The superb Daily Show segment I was tweeting about last night, about CNN's total refusal to do even basic fact-checking, is now online.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

The results are in: Everybody hates birthers.

Mr. Dobbs' first began reporting on Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories on the night of Wednesday, July 15. In the roughly two weeks since then, from July 15 through July 28, Mr. Dobbs' 7 p.m. show on CNN has averaged 653,000 total viewers and 157,000 in the 25-54 demo.

By contrast, during the first two weeks of the month (July 1 to July 14) Mr. Dobbs averaged 771,000 total viewers and 218,000 in the 25-54 demo. In other words, Mr. Dobbs' audience has decreased 15 percent in total viewers and 27 percent in the demo since the start of the controversy.

CNN, the Cable News Network, announced yesterday that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers. Ugh. What idiots. It's not as if science, technology, and environmental reporting is likely to be important anytime soon. Via Kevin Drum.

Last words for a while on Palin.

* Andrew Sullivan of all people has been absolutely brutal, all day, hitting just about every objection to Palin in order. He's also pushing the gambling meme, which I'm convinced is the key frame through which to view this very reckless, lunatic choice.

* More gambling: Dan Gerstein, a former adviser to Sen. Joe Lieberman, in the New York Daily News:

"In picking an unknown, untested, half-a-term woman governor from Alaska to be his running mate, John McCain is following in a long line of reckless men who have rolled the dice for a beauty queen. Except in this case, McCain is taking one of the biggest, boldest gambles in modern American political history."

Sometimes you have to roll the hard six?

* Sullivan and Ben Smith together point out the worst vetting lapse I've heard thus far, that Palin supported Pat Buchanan for president in 1996 and 1999. That's mind-boggling. Was she vetted at all?

* Maybe not: as of Sunday, he'd still wanted Lieberman, and the final decision was only made last night.

* Ezra's been good today too, particularly on the cable news coverage.

* Robert Elisburg's verdict: The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History.

Everybody's raving about Brian Schweitzer, who managed to get the crowd fired up about energy and about Obama after Warner put them to sleep. (Everybody! Benen, Marshall, Kos, Giordano.)

One of the still-underappreciated stories of this election, I think, is the national hunger for a honest conversation about energy and the environment, something we've been entirely denied by coal-industry-sponsored debates in the primaries and Exxon-sponsored convention coverage in the general.



In the cheap seats, stand up!

Blogging's been slow today, which is odd because I have a ton of tabs open. Here are a few:

* The Daily Show does the Lord's work mocking Scalia's 60 Minutes interview, while Colbert enters the strange, strange world of John McCain's superstitions.

* Ze rightly calls out CNN's attempt to monetize their own shitty journalism. Also re: Ze: 'Ze Frank and the Poetics of Web Video'.

* What American politicians might learn from The Godfather. It's just too bad we keep electing Fredo.

* And Matt Yglesias warns us, once more, of the rise of the humanzee. Will no one heed this dire warning?

A global map of human impacts to marine ecosystems, via Science, via MeFi. The impacts page is even more stark than the main one; check out, for instance, the maps for ocean acidification (right), ocean-based pollution, and climate change.

NBC News devoted a few (two) minutes to this study recently. "If we change our ways," the report says, "the oceans can recover."

Glad that's taken care of.

This continued Pollyannaism towards environmental issues drives me nuts. If we change our ways—but we won't, not least of all because of the poisonous indifference of big media outlets like NBC News itself—the oceans can recover—can with a heaping spoonful of might and eventually in time, and recover always carefully underwritten with to some degree. Still, at least two minutes is time spent, some token acknowledgment of the problem; it's better than CNN's incredibly sorry record in the 2008 presidential primary debates, where in five coal-industry-sponsored debates not a single question was asked about environmental issues.

In fairness, CNN did once allow Dennis Kucinich to speak to a snowman for a minute and a half, so I guess we're even.

Regular readers of the site know I do a lot of beating up on Fox News, because they're a travesty—but of course the problem far from ends there. My father sent along an excellent write-up in the L.A. Times that begins to touch upon the actual problems in the recent CNN YouTube debate: not that they let Democrats speak (though they shouldn't have, at least not so much), but rather that in every case, in both YouTube debates, the network inevitably selected in favor of the moronic, the trivial, and the salacious. The YouTube gimmick, in other words, has functioned entirely as a smokescreen for the network to advance its own interests of ratings, scandal, titilation, and profits, and has not been in any sense an attempt to give honest voice to the questions of everyday people.

Of course this is always the corporate media's agenda, in every debate and in everything they do—but the YouTube format has given them an excuse to be so much worse.

Even on those rare occasions when a question has actually been of substance, it was inevitably phrased in the least substantive possible way, with the central consideration always the question's attention-grabbing qualities. And make no mistake, questions of substance were hopelessly rare in both debates; far more commonplace have been "gotcha" questions, questions in the form of exhibitionist confession, questions paired with their exact opposites in the hopes of creating contradiction or scandal, and questions addressed specifically to marginal and fringe candidates for no other reason than to give them a chance to bash the frontrunners from the left, right, and center. I know all this because I combed through the Democratic YouTube debate transcript crafting an email response to a certain beloved family member's delightful missives about the "Clinton News Network"; behold a quick rundown of the foolishness:

My question is for Dennis Kucinich...

Mrs. Clinton, how would you define the word "liberal?" And would you use this word to describe yourself?

If you had to pick any Republican member of Congress or Republican governor to be your running mate, who would it be?

The first one is from Senator Chris Dodd. Senator, I have to ask, what's with the white hair?

...But is African-Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?

How do we pull out (of Iraq) now? ...Do you leave a newborn baby to fend for itself?

How many more soldiers must die while these political games continue in our government?

My question is for Mike Gravel...

I was wondering if the candidates feel women should register for the draft when they turn 18. Why or why not?

Who was your favorite teacher and why?

I've been growing concerned that global warming, the single most important issue to the snowmen of this country, is being neglected. (Asked by a snowman. And, worst of all, Kucinich is the only one to have to answer it!)

What a waste.