Blogs

Look at what they are doing to poor Helen!

I just love how the press is so outraged by this story.

According to a new study just released, 80% of consumers would not be willing to pay for access to online content:

A similar study was done by the Boston Consulting Group and found only 48% of the respondents would pay for online access to news, and the average monthly price they would be willing to pay is only $3 per month.

So is “pay for content” the silver bullet the media is looking for? Going by these numbers, no it isn’t. A better cure for the media would be more openness – a willingness to work with bloggers to drive traffic to their sites.

After that big Letterman/Palin feud, I thought the right was declaring that the children of politicians were “off limits”. Well I guess that only applies to the children of right wing politicians. If your the child of Barack Obama then the right can attack you anyway they want, including referring to you as a “street whore”.

Bill O’Reilly decided to go after blog commenters the other night and he just so happened to single out Hot Air. The interesting part of that is the fact that Hot Air is owned by Michelle Malkin, who is a common face on FOX and has even guest hosted for O’Reilly in the past. The civil war is deepening amongst the wingnuts.

Larry Johnson’s blog, No Quarter, never ceases to amaze me. Here is one of his writers claims today:

In a brilliant rebuttal to coordinated attacks from the far left, this Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Tax Day Becomes Protest Day - How the tea parties could change American politics.” (related stories) nails the true genesis of today’s protests:

The author of this “brilliant rebuttal”? Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Yeah – that Glenn Reynolds, of InstaPundit fame, who helped put this whole thing together. But forget facts, let’s just try to sell it as some independent thinker. I bet they would have bought a brilliant op-ed rebutting claims that Bush lied us into war, even if the op-ed was written by Donald Rumsfeld.

Wednesday was the last day of the right wing’s Pajamas Media advertising gig. I wonder if that will account for high unemployment numbers for April? I am just shocked the right wing blogs are even still around without all that income.

Seriously.

As most, I spent a lot of time yesterday watching the miracle that was flight 1549. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot of the plane, is a hero to the end for his handling of the disaster at 3,000 feet.

Something that I did notice while checking out blogosphere coverage of the near tragedy was that people seemed to be kind of shocked over the notion that birds can bring down a big jet. For example, here’s Malkin’s posting;

Speculation: The plane hit a flock of birds?

She’s questioning the whole “flock of birds” thing, when in actuality birds account for tons of airplane problems, including engine failure. It wasn’t that long ago that G.E. actually tested engines by releasing live birds into engines (I knew one of the people who worked there doing this).

I just had to point out Malkin though. If there were rumors that some brown person was trying to take over the plane, then the whole “speculation” work wouldn’t be there. Instead it would read more like “jihadists hijack airplane”.

True we now get to wait for the pre-emptive strike against all birds. We must attack them there so they don’t attack us there! Bush has 4 days left in office – could we see another war?

The Wasillia-billy is at it again. In Sarah Palin’s latest tirade, she once again aims at bloggers:

Sarah Palin fired a new salvo in her war on the media, unloading in a new interview on her home state paper and “bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie.”

Now how many lies do the blogs tell, and how many have Palin been caught in? This lady actually makes George Bush look sane, even after yesterday’s presser.

Vendettas and ‘gotcha’ is the politics of old. It’s synonymous with the old attack ads, and something the American people have started rejected, rather strongly. Barack Obama campaigned on change. In two weeks since becoming our President elect, Obama has:

Embraced his one time rival Hillary Clinton, offering her a top position in his administration

Welcomed his recent rival, John McCain, to sit down and discuss how to move forward and put country first.

Dismissed any calls of Joe Lieberman being punished for campaigning against him.

The last issue is the biggie, causing so much outrage throughout the blogosphere right now. Obama said he was going to give us change, and he has. I wish some in the blogosphere would learn to accept that, instead of acting like the person who just murdered a family member was acquitted.

And if they have trouble listening to me, then listen to what Bob Cesca has to say on it – hitting on another point:

With Begich's victory, the Democratic caucus has grown to 58. With Franken and Martin, we could hit 60. Filibuster proof -- at least on paper. But imagine if the Democrats had voted to ejector-seat Lieberman from his chairmanship, and he had stormed off to the Republicans, as he had threatened.

The Begich win would've been nullified in terms of the caucus head-count. One step back to 57. Even if Martin and Franken both win, we would've been stuck at 59.

Yup, pushing Joe out of the caucus would have nullified the Begich win and we would have no path to 60. At least we still have hope, albeit a smaller hope.

I can’t stand Joe Lieberman, and I intend to watch his every move like a hawk from here on out, but there is a simple fact to remember. Joe votes with the Democrats more than the Majority Leader does. That’s something we can’t ignore. Obama has a very progressive domestic issue and we need every vote we can get. Let’s not cut off our noses to spite our face.

It’s no secret that the Liberal blogosphere helped propel the Democrat out of the abyss of minority status in our government. Could the right wing blogosphere do the same for Republicans? Well if they continue following the path of idiocracy and taking push polls as gospel, then that won’t be likely unless America gets hit by a big case of the stupids.

Case in point; a push poll by a wingnut website HowObamaGotElected.com, who commissioned Zogby to run it. Nate Silver had an interview with the person behind the poll, and you can tell by their obscenity riddled, highly touchy responses that one of the best people in the world of studying polls got under the skin of this wingut.

~~lt;p>Of course the right wing blogs are taking this poll as gospel, looking at it as the holy grail of electorate knowledge today. Ignore the fact that the same can be argued from this side. Look at the huge number of people who thought Obama was a Muslim, especially in ruby red Texas. Now think about how the same people on the right kept trying to push that story and wanted the media to push it, along with a story that Obama spent most of adult life in a Christian church with Jeremiah Wright. Wait! He’s a Muslim, but has gone to a Christian church all this time? Yeah – that’s the stupidity of the right I am talking about.

So can the right wing blogs help lift the Republicans out of minority status believing such things? I doubt it. Think about this. The Republicans have done nothing but dismiss polls over the years, especially on important issues such as abortion, energy policy, the Iraq war and the economy. They quickly dismiss them all as being inaccurate, yet they now hold on to some highly tainted push poll as gospel. Polls, love them or hate them, is the best method we have of gaining the pulse of the American people. It has also been the only real way that the American populace could let their voices be heard by our leaders. Hopefully that will be changing with our new President.

If the Republicans want to recover and their blogs be able to take credit then they need to get rid of the tinfoil hats once and for all. They need to push on fact, not the epitome of why polls can be skewed anyway you want. But if the right wing blogs become the last great hope of the Republican party, then they are doomed. They have no hope because America just woke up from eight years of stupid. They also need to really consider the fact that they are taking a poll as gospel done by the very same company that said “McCain leads Obama by 1 point” three days before the election. We all know how wrong that one was. </p>

(Dave Neiwert has much more on this)

In my ongoing effort to help the right wing blogs go after those who trash Sarah Palin, I have decided to submit another name; Newt Gingrich:

“I think that she is going to be a significant player,” said Gingrich during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. “But she’s going to be one of 20 or 30 significant players. She’s not going to be the de facto leader.”

How dare Newt diminish the rising star in such a way! Who does he think he is? The right wing blogs will make sure Newt has no place in American politics anymore. Or will they have a serious crisis as one of their idols is starting to shoot down another idol? Oh the head spin!

Just ask old Confederate Yankee, who informs us of the following from the ‘thinkin’ room’:

Dear 52,

It seems the man you entrusted with your vote lied about his relationship with domestic terrorist and attempted mass murderer Bill Ayers.

Many of you either didn't hear about Ayers, or accepted Obama's evolving explanations that Ayers was "just a guy in his neighborhood," or someone that he thought had gone through some sort of terrorist rehabilitation—perhaps at the Yasser Arafat wing of the Betty Ford Clinic.

But now that Ayers has come out and admitted that their relationship is very close—"family friends" is how he put it—how does that make you feel?

You've been conned in to voting the family friend of a known terrorist into the White House.

How does that make you feel?

Well color me stupid! I’m going to load up the shotgun, hop in the pickup and head on down to the election office and get my vote back! It’s amazing how stoopid a majority of this country really iz. We’ez shudav known we waz in fir a hoodswinkin’. Dam that edumacated negro and his terroist frinds.

OK – now it’s time to leave redneck idiot land on the right of the blogosphere and get back with the majority of this country who basically don’t care about this crap. Hell we just survived eight years of a President whose grandfather was one of Hitler’s little helpers.

That's what InstaIdiot Glenn Reynolds is pushing right now, along with his factually impaired cohorts on the right.

Here's a news story from yesterday:

An Iraqi soldier shot and killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded at least six others yesterday in Mosul, the American military said.

As the shootings occurred in northern Iraq, violence continued in Baghdad, with at least 25 people killed in bombings across the capital.

Well it is over for those two soldiers and 25 people.

Then we have al-Sadr making noise again:

Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Friday renewed threats to resume attacks on U.S. forces if they don't leave Iraq, deepening the unease over a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that would allow American troops to stay for three more years.

The threat came in a statement by the Iran-based cleric that was read to supporters gathered for Friday prayers in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City enclave and the city of Kufa, south of Baghdad.

"I repeat my call on the occupier to get out from the land of our beloved Iraq, without retaining bases or signing agreements," al-Sadr said. "If they do stay, I urge the honorable resistance fighters ... to direct their weapons exclusively against the occupier."

Yeah that's peace and prosperity abound. Perhaps we are starting to see the new meme being formed by the wingnuts. If Iraq does go good it's all because of Bush, but if anything goes bad then it's because of Obama. Hey we won now, but in 67 days we will be losing! I believe that's where this is going.

Be afraid Republicans! Erick Erikson has launched "Operation Leper" to go after the McCain staffers who leaked stuff to the media about Palin. TBogg has all the great details, along with evidence of the power of Erickson.

Welcome to a war our nation as a whole isn't in. This is a war we can sit back, watch and laugh at. For months we heard about a divided Democratic Party, but that was possibly to hide this growing division.

The wingnuts have had a horrible year. They saw the loss of their first great white hype hope, Fred Thompson. Then they really lost out when the people of their party stood up and rejected their pick for nominee three times over. First Fred, then Mitt and finally Huckabee. They were forced behind a candidate they couldn't stand. Now their new messiah, Sarah Palin, is being exposed for the fraud and idiot she is. The righty blogs can't pick a winner for anything.