Bayer-ly logical

At least, you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.  One excellent way is to repeat something so often that it becomes impressed in many easily-impressible minds.  This is how they sell Bayer aspirin, with that notion that "all aspirin are not alike."  No matter how much they tell you that, any aspirin that you can buy, be it the bottle of 10,000 pills for a buck at the Dollar Tree, or the wee bottle of 24 of the Bayer brand for $3.69 at Drugs "4" U, is all the same.  325 mg of acetylsalicylic acid is 325 mg of acetylsalicylic acid, no matter how you dress it up.

Rupert Griffin

Mr Rupert Murdoch, until recently best known for having Stewie Griffin's teddy bear named after him,  is also a "media mogul" whose minions in England have apparently committed such unspeakable acts as hacking the cell phone of a teenaged kidnapping victim, thus denying her family and the police access to certain information while the girl was missing.  The American FBI is said to be looking into reports that the same thing was done to 9/11 victims on these shores.  So his FOX News people have on a guest who points out that other huge entities have been hacked, so what's all the fuss here?

Subtle point.  It's like saying, if you get caught hitting other people over the head with a 2 x 4, "Well, other people have been hit over the head with 2 x 4s before!"  Here is the video to that interview, showing how FOX can take most any story and shuffle the words around, like riverboat card sharks, fooling those who so dearly cling to a notion of a nation where, as Jonathan Kay wrote in Salon the other day of the rabid addicts of Sarah-tonin:

Palin partisans focus on her constructed identity: a patriotic, God-fearing small-town girl who grew up in a Norman Rockwell Ameritopia of state fairs, basketball tournaments, beauty pageants and wooden churches. To announce one’s support for Palin is to declare one’s belief that this vision of America somehow can be recaptured, that the country’s social contract can magically be turned back to the era of sock hops and drive-in restaurants, if only Americans elect the right people. To put down Palin, on the other hand, means that you hate America.

 I don't happen to hate America.  I love America, but I see an increasing problem with misinformation being gobbled up so readily by people who can see Palin's daughter as the poster child for teenage chastity.

And the other day I was stunned to see Michelle Bachmann say these words:

“Let me be abundantly clear — my ability to function effectively has never been impeded by migraines and will not affect my ability to serve as commander in chief.” 

I pointed out that what she was saying, in her convoluted manner, was that her ability to function will not affect her ability to serve.  Exactly what does that mean?  

The square root of sweet doodly-squat, is what that means. 

But after I posted that statement, I was taken to task as representing "yellow journalism 101."  And still I wonder, how is it yellow journalism to publish someone's words verbatim?  It's as bad as Charles Barkley claiming to have been misquoted in his autobiography.  People in the public eye have to measure their words, or should.  When they are quoted, it's just a quote, not an interpretation.

Ever since last fall's elections, when the R party took over leadership in the house, I have waited patiently for them to cure everything that ails us, as they promised to do during the campaign.  The presidential campaign next year ought to be a doozy, with people like Michelle in the mix.  But don't worry.  My ability to vote will not affect my ability to vote.