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Glenn Beck is losing more and more advertisers
03.11.2010
07:11 pm
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Why in the world would any respectable company want to associate their product with a sociopathic sack of shit like Glenn Beck? And what ad buyer at which advertising agency would be dumb enough in 2010 to tell their client they should be purchasing advertising on the Glenn Beck show?!?! Whoever sold TurboTax on the idea should be drummed out of the advertising business for good. What fucking idiocy.

Nice work over at the StopBeck blog. Note how fast it was for TurboTax to pull out:

On March 9th, TurboTax advertisements began running on Glenn Beck’s show on the Fox News Channel.  Participants in the StopBeck effort promptly sprang to action.  Less than 24 hours later, TurboTax announced that they would be pulling their advertisements from Glenn Beck’s show.

This brings the total number of advertisers to drop Glenn Beck to 120.  On a related note, the broadcast of Glenn Beck’s show in the U.K. has been running without any advertisers for over a month now.

TurboTax’s statement:

Thanks everyone for your feedback, & for reminding us of what we value. We’ve pulled advertising from the Glenn Beck show.

 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.11.2010
07:11 pm
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Ronald Reagan Fears The End Of Fashion
03.11.2010
11:19 am
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He’s damn serious about it, too! Watch this fantastic and bust-a-gut funny video from Jameson Notodo Film Fest.
 
(via IheartPluto and Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.11.2010
11:19 am
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Little Green Footballs interview gets some little green trolls
03.07.2010
10:02 pm
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I refer you to the comments thread of this week’s Dangerous Minds interview with Charles Johnson, of Little Green Footballs. This afternoon Charles linked to the interview from his popular blog and within a matter of minutes people were posting about the interview both there and here. Some pro, some con (I get compared to Sean Hannity for instance!), but some just nasty and fairly pointless, such as one item (since deleted by us and not at the request of Charles, either) which managed to slip in both a homophobic epithet and a not-so-veiled death threat!

Charming.

As Charles replied “Welcome to my world! These are exactly the people I was talking about in the interview.” I sent him the IP address and in a matter of minutes he tracked the guy down and found several instances of his email address posted online elsewhere.

Views were initially slow on this episode, but are trending upwards quickly. I’ll leave this up for another day before posting part 2.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.07.2010
10:02 pm
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Sarah Palin 2012
03.05.2010
06:19 pm
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Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.05.2010
06:19 pm
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Fear of an Anarchist Planet
03.03.2010
09:26 pm
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American Leftist posts on the ongoing struggle over tuition hikes in the University of California system. (As previously covered on Dangerous Minds here.)

Last November, I posted about the protests that erupted within the UC system over registration fee increases of 30%. Police struck students with batons and tasered them during protests during the regents meeting in Los Angeles where the fee increase was approved on a bipartisan basis. Students thereafter barricaded themselves within buildings at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis. As students occupied Wheeler Hall on the campus of UC Berkeley for approximately 15 hours, a large crowd of students, UC staff and the public generally rallied in their support, and prevented their forcible, potentially violent arrest, by UC police.

The protesters positioned themselves within the social framework of opposition to the imposition of neoliberal policies within California, policies that result in incomprehensible increases in salary and benefits for people like UC President Mark Yudof and the newly hired Chancellor of UC Davis, Linda Katehi, while classes are cut, class sizes increased and students required to pay substantial increases in fees during one of the worst recessions in US history. Meanwhile, rank and file state workers experience 15% pay cuts, while judges complain about the closure of the courtrooms one day a week. In California, the more you make in the public sector, the more immune you are from participating in the sacrifice being imposed by the Governor and the Legislature.

Now, the students are back… having performed significant outreach into the community, especially in the East Bay. Not surprisingly, the faculty at UC Berkeley, as it was during the occupation of Wheeler Hall, is scared the protesters will take control of the movement away from enlightened minds like them.

(American Leftist: Fear of an Anarchist Planet)

Posted by Jason Louv
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03.03.2010
09:26 pm
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Of Gordon Brown’s temper and a ‘citric idiot’: Robert Popper’s crank call punks British media
03.02.2010
06:05 pm
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A prank phone call made by British author and comedian Robert Popper apparently fooled a few of the British dailies, including The Telegraph, The Sun and (sort of) The Financial Times. Popper, who makes crank calls and puts them on his website, called talk radio station LBC and pretended to be a woman who had seen Gordon Brown throw a tangerine into a laminating machine during a temper tantrum. The hoax was reported as true in The Telegraph and The Sun. The Financial Times also published a blog post on their website, stating that the call was probably a hoax and have since issued a follow-up confirming this.

Here’s an abridged version of what happened, written by Popper himself on the BBC Comedy blog:

Last Monday I decided to do one of my silly and—admittedly—childish phone calls under the guise of my Timewaster Letters character, Robin Cooper.

So I switched on LBC (a London talk radio station) where the topic was Gordon Brown’s alleged bad temper. I called up and got through almost instantly. “What do you want to talk about?” asked the LBC operator. Without time to think I replied, “Gordon Brown visited my place of work and lost his temper right in front of me.” Very soon I was on air, explaining how Gordon Brown had toured my workshop - a “lamination factory”—and thrown a tangerine into one of the machines, breaking it, before calling a member of staff a “citric idiot.”  It was all I could think of at the time. A load of nonsense. But I was quite proud of the phrase, “citric idiot.”

Anyway, skip forward to Friday night. It’s midnight. I’m lying in bed when I get a message on twitter that the tangerine story had been mentioned on BBC Two’s The Bubble. I clicked on iPlayer and fourteen minutes in, I see the brilliant David Mitchell telling his guests that Gordon Brown had allegedly thrown a tangerine into a lamination machine. 

What?! I immediately stuck my phone call up on my site (I’d animated it with my crap drawings), mentioning how it had been picked up on The Bubble. Very soon someone tweeted saying that they’d read about the tangerine incident in the Financial Times. And there was a link! Within seconds, someone else added that it had been in The Telegraph, with the headline: “Gordon Brown accused of throwing a tangerine.” The article went on to say, “One of the factory workers told The Sun Mr. Brown became angry and threw a tangerine he was holding into a laminating machine.”

But my favorite part was when a Hong Kong news agency, which had previously, and bizarrely, animated various incidents of the Brown bullying story, animated my story as well. There it was in black and orange: a sort of man throwing a tangerine into a machine. I laughed so hard, I almost puked my lungs onto my legs. To think that 6000 miles away, a news director in a Hong Kong office had actually instructed one of his animators to show the British Prime Minister throwing a tangerine into a lamination machine. Did the animator have to google ‘lamination machines’ for reference? Actually, the tangerine and the machine looked pretty good, but the factory resembled a sort of over-sized torture chamber.

Popper goes on to write that only the Financial Times was suspicious of the prank, but added “[...] to The Sun and The Telegraph, I just want to let you know that I have another amazing story of the time David Cameron visited the very same factory, and threw a carton of milk into the very same machine, before calling the very same factory worker a “lactic imbecile.”
 

 
Via Xeni Jardin/Boing Boing; cross posting this from Brand X

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.02.2010
06:05 pm
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Dick Cheney: Dancer at the End of Time
02.22.2010
03:47 pm
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I’m not sure I can properly parse this bit of news from Arthur.

Apparently Dick Cheney took the stage at CPAC to the tune of Howlin’ Rain’s song “Dancers at the End of Time,” a tribute, of course, to the Michael Moorcock book of the same name.

What in the… well, I suppose he’s laughing at all of us, isn’t he? SOMEBODY is. SOMEWHERE.



(Arthur: Dick Cheney, Dancer at the End of Time)

(The Dancers at the End of Time (S.F.Masterworks))

Posted by Jason Louv
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02.22.2010
03:47 pm
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Poll: Majority of Minnesotans ‘embarrassed’ by Bachmann
02.19.2010
12:07 am
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Imagine how hard it would be to get out of bed in the morning if you knew that over half of the people who knew you thought you were an embarrassment? Imagine now that you are a politician with that kind of affection out there for you. Would you bury your head in shame like a normal person? If you’re Rep. Michelle Bachmann, probably the stupidest person to currently hold elected office in America today—and that’s really saying something—you double down!

A new survey of Minnesotans shows that a majority of residents — 56 percent — are embarrassed by Rep. Michele Bachmann. The release of the survey, commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and Credo Action, follows recent high-profile statements by Bachmann that she believes President Barack Obama wants to “annihilate” conservatives, that the U.S. faces a “curse” – and extinction — if it fails to support Israel, and that government must “wean” Americans off of social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.

The Bachmann survey results, released exclusively to the Minnesota Independent, measure responses to the question, “Do you think Congresswoman Michele Bachmann does Minnesota proud in Congress or embarrasses Minnesota?” While 56 percent of respondents statewide said they were embarrassed by Bachmann, 29 percent answered that they were “proud” of the Sixth Congressional District Republican, and 15 percent were “not sure.”

Predictably, 87 percent of Democrats polled said they were embarrassed, while only 12 percent of Republicans agreed (58 pecent of Republican respondents said they were proud of Bachmann).

Poll: Majority of Minnesotans ‘embarrassed’ by Bachmann (The Minnesota Independent)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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02.19.2010
12:07 am
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Obama’s Awkward Call to the Astronauts
02.18.2010
04:57 pm
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“Hey guys, what’s happening? No more manned space fights. Hope you’re cool with that. K thx bye.”

Astronauts flying in space are used to VIP phone calls that don’t always go as scripted, but Wednesday’s conversation was probably one of the most awkward.

President Barack Obama used his chat with the crews of the space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station to declare that he sees space exploration as “so important.”

“My commitment to NASA is unwavering,” Obama said. He emphasized “how proud we are of you ... and how committed we are to continuing human space exploration in the future.”

A few weeks ago, the White House unveiled a plan to cancel NASA’s new spaceship, its two new rockets and the NASA program, now five years in the making, to return astronauts to the moon. Though Obama also wants to add an extra $6 billion to NASA’s budget over the next five years, his proposal has thrown much of the space agency into turmoil.

None of the 11 astronauts was rash enough to bring up the outrage felt by many of their colleagues, but they were more candid during media interviews they gave earlier in their mission.

(NYT: Obama’s Awkward Call)

Posted by Jason Louv
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02.18.2010
04:57 pm
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The (Nothing Personal) Impeach Obama Billboard
02.16.2010
04:43 pm
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“Impeach Obama: America’s Small Businesses Are Failing; Help Us Spread The Message.”  And the billboard shenanigans continue.  The above Wisconsin road sign will stay there for 6 months at the cost of $1,000 per month, and was paid for by a “company supported by number of area businessmen concerned about tax and spend politics.”  Tom Wroblewski, a lawyer for the company (whose identity he naturally wishes to protect), is quick to point out that, “the billboard is not meant to allege any impeachable offense has been committed, it’s nothing personal.”

Bonus recipe for despair: read sign, contemplate this, repeat. 

(via Alternet)

 

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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02.16.2010
04:43 pm
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