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Politics & Controversy

Google News Gamed?

What happens when machines edit our news? What happens when news sources game Google News to raise their ranking? Online Journalism Review is asking that question, and has some interesting answers to report. It seems conservatives and conservative-biased news or quasi-news organizations use people’s full names, while mainstream sources and those with a liberal bent […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

These Aren’t Campaign Commercials

eBaum’s World added a couple of funny Bush videos recently.

  • What is soveriegnty? Bumble mumble. Two things: if he was a lot smarter, he would have known the meaning of “sovereignty,” but if we was just a little bit smarter, he would have known that the question was about how his government would treat Native Americans and answered that.
     
  • The claim is that this is a video of George W. Bush drunk at a wedding (with all apologies that it’s a WMV file).

The thing about these is that once you start wasting your working day watching them, you can’t really stop. So here’s a few more related videos and sound clips:

Casey Bisson

Project Censored’s Annual Roundup

Project Censored has released their list of the most censored stories of 2003-2004: #1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy #2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Holds Corporations Accountable #3: Bush Administration Censors Science #4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians #5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our […] » about 400 words

Casey Bisson

Claim: Beverage Choice = Politics

I’ve been a little slow to blog these things lately, but this comes from BeverageWorld magazine. They published the results of a poll connects beverage choices to political affiliation. They break the politics down into six choices: Democrat, Republican, independent, independent liberal, independent conservative, and none of these, then they compared booze and soda-pop choices […] » about 300 words

Texas’ Crony Politics and the Presidency

I finished Cronies by Robert Bryce recently and I can’t help but tell people about it. I hadn’t really wondered why so many presidents and vice-presidents have been from Texas, but Bryce did. “Two of the last three American presidents — and three of the last eight — have been Texans. Each of them got […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

RNC Eve

NYC’s sex workers expect to be extra busy while the Republicans are in town. There’s been talk of terror alerts. Get some backstory here, then read Ridge Issues Alert For U-BoatAttacks On Northeast Coast (and laugh). Google seems to think MaisonBisson and alandwilliams are similar. There, I found Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth and Cabbies […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

Republican National Convention To Be Windfall For NYC’s Sex Workers

The New York Metro reports that the sex industry is expecting a 20 to 50 percent uptick in business while the Republicans are in town for the Republican National Convention this week. Mary, a stripper at Ten’s Cabaret speaks from experience. She worked the 2000 RNC in Philadelphia and expects the strip clubs in NYC […] » about 400 words

The Conservatives vs. The Academy

AlterNet has a story by Joshua Holland about the Right’s crusade against lefties on campus. As I saw with my experience with the conservative sniper that was trolling here not long ago, the conservative mission is to criticize everything that’s off their message. Holland describes this as “backlash” politics: The backlash came about when traditional […] » about 600 words

Casey Bisson

Faith-Based Missile Defense

Defense Tech is reporting on the progress and prospects of missile defense (and their title is too good to pass up). Early in his administration, President Bush put a whole lot of stock in “faith-based” initiatives to solve domestic problems. Now, the President seems to be taking the same approach to military matters. Defense Tech […] » about 800 words

Casey Bisson

FBI Investigates

A friend sent this along yesterday:

I was visited, a couple of weeks ago by an FBI agent investigating whether or not I was involved in terrorist activities. Seems one of my neighbors (I don’t know who) placed an anonymous call saying that “[name deleted], who works for [airline name deleted] and lives [address deleted], resembled a terrorist on a watch list.”

So, the guy had to come over here and make sure I was not evil. After being here about 20 minutes and asking me some basic questions about my background, he left, convinced I was not plotting to blow up the free world. I thought the whole thing was the funniest f’n’ thing I’ve ever experienced.

Give them credit for investigating every little tip they get, I guess.

Casey Bisson

RNC Anarchy

Writer Paul Schmelzer has a list of (civil disobedience?) actions against the RNC in NYC. Among the actions planned: Bikes Against Bush, radio jacking, backback broadcasts, WiFi on wheels, and accurate crowd counts. Crowd counts? It seems government bodies like to undercount the number of people protesting against them, so a few hactivists will be […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

Look Ma, No Fire Protection

Alternet is featuring a story about the Bush administration’s attempts to reduce nuclear power plant safety requirements. This news might have slipped by unnoticed, except Mainichi Daily News is reporting on a steam explosion at a Japanese nuclear plant that killed four and injured seven workers today. Bush’s plan, against this background, seems haphazard.

At least this accident didn’t result in a radiation leak, the the 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident did. One worker was immediately killed and two others seriously injured when a batch of uranium ‘went critical.’ At least one of the injured workers died during recovery, and countless others will be subject to as-yet unknown health effects from the radiation leak.

Most people think of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in this context, but InfoPlease has a convenient short-list of nuclear disasters, Green Peace has much longer (though more complex) list of nuclear accidents.

Casey Bisson

Juliusblog on Coincidence: Bush Ratings vs. Terror Alerts

Juliusblog has a chart comparing approval ratings on a timeline with terror alerts. Guess what? Juliusblog makes the following observations: Whenever his ratings dip, there’s a new terror alert. Every terror alert is followed by a slight uptick of Bush approval ratings. Whenever there are many unfavorable headlines, there’s another alert or announcement (distraction effect). […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

Village Voice: Church of Bush

I started to make noise about this a few weeks ago in my story about Fahrenheit 9/11: I’m growing increasingly uneasy about the cult-of-Bush-worship that Brittany Spears exemplified in her appearance in Fahrenheit. The Greeks expected questions and debate, so did the Romans before the fall of the republic. Egyptian pharaohs, Mayan emperors, and Soviet […] » about 200 words

Casey Bisson

News: Bush Bushed

I hadn’t heard of Capitol Hill Blue until a friend forwarded this story about Bush’s paranoid isolation. First, I should say that paranoid isolation isn’t all bad. It worked well enough for ol’ Howard — “I’m not a paranoid deranged millionaire; Goddamit, I’m a billionaire” — Hughes, but then Hughes wasn’t president and didn’t think […] » about 1000 words

Casey Bisson

Things You Have To Believe To Be A Republican Today

My father forwarded this to me this morning: Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion. Trade with Cuba is wrong […] » about 400 words

Casey Bisson

This Land

Greg & Evan Spiridellis oever at Jib Jab have put together a damn funny flash movie about the presidential race.

From the lyrics:

…

Kerry: “You can’t say ‘nuclear,’ that really scares me. Sometimes a brain can come in quite handy”

…

Bush: “you’re a liberal sissy”

Kerry: “you’re a right wing nut job”

Bush: “you’re a pinko commie”

Kerry: “you’re dumb as a doorknob”

Bush: “hey, you got that botox”

Kerry: “but I still won three purple hearts”

…

That last bunch of insults from the cartoon helps frame the debate: What do you fear more: an intelligent, contemplative (perhaps metrosexual) president with real military credentials, or a dumb-sounding, dumb-appearing, evil-doing, Air National Guard deserting president? Ah, just watch the video.

Casey Bisson

Fox and Conservative Pals Out Spreading More Slander and Libel

Welcome the flacks. I don’t get many comments on stories here at MaisonBisson, so I was interested when I found a comment to my story about the Outfoxed documentary just an hour after I’d posted it. Here’s my theory, and it’s supported by stories in Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media and Al Franken’s Lies: conservative […] » about 1200 words

OutFOXed

OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism is out on DVD and VHS now. Outfoxed examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, have been running a “race to the bottom” in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public’s […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

Another Military Family Against Bush

Another Military Family Against Bush bumper stickers and other products available. Another Military Family Against Bush Value T-Shirt Another Military Family Against Bush Long Sleve T-Shirt Another Military Family Against Bush Frisbee Another Military Family Against Bush Mug Another Military Family Against Bush Big Mug Another Military Family Against Bush Messenger Bag Another Military Family […] » about 200 words

Cheap Food, Cheap Labor

I’ve found myself in a number of conversations about food safety lately. Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal comes up regularly, but I keep wanting to mention Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America. Why? Because Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose did such great job explaining the political context […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

Old News, Big Story

Google just lead me to Wage Slave Journal where I found an August 2003 story about American casualties in Iraqi. It turns out Fox News was comparing Iraq to California and claiming the former was safer than the latter. Fox can’t do math, but others can. Should anybody ask, you should know that if Californians were dying at the rate US soldiers in Iraq are, the governator would be facing 385 deaths per day. Or, at least that’s what it was a year ago. The death rate has risen since then.

…and civilian deaths are just abominable.

Casey Bisson

Fahrenheit 9/11

We expect Fox News And the Washington Times to hate it, but the reaction from the left seems to prove the old adage that a liberal wouldn’t join his or her own side in an argument. My own arguments against it relate to how little new information it revealed. The audience at the show I […] » about 300 words

Casey Bisson

The Letter Not Sent (re: LPFM, NPR, NHPR, complaint)

I was going through my files and found this unfinished letter to NHPR, my local National Public Radio affiliate, regarding the FCC’s proposed licensing of community-based low-power FM radio stations (LPFM). My point was (or it was going to be) that NPR was afraid to compete against other non-profit stations. NPR paints itself as an […] » about 1100 words

Casey Bisson