Archive for April 18, 2010
Gorgeous Flickr Photos of the Eyjiafjallajokull Volcano
Gorgeous Flickr photos of the Eyjiafjallajokull volcano eruption.
And no, I have no idea how to pronounce that name. Best advice? Sound it out. (I’m still tryin’. Eyi eyi eyi.)
Fox Portrays Bill Clinton as Insanely Angry, Limbaugh as a Sweetie
In an interview yesterday with ABC’s Jake Trapper of “This Week,” former President Bill Clinton commented on the hate speech coming from the likes of Rush Limbaugh:
In my EXCLUSIVE “This Week” interview, former President Bill Clinton told me Rush Limbaugh’s assertion that Clinton had “set the stage for violence in this country” and that “any acts of future violence” would be on Clinton’s shoulders, “doesn’t make any sense”.
Clinton marked the upcoming 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing on Friday with a major speech to the Center for American Progress, in which he warned that “the words we use really do matter, because there’s this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike.”
Conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh took to the air, Friday, after the speech and said that Clinton’s remarks, which drew parallels between the anti-government sentiment in the mid-90s and present-day anti-government expressions, “just gave the kooks out there an excuse to be violent.”
Responding directly to Limbaugh, Clinton told me, “The only point I tried to make was that we ought to have a lot of political dissent — a lot of political argument. Nobody is right all the time. But we also have to take responsibility for the possible consequences of what we say. “
One of those consequences, Clinton said, was threats against public officials. “We shouldn’t demonize the government or its public employees or its elected officials. We can disagree with them. We can harshly criticize them. But when we turn them into an object of demonization, you know, you — you increase the number of threats.”
Clinton added, “I worry about these threats against the president and the Congress. And I worry about more careless language even against — some of which we’ve seen against the Republican governor in New Jersey, Governor Christie.” A recently leaked memo from a New Jersey teachers union contained a joke suggesting that Governor Christie should die.
“I just think we all have to be careful. We ought to remember after Oklahoma City, we learned something about the difference in disagreement and demonization,” Clinton said.
Fox Nation posted Trapper’s article about the interview (without including a link and without giving Trapper credit for having written it), and it added some flowery language at the end (without noting it wasn’t written by Trapper and wasn’t included in his article). Bad as that collapse in journalistic and blogging integrity is, that’s not why I set out to do this post.
What struck me were the pictures Fox used in its graphic to draw people’s attention to the article. Clinton as insanely angry, Limbaugh as a regular-guy sweetie:
Planting Tomatoes
My husband is working in the garden; preparing the soil and setting up “Walls-O-Water.” He bought some tomato plants today that he’s going to plant tomorrow. One of the varieties is called “Mortgage Lifter.”
We hope it will be VERY prolific!
Hee.
Fox Says It’s Going to Keep a “Tighter Rein” On Hannity, et al.
Don’t get too excited folks. We’ve heard this before.
Hey Bobby, Still Think Monitoring Volcanoes is Silly?
Remember when Bobby Jindal, Louisiana’s not-so-bright Republican governor, said it was silly to monitor volcanoes?
I’m willing to bet Europe might have a thing or two to say to Jindal about that today.
McCain Wants to Be Thought of as a “Great American”
John McCain doesn’t get it. Days after he lied and said he never thought of himself as a maverick, he was on Fox this morning talking about how he wants to be thought of instead, as a “great American:”
MCCAIN: Well, all I — what I was saying was that I have considered myself a person who’s a fighter. I wouldn’t be around today if I wasn’t a fighter. I fight for the things that I believe in, and sometimes that’s called a maverick. Sometimes that’s called a partisan. And people can draw their own conclusions. I prefer great American myself, but…
That incident alone — saying something everybody knew was a lie the instant they heard it — disqualifies McCain from being a “great American.”
Poor John. He’s such a pitiful figure.
