News Roundup for 4/22/09

John McCain, being forced by the media to act like a jackass

-Headline of the day-
"Former online campaign chief says media 'screwed' McCain."

Remember Michael Palmer? Yeah, neither did I. Turns out he was John McCain's "eCampaign" chief -- which means he was probably the marketing genius behind McCain's blog and a campaign of rewarding Republican diehards for spamming the comment threads on lefty blogs. In other words, he wasn't awfully good at his job.

Anyway, despite the above bad ideas and the choice of the extremely unpopular Sarah Palin as his running mate, it was the media that killed McCain. I guess by running 14 hours of Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright every day.

At a conference held by the George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, Palmer debated Joe Rospars, Obama's "New Media" director. I guess he'd be the guy behind Obama's interactive website and email list building. You know, the good ideas on how to use the interwebs -- the ones that actually worked.

"John McCain had a very healthy and respectful relationship with the press and then they screwed him," said Palmer. Like the time the media made him make a completely horrendous campaign speech, in front of a weird green backdrop, in New Orleans. Or the time the media forced him to show a photo of Walter Reed middle school when he was discussing Walter Reed Army Medical Center at the Republican National Convention. Or the time the media made him spend insane amounts of money on Sarah Palin's wardrobe and make up. Or the time the media twisted his arm and made him offer his wife up for an amateur stripper contest.

Damned media... (Agence France-Presse)


-Your obligatory Earth Day news-
Whoo-hoo! It's Earth Day! And CNN has some handy tips on how to save the whole damned big planet and save money. Oh boy!

Among the items is Good riddance to bad rubbish. "Go paperless. Read your favorite newspapers and magazines online. Publications are increasingly relying on advertising instead of subscriptions for revenue, meaning you can discover the latest buzz and even save some money."

Yay! Except, newspapers are going under because no one's buying them anymore and not buying newspapers would just be making a bad situation worse. Besides, newspapers are about 99.99% recycled paper products, so the greenness of this move is a little questionable.

And, if all the newspapers go belly up, where would we get all of our news?

Oh, that's right. CNN. Now there's a coincidence, huh? (CNN)


-Bonus HotD-
"Scientists 'disappointed, upset,' and 'consternated' that Bush officials misused their work to justify torture."

And who can blame them? Still, I didn't know that "consternated" was a word. But it turns out that three researchers aren't happy to find out that their studies on sleep deprivation were used as a guideline by CIA torturers. You think sleep deprivation isn't torture? Well, you're not alone. Neither did the Bush administration. In fact, they wanted to make sure that being an exhausted wreck didn't interfere with all the torture.

According to the report, the CIA used the research because it showed that missing sleep causes "at most only relatively moderate decreases in pain tolerance." So you can torture someone who's been kept awake for days and not have any of all that pain be lost on them.

Isn't that just freakin' awesome? The CIA needed a scientific study to tell them that people aren't likely to sleep through torture. What a breakthrough...

Further, the study was conducted on volunteers who were never deprived of sleep "for more than one day without allowing them to recover." The CIA set their limit at "180 hours, or seven and a half days."

Just make you proud to be from the same species as these guys, doesn't it? (Think Progress)