They Were Just Kidding

Dana Milbank really surprised me with his latest column. He's not one I'd expect to indulge in schadenfreude, yet the snark in the column is filled with just that as he analyses the sudden postural shift of the "small government" Southern politicians facing the Gulf oil spill and what it means to their states and their citizens.

What is so wonderful about the column is Mr. Milbank's recitation of some facts about the states these small government bozos represent:

An analysis of data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation by Washington Post database specialist Dan Keating found that people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending. In states that voted strongly Republican, people received an average of $1.50 back from the federal government for every dollar they paid in federal taxes. In moderately Republican states, the amount was $1.19. In moderately Democratic states, people received on average of 99 cents in federal funds for each dollar they paid in taxes. In strongly Democratic states, people got back just 86 cents on the tax dollar.

If Sessions and Shelby succeed in shrinking government, their constituents in Alabama will be some of the biggest losers: They get $1.66 in federal benefits for every $1 they pay in taxes. If Louisiana's Vitter succeeds in shrinking government, his constituents will lose some of the $1.78 in federal benefits they receive for every dollar in taxes they pay. In Mississippi, it's $2.02.

That may explain why, as the oil slick hits the Gulf Coast, lawmakers from the region are willing to swallow their limited-government principles as they dangle federal aid before their constituents. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he would "make sure the federal government is poised to assist in every way necessary." His colleague Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said he is making sure "the federal government is doing all it can" -- even as he added his hope that "industry" would pay.

Those extra dollars didn't just happen, by the way. It's taken those politicians years of earmarks and pork barrel legislation to get all that money funneled to their respective states, federal money...taxpayer money.

The money that will be poured into those states over the coming months and years as a result of this man-made tragedy, however, should still be sent. That's what government is supposed to do when some of its citizens--no matter where they are located--are hit by tragedy. Even the small government bozos are having to face up to that.

Good.

And good on you, Dana Milbank.

Clinton Did It

They're still out there, making up ways to blame the disasters produced by right wing ideology on US. Yes, we fought against them, voted against, and demonstrated less often than we should have against, the Eat the Poor policies that now your wingers want to blame on us.

From my comments on the post about abstinence-only education increasing pregnancies and disease;

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This old fake fact seems to work it's way around the web over and over. It's interesting that no one ever sites data sources unless it comes from Planned Parenthood which itself does not site any scientific facts either. And let us stop blaming Bush, the Abstinence only Sex Ed was a Clinton era program that also ran through the Bush administrations time. They did not start it Clinton did
2:34 PM
Blogger Ruth said...

SAdly it had to be the kids that took the brunt of the research conducted by the wingnuts, as shown in Dallas not long ago, and now nationally. We don't need to show the birth certificate in this one.
2:50 PM
Blogger Ruth said...

sorry, forgot to put in the info;
'Abstinence-only policies go back to the early years of Ronald Reagan and intensified while Bill Clinton was in office, when Republicans slipped a provision into welfare reform legislation. Bush began his crusade from the mid-Nineties when he was governor of Texas.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/02/usa.joannawalters
2:55 PM

They're still out there, trying to keep the public interest from being represented, then blaming us when they defeat what would be best for everyone, including themselves.

Those of you who work, visit or live with the crazies know, the arguments are put out to right wing groups, and disaster results while the wingers keep on insisting that if only you give them their way everything will be ideal. The proof that they have procided that this just is totally wrong does not work on the crazies. Newest mantra, the H1N1 virus is made of baby juices and something from monkeys.

The only way to counter craziness is treatment. As you have heard from me if you've read these posts for awhile, treatment isn't always effective to do more than drive the crazies into hiding what they really think, as a close family member of mine shows me often. Those freeper posts and commenters, and callers to CSpan who inform sometimes educated and informed hosts that the Jews are running the country and hold secret ceremonies which include xtian blood, that the president was born in Kenya, that the Secretary of State is in a lesbian collusion against straight education and besides, President Clinton is responsible for 911 and the economy tanking - it goes on and on - are real and they walk among us.

The only way I know to counter them is to repeat, and publish, facts. By doing that here, I hope that I've helped you and thinking intelligent life forms somewhat. I will be posted on future afternoons, on Saturdays and Sundays, at http://seminal.firedoglake.com/ where I hope that you will visit, as I will continue offering some help for us to perpetuate sane policies and thought.

And, yes, my glance does cause milk to spoil ... if you leave it out of the refrigerator long enough.

Abstaining From Education

That abstinence education works out really well if you are trying to keep our young people pregnant and sick. Seems that with its usual results, the wingnut community has produced another harmful program that our tax dollars are supposed to support.

As Avedon pointed out yesterday at The Sideshow, the wingers think your funds ought to be freed up to spend on their programs, that's the kind of freedoms they believe in.

For our youth who are victimized by the nutjob approach to their future, lots of damage is occurring. Dallas County has seen the results of disease on the increase from its abstinence-only policies, and corrected that practice. The country is learning the hard way, as well, and our youth are being used as the guinea pigs in demonstrating the wingnut ideology works against them.

Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.

In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

In addition, about 16,000 pregnancies were reported among 10- to 14-year-old girls in 2004 and a similar number of young people in the age group reported having a sexually transmitted disease.

"It is disheartening that after years of improvement with respect to teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, we now see signs that progress is stalling and many of these trends are going in the wrong direction," said Janet Collins, a CDC director.

The results are in, the programs of the wingnuts have failed. We can't waste lives on any further indulgence of this nonsense.

Our schools are threatened by the onslaught of those who want their way, no matter how much harm it does. These rabid ideologists do not serve our kids, they serve a warped concept of religion. They should be required to learn by reading and contemplation, not experiments on our young people.

Deadlines

One of Barack Obama's earliest moves as president was to issue a promise that the prison camp at Guantanmo Bay would be closed by January 22, 2010. People of conscience in this country and around the world breathed a sigh of relief at the news. The news since then, however, hasn't been as promising. We've just learned that neither of the two commissions studying ways to make this happen, one of which is reviewing each detainee's record, didn't meet the July 22, 2009 deadline set by the President. Furthermore, the 111th Congress has been pushing back against the camp closure, introducing bills that would forbid such a move based on highly inflammatory and outright false claims.

An editorial in today's Los Angeles Times took on the issue:

Last week, the administration announced that two task forces convened by the president -- one examining the status of the remaining 240 Guantanamo detainees, the other studying interrogation policy -- wouldn’t meet their July 22 deadline for recommendations. Delay in the federal government isn't unusual, and Obama has been multi-tasking since the day he was inaugurated. Still, dilatory decision-making on Guantanamo threatens to give new meaning to the axiom that "justice delayed is justice denied."

Unlike Bush, Obama is committed to cooperating with Capitol Hill. But Congress isn't reciprocating. This week, Senate Democratic leaders sidelined the most serious threat to Obama's policy on Guantanamo, an amendment by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) to a defense authorization bill that would have kept the facility open and prohibited the transfer of detainees to the United States. But House Democratic leaders continue to oppose providing funds for the closure that the administration is seeking.

In defending his amendment, Inhofe cited polls showing that "most Americans do not want to close Gitmo, and certainly do not want these terrorist detainees to be transferred to the United States." What he didn't say was that those apprehensions have been fed by nonsensical claims that Obama would free dangerous terrorists to run loose in the streets. In fact, prisoners not sent to other countries probably would be held in "supermax" institutions that already hold hundreds of convicted terrorists and from which no one has escaped.

President Obama has already backed down on the issue of relocating any of the prisoners to the US, no matter how innocent or how non-threatening they might be. The Uighers, who never had any ill will towards the US, were shipped thousands of miles away rather than released to the community of Uighers already in the US which was willing to take the prisoners in and to help them adjust to their freedom. Because the US won't take any prisoners in, many European countries, including our closest allies, won't even consider relocation to their soil.

If the President is really serious about closing Gitmo, he needs to get serious in its implementation. He has the bully pulpit, which he appears willing to use on other important issues like health care and the bailouts of huge corporations. He needs to use it now. He needs to speak out against the outrageous disinformation being thrown out by the Republicans . He needs to make it clear that closing Gitmo will result in greater US security, not less. He also needs to make it clear that the US will abide by national and international law with respect to the use of torture.

If he doesn't, if he allows Guantanamo Bay to remain open, then his promise, like several other promises he has defaulted on, will just be more dust in the wind.

Big, Bad Wolf Health Administrator

The bugaboo that government will stand between me and my doctor is probably the lamest argument that the wingnuts have come up with against bringing Health Care to the U.S. public. I watched Washington Journal this morning with Rep. Tom Price mightily declaring that this was greatly to be feared. A recipient of government health care, he warned about government running our health care, and even failed to correct a caller who claimed the U.S. government would kill old people to solve our economic disaster. At no point did he make any concession to the facts.

Congresspeople and government employees have an excellent health care system that is administered by the government. Social security recipients have the same. None of them have thrown off that yoke and demanded they be subject to the system that fails to care for the U.S. public at large. Only by blatantly lying do the right wing recipients of government health care insist that it will hurt the public to replace insurance interference with the care they get.

Watching the lies and misconduct that the wingers are so comfortable with has convinced most of the public that the government they are part of is not to be trusted. Several sources are claiming that President Obama is losing his standing. McClatchy newspapers, as usual, gets closer to the truth than the other media, by stating the public shows a distrust of government. I would state further that, after many years of being dunned by media that reports lies, and government officials that blithely spout them, the public has learned that much of what it hears is those lies.

As Blue Texan pointed out in her post earlier; "...no one really cares what Jim DeMint or John Boehner has to say about health care. Republicans are having absolutely zero impact on the debate."

If President Barack Obama got anything indisputably right at his news conference this week, it was this: The American people don't trust the federal government.

That's a major reason he's having such a hard time selling his plan to overhaul the nation's health care. Even if they like Obama himself, people just don't think that the government can handle anything big, let alone something as personal to them as their health care.

"I understand that people are feeling uncertain about this. They feel anxious, partly because we've just become so cynical about what government can accomplish that people's attitudes are, you know, even though I don't like this devil, at least I know it, and I like that more than the devil I don't know," the president said.

"So folks are skeptical. And that is entirely legitimate, because they haven't seen a lot of laws coming out of Washington lately that helped them."
(snip)
Several analysts think that he should try for less than a complete overhaul that would extend coverage to 50 million uninsured and create a new government health insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

A more incremental approach, they said, would allow time for the economy to recover, perhaps permit trust in government to build, and then give Obama more room to seek more.

While we all would like to see single payer, and government kicking out the insurance interference with our providers, we may have to take a less desirable product for now. The reason; a sizable proportion of the country is uninformed, and will be swayed by the lies, while much of the media will report the lies as if they were the truth. That will give our undeserving elected officials - who will get more from the lobbies if they betray the public trust - a leg to stand on for voting against us.

Some of us have been joining hands and singing "We Shall Overcome" for a long time. It's in the works. All of us have to keep working at it. Too many are taking the frustration for an insurmountable obstacle. It's an obstacle to overcome, not to adopt as an end in itself.

The only solution to this failure of our system is to keep loudly telling the factual basis for progressive policies, and to fight back against ignorance and cupidity. Here, I try to do that and appreciate your support. Thanks, for your exercise of your intelligence and your principles.

Lead Us Into Temptation

Listening to the constant lying from the right wing makes a lot of us libruls - that get that Colbertian bias of the facts - pretty baffled. The congress these days is an object lesson in fiction as the wingnuts fight against the public interest. Existing U.S. health care, that 85% of the public wants restructured, can't be justified by any means but lying.

While I don't listen to much of it, the insistent canting a mantra that is blatantly wrong does grate in the bits and pieces I do hear. The victims of that campaign of lies are the wingnuts who follow and revere the opponents of public interest.

Last night, Bill Moyers' Journal took on the media blitz of haters that the right wing puts forth as its spokespeople. He focused on the Tennessee shooter , Jim David Adkisson, who killed members of a 'liberal church' in his attempt to save the country. That pathological shooter was sure that it was the liberals who are responsible for what he sees as a weakened country, where he can't get a job. How many jobless and frustrated people are following that spiel on the air by winger radio and television 'hosts' and learning the same directions? we have to wonder.

MICHAEL SAVAGE, THE MICHAEL SAVAGE SHOW: Liberalism is, in essence, the HIV virus, and it weakens the defense cells of a nation. What are the defense cells of a nation? Well, the church. They've attacked particularly the Catholic Church for 30 straight years. The police, attacked for the last 50 straight years by the ACLU viruses. And the military, attacked for the last 50 years by the Barbara Boxer viruses on our planet.
(snip)
GLENN BECK:I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out of him. Is this wrong?

RICK KARR: Michael Reagan, son of the former president, suggested that people who claim that "9/11 was an inside job," a U.S. government conspiracy, deserve to die.

MICHAEL REAGAN, THE MICHAEL REAGAN SHOW: Take them out and shoot them. They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. But anybody who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that's what they are, and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet.

RICK KARR: Neal Boortz went after victims of Hurricane Katrina.

NEAL BOORTZ, THE NEAL BOORTZ SHOW: That wasn't the cries of the downtrodden. That's the cries of the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not, and had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them.
(snip)
REV. CHRIS BUICE: When you blame all your problems on some minority group, then everyone else is exonerated. We exonerate ourselves. We don't have to look at ourselves to see what sort of ways we contribute to the problems of the world. We don't have to examine ourselves, to see what we are doing that is helping to create the problems that we're so concerned about.

RICK KARR: In other words, Buice says, angry talk radio rhetoric simply sets up scapegoats for society's problems. And ever since Jim David Adkisson walked into his church and opened fire he can't help but wonder whether that might lead to more violence.

REV. CHRIS BUICE: I just think a lot of people are hurling insults from the safety of television studios, the safety of radio studios, the safety of cyberspace, which they would not throw if they had to stand right next to a person and look in their face and say the same thing. And so that's a void in our community, the chance to be in the same room and to have these exchanges and remember the humanity of the person on the other side

BILL MOYERS: That report aired on the Journal on September 12, 2008. Earlier this year, when Jim David Adkisson was sentenced to life behind bars, he released what he called a manifesto -- a four-page statement he wrote before his shooting spree. It was a manifesto, all right, spewing hate like fire and lava exploding from a volcano.

"This was a hate crime," he wrote. "I hate the damn left-wing Liberals [sic]. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state." Among the targets of his malice -- the Democratic National Committee, for "running such a radical leftist candidate, Osama Hussein Obama, yo mama. No experience. No brains, a joke. Dangerous to America."

"Liberals," Adkisson went on, are "evil ...like termites. Millions of them. Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation." He longed to exterminate the traitors one by one. "Who I wanted to kill," he wrote, "was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldbergs [sic] book." --Full disclosure: I'm one of the hundred. "But," Adkisson lamented, "...these people were inaccesible [sic] to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickens**t liberals that vote in these traitorous people."

And that's how Adkisson decided on his victims -- he would go after the foot soldiers, the congregation in the church he described as "a den of un-American vipers." He had a patriotic imperative for anyone who read or heard his manifesto: "do [sic] something for your country before you go. Go Kill Liberals."

While you are sitting at your computer reading in a place you've learned to expect analysis and facts, in other places with other motivations hundreds of thousands are being persuaded that they need to do violence to folks like you who are on the other side. This mind-numbing ignorance has a vast audience, and elects the wingers who are trying to mobilize them to kill our government, our interests, and us.

Eliminating by the vote would be a really good way to start. Removing the liars who want their audience to believe that the government that administers their own health plan can't possibly be trusted to serve the public - the public it is supposed to represent over their worst efforts - there's a good beginning.

I don't listen to the Savages, the Limbaughs, the Obbs rants, but those who want to protest their spewed tirades might well do so at the networks that consider them worth public attention. Here are a few places you can place your remarks.

Glenn Beck; foxnews.com/

Neal Boortz; wsbradio.com/

Michael Savage; www.wnd.com

Rush Limbaugh; choose your closest station at; http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/menu/rush.guest.all.html

(Posts also appear at http://seminal.firedoglake.com/ )

Your Media Running Far Away Fast From News

Over at After Downing Street.org, I happened on an excellent blog about our missing media. We now are very aware that when news occurs, it will be ignored except as it fits accepted tropes - and forget any digging for the truth if it's not a good reflection on villagers.

All the more need for the internet, and blogs like this one.

A week ago, I published a report on 1,200 photos of U.S. torture that I have examined but the public at large has not seen. I talked about the photos on a few progressive radio shows. I received calls from some advocacy groups that have been trying for years to get hold of these photos. But I received not one single inquiry from the corporate media. Even most good blogs ignored this story despite a handful of prominent blogs promoting it. This started me thinking and fantasizing: what would the world look like if we had major media outlets that were worth more than a warm bucket of spit?
(snip)
Democratic (small d) media would be very different from Democratic or Republican or Bipartisan media. It would treat laws as mandatory, not subject to the whims of those in power. It would treat enforcement of laws against those in power as more important than their enforcement against everyone else. Such media would not cover resistance to a war without noting that the war was (if it was) illegal. Such media would not cover the prosecution of low-level soldiers for crimes they were ordered to commit, without investigating their superiors and asking why they had not been prosecuted. Such media would not quote nonsensical statements by those in power about possibly investigating whether crimes had been committed without noting (when it existed) the publicly available evidence that in fact crimes had almost certainly been committed. And if a former vice president appeared on a democratic show and brazenly confessed to felonies, the producers would invite the attorney general to view the tape on the air and respond to it.

The absence of the media has at least made an atmosphere that demands we on the blogs keep hacking away at the internet, making sure that the truth isn't drowned out by powers wielding money.

(H/T to Mike's Blog Roundup )

Playing Those Records Backwards

Urban legend prevails in the wingnut realm. The Census is a very feared bugaboo, and declarations by head nutcase Bachman that she will not obey our laws and give the information it requires for government logic are providing fodder for the mills of the survivalists.

Seen as an evil plot, like chlorination, the census struggles on trying to represent our actual composition as a country. In Mother Jones, a conversation on the freakish views that keep people hiding from giving their information covers the issue nicely.

MJ: Do you think the Census Bureau has been damaged by partisan activity?

KP: It's a complicated question because the partisan activity goes back to 1790. [Laughs.] The first presidential veto, by George Washington, was a veto of Alexander Hamilton's formula for apportioning the House, and the one that Washington preferred was one that Thomas Jefferson produced, and that was one partisan issue. The apportionment formula that Jefferson produced gave an extra seat to Virginia. Everybody knew what that game was. [Laughs.] Look, partisan interest in the census is simply nothing new. Has there been damage over that period? Yes, on and off.

I think the sampling fight, whatever it was, was deeply unfortunate. The actual assertion that the Census Bureau could behave in such a way as to tilt things one way or the other way in the partisan sense, is, on the face of it, a silly charge. It's the same Census Bureau that's considered to be incompetent by some people, and then some of the same people are saying that this incompetent agency is so clever and so Machiavellian that it can design a census for partisan reasons. It just doesn't compute. Now, did [accusations of partisanship] damage the census? Yes, it damaged the idea of sampling. I like to tell the people I interact with who are against sampling, "Next time you want to go to the doctor for a blood test, don't say, 'I want you to take out a little bit,' say, 'Take out all of it!'" How else will you know? When you wake up in the morning and you want to find out whether it's raining, you don't look out every window of your house; you look out one window. There: You sampled. So the idea that we turned the word "sampling" into a dirty word is deeply, deeply damaging, not to the Census Bureau, but the idea of fiscal integrity. Every other number we use to govern society—unemployment numbers, trade statistics, health care, how many people are uninsured—all of those numbers are based on samples.
(snip)
The whole foreclosure crisis is a major crisis because whole hunks of the country are empty when they should be functioning neighborhoods. There are just a host of problems. And then there are the ones we can't predict. Who knows? Natural disasters, strikes, I can't tell you what's going to happen. I know it's going to be difficult; it's always difficult to do a serious census, especially with today's economic, political, and general cultural circumstances. Let me ask you a question. Let's say there are 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country. What percentage of those people do you think will mail a questionnaire back in?

MJ: Ten?

KP: Whatever it is, it's a low number.

The numbers the government uses to allocate funds are going to be skewed in favor of the stable households, rather than those needing funds more desperately. This is not a help.

The wingnuts are making a hurdle against fair distribution. No surprise there. Increasingly, those who have already suffered from their empowered ideology are scheduled to be hit yet again.

Hopefully there will be responsible reporting on the facts, but more likely, the loudest voices with the most spectacular nonsense will get the attention. From covering the freak show, our pundits increasingly have become part of it. The country is learning the hard way that it is ill served by media babble.

Hostile Takeover of Truth

After the many times I've featured the ignorance of WaPo editorials, may I point out that it's just useless to point out that they're clueless, then continue giving them hits. As a parting gesture to any pretense of dignity, WaPo has fired their redeeming feature, Dan Froomkin. The voice of reason lies bleeding and dead there, and I will not be going there to give them proof of readership anymore.

Many of the rational voices I visit are in accord. The editors at WaPo create dissent by their rampant nonsense but when readers comment - usually giving real information that WaPo ignores - the editors count it as 'popularity'. I am joining the departing horde and recommend you do the same.

...there was also sadness this week, and I'm not talking about the deaths of entertainment icons from the 1970s. I am talking about the WashingtonPost.com website, which has booted out one of the best bloggers on the web.

Dan Froomkin's "White House Watch" column today will be the last one that appears on WashingtonPost.com. Froomkin has expressed interest in possibly moving the column elsewhere and continuing it, and I consider this a test of whether newspapers are (a.) smart enough to realize this is the way to modernize and move into the future of journalism, or (b.) dumb as a bag of hammers. WashingtonPost.com has obviously chosen the (b.) route. Because Froomkin's column is a shining example of how newspapers could migrate from their print business model to the more interactive web-based model they need to be in to survive.

Froomkin was fired, it was announced, because his "ratings" had dropped after Obama was elected. This is utter hogwash. In the first place, his column "White House Watch" (it started as "White House Briefing" but was changed later) was dedicated to putting the executive branch under a microscope and reporting what was there. Of course, the Bush White House was more fertile ground for this, especially towards the end. But Froomkin did not back off from examining Obama's White House, and has been severely critical of Obama's decisions on secrecy and openness and torture and accountability.

The real reason his numbers dropped is that the editors stopped putting a link to his column on their front page. When Froomkin got progressively harder and harder to find, fewer and fewer people found him. In other words, his ratings dropped because they didn't feature him as prominently anymore. This is the new online reality -- your hit count depends on a link on the front page of the site. The more prominent, the higher your hitcount will be.

But dark suspicions have been raised (mostly by his loyal readers) that Froomkin was fired because he dared to contradict one of the very conservative op-ed writers on the Washington Post payroll (the two entities, Washington Post and WashingtonPost.com are supposedly "separate," I should mention). The Washington Post has become a safe haven for such ultra-conservative commentators (they not only have an ex-Bush speechwriter, but they also hired William Kristol after the New York Times got tired of him being so wrong so often). So, in keeping with this conservative bent, Froomkin had to go.

This is pathetic and is an outrage. Anyone who agrees should contact the ombudsman at: ombudsman@washpost.com and let him know how you feel. [I disagree - Ruth]

What is truly pathetic is that the newspaper which a few decades ago brought down an American president is now not even worth reading anymore, because the only thing in it that isn't the equivalent of Fox News is their cartoonist Tom Toles (who is excellent). A bastion of journalism has, quite literally (at least for me) been reduced to a cartoon. Pathetic.

Let's see... bring down a government, sell lots of newspapers... pack the staff with neo-cons in possibly the most liberal city in America, get ready for bankruptcy. No wonder newspapers are in such trouble, if this is the way they plan their business models. (Emphasis added.)

Pathetic is one description for bringing down what used to be a heroic voice for justice, and for digging out the truth as a newspaper is supposed to do. The glory days at WaPo have been brought down, to the use of those actively destroying functional government. Deregulation has been enthroned where public interests used to reign.

This is radical overthrow of the truth, and my response is to leave.

No more hits for WaPo.

Giving Facts a Chance

That the press is talking about itself is not a bad thing, but bemusing. The costs of misinformation presented as fact are mounting.

Last night on Bill Moyers' Journal there was a very nice discussion about major press personnel who have blown it. The reporters are increasingly letting their 'sources' lie, and by airing the lie without the rebuttal are becoming part of that propaganda - as Moyers and his panelists last night pointed out, Bob Schieffer made the argument that nominated Justice Sotomayor is a racist by taking the accusation, then using it as an accepted basis for his next question:

BOB SCHIEFFER I want to get right to the quote that has caused all of the controversy that Washington has been talking about all week. What Justice, or Judge Sotomayor said in the speech eight years ago. And here it is. She said, "I would hope that a Latina woman, with the richness of her experience, would more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male, who hasn't lived that life." Senator Kyl, is that enough to keep her from being confirmed as a Justice on the Supreme Court?

BILL MOYERS: So, instead of deconstructing the quote, Bob plays the beltway card: is this going to cause her not to be confirmed?

JAY ROSEN: Well, first of all, Bob Schieffer forgot to ask himself whether the controversy that had gripped Washington was a legitimate controversy. And surely that's one thing we need him for.

BILL MOYERS: Who's to decide that? Legitimacy-

JAY ROSEN: Well-

BILL MOYERS: -or illegitimacy?

JAY ROSEN: Well, Tom Goldstein, an author of the SCOTUSblog, which is a very carefully put together blog about the Supreme Court, and a law professor - looked at the record of Sotomayor's decisions. In 96 cases, where there were discrimination claims before the court, she decided against the claim of discrimination 78 times. And there were only about ten where she sided at all with a plaintiff charging discrimination.

Now, if you know that, if you know that record, then the whole controversy looks kind of fake from the beginning. And so, what Bob Schieffer did was take what Washington is buzzing about, refused to fact check it, take it as a given, and ask a kind of insider political question. "Is this going to sink her nomination?" Which is premature and which abandons his role as a journalist in determining what is a legitimate controversy. What should we be arguing about? Which views have standing as facts, as fact-based?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's disappointing to be sure. And I'm really sorry that that responsibility was abrogated. On the other hand, what this is a clear example of, and I hope I don't sound like a broken record at this point, is increasingly how the Washington punditocracy and those who preside over it, and the Republican Party are marginalizing themselves. By focusing on these people whose influence, whose direct influence seems to be, used to be broadly at the country at large. But if we are to believe the polls, and I guess that's a whole different show for you, it seems that the importance of Rush as a mover of opinion, not as a generator of audience, necessarily. But as a mover of opinion- and Newt Gingrich is diminishing. Fewer and fewer people are identifying themselves as Republican.

While Bill Moyers' panelist, Ms. Gladstone, came to a comforting conclusion, it's not enough to absolve members of the media from responsibility when they air, and accept, outright lies. The consequences of lies increasingly affects what is done, and what we suffer as a consequence. Affecting a solid nomination to the Supreme Court today, a few years ago an unjustifiable war, and last week a tragically wrongful death.

In the case of Bill O'Reilly (whom I have never watched except on clips presented outside his 'show'), we have a member of the press using his position to promote hatred among individuals whom he realizes are unbalanced enough to listen to this blatantly biased balderdash. His purposes may be more avaricious than merely vicious, but once again have resulted in the death of some one he directed his haters against. Dr. Tiller died not because of his faulty behavior, but because of O'Reilly's lies about him.

Words have consequences -- a lesson I've learned, and relearned, after nearly 20 years of editorial and column writing.

Which makes Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly all the more unbelievable when he holds himself harmless in creating the atmosphere that helped diminish the humanity of George Tiller, the Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions.

O'Reilly used his show, "The O'Reilly Factor," to demonize Tiller.

A few of his words, as reported by Salon.com: Tiller "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birthdate for $5,000." Then-Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius "doesn't seem to be real upset about this guy operating a death mill, which is exactly what it is, in her state, does she?" And: "No question Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands."

The blame for Judge Sotomayor's being considered racist by extremists, as well as the blame for Dr. Tiller's death, lies with those who irresponsibly present lies, and do not present the mitigating truth. There are not two ways to regard promoting damaging misinformation, it is an attempt that is intended to have an effect. In the case of Bob Schieffer, he is attempting to destroy a nomination by bad information presented as if it were true. In the case of O'Reilly, he is attempting to destroy a person whose career refutes his ideology.

The press abrogated its role in the run-up to the war on Iraq, and should be replaced. The costs of willful errors is immense, and one that we can't afford.

The role of the press is not just a side effect. It has become a force of its own, and it will have to be displaced by the presenters of truth. That role has now fallen to the internets.

Attacking Her Abilities

Having heard a dirty deed done twice now, I am as usual appalled at the sheer baseness of those rightwingers who represent what used to be the Republican party. On Newshour May 29th and again on Washington Journal May 31, those who'd been given a place in the media arena representing opponents of nominated Justice Sotomayor claimed she wasn't much of an intellect, but was a beneficiary of affirmative action to get a place on the court.

That's right, in order to go to the law review at Yale after graduating Summa from Princeton, what do you need? She isn't a white male, so it can't be by her abilities. If it isn't intellect, it has to be the eternal bête noir of Affirmative Action.

From the University of Utah law professor, Paul Cassell, on Newshour, came the observations that reading her decisions showed her reasoning was 'ordinary', and her writing showed she was not going to be able to 'do anything more than resolve the case in front of her'. (If you have the stomach for it, see the linked tape at about 22:50ff.)

From Pat Buchanan, flailing about on Washington Journal, the observation came much like Cassell's, that proposed Justice Sotomayor was lightweight at best, reading at kindergarten level, and only commented on the facts (if you have the stomach, start at about 1:05:33, especially 1:09:00 for Pinocchio). Buchanan at least comes out front with his accusation of affirmative action, though he attributes it to some one else, and says we have to stand up for white men.

The sterling example of existing Justice Scalia was used to counter her abilities, with attendant admiration for Scalia's soaring rhetoric promoting rightwing ideology.

Yes, we know these as rantings from the abyss the wingnuts live in where ideology must be imposed on the world before rational thought leads to the hell of their not being in charge.

For the winger lotus eaters in the audience, though, reassurance that only affirmative action could have elevated a dark-complected female above their idols is being proffered. Having grown up in the south during the freedom rides, I've seen 'code' used before. When you can't use the 'N' word in polite society, 'our friend from the other side of town' will have to suffice.

The insouciance of our winger clowns in the face of facts is a long practiced art, and it keeps the anxieties of their believers held back to avoid acknowledging simple truths. If that believer faction stops sending in the contributions, and the emails/calls/tweets/snail mail shouting out for more, the media would have to turn to reality-based judgments from thinking sources. When that happens, the wingers are lost.

Moving on from appalled, I do begin to admire wingnuts' increasing desperation in the face of the inevitable unwinding of their latest revisionism. Future Justice Sotomayor will be confirmed. That is a major reason why the media can find only blithering idiots to represent the opposition. When she is on the bench, the mantra that she is of ordinary capabilities (pssst! and rose only through affirmative action) is going to be knocked on its head. Why, even hosts on news shows might point out the obvious fallacies!

Depending on the public's forgetfulness has become riskier daily as us bloggers show our hateful qualities of memory and thinking circles around the lame denizens of rightwing ideology.

Popularity Above Probity

This morning I was listening to WaPo reporter Chris Cilizza on CSpan tell High School kids about his career in journalism. When he got to the point of insisting that although he constantly gets comments from readers telling him what an idiot he is, but the next day those same commenters are back telling him what an idiot he is, I realized that it is, indeed, the credo at that paper that reportage is not their purpose.

A few years ago, editor Hiatt claimed high popularity because of the number who comment on his editorials. Since that time, I have been very aware that the purposes of his editorial ventures was much different from what they claim.

Controversy is created by differences of opinion. What better way to produce controversy than to write what you know readers will disagree with? Since most of the readers of the WaPo region, and demographic, are educated and knowledgeable, how better produce disagreement than by making statements that are wrong, or at least ignorant?

Today, I went to WaPo to see a comment Avedon made on David Broder's op-ed there, that she accessed through Digby. The comment was highly worthwhile, though the op-ed itself was rightwing talking points.

Avedon wrote:
I don't understand this column. On most issues, this judge has proven to be remarkably conservative - not surprising since she was placed on the court by a conservative president.

Your definition of "liberal" seems to be "not vociferously opposed to Roe v. Wade." But that's not a liberal position, it's mainstream - most Americans do not oppose Roe v. Wade.

Why is overturning Roe of such import to you, and why do you think it is the defining issue for not being a raving crazy loony lefty?
5/30/2009 8:12:36 AM

As Digby pointed out yesterday, Broder represents the Villager hopes that Roe v. Wade will be overthrown. Having women and their medical options restricted by laws espoused by rightwing thought, rather than science, is promoted by the fading Villagers.

As Avedon points out, most of this country disagrees with that viewpoint. Still, the media continues to give the major voice to that minority view. The impetus of creating controversy, by disagreement with rational thought, has overwhelmed the media, mostly it seems because they produce high numbers of responses by rejecting true and rational thought.

Facts have that liberal bias that Colbert realized years ago. Rational thinkers get enraged and make the furor that the Villagers want, because we can't stand it that print and broadcast gets it wrong.

I think it's time to remove the rational community's support. We're promoting irrational viewpoints. As no matter how often we point out that they are wrong and ignorant, that only convinces them further of the drawing power of rightwing views. I believe it is time to reject the Villagers outright.

I've stopped reading WaPo editorials, and commenting in response to Fred Hiatt's editorialisms, even though reading the comments often is quite enlightening. It's my choice to remove the impetus of enlarged audience.

We as liberals know better than to believe, and want to enlighten the weak-minded. It's that impulse the Village idiots are using to convince advertisers that they are selling papers. It's our best qualities that are being used against us.

If it promotes support for idiocy, I'm not going there. Support for denying women medically sound advice and procedures is wrong. WaPo by publishing the Villagers encourages that. It makes profits for them. Personally, I am removing myself from that equation.

No more reading the Villagers.

Government Control Bugaboo

It's almost dizzying to hear the wingnuts threatening that government control will keep us health consumers from getting the care we need. Does anyone not yet get it - the insurance companies' insistence on profits is the largest impediment to health care for the U.S. public. Anyone who has had any contact at all with those 'providers' knows that you have to take what they will let you have when it comes to collecting on all those premiums you paid in for so long, at such strain on the budget.

Getting your money's worth from insurance has become an ever less believable myth as health costs soar out of control. Yet, the industry is sure that you can be scared into leaving your well-being in their control. I like racymind's answer to to my question in a conversastion at eschaton earlier;
ME: morning, racymind, how could healthcare survive without the insurance co's running it for profit, tho?

ANSWER: Like a patient without a tumor
racymind | Homepage | 05.09.09 - 6:42 am | #

Echidne looks at the scene up close and personal.

Frank Luntz is the man responsible for "ownership society", "death taxes" and "tax relief"; all terms which give debates a conservative frame. Now he has come out with the wingnut dictionary on how to talk health care. For example:

Luntz Tip No. 1: Scare people. Especially about their children. Luntz's memo includes a road map to how to most effectively scare the bejeezus out of the American public when it comes to health care. Results show the phrase health care rationing frightened the most people, so Republicans are urged to sprinkle it around describing Democratic reform plans. It's also better to warn that Democrats want to put politicians in charge of health care, rather than bureaucrats: "Bureaucrats are scary — but at least they are professionals."

The Republicans are always about scaring people. There's a terrorist under your bed and a politician will operate on your tonsils, unless you do exactly as Frank Luntz wants you to do!

The profits they don't earn have suffered the same blow as the rest of this economy; they've been decimated by the disasters of the last eight years of deregulation and law-defying economic institutions. Now you are being asked to guarantee those insurance companies that are preying on you don't suffer losses like you have.

Not a good health care plan, in any sense of the word.

Single payer health care is what the public needs, wants, and will have to fight for. That fight is being rigged by health insurance companies. Recently doctors opposing the insurance companies' capture of our health industry were imprisoned for trying to represent the public. We have to change this criminal conduct, toward the public and against it.

Try Life Without the Internet

The last two weeks have been spent having a gorgeous trip, indeed, as you all know who have visited my posts on my cruise in the Mediterranean. For me, it was a dream I really never thought I'd get, and I acknowledge that I am profiting from the economic disaster that brought prices down so low that I could do this. I have a lot to be glad about, and I am.

There was a big drawback, though, because the internet was priced so high that I would have had to stretch - big bucks that I didn't have free - to do what I am used to. I post every day that I can, sometimes twice and more. For that, I visit a lot of news sites, blogs and articles, and information that you are used to seeing here. Research is vital to giving sound views, and you readers and I expect to have a variety of sources, even the disreputable ones, to have a good idea of what our world is like.

On board, as is true of many purveyors of television access, Fox political advertising, which they call 'news', has gotten a foothold and those who checked the news were offered that channel as if it were valid. The Fox industry pays for that access, and gets access it doesn't earn by real reporting but by paybacks. Yes, Norwegian Cruise Lines has heard from me on their allowing themselves to be suborned into presenting a right wing point of view on par with news, a point of view that fewer than 20% of us have fallen for.

When factual research is expensive, it gets a lot less accessible to you and me; we suffer a blight on our overall knowledge that makes us vulnerable to wingnut paid ads.

Having had my access limited, I am passing on to you a warning. If price becomes the issue in internet access, we will lose our intellectual freedom. Just as health care has been lost to the profit motivation of our health care industry, our intellectual freedom will be lost if profits are allowed to determine internet availability. No surprise, that is what our telecommunications industry would like to accomplish.

Your days of all-you-can-eat Internet buffet may be coming to an end.

Probably not tomorrow, but soon enough, industry analysts say.

Cable giant Time Warner recently toyed with essentially putting meters on its customers’ downloads. It abruptly backed off in the face of a revolt that was organized — where else? — on the Internet.

Still, the company shelved rather than killed the plan. Experts say that changes in the way people use the Internet — and the way some gorge on its endless cache of data — mean current pricing systems could go the way of your dial-up modem.

A metered pricing system has been in effect in Lawrence for four years. While Sunflower Broadband has heard some complaints, for most Web surfers it has kept monthly charges flat. Some users have seen steep cuts in their bills, while relatively few have had to pony up extra bucks to devour gigabytes.

In the end, said the CEO of the Internet service provider in Lawrence, “it’s a matter of fairness.”

The change won’t come easily in a world where consumers have come to take cap-free Internet use for granted.

In mid-April, Time Warner set aside plans to switch Rochester, N.Y.; Greensboro, N.C.; San Antonio and Austin, Texas, to graduated billing based on how much a household uses the Internet.

“This is ridiculous,” the group Free Press said in an online petition. “Instead of meeting growing broadband demand, Time Warner Cable is gouging Internet users.”

U.S. Rep. Eric Massa, a New York Democrat whose district includes Rochester, threatened legislation to bar the change.

“It’s almost certainly just a matter of time before they attempt to overcharge all of their customers,” Massa said in a news release.
(snip)
Critics of a la carte Internet pricing say it doesn’t account for the speed and the ways in which usage has shifted.

People who constantly worry about going over their monthly limits might be less likely to try new innovations that require more bandwidth, said James Love of the consumer group Knowledge Ecology International.

“We’re all doing things now that we weren’t doing last year,” he said. “We don’t want something that’s going to make us reluctant to try something new.”

Patrick Knorr, the CEO of World Co., the owner of Sunflower Download, notes that even as the price of providing Internet service continued to drop as technology improved, demand for bandwidth went up faster.

The cost of public awareness is not a factor we can let make a difference in internet access. If ignorance is given free rein, this country will be a much poorer place. Without you telling me when I make an error, I would not be as much on my toes as I have to be with an educated audience. If it cost you to look up and check on your suspicion that you've seen another fact, or another view, than that I think is valid, would you still go to the trouble?

Look at my posts during my cruise, and you'll find most of the material is my own experience. I want to double, triple, and quadruple check on what I pass on to you, and at $.45 a minute, the time spent doing that becomes burdensome.

When we cut back on exploring for truths, we are not in top form. That would be a tragic burden to put on bloggers. We would have to be able to afford facts. When truth becomes expensive, we will all suffer ignorance imposed by our means. Nothing could be worse for us libruls who are going to stick to the facts as long as we can.

When facts are priced out of our reach, we will all be in big trouble. High priced internet has cut back on my access to those facts, and it's been troubling. It can't be allowed to happen. Firms reaching for profits will never be a good choice for determining what the public can and will say, learn, or think.

Without open internet access, Fox would go unanswered.

Bad Guys

Luckily, I didn't sink to watching Faux News, but today it seems that ex-Darth used it to make sure no one thought he had any respect for that wimpy peace stuff. Seems that the administration now trying to clean up his messes is his idea of naive and uninformed, and not even inclined to try that mutilating folks - that resoundingly succeeded in alienating the world from the U.S. for the eight years he spent in the executive branch.

Former vice president Dick Cheney and former Bush political guru Karl Rove could both be found on Fox News last night, preaching doom and spreading bile.

Fox last night aired the second half of an interview Cheney conducted with Sean Hannity.

Hannity asked if the Obama administration is "naive, that maybe they don't understand the nature of the war on terror?"

Cheney replied: "Yes, basically. I think there's -- the assumption seems to predominate on the other side that the reason there's been problems in the world is because of U.S. activity, U.S. conduct.

"We're the bad guys. We're the ones that lead people to become terrorists. We're the ones that generate the kind of criticism that has given al Qaeda an excuse to come attack the United States.

"I don't think that's true. I don't think they needed any excuse when they came here on 9/11, killed 3,000 of us. I don't think as we strip ourselves of important capabilities in terms of our interrogation program for detainees. I don't think there are members of al Qaeda out there around the world this morning that say, 'Oh, gee whiz, isn't that great? Barack Obama and his administration are no longer going to ask our guys tough questions when they are captured. Now, maybe we won't behead their people when they capture them.' I mean, it's just -- it says something about a mindset that I worry about very much...."

Hannity: He just doesn't have the courage to say it's a war on terror?... Does that seem like a weakness? Is that telegraphing weakness?"

Cheney: "I think it does. And I think it says to -- well, to the world out there that this is no longer a war, this is law enforcement. And our most important obligation responsibility is to read their rights to the people we capture, that we're going to treat them -- we're going to Mirandize them before we do anything else."

Cheney also said the release of last week's torture memos was "being done essentially to appease a certain element of the Democratic Party, or because of campaign commitments that were made in last year's campaign."

What a concept, it's law enforcement - not a unilateral war on a nation that did not attack us, on the pretense that it had a vague and still undefined relationship with one that did. The sort of action that brought the former World Trade Center bombers to justice. The sort of action that actually worked, instead of leaving the country in deep debt with lots of dead people and no functional government in place.

From decreasing numbers who watch Faux news it would that there is a diminishing charm to watching this POS accuse anyone but himself of making the world a less safe place to live.

Going Ballistic

It's not one of my fantasies that someday I will need to use a gun. I suspect I am in a minority, as it seems so many of the populace here in flyover country have run out and gotten weapons. Now it seems the freeing of hostage Richard Phillips off the coast of Somalia has given rise to yet more dreams of shooting those bad guys. Underlying those claims, that we should arm ourselves to be safe, is the argument that our government should not prohibit us all from buying all the weapons we want.

The power to wipe out another life seems to bring out a demon in souls of those under pressure. For that reason above all it would appear that wisdom would dictate limiting access to guns. When we have a time of obvious stress, and results are already in - guns have provided a hideous and repugnant recourse to violence for desperate people - courageous leaders should be coming forth calling for tough controls on sales of weapons. Sadly, its power to shoot down those courageous enough to stand up to them has been a penultimate defense for the NRA.

In a chat on eschaton this morning, Molly Ivors gave the ultimate rejoinder to opposing gun controls;

(me;) Greta on WashJournal telling Eleanor Holmes Norton that taking guns away is taking their rights.

Tell that to the Binghamton immigrant community.
Molly Ivors

The violence of others can't be countered by easy access to guns, the gun nuts' defense against gun controls. Making all of us armed only enables those who lose it and want to take their own frustrations out on the unoffending around them.

Americans have been killing each other for a long time - thousands upon thousands of men, women and children lying in the cold, cold ground from decades of homicidal violence, the bulk of it inflicted with guns. There are street killings here, bedroom killings there - single victims scattered across the daily news. (I saw my first victim 33 years ago this month, a woman shot to death by her estranged husband as she walked across a parking lot.) And then there are the mass killings, a squall of them this spring, with 57 dead within the last month or so, in a handful of incidents from California to New York.

I hear hardly anyone, anywhere expressing much more than a shrug about it.

This is what Scott Simon of National Public Radio wrote on Twitter the day a gunman in Binghamton, N.Y., fired 98 shots in less than a minute, killing 13 people at an immigration center: "Story like NY shootings is soft spot of jrnlsm. We can & should cover hell out of it. But in the end, what does it mean? What is there to say?"

I can almost understand Mr. Simon's shrug. After the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and again after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, many of us believed the country would turn against guns - assault-style weapons and handguns in particular. But all these years later, we now recognize 280 million as the estimated number of firearms among the 300-plus million inhabitants of the United States. What is there to say? That is a mountain of guns, and it's growing.

Some say it's because President Barack Obama wants to renew the expired federal ban against military-style assault weapons - the gunman who killed three police officers in Pittsburgh last weekend said as much - so people are stocking up.

But there's more to it. There's a pessimism and cynicism about the kind of society we've become and the uncertain future we face, and that was evident before Mr. Obama took office.

People are stressed about the economy and worried that recovery might be a long way off, and that there may be shortages of food and gasoline, or an increase in crime as the jobless become desperate. So they've purchased guns and ammo, just in case the apocalypse comes before Mr. Obama's economic stimulus package takes effect.

Here's another reason why gun sales are on the rise: Americans are convinced that politicians aren't going to do anything about gun violence. Sixty-five members of his own party in the House of Representatives have urged the president not to resurrect the assault weapons ban that expired under George W. Bush. (One bright spot this year for gun control was in Maryland; the General Assembly authorized the confiscation of firearms from suspected domestic abusers.)

Most of us are also convinced that there are too many angry, ill and violent people in our midst, and that they have easy access to guns. Absent leadership that would promulgate greater control of guns, we fear mass killings will continue. So, the thinking goes, maybe it's best to be prepared - have a gun handy, just in case the madman comes to your office or your kid's school.

It's an epidemic of resignation, and it helps the National Rifle Association.

Great. Uncontrolled violence militates for more uncontrolled violence. I admit, I watched in horror as far back as the '60's, as great public servants like Sen. Joe Tydings and Sen. Al Gore were taken down by NRA dedication to the cause of arming the violent. And I admit I cannot understand a set of values that will sacrifice great public service for recidivist suspicions of our neighbors.

Under examination right now: the lawlessness of gun shows, where guns can be sold to criminals direct; and running guns to the Mexican drug wars. This kind of activity can in no way be claimed to be a benefit to our society. It's a disgrace that we can't bring the power of laws to our service in this criminal campaign against lawful society.

Maybe it would be a good time to go join your local NRA and start a move toward rational behavior. If we wait for leaders strong enough to counter these militia addicts, we may not see any rational controls in our time.

Gun controls will reduce violence by removing an easy way out to everyone who goes ballistic and lashes out irrationally. Fighting gun controls enables the criminally inclined, as well as the criminal elements. It's as simple as that.

Bring On the Big Lie

Pretending to be a writer/journalist seems not to be high on Michael Gerson's list of ways to inveigle his audience into sharing his dislike of President Obama. Gerson once again today has proved he has an agenda, and it is slander of the President.

The discussion at Dan Froomkin's chat with readers gives a terrific synopsis, so I will cite that instead of laying out the facts and events myself. Since I have unashamedly borrowed from him, I have inserted the links that Froomkin used, as well.

Hamilton, Ontario: What is your take on Gerson's column today saying that Obama is the most polarizing president? Isn't this a sign of a preferred tactic by Bush loyalists: tar the other guy with their own defects?

washingtonpost.com: Gerson: The Most Polarizing President (I do not recommend your giving Gerson any hits by clicking this.)

Dan Froomkin: On the one hand, there's little disputing the numbers. According to Pew Research Center: "Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades. The 61-point partisan gap in opinions about Obama's job performance is the result of a combination of high Democratic ratings for the president -- 88% job approval among Democrats -- and relatively low approval ratings among Republicans (27%)."

But that doesn't mean Obama is polarizing.

Indeed, as Greg Sargent has blogged on whorunsgov.com, Pew's own polling director says that would be a misreading.

Michael Dimock, Pew's associate director, told Sargent that the divide is driven by long term trends and by the uncommonly enthusiastic reaction to Obama by members of his own party.

"Dimock also said this phenomenon is partly caused by the recent tendency of Republicans to be less charitable towards new Presidents than Dems have been."
(snip)
Re: Poll Numbers: Couldn't the apparent "polarization" also be due to a large number of people who used to call themselves Republicans now identifying as independents and Democrats? Haven't a lot of the people who might have approved of, say, Clinton in April of 1993 left the party?

Dan Froomkin: And that is a very good point indeed. The "polarization" could in fact be a function of the Republican party dwindling into a ferociously right-wing regional party, defined mostly by its opposition to a popular Democratic president.

Of course the Republicans will complain that fewer people identifying Republican simply means they're being underrepresented in the polls.

There is any amount of evidence of the rightwing using the pretense of journalism to make political hay, but Gerson's record really precludes him from any berth in respectability. He has been appearing depressingly regularly in gatherings that pretend to be journalistic, while promoting a completely political mantra.

Looking back to the campaign, he was among the loudest voices making totally false claim that now-President Obama was 'the most liberal Senator'. Of course, that would have recommended him to me, but the use of this label was total fabrication. Virtual Tin Cup had a very nice expose here:

Before we get to the specifics of Gerson's column (which I would urge you all to read in full by clicking the link), I would note that this column is eerily reminiscent of a discussion highlighted by Crooks & Liars between right-wing blabbermouths Stephen Hayes and Tony Blankley and Rachel Maddow.

The Bizarro-World of the punditocracy has the world so shifted askew that in their view, John McCain, who has voted with President Bush 95% of the time in 2007 and 100% of the time in 2008 is a bipartisan who reaches across the aisle and Barack Obama, who has only the 40th most liberal voting record, is a flaming liberal with no record of working on a bipartisan basis, despite co-sponsoring legislation with ultra-right wingers Tom Coburn and Dick Lugar.


The best part of the piece at C&L comes in a quick-quote from Maddow:

MADDOW: Let me ask you though, in 2004, that “National Journal” poll, who did they say was the most liberal senator in 2004?
HAYES: I don‘t know.
MADDOW: It would be John Kerry.


For those who may not have clicked the link, or are incapable of following along, the National Journal, a conservative magazine, used faulty methods and data to claim that Sen. Barack Obama had the most liberal voting record in the United States Senate, beating out Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, whose only competition on the far left in that body is socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
(snip)
My frustration with crap like this is based not on the label "liberal", but on the fact that Gerson has managed to pen an entire column based upon falsehoods.

He needs to be removed from The Washington Post. Perhaps, in a sane universe, he wouldn't be there in the first place.


The use of unabashed liars by WaPo is increasingly militating against its place among eminent news organs. The admission finally that George Will had falsified the facts he used to 'prove' that global warming isn't happening is a bright spot in an otherwise dimmed record for that once great paper.

It's no longer worthwhile to look to the WaPo Opinions section except for Dan Froomkin, and a select few, for anything unbiased; the occasional reputable op-ed from outside WaPo staff makes it worth checking there for value.

Vast Rightwing Mendacity

Rep. Barney Frank did a number on the Big Lie being told by the right wing last night, and used the words of my title, Vast Rightwing Mendacity. It fit very well. There is yet another huge myth being promoted that blames Rep. Frank for the lack of regulation. and I am trying to get a link for it.

Of course, Rep. Frank was working for reasonable regulation throughout the last eight years of rightwing deregulation. With its usual disregard for truth, the minions of the kleptocrats are accusing the very public servants who fought them to protect the country for the disaster they brought about. Of course, anyone with an ounce of sense would already know where the responsibility lies for the economic meltdown, so there is no reason for the wingnuts to try appealing to those with good sense. That 20% is tightly wrapped in its unreality, and obviously only listens to those who reinforce their delusion.

The dominance of the media by the right wing has led to the mantra that libruls promoting homeownership by the poor caused the economic crisis, and Rep. Frank pointed out that he had sought more than a few times to ensure that affordable rental property be the emphasis rather than promotion of mortgages that the poor could not afford. He recalled a conversation with Hank Paulson in which Paulson was promoting ending rental subsidies to the poor after five years in order to push them into buying homes. Frank reports his response was to ask if Paulson then would be ensuring that after five years those renters were to get salaries enabling them to purchase those mortgages; as usual, good sense did not end the adopted belief in the wingers' own ideas.

While it's a short version of a wonderful spiel, some of Rep. Frank's major points appear in an interview published yesterday in The Daily Beast. I want to add that Rep. Frank verbally last night made a wonderful aside about how the rightwing loves to bring up his gay lifestyle and evidently finds it very titillating. He also mentioned that an article in the Wall Street Journal that blamed Rep. Frank for acting to keep regulation from being applied to Fannie and Freddie had totally been a lie, and his letter refuting it with facts was refused.

Q: You’ve been chairman now for two years and two months. What’s that been like?

A: Well, I stress that, if you’re listening to the Republican critique, I was apparently the chairman without knowing it for 15 years because they complained about all these things that didn’t happen during the period they were in power, from 1995 to 2007.

Q: You've been implicated by some opponents as being responsible for the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

A: When in fact they were in power and didn’t pass the bill. I became chairman on January 31, 2007. The committee passed the bill in March, and the House in May. I was very happy about it, particularly because one of my great passions has been affordable rental housing. One of my big fights with the Republicans was, they were killing the programs to build rental housing for people. They were the ones pushing them into homeownership. I was critical of that and said you’re not doing anyone a favor if you get them to buy a house they can’t afford and can’t keep.

Q: Since you're a celebrity in Congress, people are interested in your life, and your opponents have claimed that [Frank’s ex-boyfriend] Herb Moses was working in a high position for Fannie.

A: How do you think it’s a high position? They’re lying.

Q: What’s the truth of the matter?

A: Herb Moses was a man I lived with from 1987 until 1998. He went to business school and graduated from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in 1990 at the age of 31. He got a kind of entry-level position in mortgages with Fannie Mae, wasn’t a high executive, wasn’t a president, a vice president, a senior assistant vice president. I doubt he was in the top 200 or 300 employees or even much more than that, and he worked there until 1998. We split up, he quit and left for California, long before I was the senior Democrat on the committee. I was like the fourth-senior Democrat. That’s an example of the lies.

Q: What’s that like, being such a lightning rod?

A: What troubles me is not so much personally because people hear the facts and it’s OK. The problem is it’s a concerted effort by the right wing to avoid regulation. We’re in a terrible situation now because of the absence of financial regulation. The fundamentalists philosophically worry about regulations coming. They see this, I think correctly, as being like the New Deal, like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, where the public sector steps in to put some rules in to govern the excesses of the private sector while still keeping the value of what they do. They’ve come up with an alternative explanation, because they want to avoid new regulations on hedge funds, on credit-default swaps, on collateralized debt obligations. They’re saying, you liberals help the poor people too much, you wouldn’t let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac get regulated. And the argument now is, “Oh the Democrats stopped them.” I have to tell you, if I could stop them, there wouldn’t be an impeachment of Bill Clinton, the war in Iraq, the Terry Schiavo case, tax cuts for the very wealthy. But what troubles me is that it’s being used, for policy reasons, to prevent us from taking the kind of regulatory steps that we have to take.
(snip)
Q: How about the legacy of Alan Greenspan?

A: Oh, I think it’s a disaster. Well, I think two things. On macroeconomic policy, I think Alan was unfairly criticized. People said he should’ve deflated the bubble. What they meant was he should’ve caused high unemployment. Greenspan successfully resisted what even a lot of liberals said. It was this whole view, something called the NAIRU—the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. That said, even the New York Times’ financial pages bought into it. If unemployment dropped below 5.5 percent, it would be inherently inflationary. Greenspan says, no look, we’ve got new productivity, that’s not the case. Unemployment got down to 3.9 percent without being inflationary, and Greenspan resisted a lot of liberals, and I give Alan credit because he said no—and he also acknowledged in hearings that we had too much inequality in the society. I also remember when a Republican asked him if he thought it was possible to cut taxes and increase revenue, and he said theoretically it’s possible but it’s never happened in my lifetime. He was, at the time, 80. But he made a terrible mistake in his opposition of regulation. In particular, his failure to use the power Congress gave him in 1994, to limit subprime lending, gives him heavy responsibility for this crisis. And Bernanke to his credit, used exactly the authority Greenspan refused to use to ban the wrong kind of subprime lending.

During his floor speech last night, Rep. Frank produced documentation of his votes and his positions on issues that have been misrepresented, lied about, and blamed for the opposite of his actual activity. I will be trying to get a copy of the entire speech, but much of it was inspired. There are few more offensive things the kleptocracy has achieved than its promotion of destructive lies, often repeated by the media as if they were fact.

The refusal to allow the lies to stand is a duty the bloggers must be firm about. Promoting facts and truth is the impetus behind the left leaning blogs, and a good part of the reason they have become a force.

The truth should be able to stand alone, but the wingers have chosen blatant lies as their methodology, because it is the only way to promote failed ideology. We have to counter that constant lying with facts.

Faux Channel Gets Pwnd

If you want a great thrill, I recommend taking the pleasant step of telling your travel service that you have a special requirement from your reservation, that there be No Fox Channel in your room. Yes, that felt good. And it's now official, it's in my email requirements. No.Fox.Channel. I have been known to ask the management to change the channel before, but this is official.

Try that out for fun. Achenblog has nailed the same feeling in yesterday's column. Thanks, Mr. Achenbach.

After Obama's presser, I clicked on Fox News, where Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove were huffing and sniffing and snarling and wheezing, emphatically unimpressed by the president's performance. Fox needs to go with a different team there. The double dose of middle-aged white-guy dyspepsia is overkill. And those two are strong medicine even when solo: It's like teaming Genghis Khan with Attila the Hun.

Obama struggled, seemingly straining to see what it said on the monitor directly in front of him -- why can't he just speak from notes for once? -- and he still has that tendency to be windy. (I don't agree that he was "boring," as Drudge puts it in this morning's big headline.) But he also delivered some memorable lines:

"It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

"I have no investment in causing controversy. I'm happy to avoid it."

"We're not immediately going to get Middle East peace. We've been in office a little over 60 days."

"This is a big ocean liner, its not a speedboat."

The most important moment may have come in his opening statement, when he defended the profit motive: "[T]he rest of us can't afford to demonize every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit. That drive is what has always fueled our prosperity, and it is what will ultimately get these banks lending and our economy moving once more."

Were I his speechwriter, I would have added, "Greed is good."

You know, just to roil the blogosphere. Make some heads explode.

Some might say Obama can be a bit pedantic, to which I'd say: Um, is that bad? I learned some things from The Professor. I didn't know that AIG selling a derivative would be counted as part of the GDP. (And yet a volunteer's labor assisting the elderly, or planting trees in a boulevard median, wouldn't be counted as anything, is my guess.) I assume he misspoke when he said the majority of our recent economic growth has been in the financial sector -- because I think he used the 40 percent figure a couple of days ago -- but whatever, it's a lot, and it's been illusory.

It's hard to look rational when all you can do is rail against one of the most sane people in D.C. So far as I can tell, no one in the right wing press has tried, yet.

Join me in telling the management wherever you are staying or eating; no Faux news, no propaganda allowed.

This is going to be a great trip.

Keeping the Faith

Giving terrible advice to the president seems to be the function adopted for itself of the right wing, and most especially those who write posts pretending to knowledge about the affairs of state. Yes, George Will and Krauthammer come to mind.

It was great to read some one who actually has the interests of the country at heart this morning, in Eugene Robinson. He says 'go to hell' in the nicest way to those who are calling for President Obama to stop doing all those great things he's doing.

The "overload" criticism makes sense, until you think about it. There is general agreement that our system of health care, which leaves 46 million Americans uninsured, is unfair, wasteful and ruinously expensive. Anyone with a pocket calculator can see that as the baby boomers retire and become intimately familiar with the infirmities of old age, Medicare costs will bankrupt the Treasury. Waiting to tackle the problem will only make an eventual fix more expensive and more disruptive.

So the loudest complainers -- Republicans who claim to stand for fiscal prudence, business leaders who claim to be able to read a balance sheet -- ought to be the biggest cheerleaders for Obama's decision to make a 10-year, $634 billion "down payment" on reform. But they don't like the fact that Obama wants to fund that down payment, in part, by returning tax rates for the wealthy to the reasonable levels that were in place during the boom years of the Clinton administration.

Politically, there are no winning arguments against fixing health care or reversing the tax-cutting excesses of the Bush administration. A more promising tactic for critics is to attack the administration for trying to do too much and taking its eye off the ball.

I would argue that a laserlike focus on the financial crisis, to the exclusion of everything else, is unlikely to improve the situation and may actually make things worse. Given that we've already poured well over $1 trillion into the financial system, so far to minimal effect, how can anyone be confident that dumping in, say, an additional $2 trillion would magically turn things around? Do those who blithely argue for nationalizing Citigroup have any sense of how complicated that would be? Do the administration's critics really want our government to run a huge chunk of the banking sector, or do they just want Obama to be bogged down in a financial Vietnam?

I've been critical of the administration for a lack of transparency in handling the Wall Street crisis -- officials should level with us about which banks are insolvent and which aren't, and about the size of the overall problem. But I don't fault the White House or the Treasury for a lack of haste. If there were an obvious, guaranteed solution, we'd know it by now. Unfortunately, there isn't.

The sort who keep trying to distract our president from doing his job were going all out to make sure that Wall Street was unregulated for the years it dug this big hole we're in. We really have to look at what they're advising the president to do, and do exactly the opposite.

The country got into this mess with right wing principles in power, and it is obvious that the other direction is where we need to go.

Elections do have the effects they are intended to have. The direction this country has been elected to go, is back to representation of the public. It's gone much too far in the direction of betraying that interest. The turn-around is overdue.

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Sadly true from Achenblog:
I was one of the suckers who adherred to the belief that if you worked hard, socked away about 14 percent of your gross income in a 401k, bought and held a few blue-chip stocks well recommended by experts, listened to a financial advisor and put your savings in 529 college accounts, and so on, that over time this conservative and prudent financial plan would reap great rewards. Now I wish I had saved my cash to burn it in my hearth and reduce my heating bills.