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By Mark D, January 23, 2011 3:53 pm

This may come as a shock, but I was never a huge fan of Keith Olbermann. I always considered him a bit of a douche when he was a host on Sportscenter, and couldn’t have cared less when he got his own show. I’ve come to have a respect for his show and I’ve enjoyed a lot of the clips of it I’ve been sent. I don’t think I ever saw a full episode, and I almost always changed the channel when he started interviewing someone (I do the same to Stewart and Colbert). I’ve heard some rumors about him being a jackass in/around the MSNBC offices. But I’ve also heard a lot of people claim that no one else worked as hard on their show, with him being involved heavily in daily research.

But you have to give him credit where credit is due. If he helped guide MSNBC to a more left leaning network, then he did political discourse in the country a favor. While Fox News has been in the pocket of the Republican party, the other news networks have taken a middle of the road path with an unwillingness to call them on it. Considering that George W Bush was re-elected in 2004, it wasn’t the popular thing to come out against him before the election. But it was the right thing to point out the lies and fearmongering being used by the right. I remember when Bush was first announcing the invasion of Iraq, I was telling everyone I could that it was a waste of life and no one took me seriously. My friends now take me seriously when I talk about this stuff. It was the lack of a counter which allowed the whole country to be taken down the rabbit hole.

One thing you really have to give MSNBC/Olbermann credit for is that unlike Fox News they aren’t just lapdogs for the Democrats. They have been just as critical of Obama as they have ever been of Bush. It even got to the point that I remember the Daily Show claiming MSNBC was doing it wrong when it came to defending Obama. During his time with the network he was the figurehead and central in their movement from an also-ran to Fox News biggest rival.

Now because I’m insane I was interested in seeing what the comments would be like on Yahoo! News comments. I don’t know why I keep going back to them, I guess I’m just amused as to how much venom people can have for someone. I mean the right is so riled up about MSNBC and NBC they’ll actually chant NBC Lies at rallies. It’s almost like the 2 minute hate. I sorted these comments based on the Highest amount of ratings:

“Good! He was worthless!” 1325 Up 507 Down

“Good riddance….” 810 Up 245 Down

“He is a lying piece of crap.” 738 Up 213 Down

“Best news I’ve read all day” 734 Up 181 Down

“the world is a better place with him off the air” 716 Up 189 Down

“I Love Lucy re-runs would get better ratings.” 589 Up 138 Down

“It is a shame. Countdown was the best news show on the air.” 562 Up 1498 Down

“Take Rachel Maddow with you – you’re both idiots!” 521 Up 148 Down

“Accuracy was his forte.Showing you with facts how the republicans LIE to the masses was his specialty. Sure gonna miss him.” 438 Up 1225 Down

“We have lost a critical voice in our countries debate” 405 Up 1136 Down

I don’t get it. Two of the three positive comments for him were relatively minor and didn’t bash anyone. You would think such comments would have gotten some love especially when someone’s leaving their job. How the negative comments combined don’t have as many down votes as a single of the positive comments is mind melting. Is the internet that conservative? am I overrating the amount of conservatives on the internet? I mean there are some people who no matter what craziness they did get a positive response from people as they leave.

I really wish the best for Keith Olbermann, even if I do think a good amount of it might have been him being a douche around the offices. I also hope this isn’t a sign of NBC taking a new direction with the channel now that Comcast has taken over. Thankfully we have Brent Bozzell (seriously, someone interviewed him about Olbermann and it was in the AP report) to inform us that the show taking over for Countdown is an even bigger evil meanie liberal. I guess for Conservatives it’s be careful what you wish for.

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By Mark D, January 8, 2011 5:06 pm

Palin Decided to Delete this Tweet from her history:

It’s so sad that someone decided to take matters into their own hands when it comes to politics. Now we have a Federal Judge, a Nine Year Old and possibly others dead from this shooting. So far it appears that Giffords will survive, at least according to the reports I’m reading.

At some point though, this shouldn’t be surprising. Following the debate for the Republican National Chairman which included the following question “How many guns do you own?”, the militancy on the right has been obvious.

From the Tea Party to the other voices, the Right has been yelling that they will take back their country “One way or Another…”

People like Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and those other blowhards will claim that they never wanted this. That despite their rhetoric they never wanted someone to be assassinated. But they should be held responsible for inciting people to take these actions, especially when in the case of Sarah Palin YOU PUT A CROSSHAIR OVER THE CONGRESSWOMAN BEFORE SHE IS SHOT!!!

I’m sure that this will be just swept under the rug, but for prosperity let’s not forget that Sarah Palin might have had a big hand in this:

Congrats Sarah Palin, you might have gotten someone to help you take back one of the 20!

Interestingly Represantive Giffords had talked about this:

“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC.

And now the Right is out in full force doing damage control. They are claiming that the shooter was an ultra liberal because someone on twitter said they knew him in 2007. Of course they have no verification of this, but hey why not? Of course they are also claiming that because he listed his favorite books as The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf that he is obviously Liberal. Yes, many of my Liberal friends have read Mein Kampf. Now that they claim to be looking for someone else involved in the shooting, let’s see how their “oh he was Liberal” holds up in the long run.

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By Mark D, October 25, 2010 12:04 am

I was actually surprised to discover that conservative right wingers took the time to search through the latest wikileaks Iraq War documents. Instead of being horrified at the loss of civilian life (now thanks to these documents is considered much higher then W Bush admitted) they found a gem they could rally around. That’s right, there were WMDs in Iraq and the main stream media did nothing to report it. Another “Liberal Lie” bites the dust.

You can read all about it right here via Hot Air

While the invasion of Iraq didn’t find huge stockpiles of new WMDs, it did uncover stockpiles that the UN had demanded destroyed as a condition of the 1991 truce that Saddam Hussein abrogated for twelve years

To my shock even Wired is running the story that wikileaks unearthed WMDs They should at the very least know better.

While the Right wing has somehow discovered the internet for the first time, what they still haven’t found is Google. You see, I actually remember it being reported in independent news that these caches of old Mustard Gas had been found. The reason the main stream media never picked up on it? because George Bush Senior sold him the Mustard Gas and the turned a blind eye towards Saddam using these on his own people (especially the Kurds in 1991). It would have been embarrassing to have to explain where this mustard gas originally came from.

Going to google and searching for Mustard Gas Iraq finds the following News Stories:

Fox News Story from May 17 2004 Which includes this gem

It also appears some top Pentagon officials were surprised by the sarin news; they thought the matter was classified, administration officials told Fox News.

If the Bush Administration had found WMDs, why would it be classified instead of them shouting it from the roofs?

The Observer (UK) From Jan 11 2004

However, the find of a small amount of mortar shells is unlikely to satisfy a growing chorus of criticism that the much-touted weapons of mass destruction either never existed or were destroyed years ago. The Danish team has found only 36 mortar rounds buried in desert about 45 miles from Al Amarah, a southern town. But it added that up to a 100 more could still be hidden at the location. The rounds were in plastic bags and some were leaking. It seems they had been buried for at least 10 years.

That’s quite the imminent threat to American Security!

From the AFP via Breitbart June 22 2005

A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions “in such a degraded state they couldn’t be used for what they are designed for.”

The official, who asked not to be identified, said most were 155 millimeter artillery projectiles with mustard gas or sarin of varying degrees of potency.

Once again, not exactly the threat we were told of before the war.

Washington Post August 14 2005

Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration cited evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for the invasion. No such weapons or factories were found.

So it appears that Operation Iraqi Freedom actually INCREASED the number of labs producing Mustard gas in Iraq.

Defense.Gov from June 29 2006

The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center’s commander said here today.

“These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes … they do constitute weapons of mass destruction,” Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.

Spacewar.com July 1 2004

Rumsfeld said Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski told him about the find when they met earlier this week at a NATO summit in Istanbul.

“He pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across — I’ve forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 — warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas,” Rumsfeld told Newradio 600 KOGO of San Diego, California, in an interview aired Wednesday.

Even the Poles knew about the Mustard Gas!

Look, it doesn’t take that much work to go to Google and type in Mustard Gas Iraq. If you are going to start tooting your horn about there being “WMDs in Iraq” then your going to have to find something better then this. Saddam was never going to use this stuff to attack America. For the most part it seems quite possible that poor bookkeeping had more to do with these handful of Mustard shells here and there still being around. In about ten minutes I found six articles from 2004 and 2006 which were published at the time. There is no claiming that the “Main Stream Media” swept this story under the rug. Please next time do a little research before you celebrate proving the “Liberal Lie” wrong.

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By Mark D, May 27, 2010 3:13 pm

Nothing has annoyed me more then those Chicken Littles in the crowd crying that Obama is destroying America. That Obama is making America a Socialist state. Or the most humorous that Obama is turning the US into a Facist state. It’s kind of ironic that those who say he’s turning the US to facism were the most hard core supporters of Bush. Let us not forget which president gutted the constitution, used fear to get himself re-elected and did everything possible to avoid being charged with any wrong doing. Someone who should be on trial today for the murder of Americans and countless Iraqis all for a lie.

While Obama has continually cut taxes for 90% of the population (it should be noted that most of Bush’s cuts were for the top 10%) somehow the Tea Partiers are complaining about being over taxed. This is one of the failings of how history is currently being taught in America. You are simply told facts, then you must recite those same facts over for the test. There’s no room for analysis of events, of cause and effect, of differing viewpoints. You are taught that authority will tell you what is black and white, and that is it.  When they grow up, instead of looking at multiple editorials on the same event simply choose one news source and that becomes the end all be all.

How though can you decide what news outlet can be trusted? There is no worse way to go day by day and never scratch the surface of what’s going on in the world. When you interview random people on the street about events, most of them have a clouded interpretation at best. A constant argument following the tragic earthquake in Haiti was why should America give money to help Haiti when no one helped after Hurricane Katrina. Ironically enough a large amount of international funds did pour into the US. Somewhere between 800 Million and 1.1 Billion. Of those funds it’s estimated that only 40-50 million was actually spent on Katrina hurricane recovery. Everything is in the details, and the ignorance of the greater details is scary.

There is also strength in language which is being greatly underestimated. There are plenty of ways to say the same thing in English. But even if the end result of the information is the same no matter what words you use, you can still get your viewpoint across while simply “telling the news”. Why is it for example that protests to end the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are announced as “Anti – War” Protests and not “Peace” Protests. This is one of the few things Catholic school taught me about abortion. When you are in a disagreement, you never want to be the Anti part of the argument. People are naturally inclined to be for the Pro side of an argument because of the negativity involved with Anti. That’s why there’s Pro Life and Pro Choice. You don’t want to mainly be known for taking away someone’s rights, and you obviously don’t want to wish people dead.

One rumor I’ve always heard is that among the Nazi scientists who were recruited to work on the American Space program, there were also some of the Nazi’s best propagandists. The great depression had given Unions and Socialists a new strength. So had the war, you could night fight a war without the labor of industry. Although quick to squash the strength of the unions with the Taft-Hartley Act, they still needed a long term answer. In the Nazi Propagandists they found their answer. Combined with the pre-existing “Mohawk Valley Forumula” the pieces were in place for a quick crushing of the Unions. No where else in the world does it exist this pre-conceived notion of being anti-American. No one in Italy gets yelled at for not being Italian enough. You don’t hear in Mexico that you aren’t Mexican enough or that your anti-Mexican. These are ideas improved upon by German Propagandists who should have faced the noose instead of getting a second life in America. Their work in making the German population agree with the Holocaust, along with continuing a lost war and costing countless lives were more then enough for them to be hanged. So today we get to hear such great arguments as Love It Or Leave It. Once upon a time some of the greatest American figures of their day came together in the Anti-Imperialism League and fought against the ongoing war in the Phillipines. Although this period of time is usually brushed over, it’s amazing how today when popular figures take such a stand they are mocked and told they should just stick to doing whatever they do.

So in a society lacking the skills to interpret the news, we end up with people who believe that Obama is a Commie-Nazi and is next heir for Hitler and Stalin’s crown. They ignore that Nazism and Fascism were polar opposites of the political spectrum. They have no idea that Communists fought against Hitler’s Brown Shirts and that Communists and Socialists were the first ones to be interred at camps  when Hitler took full control.  The idea that Obama is somehow either Communist or a Nazi has got to be one of the most ridiculous ideas I have ever heard. You can have your disagreements and beliefs about Obama, but at least take the time to study, look up, research why you really dislike Obama. See if the reason you dislike him even actually exists. Dislike Obama because he campaigned on a very left leaning platform but has proceeded to basically be a centrist during his time in office. That he hasn’t brought the troops home already.  At the very least don’t blame him for the economy which Bush managed to absolutely ruin in almost no time at all. People forget that Clinton gave Bush a Budget Surplus which he proceeded to waste in no time whatsoever.  Today take the time to look up the facts behind at least one headline you read.

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By admin, December 9, 2009 11:09 am

Sorry about the time between posts. My connection has been funky. Comcast sucks.

10. 300

Although a poor translation of the comic book, they got enough right about a fantastic comic book to deserve listing. Just skip the pointless scenes with the Queen and this movie will be great. I had long said that all Hollywood needed to do was make a movie about a single battle. Unfortunately someone decided that the movie needed a strong female lead for the ladies who watched the movie. No offense, but the strong silent queen was much better in the comic.

9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The only “serious” Carey film worth watching this decade. One of the issues for me is my love of Montauk LI, which plays a key part in the movie. I also always tend to think the grass is greener on the other side and screwing up relationships. I could see this happening to me too. Also, Elijah Wood is great in one of his many small quirky roles outside of the LoTR Trilogy.

8. Pirates of the Caribbean

The first one was an instant classic. If/When I do a ten worst movies the other two deserve to be on that list. Its amazing that Disney allowed the movie to be lead by a Homoerotic pirate. Unfortunately had this movie not had a scene stealing Johnny Depp we wouldn’t have to be tortured in other movies by the amazingly dull Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom.

7. The Motorcycle Diaries

A must see movie and a must read book. The early life of Che as he takes a trip around South America with a close friend. He could have lived the rest of his life as a doctor in the middle/upper class of South America. Instead this journey opened his eyes to all that was wrong in South America and the differences between the haves and have nots. Gael Bernal also turned in an incredible performance.

6. Shaun Of The Dead

For a Zombie Comedy movie, it has a large number of touching moments and some of the best characters in a zombie movie since Night Of The Dead. In all the Zombie movies there always seems to be a character that is dumb as shit but no one will admit it or say anything. In this movie everyone fucks up and people will call them on it. I also love when Ed asks for a Quid (basically a quarter in the US) while in the bar and no one asks him what its for.

5. There Will Be Blood

Originally based on Upton Sinclair’s “Oil”, Paul Thomas Anderson ended up taking it in a different direction. Paul Dano and Daniel Day Lewis give two of the most powerful performances and play great off of each other. The great line of “I Drink Your Milkshake” is from this movie.

4. The Departed

This was a close toss up between The Departed and There Will Be Blood. Departed just has too many great showings from great actors for this to be ranked much lower. After I saw Being Gilbert Grape and Romeo + Juliet I told my friends that Leo would be the next great actor. Then thanks to Titanic I got ridiculed to no end. Mark Wahlberg also needs to do more movies like this, smaller more intense parts, instead of his wooden emotionless starring roles.

3. The Wrestler

This movie was robbed at the Academy Awards. If anyone but Mickey Rourke had given the same performance they would have won. But the Academy feared letting Mickey near a mic. That this wasn’t nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Song (as much as I hate Springsteen) was a complete mockery. It also helps that one of the wrestlers is a personal favorite of mine, Necro Butcher. This movie is so true of these older stars, the only thing is reality is sadder. Most of them are showing up in Gyms that can hold 100-200 people and have only 20-30 people in the crowd.

2. Fahrenheit 9/11

Micheal Moore’s best documentary of the decade. I believe it actually set records for profit. That Bush is not under trial for war crimes or murder is a joke. In the leadup to this movie the NY Post and Fox News went insane trying to discredit Moore to the point of calling him a Nazi. In a great example of irony Fox News and the NY Post called him a modern day Joseph Goebbels, who is famous for being the head of propaganda of the Nazi State. It still amazes me that after so many people saw this movie, Bush got re-elected.

1. Sin City

This is how you convert a comic to a movie. You take the comic and make it the story board. As great as “That Yellow Bastard” and “The Big Fat Kill” are, its “The Hard Goodbye” with Mickey Rourke as Marv that takes the cake. Almost perfectly translated from comic to movie, and there’s no one but Mickey that could have played Marv. THG also has the best line of the movie,

Most people think Marv is crazy. He just had the rotten luck of being born in the wrong century. He’d be right at home on some ancient battlefield swinging an axe into somebody’s face. Or in a Roman arena, taking his sword to other gladiators like him. They would’ve tossed him girls like Nancy back then.

That line resonates with too many people I know. Also kudos to Bruce Willis, who continues taking roles of older characters and playing them with quite a high level of dignity.  The best I can say about The Big Fat Kill (since I’m not a Clive Owen fan) is that Miho steals the story without saying a word.

Honorable Mention

In No Particular Order

The Hangover: A Classic comedy that just makes you laugh. Hollywood can’t manage that too often

District 9: Its between this and Serenity for best Sci-Fi space film. I can’t recommend it enough after seeing it a few days ago.

Return Of The King: Finally the LoTR film that stops talking and just has battles. After sitting through far too much BS in Fellowship and only one great scene in The Two Towers (Last March of The Ents) this was what we were waiting for.

Borat: People were actually rolling in the rows laughing when I saw this in theaters. Although it ends up here cause you don’t know what was scripted and edited and what wasn’t.

I might follow this up with the ten worst films.