It is frustrating...TDS: The blogoshere's new BFF is Bob Shrum
By John Amato Thursday Jun 28, 2007 4:20pm
Bob Shrum on The Daily Show a few weeks ago talking about the DC consultants on the war and the decisions that are influenced by them:
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Shrum: The blogosphere was a lot more right about Iraq than all the experts in the Democratic party.
Stewart: So why then do they keep hiring these experts.....
Shrum uses the argument that consultants are experts and you need them to run campaigns against the Rove's in the GOP. There is a place for consultants I would think, but not the ones the Democratic Party has been hiring for the last decade. Josh Marshall talks about the Washington Post series on Dick Cheney and how frustrating it is to get our information across which relates to Shrum's observation about the blogosphere..
But this is far too easy. Because the simple fact is that we've known almost all of this for years.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking the series, which is quite good. In journalism, details, the specifics are all. But the story in general has been out there for years, as well as a good number of the specifics, strewn over hundreds, probably thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, online and off...read on
As a member of The DIrty F*&king Hippie Caucus I agree. Shrum admitted we were right on the war so I guess that's a start.
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When is the next DIrty F*&king Hippie Caucus session anyway? After all, it IS Friday, isn't?
Now ... if we could just get Democratic candidates to stop listening to Shrum, and all the other "consultants", maybe more of them would actually garner the support of the general public, and win their elections!
BAC
"an expert is anyone from out of town."-Abbie Hoffman
"every national security expert . . was for the war"? Not Wesley Clark!!
national security expert = neocon groupie
Cold comfort, to know we have been right all along. It did not stop a damned thing. It did not reach deep into the souls of Democrats - withered souls bought and paid for by corporatists.
However, Mr. Amato, it IS a start. Let us hope that TJS helps bring us validation and respect. Meantime, we members of The DIrty F*&king Hippie Caucus must *keep on trucking*...
And if what we are doing doesn't work, we must do more of it only with increasing testicular fortitude.
I think they think all bloggers are 10 year old kids.
Hell yes, we were right all along and that's why they resent us.
Too bad candidates are more interested in "selling themselves" than listening to the people whose votes they seek.
L.A. Confidential @ 6:
My wife says I'm getting to old for that sort of thing.
The audio levels on all videos on this site needs to be normalized to a desktop 'standard'. The levels are all over the place. To hear this video requires the levels be jacked and god help you if email arrives and the alert blows your speakers. I meant to comment on this some time ago. The audio needs to be maximized for full dynamic range in all cases.
The blogosphere was more right than the experts.... Yah us...
For all the good it did..................... Folks, I think I'm done for the day... Just a little too burnt out by all that 'good news' coming out of Iraq, the Supreme Court, the VP and Potus offices....
Good day all, have a nice weekend.... JD
But, But we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. So puh-leeez would somebody in DC tell me how we would fight them here? Blow up our country?
Who are we fighting? Terrorists? People who commit terrorism? By definition terror is inflicting fear on people. Hasn't our own government been guilty of that? Remember all of those terror alerts just after bad news about the war or the administration or before an election?
Don't forget some of us supply ovarian fluoride to the cause, or something like that...
Anon, I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at me because I have had the same thing happen and it scares the hell out of me. Also sometimes after turning the volume up real loud to hear a video, I forget to mute it later so when an email comes in, you can hear the alert all over the house. My email alert is a bit from a Jimmy Buffet song and he sings, "Mail boat's in, Mail boat's in". That can sound strange in the middle of the night in a silent house.
Okay, so Al Gore did get elected. I propose then that we adapt the "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" evidentiary argument and apply it to everything Bush has done since installed by the Supreme Court. Therefore, all judicial appointments are null and void so we can rid ourselves of the horrendous rulings by Roberts and Alioto.
Obama is a fool.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-06-28-obama-impeachment_N.h...
He says impeachment is unacceptable. Apparently, when the president breaks the law over and over and over again, you have to wait until an election to kick them out.
Moron, it's also designed to impeach criminals and boot them from office after they are convicted.
I haven't seen that caucus yet, but the platform has to be more realistic than any thing so far
Experts? That's Shrum's opinion and its pretty worthless. What these political consultants are is "practiced" in manipulation, that's all. Their game is politics--which I think can be defined as the pursuit of actual advantage or perceived advantage regardless of reality or practicality--and NOT policies which is what interests engaged voters the most. Professional consultants are in it for the "game" and the money--consistent 'loser' Shrum and James Carville are prime examples--and nothing else.
As Josh points out the WaPo series is essentially an aggregation. But this is where specialized Blogs work well. TPM MuckRaker is a model--staying focused on one subject or theme and encouraging readers to not only add to the stories but help analyze them as well, resulting in a big-picture view that can develop rapidly rahter than having to rely on a couple of reporters doing all the legwork for months at a time. Such an approach provides a degree of continuity to and greater understanding of issues that otherwise remain obscure and disjointed, spread out over the pages of multiple newspapers in different locations at different times.
If Bob Shrum was a baseball player, he would have been sent permanently to the minors years ago.
He's a one man wrecking crew, from telling Gore how to act in the debates, to telling Kerry to "just ignore the Swiftboat attacks" his salary should be paid for by the RNC....
Shrum is 0-8 in presidential campaigns that he has had a major role in, dating back to McGovern. The only campaigns that he didn't have role in during that time were Clinton's and you can see what happened...the Dem got elected. His firm, Shrum/Devine, made more than $100 million in media buying commissions running Kerry's campaign. Talk about a credibility problem. The fact that he's now a respected talking head gives new meaning to the concept of failing upwards. Every time I see his fat face, I wanna hurl.
Look at all the foreign policy experts on this Bushit admin!
Turk, that works for me!
Morrow, Obama IS also a fool AND a coward. These complicit cowards have an OBLIGATION to protect the Constitution and the country, and to take action against anybody that violates either one. Not to do what's politically expedient and self-serving. Obama said on 60 mins. "we have to leave some troops in Iraq, top protect out interests" , but since nobody in the main stream media has EVER challenged or asked WHO'S INTERESTS ? These comments just float on by.
In a way, Stewart's question is little uninformed and naive, who ELSE are they going to hire, people from the blogspehere ,lol. The consultants, the pundits, and media whores are there to protect their interests and further THEIR agenda, they don't give a damn about the average american. Carville going to Venezuela to work for the Oligarch elections, against the people's choice Hugo Chavez, is another example of these red light district political whores.
Excuse me, but these lame, grudging admissions about those who weren't swayed by the hooey and predicted correctly that the goatfuck would occur still aren't changing the fact that the same douchebags, creeps and fuckups are still calling shots. They're intending to be even more colossally wrong and destructive in Iran.
The beltway heathers, about whom no one with two brain cells to rub together gives a heroic morning crap, are still chop-shopping AmeriCo (nee America) for parts and for cents on the dollar. They're still slagging the people who were fucking RIGHT ALL ALONG as jammy wearing femi-hippie rad blaxican bio-nerds.
Shrum's still getting a free HUUUUUUUUUUUGE lunch for being wrong then, wrong now and destined to keep being wrong beyond measure in dollars and societal regression. He's acting like his career of jaw-dropping failure -- all, it turns out, not to appear weak to a handful of his fellow consultants -- was a tiny lil'ole faux pas.
Until we tie each of these fuckers inextricably to their past statements and activities, they'll just heh-heh their way out of it as if it was a small, gauche belch at the table and blubber their heads back into the trough.
Hang it around their necks like carrion so they're not back during campaign season -- or the next admin -- with a clean slate and spanking new white suits. It's the only way to keep monstrosities like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney from surviving in politics for three fucking decades of damage and not be charged and indicted as felons, traitors and two of the worst human rights offenders in their time.
Excuse the fuck out of me if that sounds angry, vindictive or "unreasonable" to the chicken wing of the Democratic party or the Left. I am angry and you know, my anger isn't the worst badness going on here.
Shrum is a proven LOSER!!!
Go crawl under a rock Shrum, we don't need or want you.
on the morrow @ 15:
The sad truth here is that the same politicians will be arguing that their crimes should not be pursued after they leave office because, "it doesn't matter anymore" and "we need to let the nation heal."
Well guess what? You don't let bank robbers, rapists and murderers off the hook because they aren't in office, or running against you. The promise of democracy is one law evenly applied to everyone, politicians included. Those in high positions do not constitute a separate and protected class.
And letting Nixon and the Reaganites involved in Iran/Contra off the hook didn't allow the nation to heal. The wounds of treasonous behavior in high places just festered under their bandages. Now the gangrene of malfeasance threatens to poison the very blood of the nation. I doubt the patient will ever make a full recovery.
The time of treating cancer with a bandaid is over.
Ellie @ 23:
- Ellie, if you ever want to come over to our place and blog, give me a shout. At Les Enragés.org, we love righteous anger. It fuels us like strong coffee.
pissed off patricia @ 7:
My complete agreement. Everyone I told I was against the war before it started looked at me like I was stupid.
I *TOLD* them what would happen. I *TOLD* them that even if Iraq handed over EVERY weapon it had, we would invade, I *TOLD* them it was about the oil...
And they just looked at me like I'd turned purple and grown tentacles from my ass.
So I was right. That doesn't make me feel good though. I would have LOVED to have been wrong.
Honestly, how many of us would have happily eaten crow, if it had meant what's happened in Iraq *didn't* happen? I would. I would be a much happier person today if we'd walked in, been greeted as liberators as they said we would, the Iraqi people were happy and healthy, and our troops weren't dying.
I would be grateful then.
But no. No, we were right, and no one listened. Rather than be smug, all I can muster is a disgusted sigh.
Please People:
Drop rotten peaches on the local doorstep of your congress critters on July 4th.
July 4th at 1pm EST nationally.
A national impeach Bush protest as a modern day Boston Tea Party.
Spread the word.
The revolution will not be blogged so get off your asses and do something in the real world.
I am proud to be part of the dirty f#$king hippie caucus. Except I was always clean and had clean clothes. My mind was clean/enlightened. I don't know where this "dirty" idea came from.
My own two cents - and this will, I know, make me sound like a complete class warrior, and probably piss some people off - is that the problem with democratic consultants is that they are drawn from a class of people who could just as likely be Republicans. By and large, they are NOT schoolteachers, union organizers (or anyone who has ever been in a union), former ENLISTED soldiers, etc. The very type and class of people they purport to represent. They are usually members of a class that has only ever had to deal with healthcare, housing, debt, wage issues and money issues from a completely abstract point of view. To them it's all academic. Wonking and Winning. They are members of the elite, even if they believe in a politics that is not (as) elitist.
And remember - I said "by and large", there are exceptions. And please don't accuse me of not knowing this first hand. I remember my first big Democratic shindig, and remember how disappointed I was that the movers and shakers were not at all "like me". I felt as out of place with them as I would have if I had been attending a debutante ball. This isn't status envy or whining, and I'm NOT saying that someone who comes from the upper class cannot be a true man or woman "of the people" (FDR comes to mind) - my point is that it truly gives me a sense that these people don't really 'get it'. Their minds are in it (policy wise, etc.) but their hearts are not. In the end, they go back home to the Hamptons as well. The people's party has been co-opted.
And sorry for the formatting problems...I am kind of new at this.
anon @ 9:
C&L is not a tv station..I wish it was. Many computers have different operating systems and so forth...Some of the people that send in videos use different equipment too...It's not perfect. but I'm trying to resolve all the issues...It takes time...It ain't as easy as it looks...
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