What do you say to this?
I know what I say. Despite my love for candy corn, I shout a resounding “NO!!” to the above product, a sorry invention that is neither fish (candy corn) nor fowl (oreo) but some dreadful hybrid known as a candy corn oreo.
Do not buy. Stick with the classics.
It’s an evasion, of course, but it’s an indication that the MSM hasn’t been able to totally protect the president on this.
The cliche-generator has been working overtime for Obama:
President Barack Obama said in an interview that if the investigation into the Sept. 11 attack on the American compound in Libya finds that “there was a big breakdown, and somebody didn’t do their job, they’ll be held accountable.”
Speaking with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Monday, the president said that “ultimately, as commander in chief, I’m responsible and I don’t shy away from that responsibility. My No. 1 responsibility is to go after the folks who did this, and we’re going to make sure we get them. I’ve got a pretty good track record of doing that.”…
Asked whether the intelligence community provided poor information, Obama replied: “That’s what we’re going to find out from the investigation.”
“But the truth is that across the board, when this happened, my No. 1 priority was secure Americans, figure out what happened, bring those folks to justice. We are in the process of doing that right now,” he added. “Congress has been getting the flow of information continuously from Day One.”
Obama also said there were “all kinds of legitimate questions” about what happened in the eastern Libyan city.
“But I do take offense, as I’ve said at one of the debates, with some suggestion that in any way we haven’t tried to make sure that the American people knew, as information was coming in, what we believed happened,” he said.
Love that “I’ve got a pretty good track record.” Also love that expression “folks” for terrorists, don’t you? (I seem to recall that George Bush spouted that particular euphemism once or twice, as well.)
When do you think we’ll see the results of this “investigation”? And naturally the administration is the best choice for investigating—itself.
Also love the phony outrage: Obama says “I take offense” at the idea that he didn’t inform the American people. Well, you know what, President Obama? I take offense at your taking offense. It’s called criticizing the actions of a president. I seem to recall you used to do a bit of that yourself, back when you were just a mere senator.
Get ready, Republicans.
I don’t remember exactly where I saw it, but I hadn’t known before that there’s another name for Nemesis:
In Greek mythology, Nemesis (Greek, ÎÎμεσις), also called Rhamnousia/Rhamnusia (“the goddess of Rhamnous”) at her sanctuary at Rhamnous, north of Marathon, was the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods). The Greeks personified vengeful fate as a remorseless goddess: the goddess of revenge. The name Nemesis is related to the Greek word νÎμειν [némein], meaning “to give what is due”.
Perhaps Obama should hesitate before invoking “Romnesia.” It has a similar ring, doesn’t it?
[NOTE: Something about the title of this post reminds me of this:
Hogamous, Higamous,
Man is polygamous,
Higamous, Hogamous,
Woman is monagamous.]
Commenter “kolnai” makes some interesting points about the media and asks some interesting questions:
What I’m questioning, however, is this statistic I’ve seen Caddell and others throwing around stating that only 8% of the public has a favorable view of the media…
…[E]veryone has their social “oomph” for saying they dislike the media.
But we then have to square that with the findings of people like Tim Groseclose (and what we know to be true from simple observation), that a significant chunk of people are swayed to the left by the major media outlets and their framing of the issues. E.g., if NBC, ABC, CBS, the big newspapers and magazines, etc., treat Benghazi like a nothing-burger, a lot of people will swallow it.
That is important to note. They will not be neutral. They will not say, “Hmmm”¦ this is the media I supposedly hate, so let me be skeptical here.” They will swallow it. This must be explained, and it can’t be traced to mere rational ignorance, for, as noted, the logical attitude to take then is skepticism or neutrality until one does one’s own research.
My point is that people swallow it because many, perhaps most, who claim to “hate the media” actually don’t. Democrats love it and get all their info. from the MSM. Independents, or a good deal of them anyway, just swallow what’s fed to them from the surrounding informational aether, so long as it’s spoken in dulcet tones and doesn’t broadcast it’s partisanship.
Only conservatives (and libertarians) truly loathe the media and approach every story with a critical, doubting eye.
Good points. The same polls that ask people whether they trust the media seem to be rather silent on the more important follow-up questions they might ask as to why. Maybe people don’t like the MSM because of too much coverage of the Kardashian family. Maybe they don’t like it because of not enough coverage of the Kardashian family. So we don’t know what so many people don’t like about the MSM, although we pretty much know what conservatives don’t like about the MSM.
But I would submit that the media influences even people who say they don’t like it because propaganda works for a lot of people, in much the way advertising does. One of the most basic principles of advertising is that you don’t have to like an ad—in fact, you can find it quite annoying—for it to work.
There’s still another reason why so many people remain susceptible to the MSM’s propaganda despite not having a favorable view of the press: in order to reject the MSM “narrative” it helps to have a competing one. Yes, a competing one is offered by the press on the right, but most people who are not already at least somewhat to the right don’t ordinarily read or listen to the press on the right. That makes it pretty hard to hear the other side, doesn’t it? One has to seek it out, and if (for example) Fox News has been labeled a lying and biased network by the mainstream MSM, it’s something a person won’t be seeking out unless he/she is exceptionally curious. The more common reaction is probably to listen to the news less, which means that the person is even less likely to hear the right’s version, not more.
It may seem odd to us here, but I’m pretty sure that most liberals and moderates I know (not all, but most) haven’t even heard of the Weekly Standard or Commentary, much less read them. And the liberals I know who have heard of those sources never read them, either.
Take the Benghazi story. I am relatively certain that if I were to poll my friends, the majority of them would be unaware of it at this point, except in some very general way (for example, that the ambassador was murdered, that there was a video, and that something was said in the debate about all this and Candy Crowley pronounced Obama correct). After all, where would they have heard about the rest? Not on NPR, not in the Globe nor in the Times. And if I were to email them the recent Fox News stories on it, they’d most likely say, “Well, it’s Fox, so how do I know it’s true? And why isn’t anyone else reporting on it?”
And yet those very same people might respond to a poll about the MSM by saying they don’t trust it, reflecting a certain general leeriness about it. But that doesn’t mean they’re not highly susceptible to its influence, particularly on the things it chooses to cover versus what it chooses to ignore. If a Benghazi story falls in the forest, does anybody hear it?
…and he’s not going to take it anymore:
Also see this.
Almost all you hear lately around these parts is warnings about the coming hurricane.
I fully expect to lose power. But I lose power when there’s even a whisper of wind.
I just hope this time it’s not for long. And that it won’t be like the time I lost power for 5 days when it was 5 degrees out and I had the flu. It won’t, will it? Will it?
I was wondering what would have happened if Hurricane Sandy had struck on Election Day. Are there any circumstances under which the election would be postponed? I recall, for example, that 9/11 was originally mayoral primary day in New York City, and it ended up being rescheduled a couple of weeks later. But that was just a local primary, not a national election.
Anyway, if you don’t hear much from this blog for a couple of days this week don’t despair. It’ll just be me, sitting here alone in the dark.
[ADDENDUM: I might set up a few posts to automatically publish during the storm just to keep all you folks entertained. That doesn’t mean I have access to a computer. I’ll let you know if it’s really me.]
Roger L. Simon thinks that if Obama is re-elected he should be impeached over Benghazi, and that the offense is far greater than those occurring in Watergate and the Monica affair.
I think there may be grounds for impeachment (we still don’t know enough details from sources willing to go on the record), and that if it gets that far the offense is most definitely worse than the other two incidents. But although the House may vote to impeach, the Senate will never convict, and that would be true even if it were proven that Obama flew to Benghazi and murdered the ambassador and the others himself.
I am quite serious—not about the charge that he personally murdered the ambassador, but about the fact that impeachment is now so politicized, and the need to protect Obama on the part of the Democrats so great, that a Senate that is more or less evenly split will never reach the required 2/3 vote to convict.
The other day I watched the last half of a movie on TV that I’d never caught before: “Independence Day,” made in 1996. A few minutes into it Bill Pullman, the actor playing the US president, came into view.
I was stunned. He was a ringer for Romney. I’ve said before that Romney looks like a president sent from Central Casting, but I hadn’t before realized it was literally true.
The resemblance isn’t quite as dramatic in full face closeup. But in profile and three-quarters face, and especially when the actor’s whole body is shown–the proportions of the head/body, and the proportions of the features within the head shape—it’s especially striking.
By the way, in the film the president is a former fighter pilot. More like Bush senior, and somewhat more like Bush junior, than like Romney.
It’s almost funny to read the contrasting headlines, best seen on a site like RealClearPolitics. Here’s the list I found there last night:
Obama’s Road to Victory in Ohio – Nate Cohn, The New Republic
The Inflection Point: Obama Won’t Catch Romney – Rick Wilson, Ricochet
The State of the States: Obama’s Odds Still Over 70% – Nate Silver, NYT
Gallup Party ID Figures Predict Solid Romney Win – Neil Stevens, RedState
Two Types of Romney Malarkey – Noam Scheiber, The New Republic
The Obama Campaign Is Right to Panic – Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
It’s Always Been a Matter of Trust – Steve Benen, MSNBC
Holes in the Obama Battleship – Jonah Goldberg, National Review
Yin and Yang, matter and anti-matter, glass half full half empty—these paired-yet-opposite sets of prognostications give us whiplash as they cancel each other out. Of course, some are right and some are wrong, but we won’t know which is which until the final denouement.
Until then, only the Shadow knows, and he’s not telling.
[NOTE: Like you, perhaps, I tend to think that the articles that predict the election will go the way I want it to display more logic and better reasoning all around. But alas, that doesn’t mean they will end up being correct.]
So, what about the sex lives of cojoined twins?
Lest you think I’m just being frivolous and/or sensationalistic, the topic raises perplexing issues of identity and perception. With cojoined twins such as Chang and Eng Bunker, the original “Siamese” twins, who had separate bodies joined at their intact livers and with a small bit of extra cartilage, their sex lives would probably have been more like having a constant witness. But that ever-present spectator would be a person so psychologically close that non-cojoined non-twins can’t even begin to imagine the relationship, except to say that everything—toileting, sleep, walking, going to the movies—would have been occurring in the company of the other person since birth.
The Bunker twins could have been easily separated these days, with modern surgical techniques. Those cojoined twins who remain joined today are much more inextricably entwined. Modern twins such as Abby and Britanny Hensel (subjects of a recent TLC TV show), who have two upper bodies and one lower, face a very different situation. Quite obviously (unless there’s something I’m missing), sharing a single lower body would mean that each twin would physiologically participate in each act of sex.
But the mind is an amazing thing. Any cojoined twins would have to have had almost no notion of privacy throughout their entire lives—or rather, perhaps, an exquisitely attuned and highly developed sense of privacy that involves remaining separate psychologically while being in each other’s constant company, a delicacy and discretion born of extreme necessity. And to twins cojoined in the particular manner of Abby and Britanny, sex would present only a specialized subset of a conundrum the twins had been forced to deal with long ago.
It’s their partner[s] who might have more difficulty growing accustomed to the situation, rather than the twins themselves. The legal system might have a bit of difficulty with it, too: who would actually be married to whom? For example, would any marriage to the Hensels be defined by necessity as bigamy? And would they both be the legal mothers of any child? To the Hensel twins—who have surmounted so many difficulties so far, with such overwhelming psychological health—it probably all seems like small potatoes.