zann's Blog

zann Commented on Sea Change in the Media? by Greg Mitchell

2008-10-28T06:12:14Z

Media owners are as scared of economic collapse as anybody else. The left lean is temporary. The Republicans have accidentally infected themselves with their own talking points. They're committed to crowning for life anybody who makes it across their game board- (meaning, Blackwater, Bank CEOs, Big Pharm, Exxon are above the law). They're just too warped to manage the real world. Anyway, the left lean is probably more like straight up compared to twenty years ago, or to Europe.

Despite the rational media, a solid right core still gets most of its news from Fox and talk radio. They truly believe that Obama is a Muslim who is secretly allied with radical Islam and a network of domestic terrorists. If Obama wins, these guys will keep on throwing monkey wrenches into whatever he tries to accomplish. So much for unity.

We can't have a real democracy with people shouting unchallenged lies all day. Your attention is your life. The attention of the American people is the life of America. As long as some part of our attention is for sale, people like Rupert Murdoch will keep on throwing monkey wrenches and purple people eaters into it.

zann Commented on Greenspan Follies: The World Is as Ayn Rand Would Have Predicted by Dean Baker

2008-10-24T05:31:09Z

2 things nobody mentioned:
1. The executives also had the golden parachutes and bonuses unrelated to performance. They were rewarded for losing money.

2. A lot of smaller banks were much more careful.

zann Commented on The Whole Debate in 90 words by Jim Sleeper

2008-10-16T07:00:05Z

We'll be getting the "transitional dislocation and enormous pain" in any case. Nobody's going to suggest infusing the vast amount of money we need from the Americans that actually have it.

zann Commented on A Question about Pundits by Todd Gitlin

2008-10-16T06:53:53Z

Not worthless.
Pundits live and breathe these elections. Chris Matthews couldn't wait- he was already obsessing about it a year ago. They have lots of historical context- easy references to the Johnson whitehouse etc, and more general and detailed knowledge than most voters. They are as worthless as knowledge. Most voters don't watch the debates closely or knowledgeably.

Still, I don't get the scoring "on points". Do the pundits forget the context they're so good at and give one debater a point if he shuts down the other debater in some way? Obama let a lot of McCain's attacks slide which means he lost "points". So how do you score Obama's calmness, focus and restraint? Or is each topic and subtopic worth a point? I think that some topics are 100 times more important than onthers.