Prometheus 6

So there's this song, "My American Prayer," which was turned into a pro-Obama campaign video by the simple expedient of flashing some campaign footage interspersed with a bag of celebrities lip-synching the words of the song.

And it's not like I'm tired of cool videos, but this song is several years old. I guess if I were more attuned to marketing activities I'd be making money on this site, but I'm not.

And it couldn't happen to a nicer newspaper.

When another Palin fragment is unearthed, I'm always reminded of those arguments that can only take place online.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Having It Both Ways
What Hugh Hewitt’s ‘interview’ with Sarah Palin says about journalism today
By Brent Cunningham Wed 1 Oct 2008 01:42 PM

There is zero journalistic value in Hewitt’s interview. There isn’t even the illusion of critical distance, of healthy skepticism, of intellectually honest inquiry, of some sense that it is crucial to deeply sound out this person who wants to lead our nation at such a perilous time on what she would bring to the table. Instead, we get culture war nonsense about Joe Six-Pack and “gotcha” questions from the Elite Media....

So my question to Cillizza —and to ABC’s Jake Tapper and to Jimmy Orr at The Christian Science Monitor and anyone else who cited this interview—is, if you’re going to call attention to Hewitt’s work, why not go the extra step and label it what is? Especially when what you’re calling attention to is his ridiculous media bashing. Otherwise, you risk giving Hewitt’s hackery the imprimatur of real journalism....

There is nothing wrong with what Hewitt does, but let’s be honest—and clear—about what it is and what it is not.

Report Raises Questions On Voter Purging
CBS Evening News Investigates Little-Known, Problem-Ridden Process That Could Endanger Your Vote
NEW YORK, Sept. 30, 2008

With Election Day rapidly approaching, a new report, obtained exclusively by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian, raises serious questions and exposes flaws in the way states maintain their voter registration rolls.

You know how the NY Times does little summaries of aarticles on each section's landing page? I saw this today for David Brooks' latest on the Times' Opinions page.

Revolt of the Nihilists

America’s political leaders have failed utterly to project any sense of authority and to give the world a reason to believe that this country is being governed.

That promised to at least raise topics of serious interest to me. What I found is that Brooks has a pretty damn good view of the problem Republicans have created.

The American century was created by American leadership, which is scarcer than credit just about now. 

He just refuses to put the actual blame where it belongs. The op-ed is more than interesting. Coming from an axle of the Republican machine

I’ve spoken with several House Republicans over the past few days and most admirably believe in free-market principles. What’s sad is that they still think it’s 1984. They still think the biggest threat comes from socialism and Walter Mondale liberalism. They seem not to have noticed how global capital flows have transformed our political economy.

...it was jaw-dropping in places.

It was BAD ADVICE.

h/t OW

I don't know why McCain lied to Letterman. It's not like he wouldn't have found out Couric was interviewing McCain.

How could I not post this? I just hope YouTube doesn't purge it before everyone sees it...it reminds me of one of my favorite Taoist sayings: "Fail to honor people and they fail to honor you."

Battle Over ‘Watchmen’ Surrounds a Producer
By MICHAEL CIEPLY

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Visible through the glass door of the film producer Lawrence Gordon’s office here, a poster for his coming movie “Watchmen,” framed and ready for hanging, was propped against a wall this week.

Still to be determined: whether the black-and-yellow artwork, its distinctive happy face spattered with blood, will have some of its most important credits revised before joining Mr. Gordon’s crowded poster gallery.

A rapidly escalating legal fight between Warner Brothers, which has already shot “Watchmen,” and 20th Century Fox, which claims to own rights to the graphic novel on which it is based, is headed for trial in federal court in Los Angeles next January. That is just two months before Warner is scheduled to release the film in the United States, while Paramount Pictures distributes it abroad. (Legendary Pictures helped finance the film.)

And Kurtz is still a putz.

Recent Obama Ads More Negative Than Rival's, Study Says
Democrat Said to Be Facing Pressure to 'Show Some Spine'
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2008; A03

Despite perceptions that Sen. John McCain has spent more time on the attack, Sen. Barack Obama aired more negative advertising last week than did the Arizona Republican, says a study released yesterday.

Seventy-seven percent of the Illinois Democrat's commercials were negative during the week after the Republican National Convention, compared with 56 percent of the spots run by McCain.

Good call by the Associated Press on identifying them as a Republican group rather than a Jewish group.

A Republican group launched a new effort Wednesday to turn Jewish voters away from Barack Obama, an ad campaign that compares the Democratic presidential candidate to Pat Buchanan but offers scant evidence of their similarities.

The Republican Jewish Coalition is running an ad in dozens of Jewish newspapers that says Obama and Buchanan have views on Israel that are ''dangerous, reckless and wrong.'' It quotes Buchanan as saying his views on Israel are a lot closer to Obama's than they are to those of GOP presidential nominee John McCain....

The ad follows on the group's backing of a negative poll in which the questions tied Obama to Palestinian causes.

He has forced the major media (except Fox News, of course) to confront the truth.

All campaigns fall short, but some fall far shorter than others. And it is a phony evenhandedness, comfortable for journalists but ultimately misleading, that equates these failures without measuring the grossness of their deviation from the standard of decency.

In the 2008 race, and especially in the past few weeks, the imbalance has become unnervingly stark. Ideological differences aside, John McCain's campaign has been more dishonest, more unfair, more -- to use a word that resonates with McCain -- dishonorable than Barack Obama's.

This phony evenhandedness has been the hallmark of American media for as long as I can remember. Of course they would apply it to politics. Republicans knew this and spun things accordingly. And there's still some of that in the media mix.

I had forgotten all about this. Damn good reminder.

MCCAIN STILL SEES THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ECONOMY AS STRONG .... The Obama campaign routinely tweaks John McCain for having argued that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." Last week, the Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman criticized Obama for using the line, insisting that the quote is "months old."

Except, it's not. This morning, in the midst of a genuine crisis on Wall Street, John McCain once again touted the underlying strength of the economy.

 

I really hope the major media is catching on that we know when we are being lied to, and therefore know they have been letting lies pass.

Trust me, we'll still watch your advertisements if you slot some truth between them.

But it's one of those goddam unbookmarkable 100% Flash sites. Too bad...you'd enjoy the pictures.

Given her strong feelings about John McCain, we asked whether she had any reservations about taking the assignment in the first place.

“I didn’t,” she says. “It’s definitely exciting to shoot someone who is in the limelight like that. I am a pretty hard core Democrat. Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.”

How Jill Greenberg Really Feels About John McCain

When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee.

She delivered the image the magazine asked for—a shot that makes the Republican presidential nominee look heroic. Greenberg is well known for her highly retouched images of bears and crying babies. But she didn’t bother to do much retouching on her McCain images. “I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad,” she says.

I saw this link on the NY Times home page

Dowd: Palin vs. Thinking

...and almost read a Maureen Dowd column. I read Frank Rich's column instead.

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. 

The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
By FRANK RICH

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

Okay, I'm surprised they weren't first.

Don't stress though...has a winning Presidential candidate ever had to struggle so to appeal to his base less than two months before an election?

Sarah Palin's media tour: next up, Fox News

The Sarah Palin media roll-out continues. After doing two days of interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson, the Alaska governor will sit down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity next week....

Meanwhile, Hannity’s colleague Greta Van Susteren landed an interview today with Palin’s husband, Todd. Their exchange will air on Van Susteren’s show “On the Record” on Monday and Tuesday.

McCain Crowds Dwindle Without Palin
JENNIFER LOVEN | September 12, 2008 03:32 PM EST

NEW YORK — If there were any doubts that the sidekick was stealing the show, they were put to rest when Sarah Palin took off for Alaska with a wave from the tarmac by John McCain.

His crowds suddenly dwindled. The exuberant cheering heard day after day during two weeks of joint appearances went away. And the Republican presidential candidate's schedule began to resemble the lightness of May instead of the full throttle of September

It's useful because its brevity matches the weightiness of her performance . And you know how when you say a word over and over it starts to sound like a meaningless noise?

Ms. Palin...kept inserting Mr. Gibson’s nickname, Charlie, into her answers, as if to convey an old hand’s conviviality...

Well, at the end of that interview "Charlie" was the most bizarre noise I can remember hearing.

In Search of Gov. Palin

It is well past time for Sarah Palin, Republican running mate, governor of Alaska and self-proclaimed reformer, to fill in for the voting public the gaping blanks about her record and qualifications to be vice president.

The best way to do that would be exactly what the campaign of John McCain is avoiding — an honest news conference. Instead, she has been the bell-jar candidate, barnstorming safe crowds with socko punch lines and plans for a single interview on ABC News built around a visit to Fairbanks, Alaska, and her hometown of Wasilla.

“I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue,” he said.

“Countdown” will still be shown before the three fall debates and a second edition will be shown sometime afterwards, following the program anchored by Mr. Gregory.

MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat
By BRIAN STELTER

MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.

That experiment appears to be over.

After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.

The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.