Pages From The Book (PFTB): Media Coverage in Madison, etc.

Coverage Questions:

After watching this video, I was inspired to ruminate briefly on the nature of the demand by some in the "public sphere" for a return to civility.

In video by Wisconsin-based freelance writer Phil Ejercito, a large throng of protesters relentlessly heckles Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman, until he’s finally pulled away by Democratic State Rep. Bret Hulsey. As the crowd moved from fury and insults into a chant of “Peaceful! Peaceful! Peaceful!” Hulsey returned and addressed the crowd, asking them to keep it “peaceful and respectful.”

This video was published to YouTube on March 1, 2011.

Which elicited from me the following:

Fuck "Civility!" It merely caters to those who demand it. The folks with the guns talk about 'respecting' differences, like they're the "reasonable" people. It is the people WITHOUT power who are further DISEMPOWERED" by the demands of the Elite--backed by their lawyers, guns, and money--to be "respectful." Fuck "respectful," when those who demand it of me have just decided to fuck me in the ass...

But at the same time got me thinking: How much of this story does the rest of Murka get, if they mostly garner their national and international "news-bitz" from network TV, which I believe the majority still do? This put me in mind of what I recall from Grad School is a repository in which all the daily broadcasts of the "public" media are archived and catalogued, and where you could tabulate such information; so I wrote a FBud in the Radio Biz, Jim Bliekamp:

Is it at Vanderbilt? Someplace. the Newseum?

Who'll have a statistical count of the amount of coverage the Big 4 (ABC, NBC, CBS, & PBS) newscasts focused on the events in Madison WI this last week?

Imho, people with media fetishes obsess on Fox/CNN/MSNBC. To me, they're outliers (outliars, too, I guess?). The vast, gasping bulk of Middull Murk STILL gets its "news" from one or more of the "networks," innit? Do ALL the cabloids among 'em have 5 million discrete viewers/day?

Fox claims itself to be "trusted," and by its viewers I am sure it is: trusted to stoke their cultural fears and reinforce their bigotries and prejudices. Nobody with ANY intelligence "trusts" ANY media/propaganda outlet for anything, except to reflect its own self-interest, do they?

There the matter rests...

Family Matters:

I encountered a name today which piqued my interest: Cyrill Konopka, a resident of Aachen, Germany. Upon discovering him, I wrote him:

We might be Cousins:
Woody Wiqiliques Konopak March 2 at 6:23am
Es ist wir könnte entfernt in Verbindung stehend sein möglich.

Cyrill Konopka March 2 at 6:24am Report
Ich bin ein Konopka aus Deutschland :) Die Konopka Familie ist groß. Sie können scheinbar auch Deutsch.Woher kommt ihre Familie denn ?Liebe Grüße,
Cyrill

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak March 2 at 6:33am
Glaube Ich, wir sind ein von der eigene Familien "Konopak" im USA. Mein Grossvater's Familie aus Toledo, Ohio, im 19th Jahrhunnert kam. Die seit lange Zeit dort gewohnnt hatte...Sein Vater war ein Komponist von Musik dort. Er kam dort in die 1850s.
Auf Deutsch hab Ich nicht viel geschrieben, dieser lange Zeit. Hoffentlich, Sie kann mich genug verstehen...

The messages ended, and the discussion went to the Wall:

Cyrill Konopka: Ich würde mich der Tage gerne mal über ihre Geschichte unterhalten. Ein sehr interessanter Name :)
2 hours ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Glaube Ich dass dieser Nahme (Konopka/Konopak) ist Russische, am meistens.
2 hours ago · Like

Cyrill Konopka: Ich bezog mich auf diesen Namen " Wiqiliques" Die meißten Konopka sind aus Polen. Gilt als Slesischer Uradel. Unter Napoleon gab es sogar einen General Konopka. Jan Konopka.
2 hours ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Ich glaube Ich erklaren diesser Nahme besser auf English kann, wenn Sie English lesen kann.
I wanted to have my Facebook "middle name" to reflect the Wikileaks phenomena; but the "censor" in Facebook wouldn't permit it, so I tried to translate in phonetically = "Wiqi Liques"...
2 hours ago · Like

Cyrill Konopka: Ah ja ich dachte dabei an Wikileaks, interessant.
about an hour ago · Like

Woody Wiqiliques Konopak: Du (darf Ich?) hast ganz richtig gedacht!
Du (schon wider) warst im Jahre 1984 geborn, so Ich glaube, dein Eltern ungevehr meine Alter sein mussen, oder? Ich bin 65.
Ich war im Deutschland, zwischen '65-67, bei den kleines Stadt Zweibruchen stazioniert. Ist, doch, aus Aachen nichts weit, nichts?

And there for now it rests...

A New Leaf: Pages from "the Book of Faces"

Today, on this blog, I am turning over a new leaf, whereupon I plan to inscribe relevant observations, ideas and features I've been involved with on Facebook over the given time period, i.e., daily, or even less. Starting with:

Hauling Yer Weight: In reply to a post from karen in Phoenix, advancing the cause of recalling the particularly odious ass-wipe/fascist Puke President of the AZ Senate, named Russell Pearce (I wonder if he's kin to the GOPuke Steve Pearce, who's the US Rep for NM's southern District? They're cut from the same cloth.):

See, now HERE'S where we really need a sympathetic billionaire, to step in with a million here (AZ), a million there (WI), another million thither (FL), and yet another yon (OH), and here (NM), too. I'm sure you could get any Gub in the cunchry recalled for $10 Million, take or leave a few mil...

Well, $10 MIL in fly-over ville; what did it cost to recall Grey, in Cali? It took close to $100Million.

The Innocence of Lettuces:

"Nobody--except those who believe, on no evidence at all, that an immortal soul really is implanted in the embryo at the moment of conception, thus endowing it with complete humanity--can say at what point an embryo turns into a human being. The innocence of fetuses is not in doubt. But it is irrelevant: lettuces are innocent too."--Robert Hughes

DOTOF--Mike Feigen

Divided, we beg!:

"The Battle of Madison, in addition to being about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s desire to cripple his state’s public sector unions, is also at least ostensibly about budgetary matters. Walker wants to get those nasty teachers and other government workers to foot more of the bill for their retirements, right? Well … wrong actually. And one of the worst kinds of wrong, a factual error so broadly accepted by the journalists covering the story that it distorts everyone’s understanding of it." Robert Schlesinger

The First Eleven: A unionized employee, a Tea Party member & a corporate CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle is a plate with a dozen donuts on it. The CEO pulls a pistol, and gestures to a flock of toadies outside the door, who come in, reach out & take 11 of the donuts. The CorpoRat then turns to the Tea Party member and sez: 'Look out for that union fucker, he wants a piece of your cookie.'

Sloganeering:

‎"United, we bargain; divided, we beg."
Every movement needs a unifying slogan, and this one (it seems to me) coalesces and consolidates both the spirit and the aspirations of the demonstrators into one, brief, pithy sentiment! It's free, my small contribution to the struggle.

HUELGAMOS, TODOS: Woody cautions folks not to forget there is language in the PATRIOT ACT which defines "interference in interstate commerce" to be a species of "domestic terrorism," and I am morally certain that the language is in there if not to deter a General Strike, then to punish one.

Could a general strike happen here? Experts say maybe
host.madison.com
General strikes have been very rare in the United States, but students of labor point to a confluence of circumstances in Madison with dramatic potential.

Student Achievements: Vary by state. The single factor which figures most prominently in comparisons of students' scores on standardized 'achievement' tests--the variable which accounts for the greates variance, as they say in stats-- is the SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS of the students' families. ZIP Code is a better predictor of academic success at ALL levels than IQ Score. Students' family SES accounts for more than 2/3 of all variance.

The Griftress: FB Friend Ernest Spoon posted on Sarah Palin's apparently declining pouplarity among GOPukes in Iowa, asking (rhetorically, I know) why she gets ANY attention. I replied:

Murka LOVES Us some grifters, probably because, at base, Murka is a nation of grifters.

:grift: ~~ Money made dishonestly, as in a swindle. 2. A swindle or confidence game; :grifter: ~~ Swindler, confidence operator.

Grifters: It's who we are, deep down, at the bottom of our collective 'souls,' the national DNA: a nation of scammers, thieves, swindlers, and low-lifes bent on making/taking the beeg bux the easiste, quickest way. Remember Manhattan?But Spoon, I wouldn't say she's been "groomed." The washed mosta the shit outta her hair, but "groomed?" Nah... She'd NEVER qualify for Westminster...

"What Would You Do?" Immigration In Arizona!

Face to face with the persecution of the innocent?
Officials in Scottsdale refused permission to the reporters to stage their stunt in their town, fearing violence against the team.

Is The Opposite Of A "Granny" State A "Fagin" State?

Or, perhaps soon to be called the "Walker State?"

Here's the blueprint. Each pod is distinct, but it is also possible to think of them as overlapping spheres of a Venn diagram; that is, a set. The spark that ignites the whole array is contained in the aphorism "Every crisis is an opportunity," when "crisis" and Opportunity" are understood in the context of Naomi Klein's paradigm of the Shock Doctrine.


On Balloon Juice, there's a good discussion, which begins:

The assault on unions is currently the most obvious and contested part of this plan (despite the health of the public pension system in Wisconsin), but others – like the no-bid contracts and privatization scheme – are now coming to light. The last, and perhaps most significant, is the attack on public services and particularly healthcare for the poor.

Read more at the link, it's worth the time.

Agreeing, Yes. Okay, But To What

"I Challenge You!" announced a friend of mine on his Facebook wall, reiterating an all-too-common theme among liberal/progressive/leftish folks all over the Webz. The "challenge" is "...(I)nstead of you blaming me, and me blaming you, let's see if we can come up with something positive that offends the very fewest among us. Let's don't worry about abortions, or gun control or any other topic that takes us away from our focus of trying to correct the course of this Ship of State..."

I find such pleas as these--and they are as common as flies around carrion--to be confusing. We should "forget our differences and work together."

Work together for what? Here's a partial list of my principle(d) differences. Am I supposed to forget:

• adopting abortion on demand,
• strengthening gun control,
• passing/signing climate-change-prevention/amelioration legislation,
• providing Universal health CARE (not just fucking insurance),
• rolling back corporate personhood,
• breaking media monopolies,
• ending wars,
• re-instituting hand-counted paper ballots for elections,
• affirming alternative energy solutions,
• reducing/eliminting plastics consumption,
• rejecting GMO foods,
• healing the Gulf,
• getting out of NAFTA et seq,
• etc.

That's just off the top of my head.

Now, lemme get this straight: You want me to "temporarily" forget about these vital matters, matters whjich constitute the skeleton and sinew of my political involvement in the process at all, and set them aside to cooperate, presumably with folks to whom those positions are anathema. And this in order to return EXACTLY WHAT to our national dialogue? Civility? What?

It is precisely HOW those issues are driven and controlled by the Fucktards that pushed the "ship of state" so dangerously off course. It is impossible to "correct" that course WITHOUT attending to the outcome of those issue/debates.

This is where you detect the hand of B. HObama, or some absent eminence. HObama is one of those negotiators for whom the "process" is the ONLY thing that matters. What is agreed TO is ALWAYS of less significance than the act of agreeing.

Teresa Strasser Makes David Frum VERY Uncomfortable

And it couldn't happen to a nicer dickwad.

"But but he's shed blood with his conservotard pals advocating for civility."

Civility serves the powerful, curbs the powerless.



GO, Theresa.
Here's a link to her blog, the name of which is eponymous with the title of her book: Exploiting My Baby

Scott Horton, et al: The Case Against the Case for War with Iran

Who?
Scott Horton. Not the one from Harper's, but another Scott Horton, an equally adept researcher (though perhaps not so great a connoisseur as the Harper's guy). This is a very important discussion. It's about an hour in length, but the vid, per se, is irrelevant; you can run it just on audio; that's what I'd do... Safe for work...

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4: