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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Media Bipolarity and Cheney Grandbabies 

...the dilemma over it's societal role that the various levels of main stream media are wrestling with in public - complete with full frontal intellectual nudity and all - is perfectly captured by the remarkably different links that the MSNBC web site is offering right now regarding the newest addition to the strange collection of personalities that make up the extended Cheney family. At one place on the page we have:
Cheney welcomes sixth grandchild

Interesting, though, is the fact that at a higher point on tonight's page is the link:
Cheney’s gay daughter gives birth to baby boy


Both links lead to the same story...

Aside from MSM's struggle with the terminology, you could fill a wing of your average university library with the doctoral tomes addressing both the media's struggle addressing this particular blessed event and the parallel struggle that has to being going on in the minds of winger fundamentalists across this great land of ours trying to figure out how to be acceptably respectful of their hero's circumstances while continuing to spew the most spectacularly hateful unChristian talk about the very circumstances of the grandchild and daughter that Shotgun Dick no doubt love very much...

...it's kind of fun to watch the tortured twisting and shape-shifting that the media is going through over this baby. Those cocktail weenies and Air Force One seats must be a valuable commodity indeed...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:06 PM 0 comments

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Intellectual Dishonesty and Righty's Big Oil Love 

...there probably isn't even any reason to engage in any sort of meaningful debate about the absurdity of the current run-up of gas prices with bow-tied masters of conservative disinformation like George Will. There won't be any way to win, because facts will not serve as a weapon. In this piece, Will demonstrates that - in that weightless, orange-skied world of the True Believer - the sorts of things that leap out to the average eye simply don't matter. Even tidbits of information that he includes in his column don't serve to sway from the myths that Big Oil and its servants of the Conservative Media strive to slather onto the brains of the masses...

On Will's planet, the problem is simple and three-pronged: We have actually increased our driving, even in the face of increased cost; those nasty dirty long-haired hippies of the leftist environmental movement are driving the cost up by refusing to allow drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge ("refuge" apparently being a word with no meaning on that planet); and where the dirty effing hippies don't throw up blockades to destroy our SUV-loving way of life, Democratic politicians will fling themselves into the breach, levying outrageous tax burdens on every precious gallon of fuel to fund pet left wing projects like maintaining highways or repairing unsafe bridges. Jeb Bush hasn't realized it yet, but on two of those three counts, he has been judged to be "one of us", which will probably make for interesting conversation at the next family get-together...

Will does assert, as part of his argument, that you and I have actually increased our driving by 2.14 percent over the last year, a fact that no doubt could be laid directly at the feet of all those illegal immigrants that continue to swarm across our borders. Interesting fact, and one that would perhaps actually have some strong bearing on the facts, were it not for the fact that - in the first quarter of 2007 - Exon racked up a profit increase over the same time last year of 10 percent. More amazing, this increase was realized on an actual 2 percent decrease in total revenues. Chevron also posted dramatic profit increases attributable to fuel sales despite a decline in overall revenue over the same time last year. According to the mind-bending series of economic classes I had to take in college - and why a natural recourses major needed all of that econ will never be adequately explained - this collection of facts do not add up to any sensible sum...

If one is to assume that profits are collected on a "pennies on the dollar" rate, it would be logical that the oil companies would have seen an increase of 2.14 percent reflective of George's documentation of the same increase in American oil consumption.

They didn't.

They realized a much larger profit, and none of that has anything to do with ANWR or taxes or some fantasy nonsense about some Wisconsin law or somesuch. While it is certainly true that we are paying a lesser percentage of our hard-earned cash for fuel than we were in the past, the unmentioned facts have a certain heft of their own. All of the other costs that we have to absorb to keep a roof over the head, mac and cheese on the table, and shoes on baby's feet have kept up with inflation, and in some cases have handsomely exceeded our earning power. Purchasing power and the uses of disposable income matter a great deal to the 80 percent of Americans who don't live on the higher slopes of the upper middle class mountain, and a 30-40 percent increase in the cost of the fuel that powers our ride to the good life makes a big hole in the rest of that dreamquest. We deserve better that simple-minded shills telling us to shut up and take one for the team, but we're not going to get something better from a rich righty like George Will. He and his band got theirs, and the life they lead is best served by protecting whatever branch of the Entitled Wealthy who dash off the checks that make their lives comfortable. In a different age, these jabbering heads would be touting the Divine Right of Standard Oil or Big Steel, but they don't have that now so instead they will harangue us about objecting to obscene oil profits in the face of skyrocketing oil prices. After all, what are a few dead caribou or a few large tarballs on your favorite sunny beach when it comes to realizing amazing corporate profits for oil company executives and their stockholders?

We are paying a whole lot more for taking a ride these days, and - as it turns out - we aren't "taking"...we're "being taken"...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:38 PM 0 comments

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