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By Mark D, August 16, 2011 8:18 pm

I voted for Obama in the last election. Not because I was a brain washed liberal who only watches MSNBC. As I’ve said before, I don’t think MSNBC leans FAR enough to the left, so there’s no reason for me to watch it. If you seriously went out and voted for Jon McCain, you might have been a tad insane. McCain was so out of touch, he didn’t even know how to react to the sinking economy until his poll numbers started sinking. Adding Sarah Palin to the ticket in order to get Democrats who would have voted for Hillary to vote for McCain was insane too. Palin is the exact opposite of Clinton in every way, from the beauty queen aspect to being dim witted and on the opposite of nearly every important issue.

I was always worried though, as Obama seemed to become something to everyone. He was always seemed bigger then he actually was. When you go back it seemed like no one took the time to read his positions on his website, which always seemed a bit more middle of the road then people were making it out to be. I am a little disappointed that Obama hasn’t gotten more done, but he has had to face a Republican party which is completely unwilling to negotiate at all. They seem to be after power for powers sake, and holding Obama back from doing anything while blaming him for everything seems to be their road to the white house.

But the other day during a campaign stop in Iowa, Obama got in an argument with a Tea Party member. Of course the Tea Party member felt he was being ignored and bounced up and down shouting at Obama the following:

Rhodes shouted out that the president’s calls for more civility in politics had little chance of coming to pass after “your vice president is calling people like me, a Tea Party member, a ‘terrorist.’”

Yes, the guy complaining about civility didn’t wait to be picked out of the crowd among people asking questions, in case you were curious. Obama showed some of the wit which makes him so great on the campaign trail.

“In fairness, since I have been called a socialist who wasn’t born in this country, who is destroying America and taking away its freedoms because I passed a health care bill, I am all for lowering the rhetoric.”

The amazing thing is that Bush would have never (okay, I say never, but feel free to point out if I’m wrong) brought up anything that was said about him. From his AWOL National Guard stint, to the Cocaine addiction and the other rhetoric he might have heard on the trail, he never self-referenced it. It makes you wonder how close to home some of those hit. In comparison Obama is willing to bring it up because he knows people claim it, yet realizes that some people are just insane. I hope he calls out a lot more of these Tea Party Douchebags while out and about.

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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, November 1, 2010 9:40 pm

Well this is probably a bit late in writing, but tomorrow YOU need to go out and vote. I’m not a Democrat (okay, I’m registered as one, but don’t consider them MY party) or a Republican, but as I’m living in America like many of you this election will effect me. As it stands just about EVERYTHING Obama has done has seen the Republicans saying No. The filibuster is killing the Dems, as Republicans are unwilling to vote against their party in almost every issue. Meanwhile since the Dems include a decent amount of Moderates, some Dem votes have been defeated by Dems crossing the aisle.

The idea that voting in more Republicans (or voting out Dems, same difference) is going to fix anything is crazy. Republicans are also not about to fix anything. As it stands for the Republicans to get rid of the deficit AND keep the programs their in favor for, you’d have to cut every other faucet of government spending. That includes actually shutting down the government and congress. So those looking to get spending “under control” might be a little surprised when that doesn’t happen.

The idea that Obama has done nothing in two years seems rather silly. Obviously there’s the big issue of health care (and spoiler alert, it’s not going to get overturned no matter how many Republicans get elected) but do people realize that this is something that five different Presidents have tried to implement? Yes, it’s not perfect, but once again the Dems had to compromise with Moderates in the Senate and enough Republicans to get it approved. If you really are upset about it, then send more Dems to the Senate and they can actually get stuff done without compromising.

Just to keep people up to date,the non partisan PolitiFact.com Currently lists Obama campaign promises as following

122 Kept, 41 Compromised, 22 Broken, 82 Stalled and 236 in the works.

This is not a President who is spending more time at Camp David and his Crawford Ranch then at the actual White House. If your complaining that he is out on the Campaign trail so much, how do you expect him to get his legislation passed if he has to work with a Congress full of Republicans?

The Republicans only care about power and their own self interest. If they actually cared about people they wouldn’t have spent the last two years in lockstep trying to stop all Democrat legislation from passing. The threats from the Tea Party also mean that this is a Republican party that more then ever before is unwilling to do ANYTHING which might be viewed at all as being “Liberal”.

Two years ago you had high hopes for change in America. If you really want anything to get done out of DC, putting more Republicans in power is only asking for less to be done. Babysteps have been made, but the bigger steps have been blocked time and time again. The early days of Dubya’s term is picture perfect for what you can expect for Republicans. Not only did Dubya repeal the Corporation tax (a tax enacted by Reagen) but he paid back 20 years of the tax WITH INTEREST! The Republicans will be sure to reward the rich and the corporations for helping them, and the average person will be hurting worse then ever.

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By Mark D, October 19, 2010 8:33 pm

As I mentioned the other day, I tend to get most of my News stories from Yahoo!, since I enjoy AP stories. Well something that’s been bothering me is the insanity in the comments. Now some of the problem comes from the fact that Yahoo re-uses the url for news stories since AP stories have to be pulled after 3 months. So a story that involves Obama and the US would be under Obama-US4 and when a new story would be put into it’s spot the old comments would stay with that story. It’s a technological problem more then a conspiracy of any sort.

For example a newer story I was reading again involve the Yes Men pulling another prank, this time on Chevron. Now given what one would suspect of people’s attitudes towards big oil companies (you know, after the whole BP thing) you might expect that most people agree with the article and what the Yes Men are doing. Instead a quick view of the highest rated comments finds that every comment in agreement with the Yes Men have 20-25 Thumbs down. Most of them have more thumbs down then thumbs up, despite being in support of what one could guess would be a broadly popular move.

Even wilder, there is only one comment in the highest rated which doesn’t have 20 thumbs down, it’s not even in the double digit thumbs down. Yet it’s the second highest rated comment and seems to be combative to what the Yes Men are doing, here it is:

The biggest ad hoaxes are the campaigns by the politicians.
They’ll say anything to get elected, and make any promise.
Once elected, it’s business as usual, and they’ll raise taxes and spend more of our money to benefit their cronies and special interests, and also foreign governments like Pakistan.
So the various companies’ ads are small potatoes, compared to the huge hoaxes perpetrated by both Republicrooks and Democrooks.
Remember Obama’s promises? Has he kept even one of them?

There are so many things wrong with this comment. Does anyone remember when George W. Bush said in a debate with Al Gore that American Troops should not be used in “Nation Building”. It’s always amazing to me how these tea party people come out against both parties, but always finish their rant with a bashing of Obama. I find it amazing that time and time again they claim to be against both parties, yet always seem to save the most venom for Obama.

I’ve always taken the internet to be a very liberal beast. Maybe it’s because Yahoo! is such a mainstream site. Or maybe the internet reflects the reality of a bunch of idiots screaming louder then anyone else. I don’t think this is some sort of conspiracy by Yahoo! But I wouldn’t put it beyond there being more groups like the one that worked on Digg to bury liberal stories and posters.

Maybe I’m wrong and Tea Party people just have plenty of time when they aren’t watching Fox News to comment on Yahoo! News stories. It just seems to be a continuing almost somewhat disturbing trend that liberal comments are buried so quickly. I’ve found that when I’ve left liberal comments on especially busy news stories that within 5-10 minutes the comment has been removed. Some of them haven’t even been as blatantly liberal as you might think.

My friend probably has it right though, she keeps telling me I should stop stressing over it and stop reading the comments. That it’s a bunch of loons causing trouble and it’s working because I’m stressing over it. But I was wondering if anyone else reads the Yahoo! News comments and think they are a bunch of maniacs?

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By Mark D, October 2, 2010 11:23 am

When I was younger I was a fan of “Life With Louie”, and I’ll always remember one episode in which lil’Louie takes a trip around America and learns that his neighborhood/town isn’t 1/3rd the size of America. That episode never really made sense to me, but I guess that comes from growing up in the shadow of Manhattan. I mean all you have to do is go to Todt Hill and you could see the Manhattan Skyline and how massive it was to understand how small you were. For that matter I remember never really seeing stars until I was 13 and went to football camp and went outside after dark. It felt like I was looking at eternity, since on Staten Island you could never see the stars or at least more then one of them.

So growing up on Staten Island you learn pretty quick that the place you live is completely inconsequential in the big picture. Even the local paper, the Staten Island Advance, tended to not have local stories on the front page. So whenever I hear about Staten Island in the news, I never expect it to be anything good. Actually I usually expect it to be that another Ferry crashed into the pier. To one day see my own neighborhood in the news, I would expect it to have to begin with “North Korea bombs Midland Beach”. Midland Beach is actually pretty small, not small enough that everyone knows each other, but it’s one of the smaller neighborhoods on the Island. Historically Midland Beach used to have one of the smallest Post Offices in the US until it was closed in the 80s.

Now of course Midland Beach wasn’t nuked by anyone, but they found an even worse way to get into national headlines. With all the headlines about the “Times Square Mosque” (and in that situation I’m doing the air quotes with my hands), Midland Beach managed to slip into the argument. An abandoned convent owned by the local diocese (St Margaret Mary’s [Class of 94 Representing]) was going to be sold to the Muslim-American Society so they could build a new Mosque and community center. Immediately all the wing nuts in the neighborhood suddenly found the internet and started claiming that MAS was tied to Islamic terrorists.  Of course they came up with other reasons such as traffic and parking concerns.

The fact of the matter though is that all of Midland Beach deserves to be ashamed of all their actions. For being a part of New York City you would think people would be a bit brighter. But no, and this is really just as bad as the half finished Mosque that got burnt down in the South. It is the right of all people to be able to practice their religion. The Mosques currently on Staten Island are overflowing and they are trying to alleviate that overflow. The idea that this Mosque would somehow become a terrorist training center is just insanity. Don’t take my word for it, here’s a quote from Representative Micheal MacMahon after speaking with the FBI

The FBI responded to my request for information and they gave me no indication whatsoever that the Muslim American Society is affiliated with any organization that threatens our national security

The claims about parking and traffic problems? They are absolutely preposterous. I haven’t lived in Midland Beach in over 10 years, so conditions have only gotten worse, but St Margaret Mary’s faces and feeds out to Lincoln Avenue a one way one lane road. Not only that, but the parking lot for SMM is not only usually overflowing onto the two streets next to it, but the traffic when mass gets out is just chaotic. The position of the old Convent would actually feed traffic onto Greely Avenue, a two way two lane road that could handle traffic far better then Lincoln. If another non-Islamic religion wanted to move into there not a single person would complain about the traffic before they started building.

The case is quite clear that even Staten Island can’t claim the high ground. Midland Beach is packed with white people with a complete misunderstanding of the Islamic religion who put Islamaphobia behind a facade to keep out people that were different. Shame on you residents of Midland Beach. You should realize that treating the moderate and even conservative members of Islam like this only strengthens the radical members overseas. It shows them that there is no middle ground, no common area that people of all religions can come together. So thank you Midland Beach for giving more power to the terrorists, for giving comfort to the terrorists, those same terrorists you were trying so hard to fight.

Ironically this almost reminds me of Wiemar Era Germany. The Socialists and Communists had more combined strength then the Nazis. But the unwillingness of the Communists (under direction from Stalin) to form a united front (they actually claimed the Socialists were the real fascists) meant doom for members of both parties as they were the first ones imprisoned in the concentration camps as enemies of the people. Today we could help stop terrorism by reaching out to moderate and conservative members of Islam who are out there around the world. But instead we seem to take every path possible to insult them and degrade them as second class citizens.

So Congrats Midland Beach on your victory over the Terrorists, you make me sick.