"It's time to take the radical step of privileging correct information over incorrect information." (Rachel Maddow, 2/6/2009)
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This is a better blog clipping service.
SARAH PALIN thinks Barack Obama has taken too "doggone long to get in there". James Carville wants Mr Obama to "put somebody in charge of this thing and get this moving." Maureen Dowd doinked Mr Obama Saturday with her silly-straw-like wit, faulting his "inability to encapsulate Americans' feelings." Yeah, you know who would've killed as the president facing a deep-sea oil blowout? Philip Seymour Hoffman. Or maybe Meryl Streep. Did you see them in "Doubt"?
Ms Dowd's involvement is fitting, as this may be the sorriest spectacle of content-free public hyperventilation since Al Gore's earth tones. The difference is that in this case the issue is deadly serious; it's the public discourse that is puerile. There is plenty of room for substantive critique of the flaws in governance and policy uncovered by the Deepwater Horizon blowout. You could talk about regulatory failure. You could talk about corporate impunity. You could talk about blithely ignoring the tail-end risk of going ahead with deepwater drilling without any capacity to cope with catastrophic blowouts. Precisely none of these subjects are evident in the arguments our pundit class is having. Instead we have empty-headed squawking over what the catastrophe is doing to Barack Obama's image.
Who's raising concrete critiques of administration policy? Chiefly Mr Obama. Last Thursday he laid out a series of mistakes he felt he had made. Chief among them was taking oil companies at their word when they claimed to have the capability to cope with worst-case deep-sea drilling catastrophes. Now, if we feel that the president has failed to act aggressively enough on this issue, both before and since the accident, then what course of action should we now be calling on him to take? One logical step might be for the government to immediately shut down every offshore drilling rig in proximity to America's coasts, pending the development of redundant, fail-safe capacity for capping and remediating catastrophic blowouts. Is this a good idea? I don't know. But if you wanted to argue concretely that the administration had not been acting aggressively enough in this crisis, then this is the sort of more-aggressive action you might be calling for.
But how would the American people actually feel about that? Would that really "encapsulate their feelings", as Ms Dowd puts it? Or do their feelings actually contain a bit of a soft spot for low gasoline prices? Might such a performance fail to adequately interpret the deep ambiguities of the American people's helpless crush on those handsome bad boys in the oil industry?
And how would Mr Obama's chief critics feel about shutting down offshore oil rigs until the government has the capacity to stop blowouts and clean up massive spills? Presumably the same way they reacted to his six-month moratorium on new wells and suspension of drilling on 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.
"I take issue with the President's decision to extend the moratorium on deepwater drilling should it be used to indefinitely suspend offshore drilling," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in a statement. "The BP spill in the Gulf is a tragedy and there is no question we must conduct a thorough investigation into what led to this devastating spill, and we must take every step to stop and contain the leak. But with the needed safety measures in place, domestic drilling should be continued and encouraged."
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said the plan could mean "effectively killing Shell's participation in Alaska," the Associated Press reports. "That's not acceptable to me or Alaska."
What we're seeing here is a perfect circus of media nothingball: people aggressively criticising the administration for not acting aggressively enough while aggressively ignoring the fact that they oppose anything aggressive the administration does.
But he should get on in there and put somebody in charge! What's taking him so doggone long?
What a reasonable article. Of course, at least one of the commenters had this to say:
would this be like spilling something in the kitchen and doing a bad job with the cleanup so you decide instead to never cook food again?
Yes, it would be exactly like that. If what you spilled was so toxic that somehow you couldn’t figure out a way to clean it up even after decades and it made your kitchen unsuitable for habitation and killed most of the food you ever put in it so that you couldn’t use any of it. So you decided not against ever cooking again, but not to cook with whatever that particular toxic poison was.
Oh and if your kitchen were thousands and thousands of square miles wide and fed an entire region of the country.
I think comment sections are the oil spills of the Internet. Yes, sometimes including this one.
Constantly jumping in and out of National Guard helicopters and drawing up plans for additional “burrito levees” and “boudin bags” needed to stop the oil slick from flowing further into his state’s marshes, Jindal has quickly mastered the details of the issue. At a press conference in New Orleans in mid-May, the Washington Post reported that “he gave updates on the size of tar balls washing up in Port Fourchon (up to eight inches), the number of sandbags to be air-dropped (1,200) and state money spent to date ($3.7 million). He also provided a weather forecast (‘The winds continue to come out of the southeast, 10 to 15 knots’).”
This reminds me of when America’s mayor won the Battle of 9/11.
“One final note on proportionality: Fifteen “peace” activists dead is a tragedy, but they represent only one one-thousandth of the death toll of a French heatwave.”
“Today, it’s hard to find anyone on Wall Street who doesn’t speak of Obama as if he were an unholy hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Eldridge Cleaver. One night not long ago, over dinner with ten executives in the finance industry, I heard the president described as ‘hostile to business,’ ‘anti-wealth,’ and ‘anti-capitalism’; as a ‘redistributionist,’ a ‘vilifier,’ and a ‘thug.’ A few days later, I recounted this experience to the same Wall Street CEO who’d called the Volcker Rule a testicular blow, and mentioned I’d been told that one of the most prominent megabank chiefs, who once boasted to friends of voting for Obama, now refers to him privately as a ‘Chicago mob guy.’ Do all your brethren feel this way? I asked. ‘Oh, not everybody—just most of them,’ he replied. ‘Jamie [Dimon]? Lloyd [Blankfein]? They might not say Obama’s a socialist, but they come pretty close.’”
Much like the teabag morons showing up to HCR debates screaming “KEEP GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE,” the CEO’s are on the dole for billions and are then bemoaning socialism. I guess they think those no interest loans that allows them to keep giving themselves huge bonuses is just a special reward for their capitalist genius.
Just hang them all.
E.J. Dionne on the oil spill in the Gulf and what it teaches us about the arguments on capitalism vs. socialism (via DKos):
"Deregulation" is wonderful until we discover what happens when regulations aren't issued or enforced. Everyone is a capitalist until a private company blunders. Then everyone starts talking like a socialist, presuming that the government can put things right because they see it as being just as big and powerful as its Tea Party critics claim it is.
But the truth is that we have disempowered government and handed vast responsibilities over to a private sector that will never see protecting the public interest as its primary task. The sludge in the gulf is, finally, the product of our own contradictions.
A question for fellow reporters and editors: At what point do Sarah Palin's attacks and smears become so vile and absurd that they no longer merit attention? Is there such a point?
Palin, who has broken the mold in so many ways, has defied the laws of political and media gravity in another fashion: Despite the ever-mounting ridiculousness of her claims, she continues to get attention. This isn't so with other figures. Frequently those who traffic in absurdity and smears to get media attention keep upping the ante until their assertions become so grotesque and self-parodic that they are no longer newsworthy.
It's kind of like inflation: Keep printing more money and the value of it keeps dropping. That hasn't happened with Palin.
Yesterday Palin launched a bizarre and rambling attack on a journalist that by any standard should make us seriously pause. Her target was award-winning journalist Joe McGinniss, who has rented the house next door to her to research a book. The short version is that she suggested he might be peeping at her kids.
Palin is siccing her fans on a journalist who might be planning to cover her with something less than outright adoration. Dave Weigel notes that Palin's attack was "strange, unprofessional, and paranoid," and constitued "irresponsible and pathetic bullying."
In fairness, McGinniss is doing something a bit unorthodox, and for that reason this particular standoff is perhaps somewhat newsworthy. But more broadly, as long as Palin isn't an actual candidate for public office, at what point do we stop rewarding every statement from Palin, no matter how vicious or mendacious, with attention? Should there be such a point?
That's a real question, by the way. I'd love to hear what other reporters and editors have to say about this.
UPDATE, 11:31 p.m.: Ruth Marcus makes a detailed case today that the empress has no clothes, which I think makes the above question even more relevant.
Three unattractive Palin traits have, if anything, been amplified since the election: her unwillingness to buckle down and do the necessary preparation; her tendency to adopt what McCain adviser Steve Schmidt described as a "down is up and up is down" version of reality; and her enhanced sense of injury at the hands of what she oh so cleverly refers to as the "lamestream media."
Palin's appearance on "Fox News Sunday" pushed me over the edge.
First, there was Palin on Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul, whose candidacy she had championed. Anchor Chris Wallace asked straightforward questions: Was Paul right or wrong in his view that the 1964 Civil Rights Act went too far in banning discrimination in private establishments? What did Palin make of the controversy? He got typically Palinesque answers, rambling and aggrieved:
"I think there is certainly a double standard at play here. When Rand Paul had anticipated that he'd be able to engage in a discussion, he being a libertarian-leaning constitutional conservative, being able to engage in a discussion with a TV character, a media personality, who perhaps had an agenda in asking the question and then interpreting his answer the way that she did, he wanted to talk about, evidently, some hypotheticals as it applies to impacts on the Civil Rights Act, as it impacts our Constitution. So he was given the opportunity finally to clarify, and unequivocally he has stated that he supports the Civil Rights Act."
Actually, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and other interviewers did not ask Paul about "hypotheticals." They asked whether he supported prohibiting private business owners from keeping blacks off their premises.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure blacks being kicked out of businesses wasn't a hypothetical. It was American History 101.
"If Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page tomorrow and posted a note that said, "well, whaddya know, I's'a jus' out trawling' for catfish with my ol' hubby Todd, and a neighbor tol' me that he saw Rahm Emanuel crushing an endangered tropical frog to death while saluting a portrait of Mao, and also the sky is green," you can bet that the next day's "Fox & Friends" would treat the greenness of the sky as a self-evident fact, and Glenn Beck would ask Sarah why Rahm threatened Willow like that," - Alex Pareene.
Both the Hill and Roll Call have accounts today of an apparently testy exchange between Obama and Sen. Corker at a lunchtime, closed-door meeting yesterday:
“I said, ‘I got to tell you something, there’s a degree of audacity in you being here today,’” Corker said, recalling his exchange with the president. “If you look at your three major initiatives they were almost all done on party-line votes,” Corker told Obama. “I feel we’re all props here today.
“Just last week you engineered a very partisan vote,” Corker added. “I would just like for you to explain to me, when you get up in the morning, and when you come over to lunch like this, how you reconcile that duplicity.”
Obama, of course, has worked very hard the last two years to reach out to Republicans. And Corker, if we take him as his word, would really like to cooperate (he sort of tried it seems on financial reform). But Obama’s failure to secure bipartisanship is hardly duplicitous. The fact of the matter is Obama and Corker are dealing with structural forces that are much larger than themselves. Alan Abramowitz documents this in a paper that he recently presented here at William and Mary, arguing that the partisan divide in Washington is simply a reflection of the partisan divide in the voting public — and not just the political elite:
The gradual disappearance of conservative Democrats and moderate-to-liberal Republicans has had a clear impact on the electoral coalitions of Democratic and Republican Senate candidates. … [O]ver the past four decades on the [American National Election Study] 7- point liberal-conservative scale…the gap between the average location of Democratic and Republican voters has more than doubled, from .8 units to 1.7 units. In 1972, conservative identifiers made up 30 percent of Democratic Senate voters and 43 percent of Republican Senate voters. In 2008, conservative identifiers made up 19 percent of Democratic Senate voters and 72 percent of Republican Senate voters.
Abramowitz concludes, “Rather than indicating that there is a ‘disconnect’ between politicians and voters, polarization in Congress actually indicates that Democratic and Republican members are accurately reflecting the views of the voters who elected them.” He also suggests that the effect of this is more obvious in the Senate than in the House due to reliance on unanimous consent and the filibuster.
It seems that the sooner Obama et al recognize this political reality and learn to work with in it, the better. Recent weeks suggest, however, that the President is getting there.
I want to build off of Ryan’s post below a bit. Ryan pointed out that the existing atmosphere is irrevocably partisan, and that Obama seems — finally — to be noticing:
Noting that sometimes conservative activists portray him with a Hitler moustache, Obama seemed to put to rest any notion that there could be broad-based bipartisan cooperation – something he promised to try to bring to Washington during his 2008 campaign.
“There are members of their base who think if somebody even smiles at me, they think, ‘You’re a traitor. You smiled at Obama,’ ” the president said at fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “The day has passed when I expected this to be a full partnership.”
There is hardly any “room for cooperation” in the Republican Party, Obama said.
That was a quote from last night. But just hours before, the Obama administration announced it would agree to right-wing demands and send troops to the Mexican border — even though a) the move comes without a full compromise on comprehensive reform and b) troops at the border won’t stop illegal immigration, and c) Obama knows it’s a bad idea (from March: “We’ve got a very big border with Mexico,” the president said. “I’m not interested in militarizing the border.”).
But the larger point is that, if Obama believes what he said last night, then he knows that the move won’t do a thing to bring conservatives to the table on comprehensive immigration reform. (And, as Ryan points out, there seems to be little that could bring conservatives and progressive together right now.)
I guess the strategy is for Obama to constantly reach out to conservatives with compromise, only to have his hand slapped away. Over and over and over again. And then he can go out and say things like he said last night.
The problem with this strategy is two-fold: First, conservatives just make stuff up. They say he is a partisan hack who refuses to compromise — even when this is patently and obviously untrue — and hope enough people are ignorant for them to win. Too often, that strategy works.
Second, when Obama does go to fire up the base as he did last night, those of us there start to wonder whether he actually believes what he’s saying. If he does, we wonder why he keeps reaching out, repeatedly demonstrating his good faith by acceding to central conservative demands (supporting offshore oil drilling, scrapping a public option, ditching an independent CFPA) before negotiations on the larger reform have begun.
On the other hand, it is effective for Obama to point out every time Republicans refuse to work with him — and even more effective when he looks at what conservatives really want to do and points out why it’s so dangerous to America. “You can’t drive!” not only fires up the base, but drives home (excuse the pun) the fundamental point: Conservatives and progressives aren’t working together because these people are maniacs.
QOTD: DAY, on the GOP' "America Speaking Out" project:
Simpler GOP version:
"We value your opinion. Please write it on the back of a twenty dollar bill, and send it in."
In which the inevitable and incorrigible DougJ engages in a Post chat, and fails to draw the reporter into the crazy world of Randie ... DougJ: A rare Kaplan victory for me
Louisville, KY: I’m writing as a supporter of Rand Paul, whom the Post has treated unfairly. You say that his position on 40 year-old settled law is important. I say that he is the only candidate looking towards the future where we are forced to accept the single North American currency called “the amero” (go on YouTube and search for Vincete Fox amero if you don’t believe me).
Why aren’t we hearing more about this instead of about hypotheticals and bygones?
Perry Bacon Jr.: Hypotheticals matter; campaigns are about what you will do as much as what you have done, particularly for someone who has never held office before. I think his views on the Civil Rights act are important, in part because they might give a clue to his votes on the minimum wage and other such things.
[.....]
Lexington, KY: Rand Paul may not be the smoothest talker, he may not answer the questions the way you want him to, to quote Sarah Palin. But who else has the guts to take on the NAFTA superhighway? Who else will put us back on the gold standard where we belong? Aren’t these more important issues?
Perry Bacon Jr.: I think he is pretty good talker. I”m agree to hear him defend his views on the big issues, repealing the health care bill, raising the retirement age, etc.
When we polled Colorado in early March Michael Bennet and Jane Norton were tied. Last week we found Bennet with a 3 point lead. One of the biggest reasons for that shift? Bennet went from leading Norton by 12 points with Hispanic voters to a 21 point advantage. That large shift in a Democratic direction among Hispanics mirrors what we saw in our Arizona Senate polling last month- Rodney Glassman went from trailing John McCain by 17 points with them in September to now holding a 17 point lead.
But Chris Matthews’ cranky uncle likes the law, polls show a majority of Americans support it, never underestimate white backlash, blah blah blah.
This thing is a goldmine for western Democrats.
from the comments:
Boots Day
It’s very popular among people who were already going to vote Republican, which means it doesn’t make any difference to the GOP in the long run. Among people for whom this is such a big deal that it makes them want to change their vote, it’s hugely unpopular.
This is wrong on so many levels it makes my eyes bleed. First, dems go on Faux all the time, where they are confronted with contrived questions designed to push a narrative that is often false for the purposes of riling up the republican/conservative base. Repubs rarely go on any news show that actually presses them on the issues, almost never on a show like Maddow's where their ideas are actually and thoughtfully examined.
While I think that Rand Paul was smart to take a step back from the national microphones and skip this week's "Meet the Press," I think his decision highlights a larger problem: politicians on the right will not venture beyond the safe confines of Fox News. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough rhetorically asked this question on his show on Friday: "What the hell was Rand Paul doing on MSNBC?" That says it all. As you have chronicled much on your blog about the separation between red and blue states, this is just another nail in the coffin of debate in this country. When the right and left of this country will not share the same TV shows to discuss or debate the issues facing our country, we all lose.
Ladies and Gentlemen, your new Connecticut Republican candidate for Senate, Linda McMahon, wife of Vince McMahon and CEO of WWE:
Involved in multiple steroid scandals.
Delivered a “low blow” to a commentator on TV as part of his firing.
Part of an organization that condones “simulated rape, public sex and necrophilia”.
Here’s what one of her former employees says about her:
She may look like a Sunday school teacher. Linda McMahon’s hands are as bloody as her husband’s because she is aware of every move in the ring. She has had no problem with grown men – myself included – cutting their head with a razor blade. All of a sudden, why aren’t these guys bleeding anymore? Because Linda is running for the Senate.
That’s just from her Wikipedia entry. Compared to this woman’s caravan of crazy, Dick Blumenthal’s Vietnam fudging is about as politically interesting as a county commissioner using the wrong fork at dinner.
No matter what generic Congressional ballot polling says (and it’s not looking that bad), candidates win elections. And, man, do the Republicans have some shit candidates.
Update: I love that we’re wall-to-wall Linda ads as soon as I post this. “Ready for Something Different” indeed.
One of the main downsides to a national controversy over the beliefs of a high-profile candidate: other candidates start fielding questions about their takes on the matter.
Last week, Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul articulated his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, as part of his larger extremist ideology. But given the controversy it generated, it was only a matter of time before Republicans elsewhere started feeling the heat, too.
In Nevada, Sue Lowden, the controversial GOP Senate hopeful, spoke to Politico yesterday, and refused initially to talk about her health care views. When the discussion turned to Paul, she refused to talk about that, too.
At the end of the interview, Lowden declined to discuss whether she shared Paul's views on the Civil Rights Act.
"You can't resist this, can you? I have no idea what another candidate says," Lowden said.
Asked whether she had any concerns about the law's reach into private business, Lowden said, "I'm going, thank you," then abruptly hung up the phone.
In Kentucky, Republican congressional candidate Andy Barr was less rude, but no more forthcoming when asked whether he agrees with Paul's worldview.
"Well, we'll, we'll, we'll certainly answer those questions later on."
At that point, Barr walked away, rather than continue the discussion.
A couple of things to consider moving forward. First, these questions are likely to continue. Republican campaigns would probably be wise to come up with a stock answer to the inquiries.
Second, coming up with that answer should be pretty easy. For crying out loud, we're talking about the Civil Rights Act and the ADA. I realize the Republican Party has shifted aggressively to the hard-right, but in the 21st century, even in contemporary GOP politics, there's nothing wrong with a Republican candidate endorsing some of the bedrock legislation of modern America.
"I support the Civil Rights Act of 1964." How hard is that to say?
Living in New York, I’m generally not impressed with other states’ political shenanigans, but what’s going on in Nevada right now is pretty special. You’ve got a sitting governor, Jim Gibbons, who: (1) is being sued by a Vegas cocktail waitress for sexual assault, (2) publicly claimed to have not had sex for fifteen years after being spotted consoling a Playboy model, (3) was caught repeatedly lying about a trip to Washington with his alleged mistress, (4) was recently investigated by the FBI for 18 months (though eventually cleared of wrong doing).
And then you’ve got Republican Senate primary where the chicken-for-checkups advocate Sue Lowden is regarded as the more sane of two leading candidates:
And as part of this effort, (Senate candidate Sharron) Angle reportedly wants to go to the Senate to fight to privatize Social Security; build nuclear power plants inside Yucca Mountain; eliminate the federal income tax; pull the country out of the United Nations; and allow unlimited campaign contributions. She’s also a hard-right culture warrior, backing the far-right line on immigration and supporting bans on nearly all abortions.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, a conservative paper, conducted a survey that identified Angle as the Nevada Assembly’s “Worst Member.” Twice.
Angle and Lowden are neck-and-neck. Gibbons, unfortunately, is well behind in the polls.
“Largely decorated by Limbaugh himself, [his Palm Beach house] reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. A massive chandelier in the dining room, for example, is a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of New York’s Plaza Hotel. The vast salon is meant to suggest Versailles. The main guest suite, which I didn’t visit, is an exact replica of the Presidential Suite at the Hotel George V in Paris. There is a full suit of armor on display, as well as a life-size oil painting of El Rushbo. Fragrant candles burned throughout the house, a daily home-from-the-wars ritual.”
Sixteen years ago, House Republicans put together the "Contract With America" based on polls and focus groups. This year, House GOP leaders are launching the "America Speaking Out" project, in the hopes of crafting a new "contract" based on public feedback and interactive social media.
The biggest difference, however, is that this time, American taxpayers are being asked to finance the partisan initiative.
Republican officials will kick off the project with an event in D.C. this morning, and it's been described, accurately, as an initiative intended to help the GOP craft "a set of policy items that Republicans would pursue if they won back control of the House in November."
When asked about this yesterday, GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) was vague about financing. "'America Speaking Out' is not a project of the political" campaign arm, Pence said, reluctant to go into further detail.
Now we know why. Republicans are claiming that the project will be kept separate from their campaign committees, and can therefore be financed by taxpayers.
Congressional scholar Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said it is not credible to say the agenda is not intended for the 2010 campaign cycle.
"Its only purpose is as a campaign document," Mann said in an e-mail. "They are in no position to shape policy before the election. It is a defensive move, to deal with the criticism that they are the party of 'no.'"
But Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, said Republicans have to maintain that the document is not meant for the campaign trail, even if it is only a charade. "If they don't, they are in danger of using taxpayer funds for campaign purposes," she said.
But given what Republicans have already stated publicly, the notion that the "America Speaking Out" project isn't intended for the midterm elections is ridiculous.
This isn't even thinly veiled -- the partisan, campaign-related function is as plain as day.
House Republicans will unveil on Tuesday a Web site they will use to solicit policy ideas from the public, the first step in the development of a platform that they will present to voters this fall. [...]
The Web site formally starts the GOP's process of touting its own vision and policies to voters, after spending most of the last 16 months bashing President Obama and congressional Democrats.
And Republicans, aware that some of the anti-Washington fervor among the public is aimed at both parties, don't want to simply put out a formal agenda without buy-in from voters, particularly conservatives. So, along with the site, House Republicans will hold town hall meetings around the country starting next week. They want to use this process to get ideas for the "Contract With America"-style policy document they are set to release closer to the election, which would list principles and proposals that Republicans would adopt if they won control of the House.
Keep in mind just how transparently silly the argument is. Republicans will argue that all of this -- the website, the social media, the town-hall events, and the document to be released in September -- has nothing to do with the party's campaign efforts in the fall. They have to maintain this fiction with a straight face, in order to justify use of our money to pay for the effort.
This probably isn't the ideal way for the GOP to prove it can be trusted to spend the public's money wisely.
If you’re an American and you believe that the government should respect habeas corpus or privacy rights or the separation of church and state, or that invading foreign countries for no reason with no plan is bad, or that torture is bad, then you hate America. If you’re a Catholic and you believe that raping children is bad or that social justice is central to Catholicism or that that it’s okay for a democratically elected representative in a secular government to vote in favor of reproductive rights, then you’re a cafeteria Catholic. If you’re Jewish and you think that nuking Tehran is a bad idea, then you’re a self-hating Jew.
How did the far right manage to do this? These are three different (if connected) arenas with three different sets of issues. Why does the right hold the patriotic/one truth faith/etc. higher ground in all of them?
I believe this is the central question of modern American politics.
from the comments:
RSA
Is it possible you’re slightly over-analyzing the situation, DougJ? One answer is that the specific issues don’t matter—it’s that rightwingers are authoritarians, and someone has told them over and over what to believe is right. They can even turn on a dime when needed.
Karl Rove thinks the Obama White House, unlike its predecessors, is filled with mean people who say bad things about their political opponents.
"President Bush, for example, never allowed a White House staffer or administration spokesman to go out and do what this administration and our predecessor routinely did -- that is to engage in calling the leaders of the opposition party disparaging labels and question their motives," he said.
The underlying complaint is itself dubious. This White House has its flaws, but in the face of hysterical criticism from clowns like Rove, the president and his team have shown considerable restraint when it comes to using "disparaging labels" and questioning critics' motives.
But the irony of Rove's criticism is that he's guilty of engaging in the very tactics he's whining about now. In 2005, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) described the Bush administration's torture policies and system of secret prisons as being reminiscent of "Soviets in their gulags." As Alex Seitz-Wald reminds us, Karl Rove, at the time a high-ranking White House official, argued that Durbin's quote was evidence that liberals are anti-American traitors.
If Bush "ever allowed" his aides to question rivals' motives, why did Rove specifically question, to use his words, "the motives of liberals"?
But the larger, and arguably more entertaining point, is that Karl Rove has made a habit of blasting Obama and his team of doing the exact same things Rove did when he helped run the White House.
Rove ran a White House that embraced a "permanent campaign," so he's accused the Obama team of embracing a "permanent campaign." Rove embraced the politics of fear, so he's accused Obama of embracing the politics of fear. Rove relied on "pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted " political events, so he's accused Obama of relying on "pre-packaged, organized, controlled, scripted" political events. Rove looked at every policy issue "from a political perspective," so he's accused Obama of looking at every policy issue "from a political perspective." Rove snubbed news outlets that he considered partisan, so he's accused Obama of snubbing snubbed news outlets that he considered partisan. Rove had a habit of burying bad news by releasing it late on Friday afternoons, so he's accused Obama of burying bad news by releasing it late on Friday afternoons.
A lesser hack may find it difficult to launch political attacks that are ironic, wrong, hypocritical, and examples of projection, all at the same time, but Rove is a rare talent.
When reality is unconscionable, and you are an opinion-journalism outfit with principles (or just a human with a functional spine), you tilt at the goddamned windmills, without first vetting it through a reality check.
Why would anyone want to associate themselves with a movement that was content to tilt at windmill? At least regular conservatives try to win elections and enact policies. Libertarians just sneer at the world.
Josh Green has a theory about the Rand Paul implosion: the in-state Kentucky press has been so decimated by the newspaper crisis that there was no one to give him the kind of scrutiny Paul got on day one when he went national and had a head on collision with Rachel Maddow.
I usually find these sorts of explanations deeply unpersuasive, though one hears them more and more. Josh apparently does too, usually; but he spent some time down in Kentucky covering the Paul campaign and in this case he's thinking there may be something to it. And because it's Josh and because he's actually spent some time down there, which I obviously haven't, I'm inclined to believe him.
I've had another theory, though. And I think it actually dovetails nicely with the media crisis one. It's basically this -- all the stuff Paul is getting in trouble for now are things that would just be really tough to use against a candidate in a GOP primary in Kentucky, or frankly most red states, especially in 2010.
One of the things we rely on in politics is an adversary system to weed out bad apples. We don't just rely on the press. We rely on the self-interest of the candidates themselves to ferret out weaknesses and warning signs in their opponents. In this case, though, was Trey Grayson going to go after Paul for his archaic and troubling views on civil rights? In a GOP primary in Kentucky in 2010? I doubt it. And pretty much the same for thinking there shouldn't be a minimum wage or that Mexico and Canada are going to take away our liberty or that there shouldn't be an Americans with Disabilities Act or all the rest.
That doesn't necessarily mean that most GOP primary voters would have agreed with Paul's position. It's just that they weren't going to have any traction for a fairly milquetoast Republican like Grayson who needed to show that he was as anti-Obama and anti-federal overreach as the next guy in the year of the Tea Party. Just wasn't going to happen. So in addition to the press, there was a structural breakdown in the race itself that left a lot of Paul's nuttier positions unexplored.
Which brings us to another point. I'm not at all clear how much or whether any of this stuff is going to hurt Paul in the Kentucky Senate. I think the Rasmussen poll that showed him like a million points ahead a day after the election was nonsense. And Conway seems like a strong candidate. But, again, it's far from clear to me that this is going to hurt Paul in state.
That's now where this is cutting. Where this really has the potential to hurt Republicans is nationally. Whatever happens in Kentucky, Paul risks becoming the proverbial crazy uncle at the picnic they're constantly having to explain or excuse or be embarrassed about.
Republican Senate candidate and right-wing ophthalmologist Rand Paul got into a little trouble this week while explaining his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To a lesser extent, his disagreement with the Americans With Disabilities Act also raised a few eyebrows.
When Wolf Blitzer asked Rand about his ADA opposition, tried to make his concerns sound reasonable. "[L]et's say you have a local office and you have a two-story office, and one of your workers is handicapped," the Republican said. "Should you not be allowed maybe to offer them an office on the first floor or should you be forced to put in a $100,000 elevator? ... [M]y understanding is that small business owners were often forced to put in elevators, and I think you ought to at least be given a choice. Can you provide an opportunity without maybe having to pay for an elevator?"
At first blush, that may not sound ridiculous. The problem, as Yahoo News' John Cook discovered, is that Rand Paul has no idea what he's talking about, complaining publicly about the ADA without knowing what's in it.
The legislation specifically exempts the vast majority of buildings three stories and under from any requirement to install elevators. In other words, if you are a small business owner and you have a two-story office and one of your workers is handicapped, no one can force you to build an elevator. It's true that the exemption doesn't apply to health care facilities or shopping malls or buildings four stories and up -- and Paul, who has an ophthalmology practice, may have been thinking of those provisions when he insisted that businesses are "often forced to put in elevators."
Trouble is, we searched far and wide for a single instance in which a private employer was successfully sued under the ADA for failing to provide an elevator, or was compelled by a lawsuit to do so, and we came up empty. We searched the case law, contacted ADA experts -- both proponents and opponents of the law -- the Justice Department, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Not one of them knew of any case involving the government-ordered installation of an elevator. It looks like Rand Paul is either peddling a myth or spinning some vanishingly small number of elevator installations we've yet to hear of into an epidemic big-government overreach.
That's because, while the ADA does impose a burden on employers and business owners to make their facilities accessible, it also contains reasonable restrictions on what owners and operators of existing buildings can be forced to do.
When Cook asked the Paul campaign to substantiate the candidate's concerns, it did not respond.
Paul's bizarre worldview is troubling enough; is it too much to ask that he read up on the issues he claims to care about?
Libertarian Paul defends oil and gas company May 21: Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight discusses Rand Paul's libertarian urge to defend the honor of the oil and gas, the enormous recipient of taxpayer money.
Earlier this week, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar announced a reorganization of the Minerals Management Service (MMS), which has been rife with corruptionandincompetence. MMS would be split into three different offices. Shortly after Salazar’s announcement, John Goll, the head of the Alaska MMS office, called an “all hands” staff meeting to eat a cake decorated with the words, “Drill, Baby, Drill.” Goll is now expressing regret for the incident:
In an e-mail Thursday to agency employees nationwide, Regional Director John Goll says it was wrong and expressed regret that he let that happen in his office.
The Center for Biological Diversity is calling for Goll to be fired.
Update A Government Accountability Office report found that the Alaska office “deliberately avoided establishing consistent guidelines for determining whether future leases would cause significant environmental impacts in the Arctic.” Many scientists left the office, "frustrated that their concerns over environmental threats from drilling had been ignored."
One of the most contentious issues in the debate over what to include in Texas’ social studies textbooks surrounds the separation of church and state. The far-right members of the State Board of Education (SBOE) argue that America is a Christian nation and separation of church and state is a myth. In March, a majority of SBOE members voted “against requiring high school American government students to learn that the nation’s Founders barred government from favoring or disfavoring one religion over all others.”
At the opening of yesterday’s session — where the board gave final approval to the social studies standards — far-right member Cynthia Dunbar gave the invocation, in which she used the prayer to pusher her anti-church-state separation agenda:
Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England or the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, or the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the same objective is present: a Christian land governed by Christian principles. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it. … I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion.
Watch it:
Additionally, during a session this past week that included debate and comment from members of the public, a man stood up and said, “I have to tell you: Islam is coming, and Islam brings death. So I say, ‘Repent America, repent.’” CNN said that Lawrence Allen, the one Muslim member of the board, called the man out for his “insulting” comments, but not one of the other 14 members complained. Watch it:
A May 4-12 poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the TFN Education Fund found that “68 percent of likely Texas voters agree that church-state separation is a key principle of the Constitution.” That number included “59 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of political independents believing it is a key principle.”
After a contentious debate and international scrutiny, right-wing activists in control of Texas' State Board of Education did exactly what they set out to do: they approved a new social studies curriculum that ignores reality, and reflects history the way they wish it happened.
The State Board of Education Board, ending nearly two years of politically divisive deliberations, approved new social studies curriculum standards for the state's 4.7 million students despite vigorous objections from the board's five minority members.
The revisions have drawn national attention amid complaints that conservative Republicans on the board are attempting to alter history and trying to inject their political beliefs into the curriculum. [...]
The curriculum, which will be used in classrooms beginning with the 2011-12 school year, will also serve as a template for new textbooks. They will remain in effect for more than a decade.... With one member absent, the board voted 9-5 to accept the new curriculum for kindergarten, elementary school and high school.
The new standards say that the McCarthyism of the 1950s was later vindicated -- something most historians deny -- draw an equivalency between Jefferson Davis's and Abraham Lincoln's inaugural addresses, say that international institutions such as the United Nations imperil American sovereignty, and include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn.
Of particular interest, the new standards dictate that students must "describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association."
A majority of the state board took an especially hostile view of the separation of church and state -- which, of course, has been removed from the curriculum -- and board member Cynthia Dunbar (R) spoke for her cohorts when she insisted the nation's origins were "a Christian land governed by Christian principles," all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
At its core, this is not just a travesty for academic integrity and students in Texas, but it's also a reminder of what's gone horribly wrong with the twisted right-wing worldview. These state officials have decided they simply don't care for reality, so they've replaced it with a version of events that makes them feel better. The result is an American history in which every era has been distorted to satisfy the far-right ego.
Of course, the concern outside of Texas has been that the state-mandated ignorance might spread -- Texas is the nation's second-largest customer for textbooks, and "publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers." This week, however, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told CNN that he does not believe there will be a "ripple effect" that undermines education elsewhere.
Texas school kids, however, will be punished by the right-wing agenda, and there's not much anyone can do about it.
If you don't quite get what happened to the global economy over the last two years, or who's at fault, you're not alone. Indeed, that's nearly everyone's situation. The big crash of 2008 and 2009 and its ongoing ripple effects -- such as the European fiscal crisis that's rendering my visit to France a little cheaper every day -- seemed to come from nowhere as if by natural causes, as unpredictable and unmanageable as the Icelandic volcano or a Gulf Coast hurricane.
Charles Ferguson is here to tell the world that the crisis that wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, threw millions of people out of their homes and out of work, and further widened the gulf between rich and poor was no accident. It was a crime. Ferguson, a former software entrepreneur and policy-wonk scholar turned filmmaker, is definitely no left-wing bomb-thrower or closet Marxist. But he plays one in the movies, you might say. His new documentary, "Inside Job" -- arguably the smash hit of Cannes so far -- offers a lucid and devastating history of how the crash happened, who caused it and how they got away with it.
[...]
There was nothing reasonable or decent or redeemable about the world of high finance, in Ferguson's judgment, by the time the 21st-century bubble reached its peak around 2006. As he illustrates with a damning parade of interviews, images and public testimony, the financial industry had ridden 20-plus years of manic free-market deregulation and neoliberal fiscal policy from one crisis to the next, surfing a rising tide of greed and corruption. (There are several people in this movie, prominent among them former George W. Bush advisor Glenn Hubbard and Harvard economics chairman John Y. Campbell, who will rue the day they agreed to talk to Ferguson.)
In a captivating conversation with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (who looks here like a knight in shining armor, believe it or not) Ferguson suggests that the financial industry has become a criminal class insulated from society, where profit justifies everything and morality and ethics, not to mention basic human decency, are totally irrelevant. Gaining remarkable access to a wide range of financial insiders, experts and academics, he builds a persuasive case that by conquering Washington with piles of campaign money and conquering the economics discipline with free-market ideology (and more piles of money), the financial industry built a fortress of deregulation that allowed it to plunder the peasantry with no control or oversight
It sounds as though this is a truthful and lucid rendition of what happened, which is sorely needed. I hope it get wide distribution and a lot of people are able to see it. Since the Democrats are too complicit to build this narrative for political purposes --- and the Republicans are beyond any hope at all --- it's left to others to do it on behalf of the people. This sounds like a worthy effort in that cause.
The Secret Service is investigating a bar in West Allis, Wisconsin after a bartender burned President Obama in effigy in front of a cheering crowd. A video obtained by local NBC affiliate TMJ4 shows a bartender at the Yester Years Pub and Grill burning a small figurine of Obama “with what looks like duct tape” wrapped around its neck. The crowd can be heard laughing and shouting in the background. Watch TMJ4’s report:
Jerry Ann Hamilton, the President of Milwaukee’s NAACP, was “outraged” by the incident and worried it could be racially motivated. She called the images “very offensive” and said she would push for a full investigation. The town’s mayor and local residents also expressed dismay. The Secret Service confirmed it was investigating, but would not comment further. (HT: Mediaite)
Rachel Maddow, grounding the tuning forks of our national narratives. No one else on teevee can bring such clarity of thought and narrative coherence to an issue. This is the most brilliant opening to a tv news segment I have ever seen. Ever.
Not to go all Rand all the time, but he’s a gift that just keeps on giving. His official statement about the civil rights issue, posted on his Obama-clone website, starts like this:
In response to liberal media attacks, Dr. Rand Paul today released the following statement:
Rand and Sarah Palin have at least one thing in common: a reporter asking a question that elicits a moronic response from either of them constitutes a “liberal media attack”.
The latest--an update from Michael Scherer's smart post below--is that Rand Paul is now saying that he regrets the appearance with Rachel Maddow, not the ridiculous statements he made in favor of a private business's ability to discriminate according to race. I suspect that this will be the first of many such disasters for the Tea Party libertarians. They are about to find themselves faced with actual political rivals who will be more than happy to expose the utopian foolishness of their ideology. This will be a rare moment of public education for an electorate that doesn't pay sufficient attention to even the most important aspects of democracy.
If Democrats play their cards right, by November most Americans will know that Medicare is government health care, that social security is a government pension service, that all the bank bailout money either has been paid back or will be covered by a modest tax on too-big-to-fail banks, that the Obama stimulus package mostly consisted of tax cuts for them and support for necessary local government functions like schools and cops--and that the jobs-creating aspects of the stimulus package have been remarkably free of corruption.
Farther up the Appalachian Trail, in a special election for Congress in western Pennsylvania that had Republicans salivating, the Democrat decisively triumphed in a district that had rejected Obama in 2008. The surprised GOP rationalized that the result didn’t really count; the winner was "pro-choice and pro-life." So are a lot of Democrats in Pennsylvania, including Sen. Bob Casey—and so are a lot of the Democrats in Congress who, after this special, we know can be re-elected in the fall. The outcome was a signal that the new Associated Press survey, which shows Obama’s party with a 5 point lead nationally, may actually be right. All politics is economics; as the economy improves, so will Democratic prospects for the midterms.
But the President can’t simply wait for history. He has to nudge perceptions and interpret events. This is Obama’s party—and the Campaigner-in-Chief has to carry an affirmative message that will define Democrats between now and November.
The constitutional aberration, in fact, was Southern legislation that required segregation in various business establishments. To cite just one of many examples, a 1928 Alabama state law mandated racially separate toilet facilities in hotels and restaurants. Segregation was never really a matter of individuals exercising their free speech or property rights, as Paul implied. It was a tight web of mutually reinforcing public and private rules.
I'm afraid that the Ron/Rand Paul world view founders on these sorts of contradictions all the time. It's amazing that there's room for it in today's Republican Party, or anywhere on the political spectrum, for that matter.
There are those who think John and I are wrong to want to move the discussion of Rand Paul away from the topic of whether or not Rand Paul is a racist. Let me remind you: a few years ago, there was an extended back-and-forth between Bobo and Paul Krugman about the extent to which Reagan used racism to help himself politically. Republicans tried to deflect it into an argument about whether or not Reagan was racist himself and then trotted out old friends to say how much Reagan loved black people, had black best friends, didn’t see race at all, and so on.
But, you see, it doesn’t matter whether or not Reagan harbored racist feelings in his own heart, he gave his first post-convention speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi and talked about “states’ rights”. He talked about “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. Reagan’s “actual feelings” about race matter about as much as Lindsey Graham’s “actual feelings” about health care reform.
Once things become personal, Republicans can wriggle off the hook. It’s just too easy to trot out black friends or at least stories about black friends and say “see, Rand Paul is not a racist, next question.” The last 40 years of American politics haven’t been destroyed by a bunch of dumb, racist crackers, they’ve been destroyed by cynical conservatives who were all too willing to manipulate dumb, racist crackers for political gain.
Rand Paul is a nut. But the focus has to be on his nutty political positions and the extent to which other Republicans also believe them (the denials have not been strong so far, aside from McConnell, who already hated Paul), not on his “actual feelings”. Republicans have made a lot of hay out of white fear over the past few decades. And now, to use their own words, it’s time to shove it down their throat.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff.
I don’t think that is what Rand Paul is doing here. He’s doing the opposite, in a way, spelling out his opposition to Civil Rights in a politically suicidal way for reasons I can’t ascertain. This may derail his Senate campaign. But it also appeals to racists:
In December, Chris Hightower, the spokesman for Paul’s senate campaign, was forced to resign after a liberal Kentucky blog discovered that his MySpace page had a comment posted around Martin Luther King Day that read: “HAPPY N***ER DAY” above what appears to be a historical photo of the lynching of a black man.
What makes this whole discussion interesting isn’t figuring out whether Paul is racist or a Randian nut job or just an idiot, what’s interesting is that the entire modern Republican party is based on opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and yet it’s taboo to oppose the Civil Rights Act openly. Look, I know there’s taxes and foreign policy and blah blah blah, but the simple fact is that the south was dominated by Democrats before the Civil Rights Act and is dominated by Republicans today.
Can you think of another single issue that has completely changed the political climate of an entire region?
To take this one step further, the institution of slavery is often described as the “original sin” of the United States, but obviously there was nothing original about it. I’ll bet you that in any ancient civilization anywhere in the world, one of the first things people did once they’d figured out the really important stuff—how to feed themselves, how to produce booze and pornography, etc.—was start developing theories about why they were better than the people from nearby areas and why it might be a good idea to steal from these people and/or keep them as slaves. And so it is today, with William Saletan and the Bell Curve and Andrew Sullivan’s deranged readers.
Racism and tribalism have always been a big part of politics everywhere. Why do we have to keep pretending otherwise?
It’s been a longtime since I’ve nut-picked the comments at Politico, but these are hard to pass up (from the blog piece on Rand I mentioned in the last article):
I’d thought I’d never go along with that kind of thinking. I thought everything should be open to all. I prided myself, only for myself, in doing and voting in such a way as to figure everyone was equal. Now though, I see radical Communists in the White House, I see Presidential friends that tried to blow up the Pentagonand kill cops, I see union goons beating up an elderly black man because they didn’t like his politics, I see a political party that not only supports infanticide,but in addition, supports underage illegal alien teen brothels and a movie director raping a 13 year old, and I begin to think, there sure are a lot of groups I’d hate to hire or hate to live by if I could help it
I do have a question though. Race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Obama’s own Reverend Wright preach a gospel of hatred for the white race. If so many of their flock feel that way, why are they always trying to move into all white neighborhoods?
You liberal clowns are despicable. Obama’s America will look like the Kenyan shanty town where his brother lives if he is not stopped from instituting his radical marxist agenda.
Rand Paul probably isn’t a racist—his reasons for opposing the Civil Rights act are likely intellectual, if misguided. But make no mistake: his position has a lot of appeal to people who are racists.
Government regulates – and, of course, provides the necessary conditions for the existence of – private business in all kinds of ways. So when people have a particular concern about, say, the Civil Rights Act, as opposed to, say, parking requirements, it’s reasonable to wonder why.
Here's the problem with Rand Paul's statements over the Civil Rights Act. If he were truly a pure libertarian, they'd be defensible theoretical views, as you point out. But, as Time magazine notes:
Paul has lately said he would not leave abortion to the states, he doesn't believe in legalizing drugs like marijuana and cocaine, he'd support federal drug laws, he'd vote to support Kentucky's coal interests and he'd be tough on national security.
Paul is willing to bend the issue of pure personal freedom for drug laws, abortion, and even coal subsidies ... but he thinks telling a restaurant it cannot discriminate is a bridge too far? I still don't think he's racist, but what he chooses to be ideologically pure about certainly raises my eyebrow.
Tea party favorite Rand Paulhas rocketed to the lead ahead of Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary here on a resolute pledge to balance the federal budget and slash the size of government. But on Thursday evening, the ophthalmologist from Bowling Green said there was one thing he would not cut: Medicare physician payments. In fact, Paul — who says 50% of his patients are on Medicare — wants to end cuts to physician payments under a program now in place called the sustained growth rate, or SGR. “Physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living,” he told a gathering of neighbors in the back yard of Chris and Linda Wakild, just behind the 10th hole of a golf course. ...
He also said he plans to continue practicing ophthalmology if elected.
Williams, a frequent Fox News contributor, wrote on his site:
The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god (repeat: "the terrorists' monkey-god." if you feel that fits a description of Allah then that is your own deep-seated emotional baggage not mine, talk to the terrorists who use Allah as their excuse and the Muslims who apologize for and rationalize them) and a "cultural center" to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult. It is a project of American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, essentially the same group of apologists (but under 2 different names) for terrorists and the animals who use it as a terrorist ideology. They cloak their evil with new age gibberish that suggests Islam is just misunderstood.
Yay! And he's like a bigwig in the Tea Party movement, which, as we know, is NOT AT ALL RACIST OR CRAZY. We are required to believe that, because they told us so.
It doesn't have anything to do with the Tea Party Express and the issues addressed by the tea party movement, and was written on Mr. William's personal blog, and not on any Tea Party Express website, blog or social networking page.
Ah yes, the old "The chairman of our Politics & Anger & Soiled Depends Club said something pretty offensive, publicly, but not on our club's letterhead, so it doesn't count" maneuver. It's like when the Freemasons were all "Oh no, Andrew Jackson didn't call that guy a quadroon in our official pamphlet, so it's fine."
Pleasantly enough Williams went on a rant about that Muslim Miss USA lady, Rima Fakih, on the same blog post. It is also NOT AT ALL CRAZY. It is mostly just a beautiful even-handed sentiment that the Teabaggers should be deeply proud of:
Meet the new Miss Muslim USA Rima Fakih. In the photo above she is a participant in a stripping contest held by a Detroit T & A radio show. Last night she won the nod for Miss. USA when Miss. Oklahoma dared answer a question from a judge about illegal aliens with a response that suggested immigration law be enforced while safeguards against racial profiling are also enforced. At that point pageant political correctness went into full gear and Fakih was declared the winner.
Note to the freaks and mental cases who dominate Islam: See what you're missing when you peal off the burka there fellas? Maybe you wouldn't have to spend so much effort Michael Jacksoning the little boys in your terror camps if you took a look at the chicks for a change.
In the meantime I have a wonderful idea along the same lines as that mosque at Ground Zero thing… a nice, shiny new U.S. Military Base on the smoldering ruins of Mecca. Works for me!
Turn that cube in the middle they got there into a McDonald's! Gooooooo Tea!
Here’s a little thought experiment: Imagine that Mexican Constitution made explosives legal, that Mexico had thousands of shops in border towns selling hand grenades, and that shit was blowing up everywhere here. Then imagine that Obama addressed the Mexican Congress and said the following:
And with all due respect, if you do not regulate the sale of these weapons in the right way, nothing guarantees that criminals here in the Mexico, with access to the same powerful weapons, will not decide to challenge Mexican authority and civilians.
My guess is that Cornyn and Kyl would be yelling treason, while McCain would be commandeering the Arizona National Guard as part of his invasion plan.
Those mild words (with references to the US, not Mexico) are what Felipe Calderon said yesterday in Congress. He’s concerned because the current violence in Mexico is armed in part from the 7,000 stores selling assault weapons on the US/Mexico border. Fewer than half of the Republicans in Congress bothered to show up, and here’s Cornyn:
“I have great respect for President Calderon, but he really shouldn’t turn this into an opportunity to tell us we should change our laws,” Cornyn said. He said that the Second Amendment, which gives Americans the right to bear arms, wasn’t a subject for diplomatic discussions.
I wonder what would happen if half of the Republicans missed one of Bibi Netanyahu’s joint addresses to Congress, and if the ones who did attend told him to STFU.
Recently, healthcare and oil industry lobbyist Newt Gingrich published a book, To Save America, which argues repeatedly that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are a “secular-socialist machine” that “represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.” But in 2005, during an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes, host Sean Hannity asked Gingrich what he thought about MoveOn.org and Democrats supposedly “comparing George Bush to Adolf Hitler.” Gingrich replied, “maybe they’re becoming the unhinged party.” Today during a press conference in the Capitol Hill visitor center, ThinkProgress asked if Gingrich’s standard for being “unhinged” applied to his own frequent comparisons of Obama to Nazi Germany:
TP: In your new book, you argue that Obama and liberals quote “represent as great of a threat to America as Nazi Germany”–
GINGRICH: Not here, but I’m happy to talk about that–
TP: Just really quickly though, but during the Bush years, you said people who make Bush-Nazi comparisons were quote “unhinged.” By your own definition, are you unhinged?
GINGRICH: No. Nice try.
Watch it:
While Gingrich sees nothing absurd or hypocritical about his comparison between the Obama administration and Nazi Germany, he is facing increasing criticism for his assertion. This morning, conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough ripped Gingrich’s Nazi-Obama comparison as “sick” and “pure wingnuttery.” Yesterday, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) called on the GOP to condemn Gingrich’s new book for his “dangerous anaology” between Obama and Nazi Germany. “Gingrich’s linkage not only diminishes the horror of the Holocaust, it also licenses the use of extremist language in contemporary America,” remarked David Harris, executive director of the AJC.
Fact-checking can be a good business strategy (Greg Sargent):
Has anyone else noticed that the Associated Press has been doing some strong fact-checking work lately, aggressively debunking all kinds of nonsense, in an authoritative way, without any of the usual he-said-she-said crap that often mars political reporting?
I asked AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier about this, and he told me something fascinating, if not all together unexpected: Their fact-checking efforts are almost uniformly the most clicked and most linked pieces they produce.
Journalistic fact-checking with authority, it turns out, is popular. Who woulda thunk it?
I’ve heard various theories about David Gregory’s refusal to allow fact-checking on “Meet the Press”, but none of them make sense to me.
It’s longer than the Constitution, and Conor Friedersdorf is already arguing with Matt Yglesias about Megan McArdle’s take on it, but, nevertheless, this report from the belly of the media beast (Philadelphia Daily News, Wall Street Journal, Jezebel) is a must read:
So I wrote what I know, or rather what I’ve learned, which could be summed up this way: when the Internet forced journalism to compete economically after years of monopoly, journalism panicked and adopted some of the worst examples of the nothing-based economy, in which success depends on the continued infantilization of both supply and demand. At the same time, journalism clung to its myths of objectivity and detachment, using them to dismiss the emerging blogger threat as something unserious and fundamentally parasitic, even as it produced a steady stream of obsessive but sneering trend stories on the blogosphere.
It’s not an anti-media screed, it treats not only the arrogance of established media and silliness of some new media, but also the genuine bad-assedness of being a real reporter.
Rolling Stone should hire Maureen Tkacik, she’d be a great complement to Matt Taibbi.
I'm just some guy who reads blogs that privilege correct information over incorrect information. Consider this a better-blog clipping service of my favorite stories.
” above what appears to be a historical photo of the lynching of a black man.
