Left-wing blogosphere up in arms about Slimebaugh blaming Obama for Sanford's recent behavior. The utter disingenuousness of the far left is comical.

http://chattahbox.com/us/2009/06/26/rush-limbaugh-its-obamas-fault-that-gov-sanford-cheated-on-wife/

These are the same nuts who blamed "W!" for every calamity, domestic and abroad, for 8 years. My personal favorite: Blaming "W!" for causing Hurricane Katrina to occur. Now, is it outrageous for Slimebaugh to blame Obama's economic policies for causing Sanford's bad behavior? Of course it is. That's Slimebaugh being Slimebaugh. He blamed Clinton for everything under the sun during Clinton's 8 years. Now down to brass tacks: This is just another illustration of what I mean when I say the two B.S. extremes that control our two parties are little more than two peas in the same demented pod. Each loves to rant and rave when the other extreme engages in the same kinds of slimey behavior that the first extreme itself routinely employs. Nothing ever changes with these guys. Their world views are intellectually dishonest to the last. It's in my mind not only enjoyable, but indeed a necessity, to be Independent of these goofs. And the "blame" for that lies with no one other than themselves.

Hey media nationwide: TMZ kicked your ass yesterday.

As a person who has occasionally watched bits and pieces of TMZ's daily television show, I have to say that I have never thought very highly of TMZ. Chasing around celebrities and trying to annoy them with silly stupid questions, I suppose, really isn't my cup of tea. But I digress, because I also have to say that I was thoroughly impressed yesterday with TMZ. Not only was TMZ the first to report Michael Jackson's death, but it was well over an hour later before any other media outlet was able to confirm the death and report it as fact themselves. In the Internet era, such lag time between the first reporter and the second is virtually unheard of (sorry Jeeves to end a sentence on a preposition). In fact, I can't recall seeing anything quite like that before. You know what that means? TMZ was all over the story and had sources and information that other media outlets did not (or least did not until well over an hour later) -- a most impressive feat with respect to a story that was very sudden and fast-moving. TMZ should consider branching out in the mainstream national news and political arena, because they might just be able to show the advocates who lurk there a thing or two about real journalism.

They were a couple of bona fide pop culture icons.

Both were particularly memorable and meaningful to us members of Generation X. Rest in peace.

I would offer comment on His Majesty's ABC-sponsored health care infomercial last night...

http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/06/abcs-white-house-special-struggled-for-viewers.html

But I didn't happen to catch it. And apparently I wasn't the only one (see above link). But I suppose this does take some wind out of the sails of the repubs who were complaining about this event (I complained about it as well in this space). After all, how can you rant and rave too much about a program that nobody watched?

Stick a fork in him, he's done.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/25/sanford-took-taxpayer-funded-trip-to-argentina-last-june-2/

It appears that a trip by Sanford to Argentina last year was taxpayer funded. With that, combined with the lies he was having his staff put out to the public about his recent whereabouts, I see no way this guy survives much longer without resigning his governorship. Heck, he should resign. If he somehow survives this stuff, it will be one of the better Houdini acts that I've seen.

O'Reilly & Barney Frank tonight. I have to say, that was some high entertainment!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

To use a phrase I'm fond of, these are two peas in the same pod -- pompous, angry blowhards, and that's what makes it so entertaining the two times they've gotten together on O'Reilly's show. I was literally rolling on the floor at several of their exchanges, because you simply have a combustible firekeg any time you get two people like this together. I view them both as basically cartoon characters more than anything else, which is why tonight was so much fun. As for Frank, I could not disagree more with virtually everything that comes out of his mouth from his blinded ultra-liberal perspective, but I have to say (and may some force from on high strike me down in my tracks for saying this) that I kind of like him a tiny bit more every time I see him in these kinds of situations -- the utter rambunctiousness and pomposity of this individual is something I must admit to having a bit of respect for (sorry Jeeves for ending a sentence on a preposition). Bottom line: Frank would make a great professional wrestling manager. He's totally spot on for that role. Don't care for him too much as a politician, but I think that maybe he's missing his true calling. And one final observation, which I will make in the form of a bit of advice to Frank: Get some semblance of a sence of humor, dude (at least if you want to remain in the realm of politics, as opposed to being a pro wrestling manager who must maintain kayfabe most of the time). As for sense of humor, you have none. As for self-deprication, you have none. That's about the only difference between you and O'Reilly -- he has a tiny bit of a sense of humor, and can self-depricate now and then. But Frank, I must say, I did see you ALMOST crack a tiny smile at the end of the O'Reilly segment. You should roll with that a little more. We could all use to smile just a bit more than we do.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-us-spain-soccer25-2009jun25,0,1539616.story

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,528977,00.html

USA 2, Spain nil.

They traipsed around town buck naked because they just wanted to have a positive effect on global warming.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/is-nudism-a-green-vacation/

No. That hasn't really occurred yet. Just speculation on my part as to where a story like this one might lead ("living in the buff has 'a positive effect on global warming, climate change and society'").

His Majesty made the White House press corps look like fools and flunkies yesterday.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/24/obama-dominates-news-media-with-full-court-press/

But I wonder if many of them really care that much. I would think that the calling of pursuing a journalistic career would not include a desire to be used as the tool of a sitting president, but I guess that just shows my complete naivete.

His Majesty apparently now in cahoots with the media to choreograph the questions that will be asked at press conferences.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0609/Obama_calls_on_HuffPost_for_Iran_question.html

As I've echoed multiple times now in this space, it's difficult to get too outraged over this kind of stuff anymore -- it's just become too par for the course in terms of our advocacy-driven national media. But that still doesn't mean it ain't slimey, nevertheless (sorry for the double negative).

Postscript: On the lighter side of things, it is amusing that His Majesty and the particular advocate in question (I think I will cease calling these people journalists or reporters) could have apparently used a little rehearsal time together beforehand. It looks like Majesty went off-prompter for a moment (always a surprise), which appeared to trip up said advocate, who launched right into his scripted question without paying much attention to what Majesty had just said to him (see above link for the precise exchange). Heck, these people might be throwing journalism out the window, but I will commend them for at least entertaining me in the process.

She's b-a-c-k.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124572555214540265.html

This time to put the kibosh on a spy satellite program started under "W!". But she's not saying much. And I wouldn't exactly put this item high on the controversies list -- sounds like this was program that had never really gotten off the ground anyway. Oh, for the good old days of just a few months ago when Napolitano was good for at least one asinine quote per day. But His Majesty has since very effectively strapped the muzzle on her and locked her down in his wine cellar. Set Janet free, Majesty! Set her free, I say! I need material on slow news days (look no further than yesterday's two posts).

On a very slow news day, in which I actually posted about a South Carolina governor, I'm at a loss over here. So how bout revealing my beer of choice.

After all, the blogosphere is waiting with bated breath for this one! Smooth as a wild turkey's tail feathers, 5.9%, and very reasonably priced. Keystone Ice. Damn right.

What a weird story from South Carolina: The Governor's been missing for days, but no one seems too concerned.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0609/Sanford_goes_missing.html

Says the South Carolina First Lady: "I don't know where he is." Since Sanford is the "I'm drawing a blank" guy with whom the liberal blogosphere fell in love last year, I assume they'll also have a field day with the current story (assuming the governor is actually OK, obviously). Strange stuff.

"Obama Job Approval Slips to 58% for First Time."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/121028/Obama-Job-Approval-Slips-58-First-Time.aspx

That's the headline currently on drudge report. But when one considers that His Majesty's approval rating in Gallup tracking has averaged around 63% since he took office (see linked article), the 58% number does not strike me as some earth-shattering figure on its face. However, much more significant to me is a breakdown I saw on Meet the Press this morning, indicating that Obama's disapproval rating amongst us Independents -- a figure that was only at 31% in the past -- has now ballooned to 44%. Might want to keep your eye on the Independents, Majesty.

Thanks again to the far left for reminding me why I'm doing this.

Watching Meghan McCain's appearance on Maher's show last night, and watching a "panel" of looney liberals trying to gang up on and beat her around, just reinforced for me again how and why I could never be a part of a democratic party that is basically controlled by these types of hateful, mean-spirited individuals on the far left extreme. As for Meghan McCain, she's republican (I'm not) and I think she's certainly to the right of me -- but I do find to her to be a refreshing and free-thinking individual, which is all I ask of any person. That's also the kind of person that the far left and far right hates with a passion, as evidenced by Maher's and Begala's slimey performance last night.

Loony left at it again: If you dare to disagree with them on any issue, they will come after you with all of their resources.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/19/moveon-org-targets-democratic-senator/

Today we have radical far left outfit Moveon.org actually taking out radio ads against a DEMOCRAT, Lousiana Senator Mary Landrieu, for having the nerve to disagree with His Majesty concerning Majesty's health care reform proposal. Just like I was talking about in the blog post immediately below, these nuts on both extremes will attack you with everything they have -- and even eat their own -- if you voice so much as any disagreement whatsoever with one of their tenets or with one of their most highly annointed leaders. As to the far-left, the only person in the country allowed to stray from the reservation a bit is His Majesty himself (see, e.g., the far left largely running for the hills on issues like Afghanistan and Majesty's opposition to gay marriage), but even he's not completely immune (again, see today's earlier post below).

I've observed that this practice of the two extremes always takes one of two paths. First, the two extremes sometimes try to label anyone disagreeing with them as simply inhabitating the opposite extreme. This is what we saw with the Tea Parties: Although such events had a huge turnout of non-liberals, non-conservatives, Independents, and even some democrats, the far left national media tried to paint the events as the folly of tens of thousands of radical right-wing extremists. This first approach is also a favorite of Rush Slimebaugh, just to give an example on the other side.

Second, and alternatively, the two extremes -- if they know that trying to paint the dissenter as a radical on the other side is unlikely to work -- will instead try to brand the person as a type of creature that they hate almost as much or more as the opposite extreme -- the so-called mealy-mouthed "moderate." That's the strategy employed for people like Landrieu and Joe Lieberman. And nevermind that neither one of those two politicians is anywhere close to the center if you consider all of their positions in their entirety. But that doesn't matter to the two extremes. Rather, it only matters that you had the nerve to disagree with them on an issue or two. Once you've done that, you're going to get the full #1 treatment or the full #2 with all of the resources these two extremes have to pour into it (which is typically almost limitless).

As expressed earlier today, our political system is simply broken. Most of us aren't represented by much of anyone, and those that might actually strive to represent us a little bit get villified and demonized by the two extremes. It's a rather pathetic state of affairs, and I guess all I can do is to just keep talking about it as loudly and often as I can. Which I will.

It can't be easy being a democratic politician. Too many powerful far left interests and creepy little groups to cater to all at once.

His Majesty's got PETA people beating him up for swatting a fly. He's got radical Nancy Pelosi, the ACLU and loony left editors at the New York Times trying to undermine his position opposing the immediate release of the detainee abuse photos. The gay rights groups are all over him for taking a position (opposition to legal recognition of gay marriage) that is in step with the majority of this country.

But for much the same reason, it likewise can't be easy being a republican politician. They similarly (only on the opposite extreme) must deal with powerful conservative interests and weird little right-wing groups.

And the problem is, so much of the money that funds these two parties comes from all of these right-wing and left-wing freaks. The result is a broken political system comprised of two parties controlled by their extremes and out of step with the majority of Americans. If you try to remain somewhat in-step with the 60-65% (or more) of this country which is neither far-right nor far-left, then the two powerful extremes will attempt to brand you (and are usually successful) as a mealy-mouthed moderate who is to be even more loathed than the opposite extreme.

That's the situation we have in this country right now, and I don't know that it will change any time soon. We have a firmly entrenched two-party system in our political culture, and it's very difficult for a third party to surplant one of the two dominant parties. But that doesn't change the fact that there's something very wrong and broken about our political system -- a system in which most of us folks aren't represented by much of anyone. I may not be able to do a damn thing to change it, but I'm going to keep pointing it out as loudly as I can until the damn cows come home. You've got my promise on that one.

So make nice with His Majesty, give him some "positive" treatment, and a member of the media might get a nice presidential appointment?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/President-Obama-Announces-Appointments-to-the-Presidents-Commission-on-White-House-Fellowships/

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/06/05/1955244.aspx

Look, I'm not even going to pretend to be all outraged over here; after all, we saw this same kind of silliness during the "W!" years (Tony Snow immediately comes to mind). No, the reason I'm blogging about this is because of the further consideration that has occurred to me: If Brokaw can get a commission appointment merely by being on His Majesty's good side, then what kind of even more lucrative appointment might a reporter receive who takes things a few steps further, e.g. a reporter who goes so far as to bow to His Majesty?

http://independentrage.blogspot.com/2009/06/nbc-news-anchor-bows-before-president-i.html

I mean, could we soon be seeing a Brian Williams coronation ceremony ushering him in as the next Earl of Baltimore or Duke of New England? Stay tuned.

His Majesty attacks Fox News, is all up in arms that only 95% of the national media is devoted to reporting "positive stories" about him.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/17/obama-takes-aim-at-fox-news/

The unmitigated gall of His Majesty. (I've always wanted to use the phrase "unmitigated gall," and here it seems very appropriate). You have almost all of the national media in your back pocket, but you want it ALL. Good grief, man. Such audacity, such arrogance. And people ask me why I refer to you as Majesty. And by the way, as someone who actually went to journalism school (and a pretty damn good one at that), let me just inform you, Majesty, that it is NOT the media's job to tell "positive stories" about you. It's the media's job to cover you in a fair and objective fashion, striving always to keep personal biases out of the equation -- an endeavor upon which our national media (including Fox News) has become a completely dreadful failure.

My immediate reaction to this apparent June 24 marriage between ABC News & His Majesty to push Majesty's health care reform agenda...

http://www.drudgereport.com/flashaot.htm

This joint White House/ABC News primetime media event, which will apparently exclude opposing viewpoints, strikes this old J-School grad as a perhaps unprecedented media excursion into the realm of pure advocacy under the false guise of objective journalism. In short, it's pathetic. But am I shocked or overly surprised? Not really. And that might be the saddest thing of all.

Methinks O'Reilly made a Royal Jackass of himself tonight with KC Star's Mary Sanchez.

As best I can tell from what was described on O'Reilly's show, Ms. Sanchez took the stand in a column which was very similar to my stand in this space and which was actually very defending of O'Reilly -- i.e., that all these far left freaks, including the Star's Mike Hendricks, who came out and said that the anti-abortion crowd was basically an accomplice in the Tiller murder, are full of crap. So O'Reilly gets this poor lady on the air, and rather than paying any attention to her basically defending him and standing up for her correct viewpoint here (i.e. that it's wrong to blame anyone for Tiller's murder other than the actual slimeball who went in there and killed Tiller in cold blood), O'Reilly rants and raves in full bullying mode about her disagreement with him on the late-term abortion issue. His behavior on this particular segment is about as bad as I've seen it from O'Reilly (and in the interests of full disclosure, I also oppose late-term abortions, which is an entire area outside the Roe v. Wade decision and its progeny). O'Reilly was pure bully tonight and purely disrespectful to Ms. Sanchez. I've said previously in this space that I can more or less take or leave O'Reilly because he is so often no more than a bully and a pompous blowhard. And that's precisely what he was tonight, reminding me very much of a certain jackass sports talking head that we have here in KC called Kevin Keitzman. I may just referring to O'Reilly henceforth as "Keitz!", because he pretty much deserves that after his performance tonight. And by the way, O'Reilly, why don't you get me on the air one of these nights, Mr. So-Called, Alleged "Independent" (which you are not for one day of your life), and then why don't you try bullying me around? I'd LOVE to see how that would work out for ya!

I'm getting a little tired of the predictable far right stance that His Majesty should be ranting & raving & jumpin' off curbs about Iran's election

First of all, I for one have had plenty (way too much) of the failed neo-con revolution of the last 8 years, which was convinced (so much so as to outright lie to us about the pretense for invading Iraq) that it is our job to go around spreading our cultural and political system throughout the world. That is not our job. When we embark upon that course, it's a very dangerous road and it costs us many, many (way too many) lives of young American troops. Second, His Majesty is in a difficult pickle here -- If he comes out swinging about the likely fraudulent nature of the election -- when in all likelihood this is all going to die down with the Ayatollah still firmly in charge -- it will undermine, at the very least, this so-called backdoor deal with Iran about them not meddling in the Iraq situation. So while I freely and openly (as is my RIGHT as a FREE American) criticize His Majesty when I see fit, I won't here. This is a very delicate situation, and I respect the delicate way he is handling it so far.

Big bloated mean-spirited liberal Bob Beckel on Hannity tonight: "Obama is the greatest president this country has seen since FDR!!!"

Good grief, far left, can we stop the INCESSANT hero worship towards His Majesty? He's been in office not even 6 months yet, even if you do happen to Ditto-Head (to borrow a Slimebaugh catch-phrase) every single thing The King does even when it is inconsistent with your basic core values (see gay marriage, Afghanistan). And by the way, in my estimation there has not been a "great president" in my lifetime, dating back to the early 1970's. The last person I would consider to be a "great president" would be JFK, although apparently Bob Beckel doesn't entirely agree, given his above quote. But I'm sure also that JFK wasn't nearly liberal enough to suit the likes of Beckel's giant saturated-fat filled leftist mug.

On this Flag Day, here's a very small way to support our wounded troops.

https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/content/view/543/907/

Wounded Warrior Project is a charitable organization devoted to supporting our severely injured Veterans when they come home. Go to Wounded Warrior Project's above link, click on the freelanthropy.com link, and you can download a very small tool bar (it's much narrower from top to bottom than the usual google or yahoo tool bar) that will allow a small, free contribution to be made to the Wounded Warrior Project for every web search that you do through the toolbar (such searches are powered by Yahoo, an outstanding search engine, and so you are basically just doing yahoo searches through this particular tool bar). I am committed to doing all of my searches through this toolbar. The contribution is only a penny a search, but if enough people latch on to this, and if many of those people do as much internet browsing and searching as me (!!!), we together can start making a difference here. You'll notice after you download the toolbar that this is a fairly new endeavor and they've only raised small peanuts so far from this search thing. But let's change that. I've noticed that Two and Half Men's Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer are now being seen on Wounded Warrior Project television ad spots (which I applaud them for), and so I'm hopeful that this and the other volunteer ways to get involved with this Project (which I'm very much interested in) are going to really start taking off going forward. Website to check out: www.woundedwarriorproject.org God bless our wounded warriors for the incalculable sacrifice which they have made for us and which they have made for everything that makes this the freest country in which to live in the history of the planet (at least in this dude's view).