Verily, This Was The King Of Pop

Clearly I have underestimated Michael Jackson's hold on our popular psyche. The news people can't get enough of him. Last night as I was going to bed, the BBC World Service devoted 10 minutes at the top of the hour to him; this is time they would normally devote to the revolution in Iran. You don't see McMahon or Fawcett getting this treatment.

Then again, Jackson was a unique guy. In addition to his (I'll be generous) unusual public persona, he also had a rare and beautiful voice, a phrasing that cannot be duplicated, and a knack for making what he did for a living look easy, even as he made a normal life look impossible.

How easy he made singing became apparent to me last night at the Karaoke bar. No less than 5 people took on Jackson's material, some of them very very good, and all came out as weak imitations. It only served to remind me that Jackson himself was a genius. I'm no fan of that kind of drippy, electric-piano eighties easy listening, but when Michael Jackson is mixed up in it I can always listen to it. Hate the song, love the singer. I recall when I first heard MAN IN THE MIRROR my thought was, "that's brilliant" and and suspect had it come from anyone else it would have been "how trite."

Sadly he did his job so well for the first twenty years that once the nineties rolled around, we were all stocked up with Jackomusic and didn't need any more. So sales dropped off but we were still willing to stick around and let him entertain us with his increasingly bizarre facelifts and terrifying behavior around children. We never tired of that, and it looks like we're not going to for a long time to come.

Billy Mays Dead At 50

Enough!

Let My Lizard People Go

"The bill's passage, by 219-212*, with eight Democrats voting against it, also established a marker for the United States when international negotiations on a new climate-change treaty begin later this year."

Eight democrats voting against a bill - isn't it time to stop blocking Al Franken?

I mean really, this vote demonstrates that there is enough range in the Democratic party that there is no NEED for the increasingly scarce Republicans. We oppose ourselves. Once Republicans drum out the 4 who voted for they bill (attention bias watch customers: the NYT fails to mention that any Republicans voted for it) they'll be small enough to stop being a voting bloc and just take up residence as a kind of elected lobby. A party of spokesmen.

* I'm reading elsewhere that it was 44 Democrats voting nay, which would just further buttress my position.

It Doesn't Happen in Threes

During the last few days, we lost FOUR famous people - Sky Saxon, garage-band icon and leader of The Seeds, passed away yesterday. If you don't think Sky counts, you're not pushin' hard enough.

Enough already!

Let He Who Is Most Familiar With Sin Cast The First Stone

ABC News posts a helpful and entertaining guide to politicians who condemned Bill Clinton for his extra-marital activities while shrugging off their own. Mark Sanford makes the list, as does John Edwards and the usual suspects. My favorite quote: In his 2007 memoirs, DeLay, R-Texas, revealed a secret: he had had an extramarital affair that pre-dated Clinton's impeachment. He saw no hypocrisy, however. "I was no longer committing adultery by that time, the impeachment trial. There's a big difference."

This Is Fair

Sarah Palin was very upset the other day, because someone on a blog had used a picture of her and baby Trig and photoshopped the head of a local right-wing talk show host onto Trig. I won't reproduce that image here. I believe I read somewhere that she is fair game, but her children should be off limits. Fair enough. Courtesy SOMETHING AWFUL, acceptable Palin Photoshop Humor.

There! We can all get along!

Shoulda Seen This Coming

In Los Angeles there was this talk radio host named Michael Jackson. He went off the air in this town eventually because he was quiet, reasonable, and encouraged debate from all sides of the spectrum. In other words, there was no market for him.

He is still alive, and these people are seated around his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I don't think they know. When the talk radio host eventually passes away, I hope his fans will do him the courtesy of holding a vigil at the wrong star, just to balance the books a little.

(h/t Tbogg)

Bad Week For Icons

Ed McMahon, you were underestimated for your whole life. I miss you.

Farrah Fawcett, you were underestimated for the first part of your life, then you did some remarkable work. I miss you too.

Michael Jackson, I miss you even more. I have no idea what you were like in private but your public persona was that of our nations biggest weirdo. You were the poster boy for celebrity craziness. Once the king of pop, you became a story to frighten children with. Safe bet: we shall not see your like again.

There Is A Perfectly Reasonable Explaination For This

The liberal media never identifies Democrats if they're involved in scandals. Yes! No one involved in a scandal is ever associated in the press with the Democrat party.

Therefore, Fox has to do this once in a while, just to balance things out. In the big scheme of things, this freeze frame is completely accurate.

(h/t Wonkette, which probably added the crayon scrawlin' themselves)

The Good News About Mark Sanford

Hey, it wasn't a male prostitute. Same goes for John Ensign; image-wise, you guys are stepping way up from the Larry Craig/Ted Haggard era. And it certainly helps that sanctity of marriage argument when you're seen as cheating on your wives with women, rather then men.

BWAH HAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!

Sorry, just let me have my fun.

Listen, you probably weren't listening but when the Clinton impeachment was going on. But I'd frequently pose the plaintive question, "are you SURE you want to pin your whole strategy on this?" Because there is a potential downside to demonizing politicians' infidelity. It's as if the guy calling the shots was either not a politician, never had sex, or both.

Grover Norquist must be quite a guy.

BWAH HAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!

Sorry.

A Rough Press Conference

Here's some of the questions the Obama lovin' far left liberal media posed at the press conference this morning.

Major Garrett, Fox News: In your opening remarks, sir, you said about Iran that you were appalled and outraged. What took you so long?

Followup: Are Iranian diplomats still welcome at the embassy on Fourth of July, sir?

?: Wouldn't that drive private insurance out of business?

"Chip": Were you influenced at all by John McCain and Lindsey Graham accusing you of being timid and weak?

?: ... how many cigarettes a day do you now smoke? Do you smoke alone or in the presence of other people? And do you believe the new law should help you to quit? If so, why?

My favorite, because it's acknowleged that this is one that Obama knew was coming, and he specifically asked for it. Nico Pitney from the Huffington Post: I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions on tonight from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online. And one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of -- of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?

My point in taking these questions and not posting the answers is this - the press isn't coddling this guy at all. They're not being mean either, but it's not the Gannon-fest that people like, say, Warner Todd Huston are painting it to be.

Kill the Shepard

Many people rely on Fox News because they believe it is the only unbiased source of reporting on television. That's why when someone on Fox suggests that they may be mistaken, they demand he be fired.

On June 10, (Shepard) Smith was in the middle of three hours of coverage of the killing at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, in which officials identified an elderly anti-Semite as the killer. He then mentioned a prior warning by the Department of Homeland Security about right-wing extremist groups and connected that to the angry e-mail messages he had been receiving.

“When a crazy man has walked into a Holocaust museum and shot the security guard, maybe that’s an appropriate time to warn people: you’ve got a crazy person in your life, keep an eye on him,” he said in an interview in his Manhattan office last week.

Mr. Smith said he fully anticipated one result of those comments: the nasty e-mail increased.

“Thousands of them,” Mr. Smith said. “And I know they don’t mean the things they say. I know they don’t hate me and want death on my family.”

He thinks it's bad for him, imagine the mail Juan Williams gets! If I'm Shep, I'm getting pretty tired of swimming upstream all the time; maybe I'm looking for a new gig at CNN or somethin'. Why not? At least there, his far-left moonbattiness (do you know he insisted that people were trapped in the Houston Astrodome after Katrina? Brownie himself hadn't even heard that one!) will go unnoticed.

Hungering For Democracy

I'm going to meet Republicans halfway here. A frequent claim made, when defending the Iraq war, is that we gave the Iraqis the Democracy that they craved. I usually brush this off as another lie, (Weapons of Mass Destruction! Hussein was tied up with 9/11!) but clearly, this is not a lie. Events in Iran reinforce the idea that the Middle East passionately wants free and fair elections.

Where I part company with my Republican brethren (and you are my brethren, except those of you who are my sistern) is on this: they clearly want Democracy, but they don't want Americans giving it to 'em. If we gave them the chance in Iraq, the first thing they'd vote out would be us. Guaranteed. Democracy won't transform the Middle East into a benign haven for us. It will, however, give the PEOPLE who hate us more power and the GOVERNMENT who hates us less.

This is why, if you aren't rooting for Ahmadinejad (yes, I had to cut and paste the name) the last thing you want is for Obama to speak out in support of his opponent. Once that guy becomes the American Choice, his political career is over. Let's step back and let the rest of the world handle this one, shall we? They have their uses sometimes too.

Instant Cognitive Dissonance Generator

Just spotted in the lunch room freezer:

BUDGET GOURMET MACARONI AND CHEESE

It just takes the addition of one word to turn a rational thing into a complete physical impossibility.

Father's Day Word Of Wisdom

When I was young I used to ask my dad "if there's a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, why isn't there a Children's Day?" He'd sigh wearily and reply "every day is Children's Day."

Fathers who recognize this are the reason we honor them today.

The Return of The PUMAs

Remember them PUMAs, the massive bloc of Democrat voters who were so enraged by Hillary Clinton's loss in the primaries that they threatened to write Hil in and split that vote? How'd that work out anyway? I don't recall but I have a vague recollection that some wags suggested the whole thing was a black ops project of the RNC that failed massively. Indeed, my favorite PUMAs packed up and went home.

But by Golly, they're still out there, representin' for my girl Hil!

Check out Hillbuzz! They're keeping an eye out! Here's a posting from the 9th.

1100am – Meeting with Sukhbataar Batbold, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia

Remainder of the Day: being awesome

Admittedly, that's all I could find about her in five pages of posts. But their plate is full! It's only logical that Hillary Clinton supporters would be more concerned with vilifying David Letterman for all those nasty things he said about Sarah Palin. Here they are crowing over their victory in getting Olive Garden to pull its ads from Letterman's show!

Oh and here's Olive Garden explaining that it did no such thing.

Still, how can you believe them once you've seen the massive PUMA protest outside Letterman's studios last week?

No, they're not just fading into the night. Like real pumas do.

***Update: Here's something I'm a little surpised to not see in Hillbuzz.

Another Slippery Slope

courtesy GraphJam

Here's Why Obama Is Talking To Doctors

PRINCETON, NJ -- Nearly three-quarters of Americans (73%) say they are confident in doctors to recommend the right thing for reforming the U.S. healthcare system. That is significantly higher than the public confidence extended to President Barack Obama, as well as to six other entities that will be weighing in during the emerging healthcare reform debate.

You might conclude that the only reason I even posted this was to point out that the people whom the public trusts LEAST to reform the health care system are Congressional Republicans. Well, fine, think what you want.

Why Hasn't the MSM Covered The New Cell Phone Tax?

I'm getting a little static from WAMK about how the liberal media doesn't run with all those talking points - one he didn't mention is the trope that the administration was going to tax cell phone use if you have a business-issued cell phone. You didn't see ANYTHING about that in the MSM yesterday, and it was all over the right wings blogs. Much was made of Obama's new tax.

Well, that was yesterday. Today there is this:

The Obama administration is in favor of repealing a 1989 law that asked to tax people for using their work cellphones for personal calls. A turn of events after last week, when the IRS said they wanted to enforce it.

Of course, the law was dumb nowadays and almost impossible to enforce, as Douglas Shulman—Internal Revenue Service Commissioner—puts it:

[Treasury] Secretary [Timothy] Geithner and I ask that Congress act to make clear that there will be no tax consequence to employers or employees for personal use of work-related devices such as cellphones provided by employers. The passage of time, advances in technology, and the nature of communication in the modern workplace have rendered this law obsolete.

Interstingly, Gizmodo quotes two sources; Reuters headlines it as The Obama Administration wanting to repeal the law, while the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal manages to tell the whole story without even mentioning Geithner. I'm just wondering - should the MSM have run with this story yesterday?

A Reason To Be Ashamed, A Reason To Be Proud

"I'm looking forward on reading your post on why it's ok for Obama to keep the White House visitor log secret.

Am I a racist for calling him out on that?

It is good to see that the same Lefties that sued Bush are now suing Obama. Guess there are a few more votes he'll lose come 2012.

Hope and change my ass."

My embittered friend WAMK is referring to this story:

MSNBC reports that the Obama administration has denied its request for the names of individuals who have visited the White House since the Inauguration. Additionally, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington announced today that it is suing the Department of Homeland Security after the non-partisan organization was denied a request for records of visits of “leading coal company executives.” The Obama administration’s explanation:

The administration ought to be able to hold secret meetings in the White House, “such as an elected official interviewing for an administration position or an ambassador coming for a discussion on issues that would affect international negotiations,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt.

The Bush administration made the same arguments, which were ruled against twice in federal court.

You probably already know I'm deeply upset at this. I'm annoyed, I think it's wrong, and I hope the administration will change its policy on this very soon. The article I'm linking to points out numerous campaign statements in which Obama promises to stop exactly this kind of behavior. They should NOT continue this policy.

Here's my bright spot - as you can see, I'm getting this very damaging story from MSNBC, via the "right-wing smear site" ThinkProgress. At least I can use this ugly situation as fodder for one of my other points, which is that the vast left-wing media bias conspiracy isn't as bad as the right keeps saying. Between this and Letterman apologizing for his remarks because he had gotten criticism from Mark Shields on the PBS NewsHour - well, WAMK, believe what you want, but these are some of the reasons why I think the MSM bias isn't a problem. In fact I doubt there is a bias.