Happy Place Diversion ~ Ironic Rewrite of Alanis Morissette

"We changed your song so it finally makes sense.
We've got an editorial way of helping you out.
Helping you out."

Snark in Pictures

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Birther's Remorse: Coffman Warns Others to Drop It

It's really quite funny when Republicans try to shift so far to the right extreme that they fall off a limb. That recently happened to Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado). He said he didn't believe President Obama was really born in the United States, and now he is eating crow for breakfast. You have to laugh - it's beyond overdue for this to happen. The press should have called out every one of these birthers long ago, and I guess they tried. But now we've got Republicans themselves waking up like a drunk with a hangover saying "I said what? Oh, I didn't mean it . . . let's just move along . . ."

TPM: Coffman on his Birther Rant

“If I had to do it over again I think I would have said, ‘Let’s move from this birther question, the president was born in the United States, period,’” Coffman said in an interview with local station K-HOW. “‘Let’s just move on and let’s focus on the issues that are going to win this election. And secondly, let’s not ascribe this to those who oppose us that they’re any less Americans than we are.’”
A week earlier, Coffman had said at a fundraiser: “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” He quickly issued a press release walking it back, but shunned follow-up questions on the incident. On Tuesday, he repeated the same statement, “I misspoke and I apologize,” five times to a television crew that approached him after an event, offering no further explanation.

Coffman told K-HOW on Thursday that he regretted suggesting the president was anything other than American, and repeatedly emphasized that suggesting as much was also bad optics. The host asked Coffman whether he was “speaking from the heart” when he made his initial incendiary remarks and simply recanted “for political reasons.”

It was only a few days ago that Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett had to take to the airwaves to apologize for embarrassing his state after he harrassed the State by threatening to drop Obama from the November ballot - can you imagine? A sitting President not allowed on a state ballot just because some jerks (or racists) feel he is illegitimate? Luckily someone had a little talk with this nutcase.

From Huff Post:

"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn't my intent," Bennett said Tuesday during an interview with radio station KTAR, adding that he was just trying to "help as many Arizonians as I can" by looking into their concerns over the document.

Bennett also walked back his threat to keep Obama off Arizona's ballot this fall.
"He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has," Bennett said.
However, when pressed by the radio hosts on whether he was pandering to birther conspiracy theorists who believe the president was born outside the United States, Bennett pushed back.

"What is so sacred or untouchable about this question that you can't even ask the question?" he said, after insisting that he himself does not subscribe to the fraudulent birth certificate theories.

In the radio interview he says he wasn't trying to draw attention, and was just doing his "quiet little job." Yeah - how about doing it with some common sense? Do these people just not understand that Obama's mother was an American? And that Hawaii is a state of the union? Hello?

The birther movement is all about making President Obama seem alien, foreign, exotic, and just plain "un-American." They say "African" and "Kenyan" with comtempt, possibly forgetting that there are plenty of white Africans and Kenyans, and even some with American parents. Are they making outrageous statements just to get votes from Tea Partiers, or so some of them really believe this nonsense? Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is the Energizer Bunny of Birthers. No amount of verification from Hawaii will ever be enough for him to believe that President Obama was born there. He recently dispatched a "cold case" officer to go to Hawaii seeking more evidence, using taxpayer money to continue his own version of Captain Ahab and the Great Whale: Arpaio Not Giving Up on Birther Investigation

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it will take more than a letter verifying the President's birth certificate for him to call off his criminal investigation. “I'm trying to determine if any fraud occurred and who’s responsible,” said the Sheriff. The Sheriff's cold case posse has been investigating the President's birth certificate since August and is currently following up on leads in Hawaii. The Sheriff said the verification that the secretary of state received from the Hawaii registrar does nothing to change that.

That's right - logic and reason are not going to stop Sheriff Joe! He keeps on going and going and going . . .

Facebook Faceplant Causes Facepalm

I hate to say "I told you so," but the other day I wrote that I was underwhelmed by the Facebook IPO and thought it might fall apart quickly in spite of all the media hype and high-profile buyers such as Bono of U2.

And looks like I was right - headline after headline. I don't pretend to be an economist and have no money in the stock market and probably never will, but I think I can spot a trend. Facebook is not an up-and-coming commodity anymore. It's been around too long to have an IPO, and not everyone is as thrilled about Facebook as they were about Google.

Of course, no one out here in the 99% real world should feel sorry for these new billionaires. But there are problems with the fact that Facebook employees are stuck with the stock for many months and are barred from selling quickly while the price is still decent. And what about investment portfolios that included Facebook as a sure thing? We probably won't know until the bottom drops out.

WSJ: Facebook Slides Again

Facebook's stock was recently trading down 4.5%. The stock lost 11% on Monday as more investors and analysts began to question the size of the company's public debut, which initially valued the company at $104 billion. The company is now worth about $90 billion, based on Tuesday's stock price.

"Dreams of Riches"

Facebook Provides Cautionary Tale

"It was the casino effect a little bit here," said Steve Cordasco, a registered investment adviser with Philadelphia-based Cordasco Financial Network, which oversees about $700 million in assets. "It's good for the average investor to realize that you just don't know, that the experts just don't know."
Mr. Cordasco, who referred to Facebook's debut as a "face-plant," had advised one qualified investor who wanted to put a large amount in the stock not to buy on the first day of trading. The investor took his advice and bought Mr. Cordasco a beer on Friday as they watched Facebook lumber to its close.

 Bloomberg: Analysts Who Shunned Facebook Are Heroes

Analysts who broke away from the herd and told investors to avoid Facebook Inc. (FB), the biggest initial public offering ever by a technology company, are looking like heroes after the stock plunged.
While bulls forecast benefits as companies shift advertising to the Internet, Wieser said Facebook’s price is too high and the path to growth unclear. “There’s always a risk of buying into excessive hype, using rules of thumb for valuation that are divorced from fundamentals,” Wieser, a New York-based analyst at Pivotal, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “There are many things that really speak to the uncertainty investors should be incorporating when they’re thinking about Facebook.”

SFGATE: Facebook Hedge Funder Furious

We just got off the phone with a hedge fund manager who says his fund owns Facebook stock "in excess of a $100 million.
. . . His allegations/claims/opinions:
---->NASDAQ knew it systems were broken before the Facebook IPO, and instead of aborting the offering and facing huge embarrassment, it went ahead. Traders then lost hundreds of millions of dollars as they tried to buy and sell Facebook stock without getting confirmation that their trades had been executed.
---->NASDAQ made the problem worse on Monday. NASDAQ told traders who thought they had sold their Facebook stock on Friday – but had actually not – to fill out a form by noon. This form asked traders to list the price at which they thought they had sold their stock and they price at which they actually had. Problem was: Many of these traders had not yet actually sold their stock. Because the form required an actual selling price, many did, dumping tens of millions of shares of Facebook stock on the market, and sending the stock price plummeting.

Bigoted Is as Bigoted Does

I always warn people that I have strong opinions that many people may not want to hear. I'm as partisan as I can be, and unapologetic for that. And sometimes we just don't like public figures, and sometimes they say things that make us crazy.

But honestly, to me it matters not whether someone is from the left or the right - a bigot is a bigot, and an extremist is never going to win people over. Take a look at Rick Santorum if you don't believe me - oh wait, he's gone. Yes, he influenced an election and appealed to the 25% of extremists in this country, but most of us are not that person, no matter what party we are. Eventually he had to leave the stage. Paul Ryan was just attacked by the Catholic Church for being uncharitable and misinterpreting the Bible, and yet he believes he is the most devout and worthy member of that august institution.



On the Democratic side, we have our share of  religious opinions, and while Atheists want to be considered the  most opened-minded and enlightened people for rejecting organized religion, they can also be zealots. Try this - read the comments under any news story about religion and you will find a comment by some pompous jerk mocking people for belief in the "flying spaghetti monster" or the "imaginary being in the sky." Why is that enlightened? You are just attacking people for their beliefs, which is what some (not all) evangelical zealots do.



If you want people to listen to your point of view, just do something simple - be polite, think about your audience, think about the taste level. Just think. That's what President Obama does and he doesn't make many of these stupid mistakes. Don't use hate as a weapon all the time - it's doesn't work.

Please go read a List of Logical Fallacies and some of you might see what you've been wrong that gets you into trouble on the Internets.

Ad hominem (‘personal attack’; ‘poisoning the well’): L. "to the man;"
Def- attacking a person’s habits, personality, or reputation;
Ex- "His argument must be false because people say he’s a liar."

Bulverism: (named for C.S. Lewis’s imaginary character: Ezekiel Bulver) Def- attacking a person’s identity (race/gender/religion);
Ex- "You only think that because you’re a (man/woman; Black/White;
Catholic/Baptist; Democrat/Republican; Christian/Atheist; etc.)"

Straw Man (‘misrepresentation’):
Def- misrepresenting the opponent's argument; exaggerating or oversimplifying
Ex- "Einstein's theory must be false! It makes everything relative--even truth!"

3. Either/or (‘false dilemma’):
Def- limiting the possible answers to only two; oversimplification;
Ex- "If you think that, you must be either stupid or half-asleep."

We see all of those and more in political debate. The Mitt Romney Etch-A-Sketch joke is an ad hominem, but the twist is that Romney's own manager stated that erasing past statements was part of an election strategy. So the joke became a delicious irony that  tickled the humor of the public. However, when Ted Nugent and Rush Limbaugh attack President Obama or Sandra Fluke in vile language and spread lies about them, it's just not funny. Lies are not always jokes - sometimes they are just slurs, insults, and crazy-speech.

On many political forums, people make "sweeping generalities" - or what I call "throw out the baby with the bathwater" statements about other parts of the country they know little or nothing about. If Rick Perry in Texas makes some stupid remark about "wantin' to secede" because mean old Obama is forcing him to take medicaid funding (horrors) then some idiot will automatically write "Why do we need Texas anyway? Let them secede or merge with Mexico" as if every person in Texas is a Rick Perry clone. People don't realize how those statements bother Democrats who live in those states and fight for every vote. Rick Perry doesn't speak for the vast majority of Texans, and even the most right-leaning Texan would probably like to keep his United States Citizenship, don't you think? In most cases, the red states are split 50/50 so that conservatives win by very small margins, even in presidential races. Things are not cut and dried the way they seem on political forum or TV shows.



Let's recall it wasn't that long ago that the Dixie Chicks were lambasted and shunned for having the gall to say that not everyone from Texas was identical to George Bush. Obviously a false equivalency doesn't exist among "all the people down in Texas." Or in Tennessee where I live, or in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, or even South Carolina. The South has a diversity beyond a red-state status, just as the more liberal "blue states" actually have their share of card-carrying NRA members, evangelicals, tea partiers, and apocalypse-any-minute survivalists. There is no "one type" of person from any state, and to dismiss people based on geography is a rampant type of bigotry on the internet. Democrats are just as guilty of this as Republicans who think everyone in Massachusetts or New York is pro-abortion and loves President Obama.



Some people think that everyone south of the Mason Dixon line is automatically (a) a Christian or (b) a bigot. And the converse is true - there are those who say everyone north of Kentucky is automatically enlightened and immensely free of bigotry or prejudice of any kind. To anyone who believes that, I must ask if they've followed the careers of Michelle Bachman in Minnesota or Scott Walker in Wisconsin? 'Cause they are up there, you know - in a northerly direction. Sarah Palin was way up northerty-north in Alaska - where she saw Russia from her porch. Her husband belonged to a secessionist group, but that doesn't convince me that everyone in Alaska should be cut loose from the country due to Todd's extremism. Californians sometimes call themselves "Left Coasters" which is a cute tag-line, but that big blue state also gave us Ronald and Nancy Reagan, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger. The United States is like that, even if we love to broad-brush the conversation.

Both sides of the political debate use Bulverism, Straw Man, and False dilemma every day because we are a divided society and people have become so extreme that real discourse is almost not possible. "You're either with me or agin' me, dadgummit!" And the internet makes it easy to throw down the gauntlet and "take a stand" as if your life depends on it, or as if our society will crumble if they don't. I think that's how the Civil War started, but never mind . . . That doesn't mean that either side is "right" in all cases. Many right-wingers will say that "all" Democrats are communists and baby killers, for instance, when most Democrats are actually just pro-choice, not pro-abortion. Many on the left will say that Christians are either Evangelicals or Tea Party members - ignoring the many Christians who work daily to re-elect President Obama.

It doesn't matter who is spewing this nonsense - it's not logical. Everyone starts to sound like Archie Bunker. A glance at any discussion about the Trayvon Martin case proves there is plenty of bigotry to go around on all sides. It's shocking.

I've always been both a Democrat and a Christian. That doesn't mean I believe that the Bible is correct about everything, but that also doesn't mean that Jesus was wrong about everything. I find the teachings of Jesus quite soothing after a day of reading insults to women, talk of cutting children out of food programs, and hate-filled screeds about shooting the President or anyone who gets in the way of gun rights. I don't think Jesus would have a chance of even getting on the radio in these days and times, and if he did the Left would say he was too "mild-mannered" and too bipartisan, while the Right would slam him for persecuting the money-lenders and saying that rich people aren't bound for glory.



Please go read some famous quotes from smart people in the past if you want your words to resonate:

"We must make a personal attack when there is no argumentative basis for our speech”
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

"A bigot delights in public ridicule, for he begins to think he is a martyr." ~ Sydney Smith

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.”
~ Ambrose Bierce

And to those I would add the old proverb: "Two wrongs don't make a right."



To me it's just as bad for Monica Crowley on Fox to attack Sandra Fluke with some homophobic slur as it is for anti-bullying gay activist Dan Savage to attack Christian teenagers as "pansy-aZZes" for walking out on his captive-audience diatribe against the Bible. I recently wasted a couple of days gathering their statements and public reaction on my other blog, Snark Amendment because I think it's good to archive this stuff, which is ephemeral and tends to get erased when no one is looking.

And these are just great examples of two-sides to the same coin (to be proverbial again).



Monica Crowley Becomes a Bigoted Internet Meme

Irony Lost on Dan Savage as He Bullies Christians (Now with Nearly Non-Apology Apology

I love the irony and the jokes, and of course twas ever thus that freedom of speech also means freedom to make a fool of yourself by acting like a mean little girl as the bitter Crowley did, or stepping in your own bulls****, to quote the ever-eloquent Savage (who seems to know only one unimaginative noun).

A blogger writing in near obscurity -- like me -- who expects that few people will ever read this post, can have a fixed point of view and maybe only offend someone about once a month, but when you have a large audience hanging on your every word, then you have to engage brain much more before putting mouth in gear. And also remember that the internet is forever. That is something Mitt Romney keeps forgetting as he rewrites his old opinions on everything from Student Loans to Osama Bin Laden. We remember this stuff, we really do. And we will call you out on it!