HERE

rubenfeld:

Local TV News is a fraud, according to a study of 11,000 TV stories in LA.

h/t @jayrosen_nyu

This is fantastic, a must-watch. Concluding quote:

“The other day the head of a station group told the FCC that there’s no such thing as the public interest. ‘There’s your public interest, my public interest.’ And he said, ‘We broadcasters, as content creators, monitor what the public wants on a daily basis.’ What the public wants? Well, I want ice cream. I need a well balanced meal. Apparently, the people of Los Angeles want 22 seconds about their local government. Maybe if they got more of that, they’d want more of that.”

inky: The Mouth Licking What You’ve Bled, by Meshuggah (from the new DVD Alive).

A kangaroo, “Killer Willard,” beats the crap out of his “handlers,” seemingly because he is annoyed with them for tugging on the rope around his neck.

But it’s okay, they “know Willard was just acting instinctively.”

papayaaaa: Cats massaging cats

As always, the lesson I take from this kind of thing is that other animals feel pleasure and pain that is very similar to ours. It is not enough to recognize this and go back to business as usual, where other sensitive animals are tortured and killed for profit — 50 billion of them annually, in fact.

Of course, it’s pretty darn obvious anyway that other animals’ pleasure/pain sensations are very real and intense, just from interacting with them. But here’s one for all the pseudo-intellectuals and “reality-based” thinkers who yet find a way to rationalize their chauvinism when it comes to assessing the interests and lives of non-human creatures: the single binding theory of all modern biology, evolution, entails that (a) we are very similar to non-human animals, and (b) other animals must have extremely sophisticated sensory systems to survive in nature. Meanwhile, targeted biological study confirms what should be obvious: other animals have neural systems that are more than sophisticated enough to process deep sensations and emotions, and hey, they just so happen to approximate the human pleasure/pain/emotional (fear, delight, anxiety) apparatus.

Humans have a little thing called the pre-frontal cortex which, as far as I can tell, most consequentially allows us to hold all sorts of false and vile beliefs. Newsflash: that doesn’t make us better than other animals.

deepwithfuture: rats “laugh” when tickled. thanks alphabetasoup!

It’s like a train wreck — horrifying, yet you can’t look away.

Caution: This video sports pre-pubescent background dancers trying to look post-pubescent.

bradicalmang:

U.S. Soldier admits he and others gang raped and sexually sold a 15 year old Iraqi civilian (female). Then laughs about her later hanging herself in abu ghraib.

This guard also admits to the routine suffocation, electrocution, and rape of Abu Ghraib prisoners. He admits that the CIA trained them in torture methods. He admits that many Abu Ghraib prisoners were detained without cause. He admits that all of this was done with the knowledge and consent of his CO (commanding officer). And he laughs about it all with his fellow hick buddies.

TRANSCRIPT

Interviewer: What was goin’ on, what was it like being a guard there?

Ex-Abu Ghraib Guard: A guard at Abu Ghraib…

Interviewer: Yeah man, that place, it’s fuckin’ world famous now!

Ex-Guard: I don’t know what to say. Nothing special. It’s better than being a bullet sponge.

Hick #3: Know any of those guys that got busted, for torturing those inmates?

Ex-Guard: They got fucked man. Just ‘cause someone let the pictures get out.

Interviewer: Yeah. Why’d they let the…

Ex-Guard: No one expected, I mean — compared to what we were doing every day — teasing a couple hajjis? Give me a fuckin’ break. Ya know? What’s the big deal about making a hajji walk around like a dog and bark? [laughter] Why did anyone get all upset?

Interviewer: But that’s what you guys do.

Ex-Guard: What wouldn’t we do? [laughter] We would take plastic and wrap it around their heads until they started choking. [laughter] And the CIA showed us a lot of shit, man. Take a generator and hook it up to their nipples or their nuts… shock the shit out of ‘em.

Interviewer: What was the most fun thing?

Ex-Guard: The most fun thing… Definitely the women.

Interviewer: Yeah… They had chick insurgents, man?

Ex-Guard: No, no they don’t have chick insurgents. Something goes down, we just grab everyone around, ya know? Fuck ‘em. Ya know, I mean, you’re gonna have 35 trials? No, ya know? People are like, “Oh they’re innocent!” Ya know what? I don’t give a fuck. As far as I’m concerned they’re all guilty. You know what, they should’ve kicked Saddam out themselves. Instead, we’re there doing the fucking job. We’re losing guys. Were the people in the World Trade Center guilty? No. Fuck them, they fucked us, now we’re fucking them. Fuck them dude. Anyone with a fucking rag on their head is fair game. …

…a girl, she was probably like 15 years old. She was hot, dude. Body on that girl, really tight.

Interviewer: They always wear it like you can’t see ‘em, right?

Ex-Guard: Hadn’t been touched yet, she was fuckin’ prime. One of the guys, he started pimpin’ her out for fifty bucks a shot. I think at the end of the day he made like five hundred bucks before she hung herself.

Interviewer: She hung herself? How come she hung herself?

Ex-Guard: I don’t know, she wasn’t happy? [laughter] In her culture, it’s really shunned upon if you get raped. I guess she would’ve been stoned to death anyways by her people.

Interviewer: Well she was fucked anyway I guess. In more ways than one. [laughter] You didn’t get shit from the CO did you?

Ex-Guard: No, not until those pictures came out. Then the biggest rule was: No fuckin’ cameras. [laughter]

Harold Ford is considering running a Democratic primary against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (Sane-NY). Now that he is preparing to run for office in New York rather than his native Tennessee, his stated policy prefs have done a complete 180. Produced by Glenn Greenwald’s Brave New Films, the above compilation shows exactly why New Yorkers should send him packing.

Warpaint, “Elephants”

Great song, great video. I love how everything appears to be moving in both real time and slow-mo. Kinda curious as to how they did it.

Rudy Giuliani has now claimed on Good Morning America (yay for YouTube): “We had no domestic [‘terror’] attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama [re: failed underwear bomber].”

Not only was Giuliani the mayor of NYC during the Bush Administration at the time of the 9/11 attacks, he also shamelessly capitalized on the attacks to raise his national profile. He eventually ran for president in 2008, a campaign during which he earned the nickname Mr. Noun-Verb-9/11. (That’s all he talked about.)

Moreover, there were four attacks on 9/11 alone: American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 93 and 175. Moreover, there were mailed anthrax attacks that same month. Moreover, there was the infamous failed shoe bombing attack that took place in American airspace on a flight to Miami in December 2001.

As for Giuliani’s personal “national security” credibility, NYC’s multi-million dollar command center was destroyed on 9/11 because he personally made the decision, against expert recommendation, to build it in the World Trade Center — even though it was widely understood to be the likeliest target in the event of an attack. Why? So he and his mistress would have a convenient rendezvous point near Giuliani’s office in City Hall. In any case, Giuliani didn’t do much commanding that day.

Back to Bush, that’s 6 domestic attacks that we know about within the first year of Bush’s administration, which then exploited those events to usurp hundreds of billions in public money to wage two failed wars (the larger one being blatantly unjustified, inflammatory, and illegal). Giuliani was right there with them, the consummate cheerleader.

Giuliani’s statement can only be rationally viewed as one element of a concerted right-wing effort to revise history in their favor. As poor as establishment liberals may be at taking advantage of their power, we would be absolute fools to put the foxes back in the henhouse.

We got that B-roll! Enjoy.

SMACK! That’s the sound of Joe Lieberman getting slapped for ignoring the will of his constituents by opposing a public health insurance option. What a great ad.