an economy in the dumpster, on the verge of WWIII, on the verge of full-blown tyranny, and the issue of This Week is gay marriage. *yawn*

'[President Obama's] hair is so white now that it can talk back to the police.'--Cecily Strong

Faux opens this week with an in depth conversation about the new expose' Clinton Cash. Bleats the Press opens with a tear jerker about the earthquake in Kathmandu. What a surprise. Then on to drones--American drone strikes alone are now on the cusp of having killed more people than died in lower Manhattan on 9/11/01. Charming milestone. It's funny to hear Chuck Todd talk about conducting military strikes '...without risking American blood or treasure.' I guess he thinks drones grow on trees.

And straight from that sentiment to the usual Boeing commercial...

Half an hour in and Fox is still talking about how the Clintons are for sale--or, at least, for rent. And NBC still isn't--samesexmarriage samesexmarriage samesexmarriage and how deplorable it is that there are differences from state to state.

Isn't it amusing when a company like Wal Mart spends a billion dollars on advertising to tell us that they're spending an extra fifteen million this year to bring their employees up a little closer to the poverty line?

On to secondary subjects--after trash talking the Clintons for half an hour (not that they don't deserve more), Fox has a minute or two to talk about drones killing innocent hostages. And NBC might get around to talking about how crooked the Clintons are--once they get through talking to Garry Trudeaux about Charlie Hebdo.

'It's such a pleasure to be here with you at the Washington Hilton. Which sounds like something a prostitute would say to a congressman.'--Cecily Strong

Conveniently for Bleats the Press, they have no time to talk about how crooked the Clintons are,as theirs is the network Cecily Strong works for, so they can interview her instead.

The first half of Faze the Nation is to be commended for breaking the mold with a more in-depth look at the Nepalese earthquake and covereage of police abuse in Baltimore. Of course, the second half promises to be samesexmarriage samesexmarriage samesexmarriage.

Well, no, they aren't spending the entire last half of the show trying to drive wedges between evangelicals and most other people (including, I'm sure they hope, us) by talking about the campaign to make same sex marriage a nationwide reality. It seems the Clinton Foundation posted a statement on their site saying mistakes were made and are being rectified. So, they are forced to confess that the Clintons by themselves are as effective at funneling money into Washington as the Koch Brothers.

Rentable Clintons on a Sunday morning. Wonder if any of them are in church right now?

'I have a friend that just a few years ago was making millions of dollars a year, and now she's living out of a van in Iowa.'--Barack Obama

It ain't our fault the woman married a third-rate saxophone player.--me

[acptulsa]

Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore we're even going to ask the Speaker of the House about Baltimore. Dozens of civil rights activists and 'experts' were trotted out to say that these riots are not about federal militarization of the police, but merely race. Kudos to Tavis Smiley who said on Faze the Nation that this is about jobs, and the lack thereof. Even if he didn't mention small business, or address what's to be done about jobs at all, he actually cut through the noise and got to a heart of the matter.

Oh, yes, and seven or eight more candidates just jumped in the race for the presidency. Just so you can't tell them apart even with an official program.