Saturday, November 6, 2010

Maddow Responds To Olbermann Suspension



"I know everyone likes to say, "Oh, cable news, it's all the same. Fox and MSNBC -- mirror images of each other. But if you look at the long history of Fox hosts not just giving money to candidates, but actively endorsing campaigns and raising millions of dollars for politicians and political parties -- whether it's Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Mike Huckabee -- and you'll see that we can lay that old false equivalency to rest forever...
...Their network is run as a political operation. Ours isn't. Yeah, Keith's a liberal, and so am I. But we're not a political operation -- Fox is. We're a news operation. The rules around here are part of how you know that.
...Now, weirdly, it is Keith who is once again illustrating the difference between what he does at MSNBC -- what we do here -- and what goes on across the street."

Must Reads



Chez Pazienza: Why We (Don't) Suck

Tim Dickinson: The Case for Obama

Jay Rosen: “I’m committed to the destruction of the old media guard.” ABC News and Andrew Breitbart

Nicholas Kristof: Mr. Obama, It's Time For Some Poetry

Gerald E. Scrose: Responding to a Rich American Who Says: "I Can Afford Higher Taxes. But They’ll Make Me Work Less.”

Senator Bernie Sanders: MSNBC's Disgrace

William Saletan: Pelosi's Triumph - Democrats didn't lose the battle of 2010. They won it.

JHW22 recommends...
Mark Morford: Letter to a Whiny Young Democrat

President Obama's Weekly Address - November 6, 2010

Priorities on Taxes

Friday, November 5, 2010

MSNBC Suspends Olbermann

Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely from MSNBC for making campaign contributions to three Democrats.

...Keith Olbermann:
"One week ago, on the night of Thursday October 28 2010, after a discussion with a friend about the state of politics in Arizona, I donated $2,400 each to the reelection campaigns of Democratic Representatives Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. I also donated the same amount to the campaign of Democratic Senatorial candidate Jack Conway in Kentucky." Olbermann went on to say he "did not privately or publicly encourage anyone else to donate to these campaigns, nor to any others in this election or any previous ones, nor have I previously donated to any political campaign at any level."
What is happening to the democratic process in our country when an individual is denied participation via legal campaign donations because of a horrible ethics policy rule? There's something horribly wrong when one cannot participate in or financially support the candidate(s) of their choice, but it's fine for corporations to donate unlimited funds to candidates and political parties in an anonymous way.

NBC should reconsider an ethics policy that infringes on an individual's constitutional rights.

UPDATE (6:05pm): According to a Huffington Post article, "[w]hile NBC News policy does not prohibit employees from donating to political candidates, it requires them to obtain prior approval from NBC News executives before doing so." The more I read into it, it seems to be personal between the NBC exec Phil Griffin, and Olbermann. It's a "my dick is bigger than your dick" issue, hence the suspension.

But the bigger issue still remains. Corporate rules are currently in place thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that make available unlimited funds to 501(c)(4)s in support of a specific campaign by corporate donors who can remain anonymous, but those same corporations can have ethics policies in place for their employees against making campaign contributions as an individual private citizen, or at least in the case of NBC, needing permission from the executives first, who really have no business knowing who you vote for or your political affiliation.  It's just not right. I'd begrudgingly say the same if it happened to Bill O'Reilly.

The Right Wing Echo Chamber

On the heels of Jennifer's post about the crazy story that President Obama's trip to India is going to cost $200 million a day, comes Rachel Maddow's take on the story and explains how, for Right Wing World, it goes from crazy internet rumor to undeniable fact, especially on Fox News.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

When Republicans Fail at Math and Logic

POSTED BY JHW22

President Obama is about to travel to India, Indonesia and South Korea. He begins with talking to business leaders in Mumbai, Indonesia, the G20 Summit in Seoul and Japan. And according to some top secret Indian government insider who discussed Obama's upcoming stay in Mumbai with an Indian paper,

The US would be spending a whopping $200 million (Rs. 900 crore approx) per day on President Barack Obama's visit to the city[Mumbai].
A WHOPPING $200 million PER DAY!?!?!?! And the article says that "3,000" people are traveling with Obama. And no, despite all common sense alarms that should be going off in your head, those alarms didn't go off for Drudge or Limbaugh or Michele Bachmann or the hordes of right-wing dumbasses who either believe it or are hoping their followers won't have any common sense alarms going off. And of course, no right-wing conspiracy is complete without a chain email.

A reporter for The World Net Daily insisted to Robert Gibbs in the daily White House briefing that because he's read the $200 million figure in many places, it MUST be true. He's one of those people who doesn't think to himself, "If I read something written exactly the same, word for word, in multiple places, it's still ONE story copied and pasted from ONE source".

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Michele Bachmann appears to not be aware that the President is also traveling to the G20 Summit and suggested the President should just do a teleconference. And because she is either woefully uninformed or deceptively manipulative, she focuses, instead, on the made-up figures and changes from "3,000" people to "2,000" people and from the article's claim of the White House booking 500 rooms at a hotel to them booking 870 rooms even though the hotel only has 560 rooms. But perhaps that's because the same Indian news site printed yet another article that states:
Around 800 rooms have been booked for the President and his entourage in Taj Hotel and Hyatt.
Stuff like this is what worries me about the fact that any naive, ignorant person can be elected to Congress. First, all Presidents travel. For the same reason Americans hate emails and conference calls: it's better to meet face to face. And if we want to consider our country a leader in the economy then we better meet with other countries to secure our foreign interests. Our economy and security are directly related to how well we play with others. In order to play with others we must have play dates and that often means going to someone else's house. We don't make friends staying in our own sandbox -- any stay at home mom will tell you that.

Apparently, Ms. Bachmann has no clue how many people attend one of these G20 conferences, which is where his larger posse will join him. Does it not occur to her that if "3,000" people (unsubstantiated figure) travel with the American President, that perhaps "3,000" people are traveling with the other world leaders? Can you just imagine "thousands" of world leaders and staffers all hovering over a speaker phone or leaning in to the picture on a teleconference -- and how many picture-in-picture windows would be needed? Well, I guess 20 windows would be needed since it's the G20. But then again, I think even non-G20 guests are invited but you get my point.

Hell, Korea is BUILDING ISLANDS for the Summit! Picture in Contact where they created an entirely secret place for the second secret machine. This is a big deal. The President doesn't set up a damn conference call.

But then again, she isn't really thinking about the ten day trip. She's thinking about sensationalism.

And really, why doesn't it bother a member of the United States Congress that a foreign news site is giving out detailed accounting of our President's security while traveling in an area recently attacked by terrorists?

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show said:
No president has ever anywhere close to 40 airplanes, 3,000 people, 500 rooms in one hotel. And that's just one hotel, for a ten-day trip, $200 million a day.
The claim that the entire hotel was reserved has been debunked by Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal, but even he doesn't state how he knows this. Even FactCheck.org and snopes.com have already debunked this entire thing.

According to Obama's itinerary, he will only be in the lavish Mumbai hotel, for one night. ONE NIGHT. And it is relevant that he is staying at that particular hotel because it was the site of terrorists attacks. We all watched on TV as this very hotel was under siege for days. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Obama:
...will take the opportunity to address a small group of individuals who were in one way or another marked by the attack, the officials say, noting that the president will be staying at the “centerpiece” of a four-day terrorist operation.
What IS unclear, is how many people are traveling with the President and how many are paying their own way, i.e. press and business people. The White House likely reserved the hotel as a block hold, leaving people to pay their own way. I am also guessing they got one hell of a group rate. But let's look at this: the Taj Mahal Palace charges 170,000INR a night for its top-notch suite. Not all rooms are that expensive, but for fun we can multiply that times 560 rooms and we get just over $2 million dollars. So one night of an entire 5-star hotel is around a million dollars when you adjust for the cheaper rooms IF they actually did book the entire hotel. So that leaves us with $199 million of the daily expense. What on earth could cost the $199 million the Indian Deep Throat claims the one night and two day in Mumbai will cost?

But what about that "3,000" people entourage? Aside from that being an absurd number, my guess is that the Indian Deep Throat is conflating separate legs of Obama's trip. There is no need for Obama to travel with more than a dozen, or so, aides, advisers, doctors, etc. (not including Secret Service) in India. However, he WILL need quite a few more to join him in Seoul for the G20 summit. The summit consists of days of meetings on global economy, business, finance. President Obama reportedly took 500 people to the G20 Summit in the UK. But then again, I have no clue how accurate that report is. Or how accurate this report is of Bush's trip to Sydney that included 700 people. But considering two different news sites reported similar figures in regards to two separate presidents in two separate years, I am guessing that this is a more accurate number than the "3,000" that came out of no where and is only supported by others who link to the same original source.

Another thing this monstrously high phantom figure of $200 million per day COULD include, though it shouldn't, are the costs that a nation covers associated with a head of state visit. How much of that figure includes India's expenses they cover when a foreign dignitary visits? Any security, beautification, staffing, the events that he will be speaking at, etc. MAY be lumped in this ginormous dollar figure, but that is not American tax payer dollars IF it so exists.

When I said, up top, that all Presidents travel, it's just a simple, verifiable fact. In 2000, several Senate Republicans requested to see the DOD costs of Clinton's international travel between the years of 1997 and 2000. The report presented shows that in that time span Clinton made 27 international trips. According to a separate report requested and presented a year earlier by the GAO, the cost of three of Clinton's trips in 1998:
The estimated costs of the President's trips to Africa, Chile, and China were at least $42.8 million, $10.5 million, and $18.8 million, respectively.
Granted, that was 12 years ago, but logic tells most people that a trip that cost a total of $42.8 million would not now cost 5X that amount -- PER DAY. Logic. Simple logic.

Interestingly, I did not find any reports requested by Congress to clarify the expenses associated with Bush's travel for international business -- they did, however question his request to raise his travel budget so he could fundraise for Republicans. But all Presidents do that, too. And that's a separate issue.

Now, aside from all the unfounded and bizarrely accepted claims, many take issue with the President leaving at all. Some think, "How can Obama go NOW of all times"? Well, let me remind those people that we are technically no longer in a recession because our GDP has been growing each quarter since the middle of last year. Also, since Obama's policies and budget have been in place, our deficit has DEcreased and our stock market has increased. Now, about those jobs... perhaps if we were building something we could sell, other countries would buy from us. Things like cars and wind turbines -- you know, the things Obama has spent the last two years ensuring that this country builds.

But back to the "not the time" argument let's put things in perspective: in November of 2008, post-election, then-President Bush traveled to Peru for the APEC Summit. We lost 240,000 jobs the previous month and went on to lose 533,000 jobs that month -- the largest monthly job loss to that point since 1974. Heck, he was only going to be the President for two more months. Did he really need to travel? What good was he going to accomplish?

Hell, so much happened on that trip you may as well read the pre-trip briefing and the summaries of the eventful, and highly relevant trip because I can't write a proper summary, and if that doesn't justify expensive travel during a recession, while hemorrhaging jobs, I don't know what does. Since we are better off now than we were then, then why can't this President travel on a highly relevant trip? President Obama's schedule covers so many topics it's best that you just read one of the many press briefings regarding the trip, too. But essentially, it's a big deal trip. Bush made a similar trip in 2005 and it was a pretty big deal as well.

I think part of what is ridiculous about this whole drama is that I have linked to several pieces of valuable and thorough information with deep insight into foreign relations and the world economy and an American President's effect on these issues. And yet, the right-wing wants to focus on a made-up, unsupported piece of absurdity that comes from an anonymous source who would have no idea how much money will be spent by our government. I hate to say this, but I actually agree with Sarah Palin on something:
I don't read some of it because I know that those that are impotent and limp and gutless, and then they go on, their anonymous, their sources that are anonymous, and impotent, limp and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references. You know, it just slays me because it's so absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today that they would take these anonymous sources as fact. So, when a story especially is filled with those and we know it's bogus and we're not going to read it.

But what irks me the most is that Diane Rehme now has to ask her guests to clarify the reality in an interview on her show. And White House correspondents like Mark Knoller are Tweeting about the drama. And now the issue is becoming that the stinking White House hasn't released actual figures due to security concerns. Well, I'd say the first person to answer to anything should be the reporter from the Indian newspaper who quoted an anonymous source. That reporter should have confirmed with the White House before printing the article. After all, wouldn't the White House know better than some fella who works for India's government? And the second person who should be held accountable is Mr. Indian Deep Throat.

What disgusts me most is that all of this hullabaloo even exists today because of right-wing media and the people who take it as gospel. Ridiculous and shameful. And those people voted on Tuesday.

Cartoon of the Day

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

About Last Night...

Before last night's election, all the polls showed that Republican members of Congress had a lower approval rating than Democratic members. Polls showed that more people trusted President Obama to handle the economy better than Republicans. But due to the frustratingly stagnant economy and desperate people with no jobs, when asked who they were leaning towards on Election Day, they would inevitably say the Republicans. That's called cognitive dissonance. But voting against your best interests is nothing new.

And I'm not going to try to sugarcoat the election by saying it wasn't huge for the GOP, even though some of my colleagues may disagree. Before last night the Democrats controlled 255 House seats, the GOP 178. Starting January 20th, currently the Republicans are at 239 seats to 185 for the Democrats and counting. Losing seats is a dent. Losing the majority by 5-10 seats hurts. Losing by 56 and counting is big.

Now, do I believe the current spin that the results last night are due to President Obama's policies? Absolutely not. This is about Americans being fickle bitches and expecting an economic freefall to stop on a dime. This is about not having the patience or not having the comprehension to understand what it takes to turn the tide. After eight years of mismanagement, some say even 30 years of Reaganomics, how is it even fathomable to think it can all be changed in 21 months?  So of course, the political party of the president in power is going to pay in the midterm elections. It's happened before (FDR, Truman, Reagan, Clinton) and it'll happen again.

So should've priorities shifted to economic growth and job creation? Perhaps, although a bigger stimulus was rejected by the GOP and weakened by the insistence of including tax cuts. But because we haven't completely crawled out of the biggest recession since the Great Depression, that's not to say that health care reform, credit card reform, financial reform, fair pay acts, the stimulus (a third of which were tax cuts) and a myriad of other policies enacted by the Obama administration hasn't helped American citizens.

As the President said today, you have to separate the policies that were enacted from the emergency spending that was necessary to stop economic collapse. Had they not bailed out the auto industry another million jobs could have been lost.  Had they not continued the TARP policies of the Bush administration (and tweaked them to make the banks accountable while returning a profit) the bank collapse could have led to a global financial meltdown. Had they not passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it's possible we'd be another couple of million jobs in the hole.

So while it was a tough loss yesterday, let's keep things in perspective. Democrats still run The White House and the Senate, and with everything needing 60 votes to proceed in that chamber, we're basically in the same shape we were before. Chances are that just like the Senate is sitting on 400 pieces of legislation because of the Republican filibuster gridlock these last two years, things will now slow down in the House as well.

So okay, Republicans. Show us what you've got. You can't be the Party of No anymore and hide in the shadows. You're out in front now. And here comes the hard part. You're going to have to work now instead of sitting back with arms folded and holding your breath because it wasn't advantageous to your party. Time to work. Alas, time to actually read some bills instead of tossing them around as stage props. Boy, so many pages!

Here We Go Again

Posted by JHW22

So, um, yes the Republicans won a lot of races. Yes, they did. So now THE talking point is that the American people rejected Obama's policies. But, um, Dems won a lot of races, too. So the idea that "the voters" spoke only one thing yesterday is just another example of how our media sets the dialogue and rewrites history with each tap on the keyboard. "The voters" said a lot of things. They said hell no to some seriously bad candidates and hell yes to a lot of good candidates. It was a mixed bag. The message should be that.

Hey, Y'all, Texas Wasn't A Referendum

POSTED BY JHW22

An interesting tidbit:

Bill White (D-TX) won Texas moderates OVERWHELMINGLY.

Also, 11% of Texans who voted for Obama in 2008 voted for Rick Perry this year. However, 10% of Texans who voted for McCain voted for White this year.

That says that the Texas races had NOTHING to do with Obama despite Republican's attempt to make it so.

You're in Timeout!

POSTED BY JHW22

This election is essentially a tantrum for some. People didn't respect the will of the people in 2008 (and that includes Dems who forgot Obama's agenda or freaked that he didn't meet it soon enough) and have wanted to complain for two years without actually doing any work. And tonight that bad behavior was rewarded.

At the same time, this wasn't the tsunami people predicted. We held some great members of Congress and got some gubernatorial wins. So the referendum argument doesn't really hold water.

But if some want to take the Republican wins with pride, that's fine, but remember that your wins come out of hate and rejection. When we voted in 2008, our wins came out of hope and progress.

We still have the White House and we still have the Senate. And we have enough in the House to stay in the game -- because keep in mind, MANY of the policies passed this year were the same policies that Republicans supported before they decided to say no to everything. So when they write bills that Dems agree with, we'll support them. We won't say no to policies we agreed with yesterday simply because we have fewer members today. But we will say no when policies would be bad for America -- and we will have the facts to support our stance.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Sick of Memes? How about the "Obama doesn't tout his accomplishements blah blah blah" meme?

POSTED BY JHW22

By request, here is a comment I left on Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog. It was in response to the "Obama doesn't talk about his accomplishments" and the "they need to repeat it over and over" memes. Why pretend to rewrite it as a post when it's perfect as I wrote it? ;) I am thinking David Corn needs to read it.

(Okay, fine, I corrected a few errors)

A) The administration and Congress HAVE talked about their accomplishments -- every day! How do people think their message is supposed to get out, however, when the media cuts away from a town hall rally? When they don't air the WH daily press briefing? When they book more analysts than actual representatives for their on-air BS sessions?
www.whitehouse.gov posts information every day that shows the work they are doing: but how many Americans go there? Are we so lazy that we only want information to come to us? And then we criticize the administration when the media doesn't do that job well? Obama doesn't run the networks so this argument that they haven't touted their accomplishments enough should be aimed at the media who doesn't bother to reflect that they ARE touting their accomplishments.
B) The administration is forced, by the American media and people, to buffer all good news. They can't talk about job creation being up, the GDP being up, the deficit going down, etc. without having to say "but it's not good enough". If they don't preface and disclaim with that statement, they are "out of touch". But each time they buffer good news, people hear the "but" and not the good.
C) Rachel Maddow has done a rundown of the accomplishments at least twice before last night. I recall her doing it once a month or every six weeks or so. And that proves my point. Rachel is supportive of the accomplishments and she does a kick-ass job of presenting them. But even she doesn't "repeat" it often enough. That is not anything the administration can control, is it? Why don't WE tell the people we watch to do a better job?
We are so willing to bitch and moan about the administration but we forget that the media consistently drops the ball. And what do we do about that? Nada. We boycott them when they hire asshats. But we don't remind them that the administration's message needs to be discussed at least once a day.

Party of Fuck No!

POSTED BY JHW22

Jimmy Williams, a lobbyist and a hilarious analyst who has worked for Durbin and Biden was a killer guest on Dylan Ratigan's show today. He was smart and funny and gave me my favorite perspective on a POTENTIAL loss tonight. He said (and I am paraphrasing here):


You can't land a punch if you don't have something to swing at so if the House goes Republican we will finally have a target.

IF the House falls into Republican hands and John "Orange Ya Glad I Didn't Say Banana" Boehner becomes Speaker, then WE have a target (and of course I mean a rhetorical target and not a some sort of gun sight target). For the last two years we have been on offense and defense. We have had to create policy while fending off the nuisances yapping at our feet. But if the House is run by Republican'ts they will actually have to DO SOMETHING. They will have to craft legislation and bring it the floor. And when they do, we will become the party of "FUCK NO!" The difference between their no and our no will be that ours stays consistent with the policies we have supported for the last 2, 4, 6 years. They said no to their own ideas. We will say no to their ideas without having to compromise our principles.

Now, I would much rather the House and Senate stay in Democratic hands and I have hope, but if we lose something tonight, let's make sure we force it to work in our favor.

Former NY Gov Pataki Endorses... PALADINO!

Looks like political party is thicker than water.

Former New York Governor George Pataki has endorsed Tea Party nutjob Carl Paladino at the last minute. Seems odd when only two months ago, Paladino called Pataki a "degenerate idiot."

The consensus is that being the political opportunist he is, Pataki may be hitching his wagon to the Tea Party candidate so that they'll remember him when it comes to a future 2012 run for the presidential nomination.  But really, with little to no chance Paladino will win today, all Pataki's showing us is that he has no pride, no shame, and will do anything to advance his political aspirations, including endorsing a porn emailing, press threateninggay bashing, racist clown.

Election Day




Vote early and often.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Tweet of the Day



Via GottaLaff:

John Boehner has been invoking Johnny Cash on the stump lately as a figure of American nostalgia:
Remember when Ronald Reagan was president? We had Bob Hope. We had Johnny Cash. Think about where we are today. We have got President Obama. But we have no hope and we have no cash.

What the Stewart Rally Meant to Me

It's taken me a couple of days to digest the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally To Restore Sanity at the National Mall in Washington DC. I've had to mull it over to figure out what it means to me because I think that the message was a little different for everyone. Here's Stewart's speech at the end of the rally:



No, I don't completely buy into the "both sides are the same" meme only because one side deals with content and facts and one side deals with hyperbole and untruths. But that doesn't mean that Stewart isn't correct in saying the screechiness on both sides can be equal. And from what I can tell, most of the participants in the over the top rhetoric were the ones most offended.

While I still think it's incorrect in trying to force the notion that there's equivalency from both sides, because the right wing noise machine is much louder, much bigger and therefore more far reaching in it's message. But it doesn't help the liberal side to participate in the teabagger, wingnut, crazy name calling. I know it's hard, but we can rebut and debate without ad hominem attacks. It only weakens our message because people who need the message most get caught up in Keith Olbermann or Ed Schultz calling someone a "right wing nutjob" rather than the content of why they are categorizing that person as such. The content can be all the more effective without clouding it in name calling.

We all do it. I do it on my blog, the right does it, the left does it, hell Stewart even included clips of himself in the video montage the preceded his speech. That doesn't mean that he thinks he's full of shit. He deals in truths and common sense through satire and comedy, but even he will admit that having a Gospel choir sing "Go Fuck Yourself" is exactly the type of "both sides" meme he's talking about.

But he's not completely wrong about new organizations or opinion shows posing as news organizations (I'm looking at Fox New Channel in particular) going too far. We love the red meat. But if you follow politics when there are no upcoming elections, if you read the political blogs daily or watch the political cable shows daily, you are a political junky. You know what's going on. Unfortunately, most people don't. Most people in America can't name the Speaker of the House. And due to the name calling, those are the people who are quicker to dismiss the content of the message because they've already tuned out - the hyperbole turned them off before you had a chance to grab their attention.

So while I didn't completely agree with Stewart, I felt I got what he was trying to say. And I think that the ultimate message Stewart was trying to put across was not that both sides are equal in content, but that they can both be over the top in negative rhetoric. That's what I got out of it anyway.

The mere fact that liberals like TomTomorrow would tweet, "Like Digby says, right wing isn't going to listen to any of this. So basically DFH's just got told to STFU" just gives more credence to what Stewart was saying in the first place. No, he wasn't calling you a dirty fucking hippie and wasn't telling liberals to shut the fuck up, but because everyone is so on edge, TomTomorrow and Digby and Keith Olbermann didn't get the message I got.

It's like when you were in school and the teacher berated the entire class for totally bombing on a midterm exam. Then you get your test back and you got a B+ or an A and you have to step back and think, "Oh, he wasn't talking to me. I get it." You have to separate yourself in an objective manner and not take things so personally. Those that were offended by Stewart didn't seem to be able to do that.

Yes, I'll still watch Olbermann because he still gives me pertinent information even though it may be in a bombastic way. And that's why I watch him and Rachel Maddow, because I can rely on their information. It's based it fact, not fantasy or fear. And since I'm not a vegetarian, the red meat makes me feel like I'm not crazy.

I'll still read Digby's blog and TomTomorrow's tweets because they still have interesting things to say. Just because I don't agree with what people say 100% of the time doesn't mean I'll write them off. It's the same with Glenn Greenwald, for example. In my eyes, sometimes he's just an Obama contrarian but that doesn't mean I disagree with everything he has to say. It's called "opinion." I just have to separate that out.

By the way, I watched MSNBC on and off for a few hours today and didn't hear one mention of the rally. An estimated 215,000 showed up for the rally, outdrawing Beck's rally of 87,000. But we'll cover the Beck rally for a week.  Stewart's? No so much.  So much for equivalence, huh?

Sunday, October 31, 2010

S#*! Sarah Palin Says (Corrupt Bastards Edition) - UPDATED

I'll leave the reporting of this one to TPM on the full story of how Andrew "Zero Credibility" Breitbart once again takes an edited, out of context audio clip to successfully make non-thinkers believe an Alaskan CBS news affiliate is in some kind of conspiracy to take down Joe Miller in a scandal.

But as far as Sarah Palin and her shooting from the hip tweets is concerned , 1- she either falls for the Breitbart bullshit hook, line and sinker or 2 - just decides to be her usual dishonest self and take advantage of it to gin up the crazy base.



Oh yes, Sarah, there's been a conspiracy against you from the very beginning, huh?  No reason to look into your background considering you were running for the second highest office in the land and had multiple ethics complaints against you and your half term administration. Why would anyone want to bother wanting to know who you were?

And would there be any doubt that if another political celebrity in the opposition party used the phrase, or Facebooked or tweeted "corrupt bastards," they would shoot up to the top of the GOP/Fox News list as Villain No. 1?

One more thing, Sarah.  The next time you think it would be cute to substitute a name for an acronym like "CBS," make sure you actually use the letters.  C.B.S. does not equal "Corrupt Bastards Club." ...Idiot.

ADDING... Fox News has not been able to confirm Palin's claim.
This afternoon, Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron aired a portion of a tape that Andrew Breitbart has posted and which Breitbart claims is a recording of a voicemail that reporters at Alaska's KTVA left with an aide to Miller's campaign. Cameron reported that Fox News "cannot verify" what Palin claimed. Cameron also said, "We have not been able to confirm it, nor have we been able to listen to the entirety of the message before the conversation that wasn't supposed to be recorded." Cameron further reported that Fox News was "not exactly sure what the authenticity of this is."

UPDATE (11/1/10 10:50am): Looks like Palin's assault on journalism continues as she responds to a Politico story about the possibility of the GOP going after the Mama Grizzly to discredit her to derail her 2012 bid, if there is one.
Politico, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, they're jokes. This is a joke to have unnamed sources tearing somebody apart limb by limb," Palin told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren Sunday. "If they would man up and if they would, you know, make these claims against me then I can debate them, I can talk about it, but to me they're making stuff up again."
So she'll berate Politico and call it "yellow journalism," but take Breitbart's word for it with his endless bullshit stories? Weak.

 
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