Abram Sauer Online

It seems the media gave up on the Haiti story with even greater swiftness than anticipated.

Plus, the troops are already pulling the fuck out of there! Shock and Awe! SHOCK! AND! AWE!

Over at Say Anything Blog “North Dakota’s Most Popular Political Blog™” it appears they’re featuring content from past years. Like this 1991 debate about gays, AIDS and blood donation.

Oh wait, what’s that? This is a debate from two days ago? Oh my. Good to see rationality and factual information have finally started making it to North Dakota.

I have simply no idea why so much of the nation thinks about the wonderful Peace Garden State as an intellectual backwater full of hypocrisy about free living and individual rights.

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Yes, the post office.. the employer of Mr. McFeely and my grandma (no joke).. is now an evil socialist entity that is to be here on out referred to in right-wing blog headlines as a “monopoly.” You know, like the socialist monopoly held by the police force.

The remake of Karate Kid is also titled Karate Kid. But in China, where the film takes place, kung fu is practiced, not karate. In the trailer Jackie Chan even says “king fu.” Karate is Japanese.

But hey, Japanese… Chinese… they look the same and probably share a lot of cultural identity and stuff and get along great, right. They’re not going to mind being confused, right. RIGHT?!

Related: The Manchurian Candidate remake.

They brought this wonderfully atrocious thing back.

“Fire and wind come from the sky, from the gods of the sky. But William Smith is your father, Smith and he lives in the earth. Once, giants lived in the Earth, Conan. And in the darkness of chaos, they fooled Smith, and they took from him one true role. Smith was angered. And the Earth shook. Fire and wind struck down these giants, and they threw their bodies into the waters, but in their rage, the gods forgot self-respect and left it on the spreadsheet. We who found it are just men. Not gods. Not giants. Just men. The secret of a good remake has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan. You must learn its discipline. For no one - no one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts, not Lionsgate.”

Hopefully he dies right away. I also now better understand how the original bagged James Earl Jones.

Cinemablend has the German trailer for Showgirls 2: The Return. If you consider the quality of the original, the sequel is like some kind of Charlie Kaufman meta-thing.

The trailer alone makes me want to punch something twee in the face.

It’s like Ben Stiller’s character in this is just the older dickface Ben Stiller character from Reality Bites.

Here is a post on “North Dakota’s Most Popular Political Blog” Say Anything which underscores just how polarized and paralyzing the online political discourse is. The post is by Rob Port, who during a recent trip to DC, pretended to be an investigative reporter.

During a tour of the White House, Port spied copies of several books he deemed “socialist,” including The Populist Revolt. The subsequent post? “Photo Evidence: Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books In The White House Library.” The post was picked up by First Things’ very popular Gateway Pundit blog, which wrote, “Figures. Michelle Obama Stocked White House Library with Books on Socialism.”

Of course, The Washington Post’s Short Stack pointed out that the books were put there by the Kennedys and that they’ve been in the library through every administration since (yes, Reagan’s too). Port put a small update in the piece itself but chose not to update the headline. The Gateway Pundit posting remains with no update.

Port rules by fiat and very clearly styles himself after Hannity or Limbaugh, though he shrewdly makes a point to disagree with them from time to time as an “independent.” He’s low-rent and local but fat with charisma and wit. Twenty years ago guys like Port made very good livings selling pieces of shit used cars to suckers. Then came the AM talk radio revolution and the Internet.

Does Port even care that his post was a lie? No. The goal of online partisan outrage factories like Say Anything is to find content, any content, to fire the machine. If that information turns out to be untrue, who cares. Post first, update (or not) later. A truth that makes right-wing accusations of inaccurate mainstream media reporting hypocritical and sad. And it makes my personal dealings with Port, including his decision not to speak with me due to concerns of my interview being all about “gothca’ journalism,” ironic and pathetic.

Think Progress’ Matt Yglesias looked at the story and came away with this conclusion: “Rob from the Say Anything blog is an idiot.”

Weather or not Port truly buys what he sells is unclear, but unlikely. Because the other focus of blogs such as Say Anything is to make a name for the owner regardless of collateral damage. Indeed, when The Post asked Port about his mistake, he said, “… I guess it is what it is.”

“On a pride-themed float called ‘Experiment of His Own Power,’ Obama is compared to ‘The Proud One’ of Dante’s Inferno, posing with his Nobel Peace Prize medal, next to several other representations of him—along with Oscar and Heisman Trophy awards, he appears as a five-star general, president of General Motors, and as the ‘healthcare-expert’ Surgeon General—all engulfed by the flames of hell.”

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