The Daily Show Discusses President Obama’s Kill List

June 18, 2012 by Leave a comment

Conservatives have a habit of attacking President Obama for actions and agenda items that do not exist, whether it’s lying about his place of birth (as they’re desperate to point out that he’s not a WASP) or his record on taxes (yes, Obama has provided significant tax cuts). One of the many unfortunate consequences of the Republican penchant for fantasy is that, when Obama does do something which deserves criticism, we do not have a loyal opposition there making the reasoned and rational case against him. Case in point: Obama’s Kill List.

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The Daily Show on Joe Scarborough’s Outraged Defense of Elitism

June 9, 2012 by 6 Comments

Reason #253 why MSNBC is not a left-leaning partisan alternative to the far-right political activism of Fox Republican News, is that MSNBC allows the establishment conservative Joe Scarborough to host more hours on their network than anyone else. Could you imagine Fox allowing an establishment liberal like Chris Matthews to host their morning show?

It’s part of a fairly common media double standard against progressives, one which Scarborough embraces wholeheartedly when he attacks The New York Times for reporting on Mitt Romney’s opulent homes, in their “Home” section. The Daily Show played clips of an outraged Scarborough wanting to know when the Times had ever applied the same standard to John Kerry.

SCARBOROUGH: Did the New York Times ever dispatch reporters to John Kerry’s homes — because John Kerry’s worth a lot more money, obviously, than Mitt Romney…

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Friday Night Video – Thomas Friedman is the Moustache of Understanding

May 11, 2012 by 2 Comments

The Partisan Report breaks down the essence of Thomas Friedman with insight and elan. Warning: there is a mention of masturbating bears.

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Strengthen Social Security

May 3, 2012 by 3 Comments

The idea that Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy is a right-wing myth. Conservatives are not fond of Social Security, which is why they often attack it as a Ponzi scheme. Rick Perry has done that. So has John McCain.

In a recent op-ed column for The New York Times, Joe Nocera points out that the real failure has been in the roller-coaster rides provided by 401(k)s. He quotes behavioral economist Teresa Ghilarducci.

“The 401(k),” she concluded, “is a failed experiment. It is time to rethink it.”

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Wednesday Night Video – The New York Times Catering to Conservatives

April 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

It’s amazing what happens when actual liberal voices appear in the media. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks correctly chastises The New York Times for their most recent attempts criticize President Obama in a way specifically designed to please the conservatives. Uygur contrasts that with the actual facts, bringing up The Pew Research study that shows how Mitt Romney has been getting more than twice the positive coverage in the news than Obama. Positive coverage of Obama has actually been at 18%, and I’m willing to bet that most of that criticism has come from the right, as opposed to the left. If there is a liberal media, the New York Times ain’t it.

UYGUR: Mainstream media, in this case The New York Times, looks at itself and says “Oh no, we didn’t do the right-wing enough of a favor. We’re giving 2-1 positive coverage to Mitt Romney. Maybe it should be 3-1, maybe it should be 4-1. Right-wing, please don’t call us liberals!”


H/t GoodOleWoody’s Blog and Website

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Paul Krugman on Lobbyists, Guns, and Money

March 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

Paul Krugman on Sunday highlighted what is known in the liberal blogosphere but tends to go unnoticed in the regular coverage of Trayvon Martin and the Stand Your Ground law — namely, that these laws have not been pushed by people, but by corporations.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence.

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Tweet Talk

March 14, 2012 by 2 Comments

Polentical is dipping its very small toe into the Twitterverse, for those who would prefer to be notified of new posts that way. Be the first to sign up! Or fifth. Four people started following in the three days between opening the account and writing this post. I have no idea how or why they found us on Twitter, but such are the mysteries of the interwebs. We’re @polentical, of course.

And here are four recent missives I found while exploring the Land of Twitter. There are some jewels lurking amongst the pebbles…

1. Melissa Harris-Perry reminds us of the political reality behind the Rush Limbaugh / Bill Maher brouhaha:

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Austere Consequences

March 6, 2012 by Leave a comment

Paul Krugman keeps churning out sharp insights that can be difficult to find in the traditional media. He had another terrific piece recently, entitled Austerity, American Style, in which he notes the decline in real government spending during this attempt at recession recovery, in opposition to the past two. Perhaps that’s why it’s taking so long? He makes the point even more directly in Reagan, Obama, Austerity, by comparing recent government spending with that of Reagan’s government in 1982.

At this point in the Reagan recovery government spending had risen 11.6 percent; this time around it’s actually down by 2.6 percent. So if we had followed the Reagan track, spending would be almost 15 percent higher.

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The Idiocy of Austerity: Greek Edition

February 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

Many newspapers are promoting the Greek austerity plan as a rescue package, none more so than Bloomberg Businessweek:

Businessweek: “Hong Kong Stocks Fall as Europe Rebuffs Greece on Rescue Package”
Businessweek: “European Bank Shares Rise as Greece Passes Measures for Rescue”
Businessweek: “Greece Rescue Faces Finance Chiefs After Parliament Approval”

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Digital Rights Hypocrisy

February 10, 2012 by 2 Comments

This week has seen a couple examples of major media companies caught violating the copyright principles they supposedly cherish.

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The Banks Get A Deal

February 9, 2012 by Leave a comment

The federal and state governments are allowing our financial institutions to once again sidestep the enormity of their crimes, although this time they do have to pay a price. It’s a price in the billions which looks large in the headlines but is actually small considering the extent of their illegal and unethical activity during the ongoing mortgage and foreclosure crisis. The banks are getting themselves a deal.

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Google Repackaging User Data

January 17, 2012 by 2 Comments

Google CampusWhen I first visited the Google campus back in 2003 in order to visit friends who worked there — well, I’ll admit it, like everyone else I visited in order to partake of the free food. It was a terrific atmosphere, full of vim and vigor, and very very open. I was particularly struck by the omnipresent coolers full of Naked juice. It seemed like an enterprising Googler could take as much of these free offerings as desired, and perhaps start as second business as a Naked juice retailer.

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