Umm ... CNN?

[UPDATE]:

Via Doug at Balloon Juice:

I would not be shocked if Palin eventually makes up some crazy story about an attempted attack on her, maybe along the lines of the Ross Perot story about how the Viet Cong tried to put a hit on him.

And her appearance on Hannity on Monday will be the perfect opportunity for her to tell us how oppressed and beleaguered she is by the big, mean liberals.

---------------------

Predictably, CNN Correspondent Erick Erickson hated on the President’s speech in today’s column. No big shocker there. But he really wallowed in the mud on this one:

Out there somewhere is someone who would love to kill Governor Palin. God forbid they do it. But you and I both know there is some crazy MSNBC watcher and Media Matters reader who even now is dreaming of doing so.

And should they try, we can be equally sure of something else. The left will be divided into two camps: (1) bitch deserved it and (2) not my fault.

It is unfortunate. I hope it never happens. But you and I both know the reality in which we live.

Wow. Way to go, buddy. You really topped yourself this time. Way to take the whole “civil discourse” stuff to heart. As if Sarah Palin were even important enough to bother with. Well, maybe in her own mind, but really. Can you imagine? Most of us ignore her, except when the mainstream media insists on shoving her latest ghost-written Tweet or Facebook post in our faces. Then we point fingers and laugh. Not quite the same as assassination but then again, maybe it is to people like Erick Erickson.

I think those three paragraphs say a whole lot more about Erick Erickson than they do about the Left, Media Matters or MSNBC. And I can't help but wonder why this hack still has a job on CNN.

Adding .... Mr. Beale heard that Erickson thinks some MSNBC watcher "would love to kill Governor Palin" and cracked: "Wait, I though none of 'em have guns?" Which reminded me: I'm always amazed at the right's two completely contradictory characterizations of us liberals, which they seem able to hold in their minds at the same time. We're either weak-kneed surrender monkeys who are "soft on defense," want to offer therapy and understanding to our enemies, and can't be trusted to keep the nation safe OR we're the whacked out anarchists rioting in the streets and fomenting civil unrest.

Cognitive dissonance much?

The View From Ground Zero Today

Russell Simmons lives across the street from Ground Zero. Here's what he did to his apartment windows:



Meanwhile the media seems bent on taking its cue from a crazy lady whose last big claim to fame was announcing President Obama is Malcom X's love child. Well, that and her famous crush on John Bolton.

I remember a time when people like that were gently ushered away from the microphone and sent on a long cruise somewhere for their "nerves." Today's modern Republican Party hands them a Fox News microphone and the national news media decides there must be something to it because, well, they're on Fox News!

Crazy world we live in.

By the way, Leviticus 19:18 referenced in Simmons' window? It reads:

18 " 'Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

Gotta love how religious conservatives always overlook just those parts of Leviticus that are inconvenient to their politics.

Holy Crap I’m In The Wrong Line Of Work

I don’t know why Republicans claim to be fiscally responsible when they do stuff like this:

“It’s standard operating procedure” to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that “at least half the bloggers that are out there” on the Republican side “are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales.”

In California, where former eBay executive Meg Whitman beat businessman Steve Poizner in a bitterly fought primary battle in the campaign for governor, it sometimes seemed as if there was a bidding war for bloggers.

One pro-Poizner blogger, Aaron Park, was discovered to be a paid consultant to the Poizner campaign while writing for Red County, a conservative blog about California politics. Red County founder Chip Hanlon threw Park off the site upon discovering his affiliation, which had not been disclosed.

[...]

But while Red County’s Hanlon expressed outrage at Park’s pay-for-blogging scheme, questions arose about his own editorial independence when it emerged that Red County itself had been taking money from the Whitman campaign.

In December of 2009, Red County received $20,000 from the Meg Whitman campaign, which has sent the site $15,000 a month since then.

The money is ostensibly for advertising, yet by conventional measures the numbers don’t add up. According to Quantcast, Red County reaches around 125,000 unique viewers per month. Two new media industry experts confirmed that, given such a readership, Whitman’s ad purchase is “ridiculously” expensive, surpassing the going market rate for such ads by 1,000 percent or more.

On the Republican side of the aisle, political campaigns are just one big gravy train, meanwhile George Soros still hasn’t sent me a fucking check. Dang.

Meanwhile, lefties can’t even get Democrats to advertise on liberal blogs. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this picture?

Obviously we’ve all known for years that some conservative bloggers are on the GOP dole; it’s also been rumored that the Republican Party and conservative organizations pay people to comment on blogs. I haven’t been able to verify if that’s true; of course a big chunk of my comment spam is paid commercial crap, selling jewelry and casino vacations and other nonsense. It stands to reason that conservative organizations would do likewise.

Anyway, $15,000 a month? Holy crap. Compare that to the $3 to $5 per 300-500 word article sweatshop pay which according to Craigslist, MediaBistro, Demand Studios, etc. is the going rate. So while right-wing Christian billionaire Phillip Anschutz’s Examiner.com throws a few pennies in writers’ tin cups, apparently we should all go straight to GOP candidates and rake in the big bucks.

Putting The "Yahoo" In Yahoo! News

[UPDATE]:

Oh for crying out loud. The conservative outrage has festered resulting in ridiculous ideas like this one.

I'm tired of hearing this attack was "vicious" and "savage." Just look at the picture.

-------------------------

God I love the liberal media.

Conservative persecution complex hit high dudgeon today when Yahoo! News erroneously “reported” that a mugging of two Bobby Jindal staffers in New Orleans last week was politically motivated (apparently the victims were wearing Sarah Palin buttons).

Here they are after the attack, courtesy of the Times-Picayune:


Looks like a typical Friday night in the French Quarter to me, but what do I know. Apparently the woman, Allee Bautsch, has a broken leg in this picture which required a six-day hospitalization and rods in her leg and ankle to repair, according to Yahoo! News. Her boyfriend, Joe Brown, apparently has a broken nose here. I’d call bullshit on both claims but that would get me labeled a hater plus I wasn’t there so I don’t know jack. I’m just sayin’. (Plus, where are the Sarah Palin buttons?)

Anyway, Yahoo! News went straight to the source, in this case a conservative blogger, to report in a banner headline that the attack may have been politically motivated :

Brutal attack on Republican fundraiser and boyfriend may have been politically motivated (UPDATED)

Turns out, not so much. Yahoo! News national affairs writer Brett Michael Dykes got that info from right wing blogger Pat Dollard, who claimed to be quoting the New Orleans Police Dept.--you’d think a reporter for a news outlet like Yahoo would have actually called the NOPD himself, but I guess that’s why it’s called “yahoo.” Politico actually picked up the telephone and spoke to NOPD spokesman Bob Young who told them Dollard had completely misquoted him.

More specifically:

Dollard quoted him saying the attack was politically motivated, but an irritated Young said the quote was the opposite of what he'd said and "completely incorrect."

Hmm. I followed this story all day long, by dinner time Yahoo! News had “updated” its story but still has not changed its headline, even after the Times-Picayune got a hold of the police report which says the attack was not politically motivated after all.

Yahoo! News has not offered a correction of any kind, in fact, but has just “updated” its story to report on what other media outlets now say (and not very accurately, I might add: after Politico reported Bob Young's claim he was misquoted, Yahoo! News said Young had "backtracked.") Anyway, I guess they just want us to decide.

In the meantime, all day long the Freeperati have been all like, “OMG OMG OMG liberals are big fat meanies and we’re all gonna die.” Whatever, liberals have done the same, that’s not the point. The point is that fucking Yahoo! News still hasn’t corrected its incorrect report and the liberal media still isn't liberal.

For a more complete rundown of today’s events, check Gawker’s rundown of the story.

The Corpse Of Compassionate Conservatism

It's proudly on display at The Corner:

Seems like there ought to be a stigma attached to the use of welfare. A little bit of shame can go a long way toward encouraging people to find jobs. The federal government may think it's doing people a favor by providing them with access to food, but it's doing them a disservice if it also robs them of the motivation necessary to break free from dependency.

Sure, because in this economy, the one and only reason people would be hungry is because they’re just too damn lazy to get a fucking job.

Thanks for maintaining the stereotype of the clueless conservative with absolutely zero understanding of poverty in America. I knew you folks were out of touch, just didn’t know how much.

Fake Outrage = Fauxtrage

The predictable right-wing pearl clutching over a Dept. Of Homeland Security report about extremist groups has put my bullshit meter into overdrive. The fact that the report was initially requested by the Bush Administration, although the Malkintents refer to it as the “Obama report,” was my first clue.

The fact that they completely ignored this January 26, 2009 report on left-wing extremists was my second clue.

But, facts be damned, this is a made-for-prime-time, right-wing talking point, neatly manufactured and packaged by the conservative echo chamber to reinforce the stereotype that Democrats/liberals hate the troops, Obama is gutting the military, and ZOMG we’re all gonna diiiiiiieeeee!!!!!!!11!!1!

So why the hell DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano is apologizing, when no apology was necessary, is beyond me. Have you people not been paying attention for the past eight years? At all? No?

Here is the predictable pattern of these things: Drudge, Malkin, Reynolds et. al. get in high dudgeon over some imagined slight, Rush and the Fox-heads flog it mercilessly, Democrat apologizes, and it’s all filed away in the collective unconscious as another case of liberals behaving badly. So what have we learned, people?

Here are the facts of the story, which Napolitano or one of her underlings could easily have trotted out. From the memory hole, 2006:

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

Give the Bush Administration credit for doing the requisite follow-up with its own report--begun last year!--to determine what impact this may have on domestic security.

Does it mean all veterans are racists or white supremacists? No. Does it mean serving your country in the military makes you susceptible to hate group indoctrination? No.

Does it mean anyone even said any of those things?

No.

It’s all just manufactured, more Kabuki theater for the gasbags to chew over, and people in the Administration and Democratic Party in general need to quit apologizing for the right-wing’s insistence on getting their facts wrong and spinning lies.

What’s that famous quote from Adlai Stevenson? “I’ll stop telling the truth about Republicans when they stop telling lies about Democrats”? Something like that.

Anyway, it’s time everyone got a clue. Stop empowering the lies and the lying liars who tell them, Democrats.

Why Bi-Partisanship Doesn’t Work

I’m not sure I can summon the correct amount of snark to match the great wits over at Sadly, No! who originated the “shorter” concept but I’m willing to take a stab at it. So here goes.

Shorter Glen Dean:

Republicans crafted a bunch of really lousy bills over the past eight years, which just proves I was right all along and government is the problem not the solution. Nyah nyah nyah.

Glen forgets that No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Prescription Drug bill and the rest were all vigorously fought by progressives who saw them for what they are: expensive boondoggles benefiting big corporations, HMOs, the insurance industry, politically-connected partisans like Neil Bush and other wealthy elites. They did very little for low-income and middle-class folks, though that’s who foot the bill.

We fought against these measures because it was bad legislation. We were overruled by the Republicans who were in charge and the Democrats who wanted to “reach across the aisle” in a spirit of bipartisanship.

And now the far right is using this as an excuse for not supporting the economic stimulus because their party fucked it up the last time.

So I have a steaming cup of STFU for you people -- and by “you people,” I do include Blue Dogs like Jim Cooper and Harold Ford Jr. in the House and Demcorats like Ben Nelson in the Senate.

Look, let me make it simple. They say crafting legislation is like making sausage. But if you’re a Democrat and you’re helping the Republicans put rancid sausage onto people’s plates, then don’t be shocked when they come back and tell you they don’t like sausage.

We deserve better than this.

Tis The Season For Dirty Tricks!

And so soon, too! Seems right wing bloggers have fallen on their fainting couches for an anti-Semitic post they discovered on the Obama website. Which is kinda funny, since it appears one of their own put it there to begin with. Ha ha. That’s so cute.

This is reminiscent of so many other GOP dirty tricks. I immediately thought of this local story from 2004:

A nasty flyer has turned up in Tennessee politics which depicts a handicapped athlete running on a track with George Bush's face pasted on.

The text reads:

Voting for Bush is Like Running in the Special Olympics -- Even if You Win, You're Still Retarded.

The Traditional Values Coalition and other right wing operations in the South jumped on this fast alleging that Tennessee Democrat Craig Fitzhugh's office, which shares space with the Kerry/Edwards Campaign, was distributing this flyer.

[...]

What has been reported is that these flyers were left in a trash can in Fitzhugh's office. No one on Fitzhugh's staff or among campaign volunteers saw that these flyers had been deposited by anyone in the garbage. Shortly after some unknown individual dropped the flyers in the trash can, another individual came into the office and found the flyers in Fitzhugh's trash -- and then made this public.

Zoing!

I guess we’ll know the presidential campaign has really begun in earnest when serial victim Phil Parlock appears on the scene.

Of course, all of this is amateur stuff compared to Karl Rove, who bugged his own office in 1991 then went screaming for the waaaahmbulance. Still, that hasn’t stopped right-wing bloggers like our own Six Meat Buffet from falling for it.

Hilarious.

Don’t Tell Michelle Malkin...

... but these things are all over Scandinavia. Here's a bunch at a tourist stand that also sold Swedish flags, baseball caps, and those fake Viking helmets with yellow braids attached.

Oh, the horror!

And here's one worn by an actual Scandinavian! At the airport! How did she ever make it through security?

I wonder if these people are ever embarrassed by the crap they start up? I'm increasingly convinced they do it just to prove they can.

Newsweek got it right:

Let's face it, the real danger here is not the girly scarf charged with being a kaffiyeh, or that jihadists are purportedly using Dunkin' Donuts as a backdoor into America's malleable consciousness. It's that the cries of a few commentators indulging in the worst form of racial stereotyping—and their demonization of an entire culture—was enough to spook a giant corporation.

Of course, Dunkin' Donuts has been kowtowing to the wingnut fringe ever since the nuts got in a tizzy over "anti-God quotes" on a Starbucks cup.

Stop the silliness. Please.

Tired Of People Who Are Tired Of It

I rarely discuss the insane ramblings going on in the local blogosphere here, but when someone writes something this stupid, I have to speak out.

Case in point is this nonsense from local conservative Glen Dean:

Meanwhile, the Guerilla Women use the term misogyny in the title of a post to describe anybody that doesn’t bow at the altar of Billary. I am so sick of seeing that word. It’s like a new word that everybody learned and can’t wait to type themselves. It reminds me of the time bloggers started using the word xenophobe to describe anybody opposed to current immigration policy. The ladies at TGW seem to even be accusing Maureen Dowd of being anti-woman. Good grief.

First of all, Glen, you need to read more. Just because a word is new to you, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been used for decades to describe something very real. I first learned the word “misogyny” when it was used to describe the late comedian Andy Kaufman--you know, the guy who used to challenge women to wrestling matches. I think he started doing that back in 1979, when I was 17.

Anyway, I’m sorry Glen Dean is tired of misogyny. Oh, the poor dear. Those big long words, with all those funny “y”’s where vowels should be. It’s hard to type, and it’s got that awkward “gyny” thing in there, which makes one think of the wife’s trips to the ob/gyn. Ewwwww., icky!

But you know what? I’m tired of experiencing it. I’m tired of seeing it on TV every night, spewed from the mouth of Chris Matthews as he attacks Hillary Clinton for her cleavage, her pantsuits, her “tears.” I’m tired of seeing this crap presented as some kind of joke, or radio jerks shouting “iron my shirt.” I don’t find it funny.

I don’t expect the Glen Deans of the world to get it; they seem allergic to the concept of putting themselves in anothers’ shoes for five minutes.

We have come a long way--but we still have a long way to go.

And quit calling me “baby.”

Premature Celebration

It’s sad when right-wing pundits like Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin, and even our own Bill Hobbs clutch so desperately to such flimsy shreds of hope as yesterday’s Ken Pollack and Mike O'Hanlon NY Times op-ed.

Glenn Greenwald thoroughly debunks the “rank deceit” of the “liberal” Brookings twosome, who claim to be war critics suddenly and unexpectedly impressed by the progress in Iraq. In fact, they’ve been cheering on the war from the beginning--Greenwald documents Pollack/O’Hanlon war boosterism and false claims of progress going back to 2003. So have Greg Sargent and ThinkProgress. But don’t trust them -- or me. You can read Pollack and O’Hanlon’s pro-war oeuvre for yourself over at the Brookings Institution.

So what we really have are two well-known war boosters and Bush surge supporters telling us how great everything is going after an 8-day Pentagon-guided tour of Iraq. Stop the fucking presses.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped the story from ricocheting across the mainstream media: “Harsh war critics do about-face! Huzzah!” I first heard such crowing on CNN yesterday morning, when Heidi Collins interviewed Ken Pollack about how swimmingly things were going in Anbar province. Another U.S. Marine was killed there today. That’s progress?

Today I learn that Fox News and other conservative media outlets are touting this Op-Ed piece as some kind of vindication, as if Pollack and O’Hanlon have never been wrong about anything (they have). This is the same group of people who routinely dismiss the New York Times as liberal propaganda, who write off everything the Brooking Institute publishes. Now they suddenly believe the rainbows-and-lollipops picture of Iraq portrayed by Pollack/O’Hanlon? Are they that desperate for good news?

Here in Left Blogistan, we know better. We enjoyed poking fun at the New York Times’ more clueless op-ed writers; Atrios has his “Friedman Unit,” a snort of derision that even has its own Wikipedia entry. Personally, I believe David Brooks is senile and should retire to his front porch. Liberals know better than to jump all over a NY Times Op-Ed as proof of anything; this one was particularly bad because everyone from CNN to Bill Hobbs have touted Pollack and O’Hanlon’s “liberal war critic” cred as proof that what they write about Iraq has to be true: “Hey, if even vocal war critics say the surge is working ...!”

Problem is, it’s not true. Pollack and O’Hanlon are not war critics, and as Greenwald has ably documented, they’ve got a history of seeing progress in Iraq where clearly none has been.

Here’s another Op-Ed to chew on. Top-ranking Republican and war supporter Sen. Chuck Hagel’s Washington Post piece from April 2007. You remember, the one in which the Vietnam Veteran and Senator from Nebraska writes:

I came home from my fifth trip to Iraq with one enduring impression. The Iraqi government must make the tough choices now to produce political reconciliation. If there is no such reconciliation in Iraq, there will be no progress -- no matter how many American lives we lose and how much American money we give. We will have squandered our resources and efforts, undermined our interests in the Middle East and, however unintentionally, produced a more dangerous world.

Well it must be true! He’s a Republican, and he voted for the war! I’m sure with these credentials, Bill Hobbs, Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt were all over that one.

No? I wonder why.

It’s curious to observe the orgiastic response to the Pollack/O’Hanlon piece. Again, I have to get back to, why? Some folks are saying it’s because conservatives are eager to paint a portrait of near-victory in Iraq. That way, when the Democrats take control in 2009, they can blame the Dems for “losing” in Iraq, like they’ve tried to blame liberals for “losing” in Vietnam all these years. That sounds about right; everything has a political motive with this crowd. Problem is, it’s not going to work. Truth shines through, it’s a natural law. Iraq was a mistake and nothing will fix it. All we can do is cut our losses.