fucking smithfield foods


Sorry for an F-Bomb before you even get in the door, but I read something last night that pissed me off so bad that a fuck derivative was the only way to get the point across before moving on to the meat of this blog.  (Prepare for the gratuitous use of meat and meat byproducts as well as the occasional Tourette's outbursts.)  So, I will now switch gears to why we are clearly one of the stupidest fucking countries on Earth and seem to be exporting stupid now. 

Hyperbole?  I think not.

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glenn beck is even crazier in hd


I finally got my high-definition receiver this past weekend for the new flat-screen TV we finally bought for Christmas.  I was flipping through the pathetically small line-up of true HD programming when I happened upon Fox News HD.  The Glenn Beck Show was on.  Holy crap!  I had no idea.  The guy just radiates crazy in high definition.  It was his eyes that really told the tale.  HD makes it impossible to avoid the ice blue insanity of those eyes.  It is long past time the republican faithful disowned these Partisan Profits [sic] of the Airwaves.

I think Howard Beale said it best:

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dear mr. miller,


I recently saw your blog at TPMCafe.

Having read some of your excellent posts, and the description of yourself, I'm very curious as to what a "Progressive Conservative" embodies? Given your impressively thoughtful posts, I am really interested to hear some of your thoughts in an effort to evolve my own.

Kind Regards
A TPM reader from New Zealand


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donner, party of two


I learned to love Fridays these last few months, newly appreciative of weekends after 18 months of telecommuting contract work.  I had finally landed a Dream Job at a Dream Company.  Life had stabilized into something more suitable for long-term planning.  I started reading both Krugman and Brooks on the train ride to my Dream Job each Friday, marveling at the irony of how unhinged the former sounded, notwithstanding my agreement with many underlying policy principals, now that the latter was writing from a minority position.

This past Friday was no different.
 

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mushroom clouds and smoking guns


A funny thing happened on the way to our Change - everything stayed the same except our new president.  The same tired rhetoric from both sides of the aisle from the same tired partisan warriors in the same shrill and paranoid self grandeur one would expect from lifelong mental patients. 

The Right wants Tax Cuts and the Left wants Social Spending.  Anyone who seeks nuance in either stance is a "centrist" or a "traitor" or somehow an impediment to whichever side takes offense at their questions.  Sounds exactly like the "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists" nonsense we got out of Baby Bush. 

Sounds like the parade of neocon talking heads who said we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

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there's something about mary jane


I think Kellogg's owe Michael Phelps an apology.  He also might have a case of wrongful dismissal if they already signed contracts and agreed to payment terms.  Kellogg's has been killing Americans for decades using food packed with high-fructose corn syrup, so they can't say Phelps isn't in keeping with their corporate identity.  They are part and parcel of many of our most pressing problems - from global warming to health care. 

In fact, I think the entire United States of America owes Phelps an apology.  And a bong hit.

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sophistry and other fun words


Like neocon and corporate appeaser and fart dropper and Bush apologist and typical republican and right wing conservative, all said in biting and sarcastic tones meant to belittle and simplify the opposing viewpoint to the point of absurdity.  A hit parade of hate and ad hominem attacks that is an alarming trend coming from liberals.  I expected a whole lot more from the left side of the social compact. 

I supported Barack Obama's candidacy as a way to put that sort of shameful intellectual dishonesty to rest once and for all.  I had hoped his tone of civility (broadly applied by the democratic faithful toward rank and file republicans in their own lives) would give the republican party just enough room to transform into the 21st century party that we need to balance Barack's transformation of the coin's flip side.  Even then, total implosion of Lincoln's party was the most likely outcome.

I am sad to report I was wrong in my belief that empathy and logic would be broadly applied in the democratic ascension to power.

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social security and medicare aren't entitlements


Some may not have thought I had it in me, but I always planned to critique Barack's performance when necessary.  It's become necessary.  Riding home on the Metro tonight, I read a four-page article on the mobile New York Times latest news section.  After a fairly standard opening paragraph, I got to this beauty of a quote:

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the evolution won't be televised


I have come to the conclusion that even as pragmatic and reasonable people accomplish great things over the coming years of an Obama administration, all we will see and hear in the near future (both on- and off-line) will be the fringes hollering and screaming as their influence over the conversation is mitigated and contained. 

We will hear the idiots from both parties who got us to this place in history justifying why the other person elected by 9% of their party's voters in the average primary is actually responsible for the mess and not them.  Perhaps it is my own story that made it possible, but I see a counter-narrative being played out at a few decibels below the Raging Right and Raging Left.

I feel we are in the process of making an evolutionary step that would have been impossible without our revolutionatry roots.

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glass houses, stones, pots, kettles, splinters and eyes


obama equation update: liberal X conservative = progressive


This is what I am calling the Obama Equation. 

Barack looked at the American political landscape and wrote Audacity of Hope as a response.  In that brilliant book, I believe he articulated the above equation as being the only way we can save ourselves from ourselves.  I also think what we are seeing, much to the consternation of our far right and far left brethren, is the Obama Administration putting those ideas into motion. 

The Obama Equation will become as important to politics as E=MC2 was to physics.

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"Semantics? I'm always up for some antics."


Our politics has become a game of feigned outrage over purposeful misunderstandings of straightforward arguments made by someone completely different from yourself but no less convinced of their point of view. 

How's that for a high-calorie sentence?

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tpm bug check


With no consistent and trackable way to register site bugs, I am curious to see what problems other users are experiencing as TPM rolls out new functionality.  Do any other computer folks out there agree that most issues revolve around their authentication schema, more specifically the fact that it relies on cookie-based sessions that can't keep themselves straight and different applications looking for their roles-based data in the wrong spots?

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fattening our sacred cows


One of the first ironies I have noticed about Barack Obama's victory is the inability of many liberals to follow his lead on positioning his coming progressive changes.  I have yet to hear the words "democratic dominance" out Barack's mouth.  All of his initial moves seem to signal a shift away from the left-right pendulum swing of the last 40 years.  He speaks to national unity at a time when many democrats shout for heads to roll. 

"It's our time now!"

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an american renaissance


President-elect Barack Obama ran on a detailed set of policy solutions for many of our most pressing challenges.  Neoconservative pundits and an anemic news media aside, he won the support of many political moderates for the depth and breadth of his platform coupled with the brilliance of his campaign.  Barack's best-selling book The Audacity of Hope lends a philosophical depth to these goals and describes nothing less than an American Renaissance. 

It was also the main reason I joined the republican party in August of 2008.

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jason everett miller

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  • Website: www.jasoneverettmiller.com
  • Location Washington DC
  • Party Republican (Bull Moose 2.0)
  • Politics Progressive conservative. I believe we need governing policies that are based in common sense and not dogma. An evolution of society and not a revolution that seeks to tear everything down and start from scratch. We don't have enough time for that nonsense.

Favorites

  • Favorite Blogs TPM. Much easier to get everything in one place than visiting a million blogs every day. Who has time for that?
  • Favorite Books Squandering of America by Robert Kuttner and People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn immediately come to mind, but there are way too many to list.
  • Favorite Quotes "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

    "It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things." - Teddy Roosevelt

Bio

I started my professional life as a union carpenter in Reno before joining the United States Navy in 1991 as an assistant ship's journalist and a deck seaman. I covered high-profile events around the globe, from Hurricane Andrew disaster in 1992 to the discovery of USS Yorktown off of Midway Island with Bob Ballard in 1998. My final tour of duty at Combat Camera Group Pacific was as a field producer in support of a worldwide mission of military documentary production.

I left the Navy in 2001 and moved across the country to start my first business with my long-time best friend Mikah Sellers.  We started a specialized communications firm in Washington DC called Hancuff Miller. After a short but successful partnership, we both decided to pursue other opportunities following the Dot.com Bomb. I spent the next several years as a freelance multimedia designer, web developer and screenwriter. I also wrote five feature-length scripts during this time, earning a bachelors degree in graphics and multimedia design from Capella University and a Masters in Producing for Film & Video at American University.

In 2006, I gathered together my educational background, technical tools and business acumen to start my second company, Metamorphosis Media, with Marcus Scott. The company completed a number of projects for non-profit clients such as Academy of Hope, Mosaica and the Conservation Fund. It was at Metamorphosis that I discovered the enormous benefit that technology and story-telling could provide to the non-profit, charity and NGO communities. I maintain a relationship with Metamorphosis as a senior consultant with the firm, but no longer support their day-to-day operations.

I live with my wife and two dogs in Washington DC.  My extracurricular activities include filmmaking, screenwriting and blogging.

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