Megyn Kelly, Phil Bronstein, Jared Loughner Is "Political"

I had to stop and read San Francisco Chronicle Editor At Large Phil Bronstein's column on how he says Fox News Megyn Kelly "dismembered" Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. I came away rather disappointed with his take, but entertained nonetheless. So, since Phil has referred to me as an "insurgent" in the Old Media World, a tag I love, it's time to strap on my helmet and have at it yet again.

First, let's get some things really straight here.

Megyn Kelly represents the ultra conservative Fox News. That means Republican. So here, into that Fox News den comes the Democratic Sheriff Dupnik. Anyone would expect Kelly, who's carrying Fox News boss' Roger Ailes' water, to try and attack Dupnik for telling it like it was: the hard rhetoric from the far right in Tucson - where Dupnik works and the shooting happened so he should know - did create a climate that triggered Jared Loughner's violent actions.

As I say here:



Second, Jared Loughner has all the marks of an anti-government type like Joe Stack. Remember him? I guess memories are short. Stack was the Austin, Texas man who crashed his plane into the IRS Building, and left behind hand-written trail of crazy thoughts against the government.  Big goverment. While Jared doesn't have that "smoking gun" document around (so far as we know), there is a growing picture of the politics of the man, as listed by Wikipedia:

Loughner was a believer of numerous conspiracy theories, and espoused views such as that the United States Government was responsible for the September 11 attacks, a New World Order would bring about a one world currency, there would be a 2012 apocalypse, NASA had faked spaceflights, and the government was using mind control to brainwash people by controlling grammar. He was a member of the online conspiracy theory message board Above Top Secret, though members of the site did not respond warmly to his posts.[15][16][17] Reports appearing after the shooting noted similarities between the statements made by Loughner, concerning grammar and mind control, and the views of conspiracy theorist David Wynn Miller.[18] Miller himself stated “I expect he’s been on my website... He’s just repeating things I’ve had up on my site the past 11 years.”[19][20]

Now that's a picture of Jared Loughner as essentially a libertarian. Add to that the overall climate of a Tucson, Arizona that has a healthy number of conservatives and anti-government types issuing all sorts of protests specifically against Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and then the fact that Loughner was mentally-ill and you have the perfect brew for the trajedy that ocurred.

All of this has to do with politics. Sorry Phil Bronstein, but if the job of a reporter is to question assumptions, the job of the blogger is to question the reporter's approach. That's what I'm doing.

Why take up the matter of defending Fox News at this time? Why not piece together the information we have and fill in the blanks where necessary with some syllogistic reasoning?

Everyone knows that young voters in the West have been more likely to register as independent because they're new to the political process, so Fox News parroting the idea that Loughner's really independent as if to say he's apolitical, is so silly it's unbelievable.

But here we are.

With Phil defending Fox News.

Or is it really Phil taking up for the hot, smart, leggy blonde TV anchor in Megyn Kelly? Easy it is to be blinded by a curvy body, even if she's the darling of conservative bloggers.

 I'll give Phil a half-pass, but that's it.

Jared Loughner was the extreme product of a Tucson society mostly against President Obama Health Care Initiative, yet stuck with a Democratic fighter for it in Gabrielle Giffords. His mental illness took him to a place we only talked about, with all of the nastiness coming out of the Health Care town hall meetings, but never thought we'd actually see.

Until last Saturday.

The Green Hornet's Director Michel Gondry To Helm Jimmy Kimmel Live

The Green Hornet's Director Michel Gondry has been tapped to helm a special episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday, January 13th at 12:05 AM ET / PT on ABC Television.

Gondry, who's film The Green Hornet comes out Friday and I'm really excited to see, won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, which is also directed, in 2005.

Gondry's also one of a few music video directors to make the transition to feature film work.

Gondry joins Quentin Tarantino and J.J. Abrams as part of a select group of directors who have taken the guest-directorial position at Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Kimmel will have Somewhere star Elle Fanning as his guest and to talk about that film which also opens this Friday. Fanning will be joined by a musical performance by The Damned Things to spice up this special episode.

Westboro Baptist Church: Plans to Picket Funerals of Arizona Shooting Victims

The Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket the funerals of the victims of the Arizona shooting that occurred recently.  The shooting ended the lives of 6 people and put Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords in the hospital.  It occurred at a meet and greet set up by the Congresswoman.

The Westboro Baptist Church has become infamous for their practice of picketing funerals to spread their messages of hate.  The "Church" plans to picket the funerals of all the victims of the Arizona shooting and wants to raise money to help the shooter, Jared Lee Laughner, get off the hook for murdering 6 people and shooting 18.  

A group called Angel Wings plans on showing up on the day of the funeral to block the Westboro Baptist Church's messages of hate with 8x10 foot angel wings that will be worn by some of it's members.  The police are expected to be at the funerals to make sure that no violence occurs.

John Bobst aka The Force of Nature

Check out my blog at www.theforceofnature.net

Jared Loughner and Arizona Shootings All About Sarah Palin and Politics

This is a rejoinder to those who say the Arizona Shootings have nothing to do with politics. Totally wrong. Jared Lounghner, the 22-year old who shot 14 and killed six people is said to be against Government intrusion into our lives.

Well, doesn't that make him a libertarian? He's against "Big Government," and shot a U.S. Congresswoman, and yet the media is saying this has nothing to do with politics, and conservatives like Sarah Palin had no impact on him.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of in my life.

We have to return to sanity in America.  We've become unhinged.

Double Dose of Focker

While waiting in the theater for Little Fockers to begin it was basically assumed that the movie would end up being not very funny or impressive. This movie was the third in the series: Meet The Parents (2000) followed by Meet the Fockers (2004).

Six years after the the last movie this movie includes the children of Greg and Pam Focker: twins Sam and Henry are about to turn five and have a big birthday party.

Roz Focker now has a sex tv talk show, Bernie Focker is in Spain learning to flamenco and the Byrnes are dealing with "Dr. Bob" no longer being a part of the family. Jack Byrnes has a heart attack and tells Greg that he will need to be the "Godfocker" if anything happens to Jack.

Greg is working as a nurse and is offered by Andi Garcia (bubbly Jessica Alba) to be the spokesperson for a male enhancement pill that is safe for patients with heart conditions.

Not very impressed with Alba's performance, she is usually an amazing actress: but this role she was so flighty and it seemed like too much of an act, unreal. She was not very convincing as she used "dope" terminology and acted "hip."

There are really interesting scenes with Owen Wilson's character Kevin, including him getting Pam tattooed on his back.

There's a lot of dramatic irony and a lot of outrageous moments. This movie should be a four out of five, because it was quite hilarious at some points and kept entertained, but Alba's performance was not her best.

Academy MTV-U Oscars Correspondent Contest Has 10 Semifinalists

The popular contest sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and MTV-U heats up as 10 semifinalists have been named, and you can vote on the best ones at http://oscars.mtvU.com. 

Here they are:

Hofstra University, Long Island, NY – Luz Pena (anchor) and Philip Robibero (videographer)
Madonna University, Livonia, MI – Idamarie Tedesco (anchor) and Walid Jaward (videographer)
Madonna University – Sara Simnitch (anchor) and Adam Woloszyk (videographer)
New Mexico State University – Brandi Parrell (anchor) and Angela Hardenburg (videographer)
New York University – Nataliz Jimenez (anchor) and Carla Bernal (videographer)
University of Georgia, Athens – Blake Mitchell (anchor) and David Torcivia (videographer)
University of Miami, Florida – Scotty Braun (anchor) and Alexandra Cotoulas (videographer)
University of Missouri, Columbia – Alex Holley (anchor) and Ryan Brown (videographer)
University of Missouri, Columbia – Erica Coghill (anchor) and John Regan (videographer)
University of Southern California, Los Angeles – Sarah Erickson (anchor) and Joel Kutz (videographer)

According to The Academy:

On February 2, the three teams with the most online votes, and as agreed upon by the Academy and mtvU, will advance to the final round of the competition. Fans can continue to cast their votes for their favorite team from February 7 to February 18, as they compete for the grand prize. All three teams will be flown to Los Angeles to cover Academy Awards pre-events, including the Animated Feature Symposium, Foreign Language Film Award media op, the Makeup Artist and Hairstylist Symposium and the Governors Ball preview.


The grand prize-winning team will be revealed on Saturday, February 26, at an Academy press conference. The anchor and videographer will be awarded a spot on the red carpet for the 83rd Academy Awards arrivals, as well as credentials for access to backstage press rooms. The winning team's coverage will be aired on MTV News and mtvU, while the two finalist teams will receive bleacher seats along the red carpet and admission to an Oscar viewing party.


The ten semifinalist teams were selected by the Academy and mtvU from videos submitted for the competition. The judging criteria included originality, creativity and how compelling the video was overall. The competition was open to college students who work in teams of two – one anchor and one videographer – and also reside in the United States.


For a complete list of rules and regulations for the Oscar Correspondent Contest, visit http://oscars.mtvu.com.

The Oscars will be held Sunday, February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center and televised live on the ABC Television Network.

Arizona Shooting Causes Increase In Glock Gun Purchases In Arizona

In yet another sign of how sick our society has become, sales of the Glock gun used by Jared Loughner in gunning down 14 people, including U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killing six people, including US District Judge John Roll, have increased.

You got that right. Increased in Arizona. Maybe you don't want to go to Arizona.

According to Bloomberg, Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix has doubled their sales after the shooting, which happened on Saturday. One-day sales of handguns jumped 60 percent in Arizona on January 10th.

Just what the hell is going on down there in Arizona? How about outlawing Glocks and other semi-automatic guns! You don't need one, anyway.

Oakland News: Southy New Restaurant, Arizona Shooting, Oakland Raiders

This edition of Oakland News has a lot of information for you.

First, if you've ever eaten at the North Oakland restaurant called Wood Tavern at 6317 College Avenue (with the best half-chicken in Oakland, if not the SF Bay Area), then you'll be able to picture it's new spring-off called "Southy."

Why that name? Because it's going to be right next door and south of The Wood Tavern. Set to open in about 10 days, Southy's going to cater to a younger crowd. There's going to be a sliding door to deliver take out orders, to which I suggest offering sliders to go with that slider!

Also, on the Oakland / College Avenue restaurant gossip beat, if you're wondering how some eateries are doing, I understand that one of them, once a large, popular place this blogger visited regularly, eventually fell off and started "floating" its liquor accounts.

Let's say you own a restaurant in Oakland. As I understand it, if you purchase beer, you have 30 days to pay the beer vendor for the volume you bought. That means you can make the money to pay the person. If you don't pay within 30 days you lose the account. What this one establishment - since closed, then split into two, and now is being remodeled - did was float liquor account after liquor account, allowing each one for beer to expire, then setting up new ones with other distributors. Eventually, it caught up to them.

Are there any restaurants taking up that practice now? My source says no. In fact, my source asserts that the Oakland Restaurant scene is hotter than ever, especially downtown and because of The Fox Theater.

The Fox sells out concerts, and so brings about 2,000 to 3,000 people downtown per show, many who eat before or after performances, keeping eateries like Flora across from the Fox and Luka's on Grand and Telegraph active, and creating enough of a market and word-of-mouth for other places like Lake Chalet on Lake Marritt, as well as old establishments like The Alley, which is both a bar and restaurant (great steaks).

Shifting Gears: Arizona Shooting Candlelight Vigil

The East Bay Young Democrats will hold a candlelight vigil for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the victims of the Arizona Shootings in front of Oakland City Hall, at Frank Ogawa Plaza from 5 PM to 6:30 PM on Wednesday, January 12th (that's tomorrow). The community co-sponsors listed are Cal Berkeley Democrats, Courage Campaign, CREDO Action, City of Alameda Democratic Club, East Bay Democracy For America, NWPC-AN, South County Young Democrats, and Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club.

Mayor Jean Quan Needs To Tweet More Often

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has just 1,377 followers on Twitter, and she's now over a week into the job of Mayor. One reason why she has a small following is that she doesn't sent out enough Tweets. At best it's once a day.

Mayor Quan's got to designate someone to tweet and also tweet herself. Quan has a wealth of material in Oakland's City Services and helpful numbers to call. Then there's the news from her own website. Then there' retweeting of Oakland and SF Bay Area news. Her tweet count needs to be ahead of her follower count by almost two, right now, it's about half.

She also needs to tweet when she's out visiting and helping people from time to time. Newark Mayor Cory Booker's become the Twitter master for tweeting where he's helped his residents dig out of the massive snow storms that plagued his city.

Get to tweeting, Jean!

Oakland Homicides: Six In 11 Days?

That Oakland has had six homicides in 11 days is an outrage. We need to have a zero-tolerance gun policy here and enforce it. If a person brandishes a gun for any reason other than on-property or personal self-defense, they go to jail. Period. Note, that's even before shooting the gun. We have to stop this crap.

Also, Oakland Police need to send a patrol car up Grand Avenue, then Euclid Avenue and then around Adams Point between the hours of 1 AM and 3 AM. As I was returning home in a cab from San Francisco International Airport on the Friday before New Year's Eve, I saw young near-teenaged brothers walking around at that time, some without shirts on in the cold. Just what the heck were they doing out at that time of night and in Adams Point?

The sad fact is that a number of late-night crimes around the Lake have been committed by very young boys of color, many below 21 and 18 years of age. It's a reflection of Oakland's racial economic disparities; we have to get them off the habit of roaming streets and into clubs and other activities, and get jobs for their parents.

Al Davis And The Oakland Raiders

I'd wish the Oakland Raiders would just tell Cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha they just don't have the money to pay him rather than making it look like he wasn't a top performer in 2010. One of the reasons his contract is voided is that he had fewer interceptions than in 2009. Well, how many times was he thrown to? Nnamdi Asomugha's one of the league's top corners, so some teams just aren't going to throw his way.

But let's face it: if the Raiders could afford Asomugha, they'd have kept him.

With a league high of game blackouts and a hyper-high unemployment rate damaging attendance in 2010, the Raiders just don't have the money to afford him for 2011. That's the problem.

Stay tuned.

Chevron Ecuador: NY Times Responds To Bias Claim, Says Plaintiffs Erred

Six days ago, I ran a blog post called Chevron Ecuador: NY Times Hides Bias, echoing the claims of other bloggers that the fact that the NY Times was a "friend of the court" (filing an amicus brief) supporting Crude Film Director Joe Berlinger's attempt to gain legal protection against giving up the outtakes from his movie Crude.

That movie, which purports to show that American Chevron Oil Company polluted the Ecuadorian Amazon, has hours of footage that was removed. As Law.com shown by presenting those videos, comments made by Steven Donziger in those removed clips, could have been damaging to Chevron's case - they were.

In the NY Times article this paragraph was 24 levels down:

But Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Mr. Berlinger that was signed by 13 news organizations, including The New York Times Company, said on Friday that it was “just not the law” that an investigative journalist cannot be compelled to turn over materials, confidential or otherwise.

The only point we were making is that the mention of the New York Times as a "friend" of the Crude Director should have been placed higher in the article. But John's emailed response is...

The piece is not an attack on Chevron, and describes in detail what a disaster for the plaintiffs the outtakes have been.

Schwartz also says the reason the paragraph was 24 levels down was because it was mentioned it in another NYTimes article, before and in a higher position.

Perhaps it's fair to speculate that, had the New York Times been aware of the exact contents of the outtakes, it may not have filed the amicus brief at all.

Meanwhile, the outtakes have changed the game for the plaintiffs, especially lead attorney Steve Donziger. Aside from Donziger's ideas about threatening Ecuadorian judges, the finding that he wrote a report by a supposedly neutral court-appointed expert may cause harm to his ability to practice law in the future.

What Donziger did was unethical. Period.

Stay tuned.

Verizon iPhone 4G Out Feb 10th

The long-awaited, prayed for, worried about, talked about, and dreamed about day has come. The Apple iPhone is finally off the At&T addiction! Well, no, AT&T still has the iPhone, but now you have a choice. And you can make it February 10th.

That's the day you can officially buy an Apple Verizon iPhone. But Verizon' offering a special deal for "reserve" iPhones for people who are already Verizon customers. That means Verizon knows what you and I know: that a flood of millions of new customers are going to flock to Verizon.

Since this is a bricks and mortar store front launch, get ready for more long lines and videos of happy people ripping open the box to activate the Apple Verizon iPhone.

The best news about the Verizon iPhone is it's priced to move at $199.

Jessie J - Do It Like A Dude: Chic Can Sing!

Wow. Lyrics aside, and in "Do It Like A Dude," they're in your face raw, Britain's Jessie J can really sing. In this song it sounds like her voice is enhanced a bit; I'd love to hear her just plain rip it without music or anything.

Watch out for Jessie J. She's 22 and up and coming. Doing it like a dude.

The Green Hornet's Seth Rogen, Cameron Diaz, and Jay Chou: LA Times Gets Video Blogging

Interviews with The Green Hornet's Seth Rogen, Cameron Diaz, and Jay Chou show The LA Times Gets Video Blogging.

While other print organizations struggle, trying to cling to old ways, The LA Times moves into New Media. Check out Reporter Amy Kaufman using a camcorder to interview the stars at last night's premier for The Green Hornet at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Seth Rogen, who's fresh from a CES trip for Sony, says it's amazing the film "actually happened:"



With Cameron Diaz, I'd have asked her about her new sexy muscular look; is that for the action film that is The Green Hornet? "Say, Cameron, show those guns!" That's what video's all about!



This one interview with Jay Chou is pretty good, focusing on how the producers talked to him via Skype:



Hats off to the LA Times for the video-blogging effort at The Green Hornet.  The video view counts - before this post - prove they still have miles to go before they totally "get it," but this is a good start.