If That's What It Takes

Now we know how Paddy Mac analyzes elections, courtesy of Charlie.

McIlheran polishes the turd.

Sigmund McIlheran

Preview McIlheran notes that Marquette's nutty professor and occasional crusader, John McAdams, was able to twist a story of a young woman getting fired from an university-operated counseling center for refusing to treat a patient into a fantasy tale of religious persecution.

MJS's own Sigmund has a Freudian slip when he writes:

As it happens, she thinks engaging in homosexual thrills is destructive to individuals – that is, it is greatly immoral and, presumably, has eternal consequences.

If nothing else, this is a great argument for nationalized health care. After all, who wants a person like McIlheran, McAdams or the young woman deciding if you are worthy of being treated? I'd go with the equality every time, thank you very much.

As for the rest of their argument, a certain blogger who is devilishly witty and devastatingly handsome, and knows more about providing mental health services than all three of these people combined has more to say on the subject here.

It's A Comprehension Problem

Fischer sez,

"The state obviously hasn't taken into consideration situations like
this."

In relation to an article that says this,

"Those are the kinds of objections the DOT is soliciting for a public
information meeting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Hemlock Elementary School, 1900
Williams Grant Drive, in Lawrence."

It's as if the facts make no difference to him. Either that or circles confuse him horribly.

How To Talk To A Bloviator

Roger Ebert takes Falafel Boy to Catholic school.

I understand you believe one of the Sun-Times misdemeanors was dropping your
syndicated column. My editor informs me that "very few" readers complained about the disappearance of your column, adding, "many more complained about Nancy." I know I did. That was the famous Ernie Bushmiller comic strip in which Sluggo explained that "wow" was "mom" spelled upside-down.

Suck Up Gentlemen!

Gotta love how once the right wing gets a dumbassed idea stuck in their heads, like the teleprompter bit they are attempting to do on Barack, they come down with lockjaw.

The reason why this doesn't work is everybody knows how inept their president was in front of crowd or a press conference. I doubt if there will be a daily desk calendar of Obama miss-speaking as there were for Bush, creating this niche of the publishing industry.

And then of course there was the celebrated receiver not-to-well hidden underneath W's suit jacket during his debate with Kerry.

But now that they have this chew toy, the right wing won't let go of it despite the bad taste it will eventually leave.

For an example of this syndrome, look at the catch-phrase commedy over at Sykes' site which stands in for creativity -- "Hot Read," "You Stay Classy (Name Here)," "Shut Up (He/She) Explained," ad nauseum.

Now we have the oh so clever Tea Party they will be holding across the country to protest the government we all elected.

Again, it doesn't work.

There is an aristocracy as in 1773. It's called corporate America. Unelected, though now more and more in the hands of government thanks to the ineptitude of these masters of the universe.

Don't get me wrong. There is a place for corporations, but they should be here for us, not the other way around as fancied by the right wing.

Stick these guys led by Americans for Selective Prosperity (ASP) in a time machine and send them back to pre-revolutionary Boston. No doubt with their perspectives, they wouldn't be dumping the tea. They'd be drirnking it.

Fisch Tracks

A while ago, our bud, Kevin Fischer was apparently complaining about the weather guy on TMJ, who said that we would get three inches of snow, but Kevin's measurement showed that it was only 2.98 inches, or something like that. To be honest, Fischer's stuff is the best cure for insomnia known to man.

Anywho, said weather guy tries to explain the facts of life and meteorology to the "crabby blog guy." Weather guy's problem was that he used big word's which Fischer doesn't understand too well, and he felt put out.

So, of course, Crabby Blog Guy complains about being called out, snarking that the weather man can't predict the track of storm seven days away.

Which is really ironic, since Crabby Blog Guy can't even keep track of his own vacation time.

Sykes Wrongs

This post by Illy-T is from last week, and I was going to let it slide for being too dated, but the title is too good, and he is learning the art of "fun with screencaps." From Illy-T, I present:

Sykes Wrongs

The Imperceptive Leading The Dyspeptic

Patrick "Preview" McIlheran thinks that some people should voluntarily give up their right to vote.

I guess he got bored of just trying to suppress their rights outright, and is now trying to use reverse psychology or something.

Besides just for being offensive, another reason to ignore Preview's advice is the source of it. It is rare to see such arrogance from people with the least cause to be arrogant.

Too Good To Pass Up

Charlie's Big Chance To Shine

For weeks, well, actually for years, Charlie Sykes has been blaming unions for all of the evils in the world.

He's blamed the auto workers unions for the downfall of the Big Three, even though it is the executives pulling in millions in just bonuses for a business design that did not keep up with the real world.

He's blamed the government workers unions for high taxes, while defending AIG and other big company executives for taking taxpayer monies to give themselves obscene raises and million dollar office renovations.

Charlie's blamed unions for just about everything from higher taxes to the recession to Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Heck, I bet Charlie would acknowledge the reality of global climate change just so he could blame that on the unions too.

But now here is Charlie's big chance to put his money where his mouth his. His parent company, Journal Communications, is in financial straits, and they need his help (emphasis mine):

The pay cuts and time off affect executives, managers, market managers, supervisors, as well as corporate staff. The company is also asking on-air broadcast talent and most union employees to negotiate payroll reductions.

I fully expect Charlie to give up at least 25% of his salary so that his colleagues and coworkers can keep their jobs, so people can still afford to buy the paper, or a car to drive while they listen to his nonsensical bashing of the unions.

It shouldn't be so hard for Sykes to do. After all, he was just recently bragging about his big contract extension.

C'mon, Charlie! It's time to put up or shut up! Give up a big old chunk of your swollen salary and show us how it's done.

Or are you just an empty, hypocritical windbag?

Will Talk Radio Give Any Credit To Pres. Obama?

The following is a post by Dan Cody, author of Left on the Lake, as an open letter to the right wing talk radio hosts. It is reproduced her with full permission from Mr. Cody.

Dear conservative radio talk show hosts,

What happened to you spending massive amounts of airtime talking about how this was “Obamas economy” as recently as a few weeks ago and lambasting him for not “keeping his mouth shut!” which in your opinion was causing the markets to tank?

Has something changed in the last several weeks that’s caused you to abandon your rants about how President Obama would kill this economy and that the markets were clearly expressing their opinions on our new President and his financial policies in a negative way?

Like I said back then, I thought that up or down, it was kind of silly you were choosing to rip into the new President a few weeks into his administration by using the fickle Dow Jones industrial average as your “proof” that Wall Street had expressed their opinion about the new President, and it was an overwhelming “NO!”.

Anyways, since you spent so much time a month ago trying to make the point that because the markets were down that Obama was a failure, I thought you’d probably want to spend just as much time talking about how Pres. Obama must be a success now that the markets are moving up.

Fair, accurate and balanced and all, you’re probably dying to get this story out there.

All my best,

Dan

Belling Gets One Right

No further commentary needed.

Someone Needs A Hug

Low self-esteem is an aggravatingly general term that gets confused between the psychological definition and the common, everyday definition, which is exploited by pop psychology. But also because of its generality, there are many things characteristics that are common in both definitions.

Just as there are many causes for low self-esteem, it is usually caused by an incident or series of incidents that occurred in one's childhood. These things could include, but are not limited to, getting picked on by other kids, not getting enough affection from one or both parents, or just a general sense of depression.

When a person with low self-esteem grows up, they tend to develop ways to cover up their feelings of inadequacy or insecurity that often mislead other people.

For example, some people might try to make themselves feel better by trying to intimidate others, say by using an expanded vocabulary, even if it means alienating those you are trying to communicate with. This gives the person a false sense of superiority.

Another problem with low self-esteem is the way to work through it. Say a person feels down about themselves because they are fat. Obviously, the solution would be a regimen of diet and exercise, but that requires self-discipline, self-motivation and dedication to the goal, which is something that most people with self-esteem lack. So instead of changing their lifestyle, and building themselves up in healthy ways, the turn to the easier, but unhealthy pattern of trying to tear other people down.

In the more extreme cases, they will do this to the point of being almost libelous, disregarding whether their attacks are even based on reality, which they often aren't.

Probably the most damaging is when the person with low self-esteem starts to use drugs, alcohol and/or food to try to alleviate their bad feelings. It only works for a short while and does nothing to alleviate the problem in the long run.

As it said in the article I linked to at the beginning of this post:

People with low self-esteem also have problems getting close to others. They are not comfortable with intimacy and create barriers to prevent people from coming close to them. They don't like to open up to people and to reveal their innermost thoughts. They may be nursing some old bad experience with someone who caused them a lot of pain or who let them down when they were most vulnerable. By forcing themselves to live in a world of self-denial they are doing a great damage to themselves. They fail to benefit from the company of others, and keep entrenching themselves deeper and deeper into their negative world. They may ultimately reach a stage where they may be declared beyond salvage.

But this is not good for society. People with low self-esteem must be helped. Their symptoms must be diagnosed, and help provided if they have to be turned into useful members of society. This help can be given by family members, friends, teachers or by trained psychologists.

If you feel that you have low self-esteem, or know someone who does, please seek help.

Found It!

In today's editorial column, Patrick "Preview*" McIlheran starts out with this line:

Anastasios Tsonis is not a lunatic, and no serious person says he is.

A friend of Whallah! pointed out in an email that if one does a Google search of the words "Tsonis" and "lunatic", one would find that the only person that did make that comparison is McIlheran. The others are just the echo chamber showing their lack of original thought.

The said friend of Whallah! pointed out that McIlheran was creating another strawman. Well, of course, this is the only type of entity that he has the intellectual capacity of beating.

*Yep, he previewed this one as well. And they wonder why the MSJ may be facing a third round of layoffs which they call euphemistically call "buyouts."

Charlie Can Now Remove the Hook from His Mouth

Ever the booster of the highly vapid Paul Ryan (R -- Brady Bunch), Charlie Sykes dutifully reproduces the chart Ryanl ran in the Wall Street Journal below.

One little problem. The chart is supposedly based on the Congressional Budget Office analysis. The only problem is that the CBO's analysis ends in 2019. Ryan's staff therefore has turned to making crap up.

Now that the GOP has put Ryan front and center is good for us back home. For too long the local media has fawned over Ryan's imagined innovation and gravitas. The national media will be doing the job that should have been done in the Milwaukee metro area a long time ago.