Sweet Jesus, I Love MSNBC!

It snowed in Baghdad yesterday.
In a scene straight out of solemn black and white stories of cease fires at Christmastime, residents of the war torn city marveled at the beauty of the white crystals falling, even if they melted upon hitting the torn apart streets. It hasn't snowed in Baghdad for as long as anyone can remember.

We are living in strange times, my friends.

This past week has been backwards crazy like that; on the heels of Olbermann's O'Reilly puppet theater the other night, in which O'Reilly unsuccessfully messes with Obama security, and then reports of Hannity being chased through NH by Ron Paul supporters, stirred up because Faux News didn't allow Paul to participate in the debate... Along came Dan Abrams complaining that he felt lately that Hillary was being shoved at us by the media! Oh really? The sweet indignation of just realizing what has been happening all along.


....and now Obama is suddenly the second coming!? What was Dan thinking when he was the program director of this very station and he supported the chronically low ratings of Scrappy-doo-Tucky-Carlson, the Libertarian fool, and the non stop rantings of Tweety Matthews, acting as if Hillary was a done deal and there was no point in even discussing other candidates. So sure were the M$M pundits about Hillary, that I started switching it off, because I am just fucking weary of being told what to do by pasty white men.

Yeah, Abrams' outrage rings a little hollow. NOW Dan is with us, in the face of the big bad M$M machine? Well, its possible, I suppose, since MSNBC is maybe the best of the worst of the M$M, but God, who in their right mind allows the likes of Willie Giest to ascend to the role of snide janitor, much less sidekick to the repugnant Morning Joe, and who kept Carlson employed against the usual formula of ratings and sponsors? I wasn't a fly on those walls, but if appearances mean anything, Tucker rode along on his relationships rather than ratings, long after it was clear that any retooling could help him in any way, and once the suits got involved there were slap-downs of Tucker and the "rumors" that Tuckie was on his way out (...also, didn't Tucker thank his 10 viewers on air, and then get reprimanded for it by the bosses?)

Granted, they have got Rachel Maddow on every show in a row, just about every night! (and, having quietly shot a pilot already, maybe she can get Kent Jones a gig there...he is sorely missed on Rachel's AAR show!) One good move doesn't clean the slate, but if they do start to build a decent lineup based around Keith, with Rachel taking the nine o'clock slot, it could be great programming for the upcoming Democratic majority! If New Hampshire is any indication, the snotty conservative pundits who used to have a stranglehold on all of the airtime they wanted, haven fallen from favor, along with their masters in the White House...

After writing the above rant the other day, I was surprised, pleased, and honored to receive an invitation to join Jill's newest project: a blog called Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews!
Not only was I pleased that she would consider my pitiful missives that are coming pretty irregularly lately, but also I'm kinda thrilled that we are all on the same page about this thing. I spend alot of time wondering if I'm just a crazy fool who was born at the wrong time, in the wrong world, and when I get any sort of confirmation of my sanity and/or remaining humanity around me, I feel so much better! Thats what got me started writing this opinion sort of stuff (and who watches more MSNBC than me??) and thats whats allowed me to go on through the morass of the Bush years and the press playing along like some sort of hired PR team.

And, it wasn't only me and Jill; it was also the entire newscycle, that left old Chris, by last Thursday, saying things like "the popular feeling is that the media...well, me actually..." influenced the outcome of the elections.... So, after years of being a sort of political kingmaker, in servitude to whosoever's stock was going up, and manipulating the American people by playing along with the farce that is his shtick; that no one could have known that any one thing or another was gonna turn out badly in this nightmare called the Bush years; no one could have known? I knew! So many of us knew! How come there were printed bumper stickers, way back then, that said "ATTACK IRAQ? NO!!," (to which has been added a new horrific array of other versions and countries,) right here in my neighborhood?

And regardless if who Tweety Matthews has ever written a speech for or been on staff with, it is an inarguable fact that he, and most of the other M$M pundits were decidedly leaning towards the talking points that were coming out of the White House in their reportage of the news leading up to this fiasco, and ever since. Its not even like any of the press would have had to look far or confirm all that much of the reams of information that was being dumped in their laps, already having been researched and confirmed. The only would have had to put their jobs on the line to report it.

So, when Tweety Matthews and his producers felt it prudent to give the stage to Michelle Malkin, as if she deserved to be on any show further towards the mainstream than the Jerry Springer Show; when they chose to allow old Tweety to literally drool on Ann Coulter, as if this is the kind of woman that anyone (especially a college crowd, which he was entertaining that week,) should aspire to be like some mean trannie with an ax to grind and books to sell, its so far beyond the pale, and begs some programming and social questions at the very least....Unless, of course, MSNBC aspires to be more like Fox News.

The pale? Well, here is a guy who finds all of this politics stuff so fun and interesting, like alot of us do. He rubs his hands together and turns all red, practically jumping up with anticipation of the upcoming primaries and what they could possibly mean. But somewhere along the line, he seems to have disconnected with the reality of what he is doing ,and what it means in the life and death struggles of not only our soldiers around the world, but of the growing number of Americans who are suffering due to the economy and our lack of health care.

So, even with the turn back towards the middle, and the network's seeming attempt to start to show a little deference to what is actually happening in the country, there is still a bit of problem with the ongoing bipolar swings of not only Tweet, but the bunch of them. When you start to wish that all pundits could be as stable as old Pat Buchanan (even if you disagree with him,) you're in trouble. When you start to think from time to time that Morning Joe has a point or two right, you're in big trouble...but across the board, we all think that something is wrong, and getting wronger, with Tweety.

On the heels of this week, came word that Timmeuh Russert is going to give Hillary an entire hour on Sunday; and entire hour! Not only was Timmeuh featured on Hardball to promote this hour, but Tweet went on about how it was going to be the hardest hitting, most important interview in the whole wide world!! And this, as part of the umpteenth time that Tweety was musing on how Hillary should and would concede; bow out of the whole show, gracefully...you know, back off.

It makes me think of how Kos has supposedly been trying to manipulate the republican primaries by having dems vote for Romney...met by such outrage! Such venom!...on both sides....But How are we supposed to view a 1 hour "hard hitting" commercial for Hillary to display her newest self? And how are we supposed to take an entire segment of Timmeuh and Tweet's delight at being able to present her newest self?

Crazymaking; after so many months of beginning every interview with anyone even remotely involved in the election process with a question like "With Hillary as the obvious candidate of choice for the democrats, what do you think of....?" Then planning her fall...now he views this interview as the most historic, interesting, and hard hitting thing to ever happen!
Either he is just trying to go with the flow as he sees it day by day, he is seriously bi-polar and not in control of which way his mania is leading him on any particular day, or this has all been a plan to try to shape the discourse....And, if so, I don't think that its working. Its clear anyway that he is not all that fond of Hillary...or women in general.

The feeling that I'm getting is that in the shadow of being so wrong all the time lately, fearing that his power is slipping as a new generation of more liberal pundits makes their way into his world, and the reality of electing a woman as president looms large, he is very confused about how to act, but is sure that he must keep being the boisterous Chris Matthews that he always was. Whats clear is that something is wrong. Ive watched him almost daily for years, as something that I turn on in the background while I putter in the evening, and something that my entire family watches, and there is something amiss there.

Look for Tweety to pull out some of his personality to match Hillary's new campaign of showing people more of who she is emotionally. I want to start a pool about tears; the tears of Hillary, the tears of Tweet, the tears of all the clowns! (cue: circus music)


c/p Sweet Jesus I Hate Chris Matthews!

Debate Night Chicken Blogging.....RIP to the Clinton Era...

The chickens love to roost outside in the cold...up on their roost trilling and cawing, all puffed up and warm inside their feathers...this is the best time to grab them for a hug and a kiss! The rumpless Arcuna is my favorite! He spends alot of time outside my window here watching me write.
*****************************************************















*************************************

















**********************************
Meantime, inside the silly little cottage in the woods, I've been watching the unreal New Hampshire debates, and weighing the very real differences among the democratic field...and the circus-like insanity of the Republican field as a whole.(Cue: circus music)
I miss Mike Gravel, and am sort of thankful for Ron Paul. Besides his really deep insanity and spitballing on how things would be run if we lived in colonial times, he speaks some pretty heavy and fearless truth. Having him in any sort of decision making position in this country would be a disaster...but I love to hear him exclaim and then watch the scary, half/dead Thompson guffaw and respond incoherently.
***************************************
















**************************************************************

What I'm not hearing on either side here is how we are going to document the bold crimes that are still bleeding this country dry. I want some answers. I don't want to wipe the slate and move forward, trying to forget this brush with the pathological. I want it spelled out so that every grade school educated, under-served and under-represented citizen in the furthest reaches of America, can realize that they should never feel again like they have to vote against their own better interests in order to keep America safe.



*****************************


















John Edwards is clearly the winner of this thing, if you're counting content and concrete plans that make sense. I love John Edwards...I have to say that he has really stood out in this process for me. I have no reservations about him. Why does the media work so hard on shutting coverage of him as a candidate out?

************************************************************************
















**************************************
I am, as usual when watching anything on ABC, bewildered at the mono-tonality of the Charlie Gibson-Diane Sawyer cult. Even Georgie Snuffleupagus has taken on the hushed morning tone of people who live in high rises with vast shiny wood floors and ununsed surfaces or perfect temples made of bamboo and facing just so. I can feel the Feng Shui of the delicacy with which these people report the news. ***********************************************************















All in all, I've found this process to be fantastic, because we have had the great fortune to have had a great field up until Iowa and to have heard what they have to say. The concept of hearing ideas spoken in a public forum had fallen away. And in a world where the Republican contenders are a bunch of bumbling nuts, I have to say that we still have an embarrassment of riches, in the bold ideas being laid out here; Bold ideas being just pulling ourselves together and trying to get us back to some semblance of where we were trying to be, so imperfectly, too many years ago.


















Its gratifying that Americans seem to really want change, but I hope that the difference between Obama and Edwards become as strikingly clear as they are to me and the rest of the political junkies out there. Look at the differences in policy on globalization, healthcare, and nuclear power, just to start. Take a look before they start to pull together too much, as they have already. Soon you wont be able to tell them apart; and they do make good counterparts. Its just too bad that they each need a VP who has some sort of older statesman thing going on. The two of them would be the most dynamic white house that we've ever had.

Hillary? She was just so-so...very heavy botox, lots of struggle, fighting back from the brink, and, I feel sort of sorry for her. The blog word is that the Clinton era is dead...RIP to the Clinton Era....

It was a Clown Strike...And the Clowns Laid Down Their Tools.....Melamine in Our Food...Republicans Get ready to Rumble.....

Its Pandemonium!!....


Chris Matthews is so excited and nervous and thrilled to be there...at the Reagan library to host the clown show that will forever be known as the midpoint of the end for these fools; aka the Republican Debate on Thursday night. Matthews chirps on happily about how great of a tribute this debate will be to the legacy of the great Ronald Reagan...watch out Chris, you might actually have to climb up Nancy Reagan's ass, and its pretty tight in there! If I thought that Matthews could be a good moderator and really ask the hardball questions, I might buy that this is gonna be a good party, but Chris is just a little too impressed and happy and smiley....I don't trust it.
This beautiful wreck of a republican candidate field is surely a perfect tribute to the guy who brought us not only the launch of the neocon movement to dissolve the American Government and funnel all of the money available into the newly deregulated, large corporations, but the decimation of social services across the country at a time when we were entering into a catastrophic medical epidemic that HE was denying, even as his countrymen were dying at his feet.... and I personally watched people grow sick and die around me too. The numbers were astounding, and New York sank into a terrible state with homeless and sick people all over. No, Reagan was not a great President. I'm sorry, but he was an addled Alzheimer's victim who was run by the cabinet...Oh yeah, THEM!! The usual suspects!!





















You know, I don't think that even Ronald Reagan would believe the shit that Bush/Cheney have gotten us into. I don't believe that Reagan could have ever imagined the American government doing so much damage to our constitution, rights, diplomatic standing, and environment....You'd have to be an idiot, brain-dead, or dead.....
That brings me to idiot-in-chief W, who vetoed the bill to put a limit on the war today, like we knew he would, saying that it would guarantee chaos.....and your point is? Thats different, like, how? Isn't it preferable to allow them their own chaos that will eventually form into their own order? Can't we allow them to try to heal themselves instead of insisting on "helping" until there is no them anymore. No matter how much we "help" them in ordering things in our imperial image, when we leave eventually (or never,) they will have some amount of chaos, forming into order again. How else will they right themselves after all that we've done to them?... its gonna take a long, long time...and its our fault. We have a responsibility to pour assistance into that country to help them rebuild and to finance social and medical programs, but not to stay as a military force, because its not working and it wont work...ever.
So, the clowns will line up on Thursday and hopefully get shot down. It could be a really good show if Matthews does his job. He is currently a little too giddy for my taste.
This is where Rudy starts unraveling and McCain implodes on TV, and Romny gets to try to explain it all away.
Why oh why cant we have ANY good commentators on AAR at this point? I could so use some sort of intelligent and snarky commentary. There is nothing...nothing at all...enough said...I have nothing left for that situation.

And in the same vein as deregulated big corporations, the deconstruction of our government, and the profit motive in this global economy....what the fuck is going on with our food supply? The melamine contamination controversy grows daily and its not just pet food, folks! Get this: I got worried about parrot food and the various chows and meats that I am feeding my way-too-many animals. I made some organic chicken and rice and veggie stew for the dogs and have been feeding them a kibble that seems O.K. for now...we'll see...but as this thing unfolds and it becomes clear that any farmer could feed livestock this cheaper feed with protein from china, then we all have to know that the stuff is in OUR food and most pet food...and FISH!! Its indirect exposure so how can it be traced?
So, doing my own research, I started to look around at different pet food companies and call some of them because I sometimes buy chew bones at the market or whatever, and I cant guarantee that all of the brands of snacks and food that I feed my animals is human grade, health food, and/or organic, not that any of those categories of food is let out of this unless and until the companies state where each of their ingredients come from.
Hartz features a disclaimer on their website that claims that they in no way have anything to do with the recalls, and that their wheat gluten is clear. But it doesn't address meats or rice or...what, if anything, they import from China. I called customer service and tried to get a straight answer about all of this....Well, the smoked pig's ears are actually from Brazil! There is no way to tease this all out.
What would a Brazilian farmer who grows pigs, and sells at least the ears to Hartz , feed their pigs? Probably the cheapest feed from China.
Well, from there I went to the big bag of chicken jerky from Costco that I just bought for my dogs. Where is it made?? China!!
What do they feed livestock in China? Melamine laced feed!
The Kaytee company, to its credit, uses American grown grains in their foods but there is some confusion in that Kaytee is also 8 in 1 (which makes the hedgehog chow we use here for Tumbleweed, and many bird snacks that I have used,) and though I was assured by Kaytee's web page and customer service that there was NO problem at all, I got an email today saying that the 8 in 1 chicken jerky was found to have salmonella in it...now that they're testing, you know, other problems are showing up.
Let me get this straight: You work with chicken that you are drying and smoking for pets to eat, and you don't spot test daily, every shift, for salmonella? It took a pet food crisis to get these companies testing? My god, what else will they find?

The really big issue here is not the pets, though they are very important to me, but the human food confusion and the F.D.A.'s insistence that this stuff is not dangerous, even though it causes sickness and death in dogs, cats, and mice. And what of birds, the actual canaries in the coal mine, who die all the time and, short of a necropsy, no one pays attention?...No, it takes a big jump in larger pet deaths to get this looked into...because we have no government oversight of anything anymore (and I can remember so clearly, Ronald Reagan saying how large corporations don't need the government to police them...they can police themselves!! yeah right...hows that working?) This is big and growing..but not in the M$M...no sir, the New York Times had a cover story on it yesterday, but its not really on the news much except for a small article in back of the paper here and there. Why is that? And why is at least one pet food company quietly paying the vet bills? What corporation ever started to pay a class quietly to head off a huge class action? I really cant believe that it has something to do with kindness and care...no, its to head off the hug payoff at the pass!

Right now I am trying to feed us all as much organic and US grain fed food as I can. I'm not sure if it even makes a difference because this feed thing is insidious, and this unregulated, uncontrolled globalism has made things too complicated...who can say what is going to happen next? But every day we are getting more and more reports of melamine getting into the American human food chain. Pigs yesterday, fish and chickens today, and a little too much assurance for agencies about how there is no danger to humans...but I don't see the studies. Where are the studies?
Send in the clowns......



Speaking of Clowns: RIP Tom Poston. You will be missed!

Even a Clown Knows When to Strike....