Bughouse Square

Links and commentary -- Thrilling!

 

Conformity, Authority and Cults

How to Start Your Own Cult

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Milgram Experiment

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 04/13/07 06:32 | link | comments |

Talking Points and Spin

Here I'm attempting to gather several clips illustrative of the principles of 'Talking Points' and 'Spin.'

The Daily Show on The Surge

The Fair Weather Invocation of WWII

The Value of Life -- Stem Cells vs. Iraq

Rockey -- the GOP post-Katrina Shill

Rhetorical Question Marks

Curiously Similar Speeches for Two Different Nominees

Co-ordinated Rhetoric on the Foley Scandal

Newsweek's Domestic Edition

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 04/11/07 05:40 | link | comments |

McCain in Never Neverland

John Stewart sums up John McCain's new image problem.  Once credibly seen as a 'maverick,' McCain has been caught prevaricating too many times since the 2000 primaries in which he dubbed his campaign bus the Straight Talk Express:

The Curved Weiner Mobile

One netizen has compiled a video of McCain flip-flops, the most damning of which is his having characterized the Iraq War as easy and later denounces the fact that Americans were misled into believing it would be easy without owning up to his own complicity:

Double Talk Express

Proably the turn-around on McCain's reputation came when he began cozying up to the president whose primary campaign viciously smeared McCain, a war veteran who spent several years in a Vietnamese prison camp.  Recently, McCain supported Bush's troop surge, claiming that in some places, the streets were safe enough for an American to travel without protection.  He's still feeling the fallout from this.

Michael Ware Lets Loose

Questioned about this, McCain's spin amounts to claiming to have said something other than what was just quoted to him:

Hear-Say

The Colbert Report addressed the controversy:

Clap Your Hands and Believe

Sure, that was funny.  But real life outdid Colbert once again.  McCain went out to Baghdad in person to prove his point, only he went with, get this, over a hundred soldiers, wearing a bullet-proof vest, and escorted by Black Hawk helecopters and Apache gunships.  The Daily Show and the Colbert Report are off this week, but I'm anxious to see how they could possibly make this any funnier.

McCain's Neverland Ride

CNN's Cafferty gives the grumpy old man treatment on the exact same subject, but still it's pretty funny. 

Cafferty Unchained

Meanwhile, Back in the States

Newt Gingrich is rumored to be making an unannounced run for his party's nomination.  Unfortunately, he seems determined to lose the minority vote that the Republicans so carefully cultivated by appealing to religion in recent elections (more through religion's antipathy toward gays than to its concern for the poor).  First, he accuses Katrina victims of being stupid:

Gingrich: The Anti-Stupid

I believe it was Bill Maher who quipped, in response to a similar statement by a rich, white politician, "I don't understand why they couldn't just get in their Range Rovers and move to their summer homes."

Recently, Gingrich denounced bilingual education, characterizing non-English as the "language of living in the Ghetto."

In El Bario

Here's the punchline:  later, he told Hannity and Colmes he was not referring to Spanish.  So, he believes that the tiny portion of bilingual programs that are not Spanish are swelling the ghettos?  He then went into a non-sequitur about the origins of the term ghetto in jewish segretation, which doesn't explain or qualify his earlier statements (he surely doesn't mean that Hebrew or Yiddish are the languages of living in the ghetto), but merely changes the subject.

Oy Vey!

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 04/04/07 06:48 | link | comments |