The rules of the game, Senator Joe Lieberman style.

Do or say anything that serves your purpose at that moment, regardless of whether it contradicts you, circa yesterday.

The only caveat: There is this thing called “the internet” where people could look up your previous statements and point out to you how you seem to change your mind the way you change your socks. But not to worry, anybody likely to point that out to you won’t get within a country mile of you. Anyone who interviews you will most likely simply treat you with the respect you think you deserve.

You really can fool most of the people most of the time.

At the time I read Eric Alterman’s ‘What Liberal Media’ in 2002 I was actually one of those people who thought the media held some sort of built-in bias toward liberal causes and policies. After reading Alterman’s book my reaction was immediate and I couldn’t believe how wrong it truly was. For years Conservatives have essentially been telling the world the sky is green and people just take their word for it. You’ve really got to willingly close your eyes to believe major papers like the Washington Post are liberally slanted in any meaningful way.

In years to come the way conservatives have worked the refs on media bias will be studied carefully by researchers looking to understand propaganda. For the most effective propaganda, as they say, is when the people don’t realize they’re being propagandized.

And now, deep thoughts

There are a great many very bright people for whom being a serious jerkass is part of the fun of the internet. You would think violent crime would be way down since the 90s, the way people take out their frustrations virtually.

This:

What Ed says. I know people say this kind of thing all the time, but if ‘Climategate’ in any way sinks or stalls American attempts at curbing greenhouse emissions, I may actually illegally immigrate to Canada.

A disconnect

Brad at Sadly, No! is mostly right on here. There are a great many liberals who will never, ever be satisfied with the president on any issue and will always feel betrayed and bewildered that he doesn’t agree with them completely. And there are a great many other liberals who will forever apologise for every sellout to Wall Street or defense hawks, often making the argument that ‘he’s an assload better than President McCain would have been.’

Where Brad goes wrong is here:

The guy always presented himself as a middle-of-the-road establishment Democrat who eschewed populism in favor of “post-partisanship” (whatever the hell that means).

I think it’s fair to say that in pre-2008 if you listened to Senator Obama for more than a few minutes, and really listened to specific proposals, you got a moderate. If you listened to him only briefly in interviews in which he was just talking and not actually advocating policy, you heard a liberal. Perhaps more importantly, the marketers designed the president’s campaign to suggest that he was a great departure from all that had come before, presumably in ways other than breaking a racial barrier. There’s always a disconnect between the marketing slogans used while trying to win and the nuts and bolts of actual governing, but with the president it seems it is a little more pronounced than usual.

Sunday Morning Philosophy: “I never take vacations.”

And now, deep thoughts

Government is predisposed to be conservative and liberals have always and will always have an uphill battle against the status quo. Mostly due to the money involved, and the fact that those with power have a strong incentive to fight anything that would force them to surrender any of it.

Interesting

I don’t know ten percent of what I would need to know to even begin to comprehend whether the clusterfuck Taibbi describes here is accurate. As much as I know about finance it could just be an inbred profession where people run across each other all the time and everyone being connected to Bob Rubin is no more nefarious than the Bill Walsh head coaching tree.

But I don’t know that for a fact, and Taibbi makes a pretty convincing case. And it’s pretty interesting to me that various corners of the liberal blogosphere like OW are so quick to dismiss him. Some of us are too quick to give the president the benefit of the doubt, or to simply say ‘well he’s eons better than McCain would have been,’ and leave it at that.

Better to be thought a fool…

Occasionally I’ll see Alan Grayson on the teevee and find myself having the typical liberal reaction to Grayson and going ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ over and over as if the Lakers were winning Game 7 of the finals. And now and then I’ll think of Michelle Bachman and wonder if Grayson is really just the liberal equivalent of Bachman and I’m just too blinded by my personal biases to see it.

And then Bachman says something, and I remember.

Time flies like the wind and fruit flies like bananas*

My goodness, six months since my last post. This blog represented in early 2009 only my latest foray into blogging, and, if I don’t keep it up this time around, my last. To be honest I was surprised it was still here and I could remember my password for so long.

Blogging and I have an odd relationship – I’ve both an odd attraction to it and an aversion to it. Attraction because, well, it’s writing in which you need not obsess over every word. Aversion because there are so goddamned many out there and so many who do it better than you ever could. Aversion also because I have too many interests that I’m not sure I could pin it down to one blog topic. I’ve decided to give it another shot for a few reasons.

1) It’d be cool if it eventually attracted a reader or two.

2) Even if I didn’t, who really cares.

3) I’m finding that writing w/out the pressure is really kind of important towards keeping me going.

4) It’s something to pass the time when you’re up sick and bored with your usual pursuits.

* H/T Groucho Marx