If you're going to mock someone for stupidity...

... recognize the difference between a question and an assertion.

"CNN Anchor Blames Asteroid on Global Warming." No, she didn't.

If you're going to play the other-people-are-stupid game, you have to play well.

"Me at CNN was not an easy fit."

"The first month was tumultuous with several tumultuous times throughout. I liked to think of myself as job security for the public relations department. About the only thing the far right and far left could agree on was that I did not belong at CNN."

Erick Erickson, no longer the right-wing guy at CNN. Assuming CNN needs a right-wing guy "for public relations," what kind of right-wing guy should it be... and why did CNN think Erick Erickson was the guy in the first place? I suspect a bias about the right caused the choice, but that he was never really the right choice. Nothing against Erickson, but what makes TV talking-heads shows work?

"The U.S. military will end its policy of excluding women from combat, officials said."

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will announce Thursday plans to open combat jobs and direct combat units to female troops, multiple officials confirmed to CNN."

Email, just now, from CNN.

"NRA airs new TV ad criticizing Obama on eve of White House gun announcement."

CNN headline.

Here's the ad:

"So a big UK liberal newspaper, mainstream... with a huge, long story on how pedophilia is normal and should be considered normal, and quoting academics...."

"And all of a sudden CNN discusses it as though I'm making the assertion...."

"We’re going to do a word count to see whether, as in Denver, Romney actually got more words in even if he talked for a shorter period of time."

CNN, working on the defense of Candy Crowley.

Mr. Romney, we're going to give you less time, because you talk faster.

CNN tried to extract a colorful quote about debate prep from Paul Ryan

Interviewed about his debate prep, Ryan said "I do a lot of reading, that's what I've always done -- briefings and reading," which CNN duly quotes. Then it's on to hunting. How does he prepare for deer hunting? The interviewer has background info from a friend of Ryan's:

The friend said that before Ryan goes hunting he washes his clothes in unscented detergent, takes a shower with unscented soap and sprays unscented material on his boots -- all steps that hunters are known to take generally, but Ryan takes it to a completely different level.

"If you're into archery and bow hunting, that's the way to do it and be successful. I like the strategy of bow hunting and it takes a lot of preparation and I do take it seriously because I am much more successful if I do things properly and prepare the right way," Ryan said.

"I have always just believed that if you're going to do something, do it well."

He's invited to connect this to debate prep (presumably with the hope that he'll say something more colorful than I read a lot):

"This stage is kind of new for me and I'm taking it very seriously," he replied. "I'm just doing my homework and studying the issues and I'll know he'll come and attack us. The problem he has is he has Barack Obama's record to run on."

I think he just mostly said I read a lot again. Nice try CNN. Maybe go interview a friend of Ryan's about Ryan's pre-Biden shower routine. Any relevant aromatherapy? Any "material" sprayed on his shoes? Unscented... scented... Maybe Ryan could stink it up and thereby trick his prey into screwing his face into a disgusted sneer of some kind. We the viewers have television — not the once-dreamed-of smellovision — so the ruse would go undetected. Suddenly, Biden's nice-guy image erodes.

Actually, some of us are still dreaming:



"In the future we will be picking our political leaders at least partially based on their smell," says Weird Al.

What's the birther/truther word for those who think political polls have become, basically, propaganda?

Pollers? Pollemicists? Poller bears? The Poller Opposites? Help me out. I need a good coinage for the condition I've found myself lapsing into. Here's the latest symptom. I think I saw somewhere this morning — on Drudge? — that CNN had the presidential race suddenly tightening up, in advance of the polls. And my first thought — I just blurted it out loud — was: They're saying it's close right in advance of the debate so they can say, after the debate, that Obama went up. He won the debate.

I went over to Drudge to look for what I'd seen, and I didn't find that but I found:

Under oath, Edwards pollster admits polls were 'propaganda'...

POLL: Plurality of Americans believe POLLS biased for Obama...

And here's what I remember seeing this morning that brought on my pollemic: "New CNN/ORC poll less skewed for Barack Obama than the previous one."

The survey, that includes a smaller eight percent over-sample of Democratic voters, has Obama leading by a 49 percent to 47 percent edge....

The news here is not that this poll is slightly skewed, but compared to the 15.4 percent skewed in favor of the Democrats in the controversial September 10 CNN/ORC poll, this latest one is based on a far less skewed sample.

See? I think they adjust the skew to get the result that suits the propaganda purpose, and they're temporarily making the race look tight to make the debate seem super-important. (That's good for CNN's ratings, so there's a commercial, nonpolitical reason too for poll fakery.) Then they can make a show of breaking the news that Obama got big debate bounce.

IN THE COMMENTS: EMD said...

Pollcats?
Polltergeists?
Skewballs?

Let's not get too distracted by the State Department spokeman's saying "Fuck Off" and "Have a good life"...

... to that BuzzFeed reporter, Michael Hastings. There's so much more of immensely great importance in their email exchange about what that spokesman — Phillippe Reines — had been trying to get us to think about CNN's use of the Chris Stevens journal, found at the site of the murder in Benghazi, after our diplomatic personnel fled the scene.

Hastings emailed an excellent set of questions:

Why didn't the State Department search the consulate and find AMB Steven's diary first? What other potential valuable intelligence was left behind that could have been picked up by apparently anyone searching the grounds? Was any classified or top secret material also left? Do you still feel that there was adequate security at the compound, considering it was not only overrun but sensitive personal effects and possibly other intelligence remained out for anyone passing through to pick up? Your statement on CNN sounded pretty defensive--do you think it's the media's responsibility to help secure State Department assets overseas after they've been attacked?

And Reines couldn't or wouldn't answer these questions. He continued those pretty defensive efforts to shift the focus to CNN. When Hastings pressed him, Reines resorted to "Fuck Off" and "Have a good life." Those nasty comebacks shouldn't be the story. They should direct us to the set of questions. Those are great questions, and the State Department will not answer them. Without answers, they feel like questions that answer themselves.

"The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens was planned by attackers who used the protest outside the consulate as a diversion..."

Say U.S. sources say, according to a "CNN Breaking News" email.

The sources could not say whether the attackers instigated the protest or merely took advantage of it, and they say they don't believe Stevens was specifically targeted. Stevens and three other Americans suffocated trying to escape a fire after a grenade was thrown into the building, a senior U.S. official said.

So it was not causally connected with the feelings-hurting movie?

CNN puts blurry dots covering the breasts of a woman in a Matisse painting.

The clip is hilarious.

At 0:47, they cut to a voluptuous newswoman in a tight, low-cut shirt. It would have been cool if they'd put blurry dots over her breasts too.

(Thanks to my son Chris for IMing me about that. He says the effect was much more noticeable and ridiculous on HDTV, where he saw it.)

ADDED: Perhaps, like me, you thought of Attorney General John Ashcroft and the $8,000 drapery.

"Report: Penn State leaders, including ex-coach Joe Paterno, concealed Jerry Sandusky's activities to avoid bad publicity."

Email from CNN Breaking News.

Breaking news? It's some kind of weird mind game. You get breaking news and the news is that you didn't already know that.

CNN is using "Breaking News" the way the least-funny guy who thinks he's a comedian uses the phrase to try to make jokes.

ADDED: Here's a detailed story about the release of the independent report, which is the work of former FBI director Louis J. Freeh.

9 minutes in June — reporting the Obamacare case.

Tom Goldstein — of SCOTUSblog, which got it right — examines the details of how CNN and FoxNews got it wrong.

10:08:30.... On the blog, readers are starting to taunt us via our comments feature (there ultimately will be 13,500 comments over the course of the Live Blog):  Guest, “CNN was first, guys…”; Bill, “Fox is already announcing decision”; yolanda, “TV just announced the decision beat you to it”; Guest, “Fox News beats soctusblog….”



It takes me almost one minute exactly to analyze the decision.... I unmute the conference call line and repeat what we have just posted....

Opponents of the Act, having seen the television reports, are incredulous and vocal in their responses:  Guest, “WHAT???”; Guest, “no reports says its gone!”; Republican, “OMFG”; Tim, “No it isn’t”; Ryan, “Bullshit”; Guest, “apparently you have it wrong”; Sarika, “IT IS NOT SURVIVING AS A TAX!!”; Fred, “It sounds like you guys are spinning this thing.  Knock it off and read the law!”

Others have seen enough to know that they need another news source:  Guest, “I’m outta here.  Turning on TV”; David, “I won’t be back to this site.”

And some indicate we are simply too late, and that Fox and CNN’s earlier reports are res judicata on other journalists:  John, “They already struck it down”; Guest, “The mandate is GONE.”

Ha ha. Much more at the link.

HBO drops Roger Ailes TV movie because it "could never be seen as objective."

That's their asserted reason. They cite their "CNN affiliation," which would supposedly interfere with their presentation of a movie that was being executive produced by MSNBC.

The HBO movie would have been based on the upcoming manuscript by media writer Gabriel Sherman who has written two cover stories for New York magazine on Ailes and Fox News, including his mammoth article “The Elephant In The Green Room” which prompted complaints from the Fox News CEO.

How can the reason be true? It it were true, they wouldn't have started the project in the first place.

The news of dropping the project comes after Nikki Finke revealed that it existed, saying:

HBO appears obsessed by GOP Conservatives. There have been movies about the 2000 Bush vs Gore election standoff and Sarah Palin and most recently a TV series featuring George W Bush’s severed head. Now HBO has done a secret deal for an Untitled Roger Ailes Project....

President Obama should have been reading SCOTUSblog, not watching TV.

"Standing with White House chief of staff Jack Lew and looking at a television in the “Outer Oval” featuring a split screen of four different networks, the president saw graphics on the screens of the first two cable news networks to break the news — CNN and Fox News Channel — announcing, wrongly, that he had lost."

I was reading the SCOTUSblog live blog with CNN on in the background:

CNN is getting it wrong, if SCOTUSblog is right. They're headlining "Individual Mandate Struck Down."...

From SCOTUSblog. "The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read." From CNN: Blitzer says "let's take a deep breath... if you're watching this on Twitter... momentous... more information...."

CNN was fumbling and blathering. I guess they have to fill every second of real time. A live blog seems as though it's real-time, but the participants have the ability to read something and study it without writing anything. But that's not enough of an excuse for the TV news failure. They need one person to talk, but several others could be quickly reading parts of the opinion and ready to go on camera when they have something to say.

I'm still annoyed at CNN for wasting my time — and playing with my emotions — back on June 5th when the polls closed in the Wisconsin recall election and they were insisting that the race was too close to call. It's razor close. After an hour of such hand-wringing, they call it for Walker, and in the end, he wins by 7 percentage points.

Fox News got it wrong too, it should be noted. Both today and on June 5th.

"Who are these people? They're not even from Wisconsin... and they're calling it over?!"

The day after the recall election, protesters show their spirit... confronting the CNN bus....



The Solidarity Singers shall not be moved... but the CNN bus is leaving.

"The Whupping in Wisconsin: Seven Key Conclusions."

'It's time to reflect. My own instincts are to enjoy the security of knowing things have not been upset. We're not going back. Peace has arrived. It's a beautiful morning. Or, as Meade just said: "It's morning in Wisconsin." But if the recall election had gone the other way, there would have been lusty gloating and aggressive interpretation of what it all means. What a stern repudiation of conservative politics it would have been!

So I want to look at some things like Erick Erickson's 7 conclusions. (The parentheticals are my reactions.)

1. "[D]efense of public sector unions is now a non-starter..." (This was known after the primary, when Barrett defeated Falk. Then Barrett had nowhere, really, to go. But he tried, with vague themes like bringing back "Wisconsin values" and making it possible for neighbors to speak to neighbors. The whole idea of the recall stopped making sense. )

2. The "coalition of disaffected independent voters, tea party activists, and Republicans held together." (Disaffected? I'd say the independent voters — e.g., me — coolly assessed the situation in Wisconsin and decided it's best to keep going in this direction.)

3. "[T]he Republican Party’s use of technology in its GOTV efforts really paid off.... The Democrats handed the GOP a marvelous gift of a recall that went on and on and on. By the time everyone got to the gubernatorial recall, the GOP had its GOTV tweaked perfectly." (Interesting. I kept hearing about how amazing the Democrats were on getting out the vote. The GOP never contacted us. We got 2 in-person visits from Democrats in the days before the election — in addition to Dem robo-calls — but on election day, we got nothing. I think one of the individuals who encountered Meade at the door — I never answer the door — figured out we were people who shouldn't be gotten out.)

4. We can discern that "Barack Obama is extremely nervous." (He was nervous and he showed it. That tweet-only contact with Wisconsin was an embarrassing display of nervousness. It made me think of that old 2008 theme: He voted present.)

5. "[E]xit polling does not work well for recall elections." (I'd say exit polling is so deeply defective that it should be ignored. I saw CNN using exit polling to make a show out of the night, to push ratings. They have these spiffy displays, to show numbers, which John King purports to explain to Wolf Blitzer, but the numbers are — I will presume from now on — bogus. It's like finding out "American Idol" doesn't count the phoned-in voters. No. It's worse. At least "American Idol" contestants are actually singing. But John King explaining the meaning of things that are not real? Why are we watching that? Is that independently entertaining? I can imagine a reality show where contestants are given ridiculous and false factoids and then they are judged by how much we enjoy their efforts to explain them. Actually, I used to play a little game like that with my sons when they were little. It was called "What if you had to argue...?")

6. "Barack Obama is still the favorite" in Wisconsin. (Is he relying on the exit polls?! I think the Obama people are completely freaked out now. And the better Walker does over the next 5 months, making things work — or making us feel that things are working — without the static or protests and recall and with economic numbers improving, the more the people of Wisconsin may get the impression that Romney can do things like that at the national level and save us from the depredations of liberal policy.)

7. "MSNBC is consistently the most entertaining news network in America when things go badly for the left.... I was actually concerned that Ed Schultz might have a medical episode on live television last night. It was … surreal." (I didn't watch much MSNBC. I get my fill of lefty acting-out in real life here in Madison. But maybe it is a fun TV show. Lord knows the CNN attempts at explaining nonexistent things are useless.)

Erickson has an 8th item, but he won't fully commit to it as a conclusion: "Anger does not win elections." (Anger... what exactly are we talking about? Dumb rage is unappealing, but some kind of fervor is needed. I think Barrett was a bad candidate because he was basically bland on the issues, he claimed he would restore good feeling, but he would rear up with angry talking points intermittently. This doesn't convince people that it's worth ousting somebody who's in the middle of doing a job that seems to be working and who seems reasonably steady and competent.)

"This is now the clearest audio we have heard of George Zimmerman's 911 call, but it's readily apparent there will still be controversy over what he really said."

Says CNN's Gary Tuckman, closing a report that made it obvious that Zimmerman said "fucking cold" — on that cold, raining night — and not "fucking coons" after he saw Trayvon Martin, the young man he would later shoot to death.

Why would there still be controversy over what Zimmerman really said, and why would Tuckman end his report by keeping alive the sick hope that Zimmerman is a racist?

What there should still be controversy over is whether CNN feeds off racial discord — either for ratings or in pursuit of an insane political agenda.

"You return force with force when somebody assaults you. George was out of breath, he was barely conscious."

"There would have been George dead if he had not acted decisively and instantaneously in that moment when he was being disarmed."

Zimmerman's brother speaks:



Quoted in the linked article, at CNN.com, is Marcia Clark, the prosecutor who failed to convince a jury that O.J. Simpson was guilty. She's talking about the photographs of George Zimmerman, which people on the web are saying prove he didn't have a broken nose.

Suddenly, everyone's a doctor, the kind of doctor that does diagnoses through blurry web videos. Flashback: Remember when Senator Bill Frist — a Harvard-trained doctor — questioned the diagnosis of Terri Schiavo "based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office"? He got slammed for that.

But here's Marcia Clark: "Anyone who's seen a broken nose is aware of the fact that the blood spurts. That leads to a lot of bleeding. You would have expected to see blood on the front of George Zimmerman's shirt collar. Blood — you know, in many more places."

Anyone knows. Of course, a broken nose is a veritable geyser. So says the expert on blood evidence. I know she's seen a lot of blood. Blood does gush from slashed throats. But a broken nose? I'm going to Google that. Here's a list of symptoms, according the Mayo Clinic website (boldface added):

Signs and symptoms of a broken nose may appear immediately or may take up to three days to develop. Signs and symptoms may include:

Pain or tenderness, especially when touching your nose
Swelling of your nose and surrounding areas
Bleeding from your nose
Bruising around your nose or eyes
Crooked or misshapen nose
Difficulty breathing through your nose
Discharge of mucus from your nose (rhinorrhea)
Feeling that one or both of your nasal passages are blocked

I am trying to fathom the depths of mendacity around the Trayvon Martin case. Why aren't people afraid of uttering statements that are so easily devastated?

For a prosecutor to make extreme and overconfident statements about evidence, when the statements are not even remotely accurate and the inaccuracy is detected through 5 seconds of Googling? I understand why people want to lie and deceive, but to throw away your credibility so carelessly?

CNN loves Huntsman! Huntsman! Huntsman!

I'm sitting in a hotel lobby where — beyond my control — CNN has been playing. I've been here for over an hour, and I'm reading and writing, trying not to be distracted by CNN, which is mostly covering the New Hampshire primary.

So the post title is just an impression.