I didn't always agree with Christopher Hitchens but always enjoyed his rapier wit, his refusal to suffer fools, gladly or otherwise, and his awesome command of the English language. Hitchens was the only guest I have ever seen smoking on Hardball, and Chris Matthews tolerated it without question or irritation, an exception I think he would not have made for anyone else. Here are some of Hitch's best zingers on Hardball:
Friday, December 16, 2011
Chuckles Toddy Delivers Capus Message To Progressives ...
As David Gregory smiles encouragingly. This happened on the Moron Joe set where MSNBC reactionaries can take a load off, ogle Mika, be themselves. At least Chuckles showed he has a pulse. Good classic form, though a bit on the tentative side: GRADE 7.5.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
58 Second Flat Post-GOP Debate Analysis: Newt Wins Battle Of The Midgets ...
Newt was smooth, humbly grandiose, witty — "I'm trying not to be zany, here" — a perfect gentleman, except of course, with the only woman on the stage, Michele Bachmann. Typical Newt, like the DEVIL, a master of disguise and deceit ...
Ron Paul, who is headed for a strong 1-2 finish in Iowa, as predicted in this blog, way before the Idiot Punditocracy caught on — they're idiots, after all — is the weirdest cult leader in American politics, running the most vicious ads against Newt, who said magnanimously, "It's hard to get mad at Ron Paul ..."
And DUMPTY ... don't compare yourself to Lincoln in those seven "Lincoln-Douglas debates" you dream about ("be careful what you wish for," says Chris DARKLY); you just don't fit the bill, historically, intellectually, temperamentally, and ... aesthetically. Lincoln ~ Douglas. Behold:
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The Republican establishment is T-R-R-E-M-B-B-L-ING-BLING ...
Ron Paul, who is headed for a strong 1-2 finish in Iowa, as predicted in this blog, way before the Idiot Punditocracy caught on — they're idiots, after all — is the weirdest cult leader in American politics, running the most vicious ads against Newt, who said magnanimously, "It's hard to get mad at Ron Paul ..."
And DUMPTY ... don't compare yourself to Lincoln in those seven "Lincoln-Douglas debates" you dream about ("be careful what you wish for," says Chris DARKLY); you just don't fit the bill, historically, intellectually, temperamentally, and ... aesthetically. Lincoln ~ Douglas. Behold:
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MSNBC Takes The LOWE’s Road
Caving to a Romney campaign complaint about an MSNBC report that Mitt Romney has been using a KKK slogan from the 1920s verbatim on the stump, to “keep America American” after a Romney campaign aide called to “alert them of the misreporting” Chris Matthews, who was not involved in the report, read this apology to the Romney campaign:
Two questions come to this blogger’s mind about this story: (1) Is it true? And (2) was it objectively reported in correct political historical context? The answer to the first question is, clearly, yes. As for its reporting by MSNBC, AMERICAblog responded, after laying out its sources:
Whatever the intended meaning is irrelevant. It is not inadvertent, since Romney has used the phrase as something his speech writers plugged in (see LA Times report). It is what is, an inflammatory phrase by a major candidate contending for the Republican nomination for president. It's absurd to consider this in a vacuum, given the Republican Party's long and craven history of using racially charged code language, symbolism, and imagery to reach a certain segment of its base. And it's astonishing that MSNBC repeatedly excuses racism from the GOP candidates.
The only critique I have of Thomas Roberts is he would have been better served to have used other sources, e.g., the HuffPost, which was out early with it, report their take on it, perhaps interviewing the reporter, rather than going with a shorthand synopsis/headline. But there's no doubt but that it's news, it was accurately reported and thoroughly sourced.
The apology read by Chris, however, seemed to cast doubt on the quality of the facts citing “a blog item” that “compared” the Romney slogan to the KKK’s. Anyone who bothers to check will discover that AMERICAblog, which unearthed this disturbing but hardly surprising tidbit of information, got it exactly right. The “blog item” is not only impeccably sourced but to say it was “compared” — as in a phrase that is similar to another — to the KKK slogan is untrue insofar as the Romney slogan is a verbatim copy of the KKK slogan rather than a variation on it.
According to New York Times, the Romney campaign “did not specify what it believed to have been misreported.” They wouldn’t want to go there, as Michael Steele likes to say (props to him on forcing MSNBC to cave?), would they.
The conservative site Mediaite reported earlier: “An NBC insider tells Mediaite that NBC News President Steve Capus addressed this story this morning at an editorial meeting, and stressed the need for accuracy, fairness, and caution before proceeding. Capus is reportedly furious at the way the story was handled, and MSNBC is in the process of apologizing to the Romney campaign.”
They are crowing at MSNBC’s public genuflecting, including the Reverend Al-turned corporate stooge, who made the network’s spinelessness complete with this totally unnecessary and gratuitous statement: “For someone who has been the victim of unproven innuendo and half-truths, I agree the report was not proper if you could nail down all the facts. And this network did the right thing by apologizing.”
Really? So tell us, Rev, what are the “facts” this blog “attempt” (attempt at what?!) did not properly “nail down”? Have you forgotten the right wing and Republican racist smears against African Americans? How about Andrew Breitbart getting Shirley Sherrod fired from the Ag Dept. for an edited video hit job in which she was falsely portrayed making supposed anti-white racist statements? These are the lies your colleague Michael Steele dismisses as just “politics.”
Where was MSNBC? Where was MSNBC on Reverend Wright, or birtherism, or the Kenya and socialist smears, all directed against President Obama? Oh they came around, after the stories had festered for days, weeks, and months, after participating in insincere hand-wringing, along with all the other sharks and jackals in the Beltway Media. These stories were pure fabrication, and your despicable corporate media sat on its hands because they were good for ratings and the bottom line.
For your information, Reverend, someone with your civil rights background might appreciate this. Here are the sources for the AMERICAblog “attempt”: (1) The “Jewish Threat” — Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army by Joseph Bendersky; and Amilcar Shabazz's Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas. These are the excerpts from the two books referencing the KKK's use of the slogan, “keep America American” now appropriated by the Romney campaign — from Advancing Democracy, followed by The "Jewish Threat":
And for Chris Matthews, the historian with appalling gaps in knowledge who evidently never bothered to check the veracity of the story — got a problem with a blog? Then check the Huffington Post’s Christina Wilkey (I'm sure Howard Fineman will put in a good word for her), why don't you, Chris. Wilkey wrote a good piece fleshing out the AMERICAblog report, adding this historical factoid, that the slogan was first used in the 1850s by the nativist Know-Nothing party — as MSNBC competes with FOX and CNN in a race to the reactionary corporate pit for "know-nothing" network props:
The conservative site Mediatie downplays Romney’s use of the phrase contending there are “only two examples of Romney using the phrase given, and I couldn’t find any others” and “the ‘campaign ad’ they embed in the story doesn’t appear to be anything of the sort. It’s definitely not a Romney ad, and it doesn’t even look like a PAC ad, but rather, a homemade video by a supporter.”
That’s odd, because at the conclusion of the well-produced ad we hear, “I’m Mitt Romney, I’m running for president, and I approved this message.” The Los Angeles Times ran a story on Romney’s campaign, in which he used the controversial phrase only days ago, reporting on stepped-up efforts and spending by the candidate:
In case anyone's interested, I researched the provenance of this coin, because, unlike the MSNBC navel gazers, I do my homework. I found it in a site specializing in KKK memorabilia. Here is its description: “This is identified as the "So-Called Dollar" token, numbered KK-214.3 in the exonumia reference shown below. This coin has the initials of the Emperor William Joseph Simmons, elected in 1922 present on this token. Note especially the placement of the open palm between the digits "22" of the 1922 date. It is a nickel alloy, measuring 35mm in diameter. It is exceptionally thin and rimless. The condition is about very good showing circulation wear. There is moderate to heavy tarnish present. It has a small hole from where it was drilled for a necklace. This coin dates to the Second Klan, with the date of the perfecting of the order of the First Klan (1866) and Founding of the Second Klan (1915) and 1922. Note the two dots dressing the "ONE FLAG" are present (1923 die version).”
What's truly galling to me is the practiced, insincere disingenuousness of the (MS)NBC braintrust regarding the quotidian use of racially charged language by this Republican Party. Newt Gingrich does it often on an hourly basis out on the stump. He was a fixture on Meet The Press with David Gregory precisely for his facility to use "incendiary" language, to quote Chris's asinine projection, while David never really challenged the institutionalized racism of Michael Steele's pals. When he did, it was genuflecting apologetically. And one has to wonder why thinking people hold corporate media — (MS)NBC in particular for pretending to be what it isn't — in such contempt?
I'm with Steve: “Maybe it’s just me, but I find phrases like “keep America American” kind of creepy.” When I hear Newt Gingrich propose putting poor children, thousands with distended stomachs suffering from hunger in America, to work cleaning the bathrooms of the privileged few, I am reminded of that phrase at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp: "Work Makes Freedom."
As for the LOWE's reference, it was inspired by the last remaining truly independent progressive cable media outlet in America: CURRENT TV. Take it away Keith, and thanks for loaning me the title:
It was the first I’d heard of it and was taken aback by the vehemence of the statement, so I checked it out. My question for Chris, Al Sharpton, NBC News President Steve Capus, their research, production, and editorial staffs is this: have they bothered to check the facts? Can you, as Rachel would say, “do the Google”?“We reported on a blog item that compared a phrase used by the Romney campaign to one used by the KKK way back in the 1920s. It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this and it showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize, we really do, to the Romney campaign.”
Two questions come to this blogger’s mind about this story: (1) Is it true? And (2) was it objectively reported in correct political historical context? The answer to the first question is, clearly, yes. As for its reporting by MSNBC, AMERICAblog responded, after laying out its sources:
The author makes good points, worth reiterating: (1) What part of the story is wrong? (2) There was no comparison to the KKK; the story is Mitt Romney repeatedly using a KKK slogan. And (3) the double standard regarding Democrats (MSNBC, if you're familiar with the story, is the LOWE's of cable news organizations); had the President done the exact same thing, the right wing machine would have gotten into high gear to pound him while an excitable Chris Matthews lined up an entire week or two of segments. Hypocrites.“And here's what MSNBC said this morning:
"So you may not hear Mitt Romney say "Keep America American" anymore, because it was a rallying cry for the KKK group, and intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews, and the progressive AMERICAblog was the first to catch on to that."
So what part of that is wrong, and what part of that deserves an effusive apology such as Chris Matthews gave this evening on MSNBC? And it was one hell of an apology. ... Clearly, Mitt Romney went ballistic at MSNBC behind the scenes over this story, which is telling. But again, what part of the story is wrong? Is the Romney campaign seriously going to keep using an old KKK slogan? I somehow doubt it. But the Romney campaign appears to be digging in, claiming that this is in fact not an old KKK slogan. ...
It is appalling. But nobody "compared" anybody to the KKK. The story was, is, that Mitt Romney has repeatedly used a slogan that just happens to be a former Ku Klux Klan slogan. And it is. So is the Romney campaign claiming the slogan isn't a former Klan slogan? Are they saying that Romney will continue to use it? No chance in hell of that. (And that's news.)
And can you imagine what the networks would have done if the Obama campaign were using an old KKK slogan, even inadvertently? Oh the never ending prime-time debate it would create. But, as always, when a Republican is on the receiving end of the criticism, it's no big deal, and in fact, you're a bad person for even mentioning it. ... It would have been nice if the traditional media had had such high standards during the Clinton impeachment, the Swift Boat Veterans, the Reverend Wright story.”
Whatever the intended meaning is irrelevant. It is not inadvertent, since Romney has used the phrase as something his speech writers plugged in (see LA Times report). It is what is, an inflammatory phrase by a major candidate contending for the Republican nomination for president. It's absurd to consider this in a vacuum, given the Republican Party's long and craven history of using racially charged code language, symbolism, and imagery to reach a certain segment of its base. And it's astonishing that MSNBC repeatedly excuses racism from the GOP candidates.
The only critique I have of Thomas Roberts is he would have been better served to have used other sources, e.g., the HuffPost, which was out early with it, report their take on it, perhaps interviewing the reporter, rather than going with a shorthand synopsis/headline. But there's no doubt but that it's news, it was accurately reported and thoroughly sourced.
The apology read by Chris, however, seemed to cast doubt on the quality of the facts citing “a blog item” that “compared” the Romney slogan to the KKK’s. Anyone who bothers to check will discover that AMERICAblog, which unearthed this disturbing but hardly surprising tidbit of information, got it exactly right. The “blog item” is not only impeccably sourced but to say it was “compared” — as in a phrase that is similar to another — to the KKK slogan is untrue insofar as the Romney slogan is a verbatim copy of the KKK slogan rather than a variation on it.
According to New York Times, the Romney campaign “did not specify what it believed to have been misreported.” They wouldn’t want to go there, as Michael Steele likes to say (props to him on forcing MSNBC to cave?), would they.
The conservative site Mediaite reported earlier: “An NBC insider tells Mediaite that NBC News President Steve Capus addressed this story this morning at an editorial meeting, and stressed the need for accuracy, fairness, and caution before proceeding. Capus is reportedly furious at the way the story was handled, and MSNBC is in the process of apologizing to the Romney campaign.”
They are crowing at MSNBC’s public genuflecting, including the Reverend Al-turned corporate stooge, who made the network’s spinelessness complete with this totally unnecessary and gratuitous statement: “For someone who has been the victim of unproven innuendo and half-truths, I agree the report was not proper if you could nail down all the facts. And this network did the right thing by apologizing.”
Really? So tell us, Rev, what are the “facts” this blog “attempt” (attempt at what?!) did not properly “nail down”? Have you forgotten the right wing and Republican racist smears against African Americans? How about Andrew Breitbart getting Shirley Sherrod fired from the Ag Dept. for an edited video hit job in which she was falsely portrayed making supposed anti-white racist statements? These are the lies your colleague Michael Steele dismisses as just “politics.”
Where was MSNBC? Where was MSNBC on Reverend Wright, or birtherism, or the Kenya and socialist smears, all directed against President Obama? Oh they came around, after the stories had festered for days, weeks, and months, after participating in insincere hand-wringing, along with all the other sharks and jackals in the Beltway Media. These stories were pure fabrication, and your despicable corporate media sat on its hands because they were good for ratings and the bottom line.
For your information, Reverend, someone with your civil rights background might appreciate this. Here are the sources for the AMERICAblog “attempt”: (1) The “Jewish Threat” — Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army by Joseph Bendersky; and Amilcar Shabazz's Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas. These are the excerpts from the two books referencing the KKK's use of the slogan, “keep America American” now appropriated by the Romney campaign — from Advancing Democracy, followed by The "Jewish Threat":
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The HuffPost link includes the Romney video ad in which he uses the KKK slogan. Similar reports have appeared in the New York Times, WaPo, and others, none disputing the essential veracity of AMERICAblog's report. Curiously, while a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney “declined to comment on the matter when reached by HuffPost” they had no such compunctions getting on the horn to the MSNBC suits to compel Matthews to issue the ridiculous apology. They must have some powerful "friends" at the network.“It's the type of coincidence every politician dreads. On Tuesday, political commenters reported that one of Romney's go-to campaign catch-phrases, "Keep America American," was a central theme of Ku Klux Klan publications in the 1920s, and served as a rallying cry for the white supremacist group's campaign of violence and intimidation against black Americans, as well as Catholics, gay people and Jews. ... The progressive AMERICAblog first posted examples of the overlap, and a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney declined to comment on the matter when reached by HuffPost. ... The slogan was first used in the 1850s by members of the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic movement called the "Know Nothing Party," many of whom were reacting to the dramatic influx of immigrants in the mid-19th century, especially those fleeing Ireland's Potato Famine.”
The conservative site Mediatie downplays Romney’s use of the phrase contending there are “only two examples of Romney using the phrase given, and I couldn’t find any others” and “the ‘campaign ad’ they embed in the story doesn’t appear to be anything of the sort. It’s definitely not a Romney ad, and it doesn’t even look like a PAC ad, but rather, a homemade video by a supporter.”
That’s odd, because at the conclusion of the well-produced ad we hear, “I’m Mitt Romney, I’m running for president, and I approved this message.” The Los Angeles Times ran a story on Romney’s campaign, in which he used the controversial phrase only days ago, reporting on stepped-up efforts and spending by the candidate:
So, this phrase, in context, comes as Romney steps up his campaign claiming President Obama wants to transform the U.S. into a “European-style nation” which is code for socialist and, of course, foreign. Or, as Chris our dear corporate lackey used to say, "the other." You know, the usual racist Republican garbage, so commonplace now it barely raises an eyebrow at MSNBC. Just ask Michael Steele; he'll spin all your troubles away, Chris. But wait, there's more — much more. The brilliant rational conservative Andrew Sullivan echoes Steve Benen in being “creeped out” by Romney's stump routine:“Mitt Romney and his supporters moved to prop up his faltering campaign Friday, unleashing millions of dollars of ads across Iowa and trying to connect personally with the voters who will cast the nation's first ballots in January.
A Romney-sympathetic "super PAC" — an independent group that can raise unlimited sums — launched a $3.1-million, three-week ad buy across the state. The 30-second television commercial contrasts Romney's job-creation record with President Obama's.”
[…]
Romney aimed his fire at Obama, and acknowledged the importance of such interactions with voters.
"There are people in this room who are informed and who care about this election, who recognize that this is a defining time for America," he said. "We have on one side a president who wants to transform America into a European-style nation, and you have on other hand someone like myself that wants to turn around America and keep America American with the principals that made us the greatest nation on Earth. And I will do that with your help."”
“[A]s Seth Masket noted, “keep America American” sounds an awful lot like a line we might expect from Bill the Butcher. (It also, of course, reinforces the not-so-subtle attack on President Obama’s patriotism, which has long been a favorite ploy for Romney.)”One of my favorite blogs, “Irregular Times,” has this fascinating post, unrelated to the AMERICAblog story, entitled “One Country One Flag One Language – The KKK Code In The 2012 Presidential Election.” I think it's important to reproduce it in full here, to give the nitwits at MSNBC something else to chew on. Here's more evidence of the connection between today's Republican Party and the symbology and slogans of the KKK, which southern white (and Iowa) racists — Republican base voters — are steeped in. According to a Southern Poverty Law Center report, Mississippi is second only to Iowa in the number of KKK groups per capita — surprise!:
Sullivan adds: “And a classically McCarthyite one, from an alleged moderate. Apparently Romney's campaign shares the slogan with the KKK.”
“Mitt Romney declares that, “English needs to be the language that is spoken in America. We cannot be a bilingual nation like Canada.”
Rick Santorum votes for a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, declaring that “the flag of the US is a unique symbol of national unity”. Thaddeus McCotter not only votes for legislation to ban flag burning, he one-ups Santorum by afterwards playing an electric guitar with an American flag pasted on to it.
“We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto,” says Newt Gingrich. Defending his legislation to ban flag burning, Gingrich lectures that “The values of absolute freedom are values destructive” to democracy.
Michele Bachmann harumphs that “We’re losing our country. People are not assimilating themselves to America. They’re not speaking English, and you must speak it if you want to succeed here in this country.”
The common thread uniting these comments is found on this coin.”
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In case anyone's interested, I researched the provenance of this coin, because, unlike the MSNBC navel gazers, I do my homework. I found it in a site specializing in KKK memorabilia. Here is its description: “This is identified as the "So-Called Dollar" token, numbered KK-214.3 in the exonumia reference shown below. This coin has the initials of the Emperor William Joseph Simmons, elected in 1922 present on this token. Note especially the placement of the open palm between the digits "22" of the 1922 date. It is a nickel alloy, measuring 35mm in diameter. It is exceptionally thin and rimless. The condition is about very good showing circulation wear. There is moderate to heavy tarnish present. It has a small hole from where it was drilled for a necklace. This coin dates to the Second Klan, with the date of the perfecting of the order of the First Klan (1866) and Founding of the Second Klan (1915) and 1922. Note the two dots dressing the "ONE FLAG" are present (1923 die version).”
The "Irregular Times" post continues:
Newt Gingrich wrote the racist Republican code language manual, along with Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and Frank Luntz. In due time, for anyone who's interested, I'll post a brief history of racist code language in the Republican Party. But don't anyone insult our intelligence by claiming ignorance that it is alive and well in today's Republican Party.“It’s a coin minted by the Ku Klux Klan. It’s an expression of White Nationalism, which has found its way into the politics of Republican presidential campaigns in the past, and will surely find its way into the Republican presidential campaigns of 2012.
They tell us that there’s one real America, a traditional America – and that America speaks English and honors the flag. One Country One Flag One Language – that’s the KKK motto that fits the Republican playbook to a T.
As seen on this coin, the KKK also loved to throw in love for the Bible into their racist campaigns, just as current Republican candidates, love to speak of Christianity a requirement for political office.
The KKK loved to promote itself through codes of the sort seen on this coin. AKIA stands for A Klansman I Am. OSFK stands for One School Flag Kountry.
The Republican presidential candidates are working with consultants who know how to throw around KKK codes with the best of them. Republican speeches will defend the flag, promote the English language, and rally around the Bible – and the message will be clearly received.”
What's truly galling to me is the practiced, insincere disingenuousness of the (MS)NBC braintrust regarding the quotidian use of racially charged language by this Republican Party. Newt Gingrich does it often on an hourly basis out on the stump. He was a fixture on Meet The Press with David Gregory precisely for his facility to use "incendiary" language, to quote Chris's asinine projection, while David never really challenged the institutionalized racism of Michael Steele's pals. When he did, it was genuflecting apologetically. And one has to wonder why thinking people hold corporate media — (MS)NBC in particular for pretending to be what it isn't — in such contempt?
I'm with Steve: “Maybe it’s just me, but I find phrases like “keep America American” kind of creepy.” When I hear Newt Gingrich propose putting poor children, thousands with distended stomachs suffering from hunger in America, to work cleaning the bathrooms of the privileged few, I am reminded of that phrase at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp: "Work Makes Freedom."
As for the LOWE's reference, it was inspired by the last remaining truly independent progressive cable media outlet in America: CURRENT TV. Take it away Keith, and thanks for loaning me the title:
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Fake 'Progressive' Channel Watch: Dylan "STRETCH" Ratigan At it Again
Dylan Ratigan's sophistry: "This bill (with payroll tax cut extension, unemployment benefits) is being held hostage, in this case (gagging) by a faction of the Republicans (for including a rider to expedite approval of the controversial Keystone oil pipeline, which President Obama has already said he will veto) — Democrats do it too, by the way."
NO.THEY.DON’T. Prove it EMPIRICALLY, Dylan. And please, don’t give us Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu. Progressives and liberals vehemently criticized them too. As we have the President when he cozied up to these JACKAL Republicans, giving up too much of our priorities. Show us, Dylan, where Democrats have filibustered needed, progressive legislation (PASSED BY DEMOCRATS) like the MASSIVE, historic obstructionism of these Republicans.
You can’t, pal. Do you really think we’re that stupid, Dylan? Good on Martin for pegging the nickname “Stretch” on you. Shows what a nice, decent guy he is, pulling his punches.
NO.THEY.DON’T. Prove it EMPIRICALLY, Dylan. And please, don’t give us Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu. Progressives and liberals vehemently criticized them too. As we have the President when he cozied up to these JACKAL Republicans, giving up too much of our priorities. Show us, Dylan, where Democrats have filibustered needed, progressive legislation (PASSED BY DEMOCRATS) like the MASSIVE, historic obstructionism of these Republicans.
You can’t, pal. Do you really think we’re that stupid, Dylan? Good on Martin for pegging the nickname “Stretch” on you. Shows what a nice, decent guy he is, pulling his punches.
Quotable: Joe Bob Briggs
"Y'all name a boy Newt, y'all gonna end up with one mean boy."
(Possibly apocryphal ... but oh so true!) Memo To Chris: Better steele (SP.?) yourself ...
Fake 'Progressive' Channel Watch: Postcript
How annoying is Meghan McCain and that hideous generation Y brogue? Let me count the ways: 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ....
Monday, December 12, 2011
Fake 'Progressive' Channel Watch: Chris's Self-Serving Newt Notion, The Steele Trap, Charlatans' Buzzword
Sometimes A Great Notion: Tapping Moron Joe’s selective blind-leading-the-blind assertion, fake progressive channel avatar Chris Matthews floated the latest explanation for Newt’s lead in Republican polls to his ubiquity on FOX:
If Chris’s thesis that Newt’s popularity among Republican primary voters is a Rupert Murdoch-FOX exclusive, then explain this, Chris, unless it's your contention that the leading mainstream media Sunday politics show is exclusively shunned by Gingrich voters:
Chris, Kelly O'Donnell ("And he's had this 'great forum'" ...), Moron Joe ("He's been on FOX 'News' for such a long time, and FOX 'News' drives Republican primary voters")... peeps, peeps; enough self-serving spin already. Interestingly, Gloria Borger of CNN made the most cogent point, recalling that Ronald Reagan used his TV platform as a GE spokesman to remain in the public eye. Say what you will about Gingrich, he is no fool. Reagan's media path to political office was Newt's model. He used his media exposure on C-SPAN, FOX, and (are you listening, Chris) NBC to vault to the top of the Republican pack. Time for an update, Steven, given Chris’s latest bout of … er, misdirection.
The Steele Trap: Readers of this blog are familiar with my seething irritation at Michael Steele's role as "MSNBC political analyst" — considering how often Steele pops up to blithely badmouth Democrats or President Obama. Isn't it the role of a network "analyst" providing they don't work for FOX to give true and unbiased information and analysis, in contrast to the garbage dispensed by partisan "guest" pundits? Reasonable people would say YES. But for some inexplicable reason, MSNBC has decided it was a wonderful idea to hire partisan political hacks and ex-politicians as "analysts." That is the FOX model. But FOX as has been noted ad nauseum is NOT a news organization.
CNN fell flat on its face when it hired former disgraced NY governor Eliot Spitzer. I'm not a fan of politicians from either party as "analysts" but at least Ed Rendell, former Democratic Pennsylvania governor and DNC chair, frequently prefaces his remarks by saying a priori he supports or opposes the issue in question. That's the ethically appropriate position to take. Michael Steele, on the other hand, has never taken an even-handed, objective, or truthful approach. Predictably, as I frequently warned the suits, he launches straight into GOP spin, talking points, misinformation, and lies.
I can't even begin to express what an affront this partisan hack is to core MSNBC viewers. Recently, on a POLITICO "ARENA" confab, Streele told us how he REALLY feels, dispensing strategic advice to his fellow Republicans — keep your powder dry — and declaring who the REAL enemy is:
Steele's unambiguous political posture taints everything he may say on MSNBC. Unlike Ed Rendell, Steele has no problem lying, spinning, misrepresenting, and concealing his bias. He has effectively become a GOP mole within MSNBC. Partisans hired as "political analysts" except on FOX are essentially on the honor system. Politicians are generic liars. Steele's outrageous trashing of President Obama's important and serious Teddy Roosevelt speech was only the latest in a growing list of MSNBC partisan Steele rants. MSNBC should run a disclaimer prior to any Steele appearance, that (a) he is on record opposing President Obama's re-election, and (b) nothing he says can be independently verified in real time as truth or fact. Instead, they'll keep slapping core viewers in the face.
PS - I've given Martin Bashir a deserved bad rap re: Michael Steele, but Martin remains one of my favorite MSNBC progressives nonetheless.
To which "tribe" does the Beltway Media belong? The latest buzzword to distinguish this self-annointed political media elite from its subjects, literally and figuratively, is to refer to "us" as part of one "tribe" or another. The idea is to circumscribe and pigeonhole people based on their political ideology, party affiliation, and little else. liberals and progressives are of one "tribe." Conservatives and Tea Partiers of another. More importantly, such tribal designations assign a relativism to each "tribe" in which ideology trumps all.
Naturally, the non-tribal Beltway Media populating their conception of the American political "center" (actually, the center-right) are the self-appointed spokespeople for so-called independents who "decide" elections. Here, the hubristic Beltway Media has tasked to itself the epically important role of schooling low-information voters and independent political neophytes on exactly what to think. Those who can think for themselves are supposed to fall in line if they wish to keep getting those insider invitations to the Beltway socio-POLITICO scene.
Describing progressives, for instance, as belonging to a "tribe" is a way of marginalizing us. Rachel has them sussed. The Beltway Media love to pontificate about "extremes" in American politics, even though the American people — a majority of so-called independents, even Republicans, among them — have repeatedly shown in poll after poll that they are far to the left of the Beltway Media and its arrogant right-leaning corporate political constructs. It's "fascinating"— to coin an overused Beltway term — indeed to observe how the rise of Newt Gingrich has so unsettled the Beltway Media out of all proportion, I think, with the real world political impact of his candidacy. Watch:
While liberals and progressives rejoice at the prospect, still uncertain — never underestimate the power of the GOP "establishment" — that Gingrich will gain the Republican nomination, he represents a real threat to the power of the "establishment" writ large which derives largely from corporate power. Oddly, Newt Gingrich, though an ally, is such a patently flawed vehicle that his prospective nomination has establishmentarians seeing red, visions of a conservative rout of Goldwater proportions. So why is this unsettling to someone such as Chris Matthews?
Hard to say. Maybe the highly suggestible Chris lives and works in a milieu in which a Newt win is not only frighteningly probable, but will effectively double down on the worst of the worst in American politics, as witnessed close up by Chris. It's a visceral reaction. Other establishmentarians know Newt as a hustler, a gangster beholden to no one. His meanness and petty vengefulness terrifies those who have crossed him. Newt has few friends in the Beltway establishment, save for wingnut media — FOX, Limbaugh, Breitbart — and maybe MTP's David Gregory. Imagine, from the establisment's POV, what a zoo a changing of the guard in Beltway power relationships would be, were Gingrich to become president.
Relax, Chris. Newt Gingrich is unelectable. If nominated, he will be defeated in a landslide by President Obama. And there are only two tribes in politics: Those who stand for, and believe in, the truth, and those who do not. Everything else is bullshit.
If Chris’s thesis that Newt’s popularity among Republican primary voters is a Rupert Murdoch-FOX exclusive, then explain this, Chris, unless it's your contention that the leading mainstream media Sunday politics show is exclusively shunned by Gingrich voters:
Good question. I'll give it a shot, Steven: Back in 2009, Newt Gingrich was actively planning a run for the presidency in 2011-12. What better platform to establish his "serious" political bona fides while at the same time remaining in the public eye than to become a high profile fixture on MTP? Was David Gregory a knowing enabler of Newt's political rebirth? If you wear a tinfoil hat, (sometimes a useful exercise) perhaps. Most likely, though, the Gregory MSM team's reasons were pedestrian: ratings, ratings, ratings — a perfect marriage with Newt's gift for making authoritative outrageous pronouncements in convenient sound bites, the compressed timespan of the MSM. Newt is a bomb thrower; a "human hand grenade" as conservative columnist Peggy Noonan described him. And "human hand grenades" are good for ratings. Otherwise, how to explain this:THE MOST POPULAR 'MTP' GUEST OF THE YEAR.... In the previous post, I mentioned what disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on "Meet the Press" yesterday. I neglected to ask a relevant question: why on earth was Newt Gingrich on "Meet the Press" yesterday?
Yesterday was Gingrich's fifth appearance on "MTP" just this year. In fact, Newt Gingrich, despite not having held any position in government for over a decade, was the single most frequent guest on "Meet the Press" in 2009 of any political figure in the United States. Literally.
From March to December, Gingrich appeared on "MTP," on average, every other month. No one else in American politics was on the show this often.
I'm reminded of something Eric Boehlert wrote recently:
"[A]s often happens when I read breaking, this-is-what-Newt-said dispatches, I couldn't help thinking, 'Who cares what Newt Gingrich thinks?' And I don't mean that in the partisan sense. I mean it in the journalistic sense: How do Gingrich's daily pronouncements about the fundamental dishonesty of Democrats (Newt's favorite phrase) translate into news? Why does the press, 10 years after Gingrich was forced out of office, still treat his every partisan utterance as a newsworthy occurrence? In other words, why does the press still treat him like he's speaker of the House? It's unprecedented."
Eric wrote that seven months ago. It's still true.
Keep in mind, "Meet the Press" didn't have the actual Speaker of the House on at all this year. It also featured zero appearances from all of the other living former House Speakers (Hastert, Wright, Foley) combined.
There's just no reasonable explanation for this. Gingrich was forced from office in disgrace — by his own caucus — 11 years ago. What's more, he's kind of a nut — we're talking about a former office holder who speculated, just last week, about hidden messages from God in snowstorms.
And yet, no other political figure was on "Meet the Press" more this year than crazy ol' Newt Gingrich. If someone can explain why, I'm all ears.
We'll have to ask David Gregory for a fuller explanation. But Chris's "tribal" colleague isn't talking. In addition, Beltway Media narrative driver and (MS)NBC partner, POLITICO, posits it wasn't FOX (or NBC, not even mentioned ... surprise!) but C-SPAN that provided Newt's "conduit to reach a generation of conservative activists." I'll buy it, in part, despite the editorial redacting. It should be noted that C-SPAN's popularity among wingnuts is itself indicative of its "conservative," i.e., right wing bias."How do Gingrich's daily pronouncements about the fundamental dishonesty of Democrats (Newt's favorite phrase) translate into news? Why does the press, 10 years after Gingrich was forced out of office, still treat his every partisan utterance as a newsworthy occurrence? In other words, why does the press still treat him like he's speaker of the House? It's unprecedented."... And:
"Gingrich was forced from office in disgrace — by his own caucus — 11 years ago. What's more, he's kind of a nut — we're talking about a former office holder who speculated, just last week, about hidden messages from God in snowstorms.And yet, no other political figure was on "Meet the Press" more this year than crazy ol' Newt Gingrich. If someone can explain why, I'm all ears."
Chris, Kelly O'Donnell ("And he's had this 'great forum'" ...), Moron Joe ("He's been on FOX 'News' for such a long time, and FOX 'News' drives Republican primary voters")... peeps, peeps; enough self-serving spin already. Interestingly, Gloria Borger of CNN made the most cogent point, recalling that Ronald Reagan used his TV platform as a GE spokesman to remain in the public eye. Say what you will about Gingrich, he is no fool. Reagan's media path to political office was Newt's model. He used his media exposure on C-SPAN, FOX, and (are you listening, Chris) NBC to vault to the top of the Republican pack. Time for an update, Steven, given Chris’s latest bout of … er, misdirection.
The Steele Trap: Readers of this blog are familiar with my seething irritation at Michael Steele's role as "MSNBC political analyst" — considering how often Steele pops up to blithely badmouth Democrats or President Obama. Isn't it the role of a network "analyst" providing they don't work for FOX to give true and unbiased information and analysis, in contrast to the garbage dispensed by partisan "guest" pundits? Reasonable people would say YES. But for some inexplicable reason, MSNBC has decided it was a wonderful idea to hire partisan political hacks and ex-politicians as "analysts." That is the FOX model. But FOX as has been noted ad nauseum is NOT a news organization.
CNN fell flat on its face when it hired former disgraced NY governor Eliot Spitzer. I'm not a fan of politicians from either party as "analysts" but at least Ed Rendell, former Democratic Pennsylvania governor and DNC chair, frequently prefaces his remarks by saying a priori he supports or opposes the issue in question. That's the ethically appropriate position to take. Michael Steele, on the other hand, has never taken an even-handed, objective, or truthful approach. Predictably, as I frequently warned the suits, he launches straight into GOP spin, talking points, misinformation, and lies.
I can't even begin to express what an affront this partisan hack is to core MSNBC viewers. Recently, on a POLITICO "ARENA" confab, Streele told us how he REALLY feels, dispensing strategic advice to his fellow Republicans — keep your powder dry — and declaring who the REAL enemy is:
It's amazing to me that MSNBC progressive hosts properly and repeatedly condemn the words of Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell declaring his main political mission is the defeat of President Obama in 2012, yet unquestioningly tolerate Steele as one of their own. Not surprisingly, Michael Steele concurs with Mitch McConnell; Mr. Obama is a president "who has rightfully earned one term" and the Republican "candidate's fight is with Obama." McConnell and Steele are entitled to their opinion; but WTF is Michael Steele doing as an "MSNBC political analyst"?!"The base is looking for a fighter, but they don't want the fight to be taken to another member of the family. Their fight, which should be the candidate's fight is with Obama. So running ads tearing down a fellow Republican, I predict will not win you friends and it certainly won't move your numbers (at least not the way you want). Political professionals misjudge the rise and fall of those who have gone before — they fell by their own hand...Similarly, Newt will either claim that presidential nomination or he won't not because Mitt gave him a beat down in a TV ad, but because he forgot to be humble or to keep quiet.
Save the money for the real battle next fall against a president who has rightfully earned one term." [emphasis mine.]
Steele's unambiguous political posture taints everything he may say on MSNBC. Unlike Ed Rendell, Steele has no problem lying, spinning, misrepresenting, and concealing his bias. He has effectively become a GOP mole within MSNBC. Partisans hired as "political analysts" except on FOX are essentially on the honor system. Politicians are generic liars. Steele's outrageous trashing of President Obama's important and serious Teddy Roosevelt speech was only the latest in a growing list of MSNBC partisan Steele rants. MSNBC should run a disclaimer prior to any Steele appearance, that (a) he is on record opposing President Obama's re-election, and (b) nothing he says can be independently verified in real time as truth or fact. Instead, they'll keep slapping core viewers in the face.
PS - I've given Martin Bashir a deserved bad rap re: Michael Steele, but Martin remains one of my favorite MSNBC progressives nonetheless.
To which "tribe" does the Beltway Media belong? The latest buzzword to distinguish this self-annointed political media elite from its subjects, literally and figuratively, is to refer to "us" as part of one "tribe" or another. The idea is to circumscribe and pigeonhole people based on their political ideology, party affiliation, and little else. liberals and progressives are of one "tribe." Conservatives and Tea Partiers of another. More importantly, such tribal designations assign a relativism to each "tribe" in which ideology trumps all.
Naturally, the non-tribal Beltway Media populating their conception of the American political "center" (actually, the center-right) are the self-appointed spokespeople for so-called independents who "decide" elections. Here, the hubristic Beltway Media has tasked to itself the epically important role of schooling low-information voters and independent political neophytes on exactly what to think. Those who can think for themselves are supposed to fall in line if they wish to keep getting those insider invitations to the Beltway socio-POLITICO scene.
Describing progressives, for instance, as belonging to a "tribe" is a way of marginalizing us. Rachel has them sussed. The Beltway Media love to pontificate about "extremes" in American politics, even though the American people — a majority of so-called independents, even Republicans, among them — have repeatedly shown in poll after poll that they are far to the left of the Beltway Media and its arrogant right-leaning corporate political constructs. It's "fascinating"— to coin an overused Beltway term — indeed to observe how the rise of Newt Gingrich has so unsettled the Beltway Media out of all proportion, I think, with the real world political impact of his candidacy. Watch:
While liberals and progressives rejoice at the prospect, still uncertain — never underestimate the power of the GOP "establishment" — that Gingrich will gain the Republican nomination, he represents a real threat to the power of the "establishment" writ large which derives largely from corporate power. Oddly, Newt Gingrich, though an ally, is such a patently flawed vehicle that his prospective nomination has establishmentarians seeing red, visions of a conservative rout of Goldwater proportions. So why is this unsettling to someone such as Chris Matthews?
Hard to say. Maybe the highly suggestible Chris lives and works in a milieu in which a Newt win is not only frighteningly probable, but will effectively double down on the worst of the worst in American politics, as witnessed close up by Chris. It's a visceral reaction. Other establishmentarians know Newt as a hustler, a gangster beholden to no one. His meanness and petty vengefulness terrifies those who have crossed him. Newt has few friends in the Beltway establishment, save for wingnut media — FOX, Limbaugh, Breitbart — and maybe MTP's David Gregory. Imagine, from the establisment's POV, what a zoo a changing of the guard in Beltway power relationships would be, were Gingrich to become president.
Relax, Chris. Newt Gingrich is unelectable. If nominated, he will be defeated in a landslide by President Obama. And there are only two tribes in politics: Those who stand for, and believe in, the truth, and those who do not. Everything else is bullshit.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
SNL Trumps Trump And Lampoons The Reverend Al ...
Darrell Hammond does the Donald to perfection, keying on Trump's clownish superciliousness, just as he did a pitch-perfect manic Chris Matthews highlighting the Philly accent (ever hilarious now — hint hint, Darrell? — with his pronunciation of "Gingrich") and trademark "HA!"
Now that Herman Cain has departed the political scene, there's the Reverend Al to enrich Kenan Thompson's cast of characters. It's not really fair to the newbie TV host Rev to play up the wrong camera thing — I tried to help, writing in this blog, "Hey Rev, the camera's over here." — but it's a good impression overall. Kenan might want to include a couple of halting "UHs" every so often ...
(Note: Turn autoplay "off" or refresh when video ends; these Hulu vids are annoying that way.)
Now that Herman Cain has departed the political scene, there's the Reverend Al to enrich Kenan Thompson's cast of characters. It's not really fair to the newbie TV host Rev to play up the wrong camera thing — I tried to help, writing in this blog, "Hey Rev, the camera's over here." — but it's a good impression overall. Kenan might want to include a couple of halting "UHs" every so often ...
And ROBYN ... she's SOOO 1980s! Sexy, cool and TOTALLY adorable:
Does It Take Their Restaurant Critic To Write A Great Sports Op-Ed For The Times?
Perhaps, appropriately so. But Frank Bruni is so much more than their restaurant critic that, on the strength of this inspirational piece, his editors ought to assign him the sports beat more often. What Bruni didn't mention in his op-ed was the proliferation, some would say infestation, of evangelicals in professional sports who wear Christ not only on their sleeve but on their jerseys. Every time they score they perform an on-field celebration praising Jesus for the feat. And when they win a championship they will remove their game jerseys to reveal handwritten signs to the glory of God on the front of their white Tees.
If such celebrations aren't outlawed, they should be. Is there such a thing as "taunting" a fan or an adversary who does not believe as they do? I have one question for Kaká: was his red card in the 2010 World Cup, ridiculous and unjust though it was, punishment from God? Because Kaká hasn't been the same player since and the ungodly (unless you're Catholic) imperialists of old — the Dutch knocked out Brazil and the Spanish, destroyers of ancient civilization — were given their day in the sun. Ours is not to question why. But maybe, just maybe, God was telling all of these athletes not to take His name in vain. It's only a game. In all fairness, though, many evangelical athletes do not flaunt their faith. Here's a list of top evangelicals in sports, whom we wouldn't have known as such, except for Tebow now that he's so Christ-demonstrative in the Big Leagues.
This Sunday when my quarterback-challenged Chicago Bears meet godly Tim Tebow and his Denver Broncos warriors for Christ at Mile High Stadium, the only team in need of a miracle are the Bears. Will they get one? NAAANHHH ... But if they do, I might consider converting, aka, personal salvation, as long as I'm not required to be a Republican.
If such celebrations aren't outlawed, they should be. Is there such a thing as "taunting" a fan or an adversary who does not believe as they do? I have one question for Kaká: was his red card in the 2010 World Cup, ridiculous and unjust though it was, punishment from God? Because Kaká hasn't been the same player since and the ungodly (unless you're Catholic) imperialists of old — the Dutch knocked out Brazil and the Spanish, destroyers of ancient civilization — were given their day in the sun. Ours is not to question why. But maybe, just maybe, God was telling all of these athletes not to take His name in vain. It's only a game. In all fairness, though, many evangelical athletes do not flaunt their faith. Here's a list of top evangelicals in sports, whom we wouldn't have known as such, except for Tebow now that he's so Christ-demonstrative in the Big Leagues.
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| "Tebowing" — photos courtesy of tebowing.com. |
Saturday, December 10, 2011
58 Second Flat Post-GOP Debate Analysis: A $10,000 Bet ...
On anyone but Mitt. Which was the effect of Romney's juvenile challenge to Rick Perry on what was, or was not, written in the first edition of Mitt's book regarding Romneycare. That kind of stratified country club millionaire's bravado is so divorced from the day-to-day money worries of ordinary middle class Americans trying to stay ahead of expenses, that it's akin to George H.W. Bush showing how out-of-touch he was with plain folks by not knowing how a price scanner worked. Mitt is effectively toast in Iowa, and if he doesn't stop the bleeding in New Hampshire, he's finished.
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- $10,000 is one-third of a median family's annual income in affluent states in this country;
- $10,000 is a downpayment on a new home for many middle class home buyers;
- $10,000 is 10 times larger than the average payroll tax cut for 160 million middle class American workers;
- $10,000 can cover one year's tuition costs for thousands of young people without the means to afford a college education; and
- $10,000 is the kind of money only high-end professional gamblers with the fattest bankrolls risk; they rarely make a prime bet exceeding 5% of bankroll, which means, to place a bet of $10,000 they need to have a gambling bankroll of $200,000.
Friday, December 09, 2011
WINGNUT WATCH: Stocking Monsters To Really REALLY FRIGHTEN Wingnuts …
Aww … Our restive wingnut zombie population, avid TV viewers of the Barrett-Jackson car auctions — because muscle cars compensate for intimacy, normal relationships, and sexual inadequacy — the johns and janes of a whorehouse named FOX, and consumers of The Daily Caller, are real SKEERT, terrified, “FRIGHTENED” that these stocking monsters will ruin their holidays:
1. President O-BADASSMA-ma: While the GOP’s latest frontrunner Newt turns off larger and larger portions of the general electorate by proposing the repeal of 100 years of child labor laws and a return to 19th century indentured servitude and exploitation of women and children — go for it, Newt, we’re lovin’ it!...
Skippy the prissy Mittster hurled the GOP nuclear option at President Obama, the get-on-your-knees-and-pray Hail Mary! pass. Vaulting right over the usual charges that Democrats are “soft” on Defense, Skippy went straight for the “appeasement” canard, a sure sign of desperation. Except this time it won’t stick, and it won’t work, with our — NINJA! president:
The country’s wised up, wingnuts. And judging by those FRIGHTENED DC pathetic hit pieces attempting to disparage OWS for: (a) being white and affluent — (like the Founding Fathers?) ... but untrue and misleading nonetheless — then (b) “hypocrisy” for posting $400 (!) to pay monthly rental on a campsite property — the kind of income that barely covers a single studio rental in anywhere USA; wingnuts remain clueless. They whine the movement isn’t genuine like, say, the Koch Bros.-financed Tea Party … unless it’s destitute and has no contributions or sources of funding. More absurd wingnut spitballs. But reading the DC gives us valuable insight into the wingnuts' teenie tiny bigoted brains; a treasure trove for psychology and psychiatry professionals studying the twisted 'logic' of the right.
ATTENTION, WINGNUTS: EVEN your deity, Ronald Reagan, is hip to the Democratic message:
OH MY. Ronald Reagan, Jr. said, "just shows you how far (right) the Republican Party has come since then." OUCH. And OOPS …
4. NEWT GINGRICH: YES-yes-yes …. Just in time for the Holidays, the GRINCH who stole everyone’s thunder has managed to turn the staid political world of the Beltway Media/Idiot Punditocracy/GOP Establishment on its head. LITERALLY. Newt Gingrich is a one-man political wrecking crew. He has totally unsettled the POLITICO world of IP luminaries like Chris Matthews, who warned progressives, DARKLY, that we should be “careful what (we) wish for.” Meaning, of course, liberals and progressives are DOUBLY rejoicing at the prospect of a Gingrich challenge to President Obama as the Republican Party nominee! It’s totally hilarious to see Chris Matthews, Chris Christie and John Sununu on the same page, not to mention the Coultergeist — this loon is afraid Newt will be "foisting EST on the nation" (!) — as Rush Limbaugh rails against the GOP “establishment.” Meanwhile, FOX and the DC are “soooo conf-US-ed…” The wingnuts are in CHAOS! OH MY … Indeed.
5. Teddy Roosevelt: Nothing like invoking the spirit of a top-three icon of the "grand old party" when it actually lived up to its acronym. In my earlier post I laid out Teddy's broad progressive vision from his "New Nationalism" speech of 1910 in Osawatomie, Kansas. Here are a few more tidbits, relevant to today's extremist Republicans. Would Teddy pass muster in today's Republican Party? No way, Joe. The only question is, will President Obama rise to the challenge of his aspirational marker:
1. President O-BADASSMA-ma: While the GOP’s latest frontrunner Newt turns off larger and larger portions of the general electorate by proposing the repeal of 100 years of child labor laws and a return to 19th century indentured servitude and exploitation of women and children — go for it, Newt, we’re lovin’ it!...
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OOPS …
2. Occupy Wall Street: Who’d a thunk that the OWS kids mocked by Newt and wingnut pundits like Ron Christie regurgitating old 60s establishment scorn — “go take a bath!” and “get a job!” — have the GOP establishment sweating rubber bullets and projectiles, so much so that Frank Luntz is feverishly rewriting their propaganda scripts:OOPS …
3. The 1980s! Wow … The pathetic, generationally brain-addled wingnut SAPS are suddenly REALLY fearful of embracing the decade of their deity, Ronald Reagan. Little wonder, since it spawned 30 years of flatlined middle class wages, an explosion of income inequality, deficits, the theft of wealth from the bottom and middle to the very top 1%, the flight of American jobs overseas, and the gutting of our manufacturing base. So we get a ridiculous story like this from a clueless wingnut Daily Caller chick, to be read with whiny valley girl diction: “Heee’s Soooo 1980s!”?! And your point is … (?):
Oh, I see. The wingnut chick’s PLEA is for President Obama to STOP echoing core Democratic Party themes dating back to the New Deal and the Great Society because, she argues, weak Democratic candidates gained no traction from them in the 80s, and… the country’s (pretty please?) moved on. Really? You wish. When Frank Luntz panics, you’re in trouble, my widdle DC wingnuts. Besides, what’s wrong with the 80s? It gave us Happy Days, the A-Team, the best one-hit musical wonders in Rock history, Star Wars, Gordon Gekko and Ronald Reagan.Which presidential candidate said this in an ad: “I refuse to make your family pay more so that millionaires can pay less?” Who promised to “fight for seniors” against opponents who wanted to “slash Medicare? If you answered President Barack Obama, you’re about 27 years too late. Those pronouncements came from an ad for Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic pols who ran against Ronald Reagan in 1984. (Mondale’s ticket lost to Reagan in a landslide, winning only one state.) This year Obama is pushing the same themes as Mondale, and other former Democratic presidential candidates.
The country’s wised up, wingnuts. And judging by those FRIGHTENED DC pathetic hit pieces attempting to disparage OWS for: (a) being white and affluent — (like the Founding Fathers?) ... but untrue and misleading nonetheless — then (b) “hypocrisy” for posting $400 (!) to pay monthly rental on a campsite property — the kind of income that barely covers a single studio rental in anywhere USA; wingnuts remain clueless. They whine the movement isn’t genuine like, say, the Koch Bros.-financed Tea Party … unless it’s destitute and has no contributions or sources of funding. More absurd wingnut spitballs. But reading the DC gives us valuable insight into the wingnuts' teenie tiny bigoted brains; a treasure trove for psychology and psychiatry professionals studying the twisted 'logic' of the right.
ATTENTION, WINGNUTS: EVEN your deity, Ronald Reagan, is hip to the Democratic message:
OH MY. Ronald Reagan, Jr. said, "just shows you how far (right) the Republican Party has come since then." OUCH. And OOPS …
4. NEWT GINGRICH: YES-yes-yes …. Just in time for the Holidays, the GRINCH who stole everyone’s thunder has managed to turn the staid political world of the Beltway Media/Idiot Punditocracy/GOP Establishment on its head. LITERALLY. Newt Gingrich is a one-man political wrecking crew. He has totally unsettled the POLITICO world of IP luminaries like Chris Matthews, who warned progressives, DARKLY, that we should be “careful what (we) wish for.” Meaning, of course, liberals and progressives are DOUBLY rejoicing at the prospect of a Gingrich challenge to President Obama as the Republican Party nominee! It’s totally hilarious to see Chris Matthews, Chris Christie and John Sununu on the same page, not to mention the Coultergeist — this loon is afraid Newt will be "foisting EST on the nation" (!) — as Rush Limbaugh rails against the GOP “establishment.” Meanwhile, FOX and the DC are “soooo conf-US-ed…” The wingnuts are in CHAOS! OH MY … Indeed.
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5. Teddy Roosevelt: Nothing like invoking the spirit of a top-three icon of the "grand old party" when it actually lived up to its acronym. In my earlier post I laid out Teddy's broad progressive vision from his "New Nationalism" speech of 1910 in Osawatomie, Kansas. Here are a few more tidbits, relevant to today's extremist Republicans. Would Teddy pass muster in today's Republican Party? No way, Joe. The only question is, will President Obama rise to the challenge of his aspirational marker:
In the audience at Osawatomie in 1910 were many veterans of the Civil War, stroking gray beards just a few years before the unthinkable violence of the Great War broke out in Europe. They heard a far-reaching vision from Roosevelt.
On the rich: “The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted.”
On labor: “We need comprehensive workmen’s compensation acts, both state and national laws to regulate child labor.”
On the environment: “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of ensuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”
On corporate power: “The Constitution guarantees protection to property and must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.”
Today, Gingrich has called child labor laws “truly stupid,” and has suggested that poor grade school students do the work of janitors at schools. The Supreme Court has elevated corporations to full citizenship, freeing them to use their power to dominate elections. Forget about conservation — virtually every major Republican presidential candidate denies the basic science of a potential global climate catastrophe. And Glenn Beck, a leading voice for the Republican crazy caucus, calls Roosevelt-style progressivism “a cancer on our Constitution.”
But it’s shame that Obama, in channeling T.R. from a long ago summer’s evening, could not reach for anything more stirring in his proposals than a call for the approval of his consumer protection bureau appointee, and the continuance of tax cuts for wage-earners.
So it is, a curse of the modern political age: no one from our times is even a distant candidate for Mount Rushmore.
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A Touch Of Enlightenment: Hillary's Speech On Human Rights For Gays
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a historic speech at the UN upholding gay rights as human rights, with a bold and moving declaration condemning violence and discrimination of gay, lesbian and transgendered people across the world. The speech, arguably Hillary's greatest to date, was made on the cusp of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this Saturday. Here's a roundup of the world's reaction to Hillary's speech. Watch Rachel's segments and the full 30-minute speech here:
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Media Watch: Of FASCIST BASTARDS And Weird Libertarian "Humor" Promos
It's nice to have independent cable media in CURRENT TV where calling out a fascist, i.e., a spade is a spade is a FASCIST BASTARD, is perfectly fine and won't get the host banished for telling the truth. Watch Keith go feral on these fascist ratbastard Republicans:
Meanwhile, the fake progressive network is hiring them as "analysts" and running fascist ads for Moron Joe with Mike Barnacles waking up on a park bench, beneath newspaper pages like a homeless person, to do the show — at a time when temperatures are dipping below freezing and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been made the nouveau homeless, thrown out of their homes by the banks and the local sheriffs — this passes for humor? (I suppose ...) at the fake "progressive" network that gives a Republican libertarian ASSHOLE like Joe Scarborough his morning show.
But that's not all: there's smoking, gambling, liquor and hookers, while Mika-the-liberal enforcer runs around in her dominatrix skivvies. Typical, juvenile Moron Joe libertarian "humor:" Celebrating our victimless social peccadilloes which the big bad state wants to regulate; be it the "pleasures" of cancer-causing/spreading smokes, the freedom to drink with sex-for-hire call girls (legalize the victimless crimes — prostitution and drugs — as Willie the Wingnut the alkie enjoys babes-for-hire), or the token Dem enjoying the "liberty" of homelessness because, well, it's his "fault." Nice.
Is this supposed to be cutting edge, or funny? Seems to be more stupid, glib, and insensitive/offensive than anything else. This Business Insider comment pretty much sums it up. Hard-edged and mean-spirited wingnut "humor" on view. Here's the weird extended Moron Joe promo, clips of which are aired on MSNBC. My guess is, it won't help his ratings one iota:
Moron Joe, it should be noted, is where reactionaries, plagiarists, nativists, and wingnuts hang out. Mark Halperin, conservative plagiarist annointed MSNBC "senior political analyst" who smirked that President Obama is "a dick" warms Pat Buchanan's seat. Pat was banished for a time at least for publication of his latest racist screed, probably deemed necessary by the suits given their large African American audience. Judging by the new ad campaign, Pat may be back once his "book tour" of racist and white supremacist media venues is done and deemed more benign by the passage of time.
Meanwhile, the fake progressive network is hiring them as "analysts" and running fascist ads for Moron Joe with Mike Barnacles waking up on a park bench, beneath newspaper pages like a homeless person, to do the show — at a time when temperatures are dipping below freezing and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been made the nouveau homeless, thrown out of their homes by the banks and the local sheriffs — this passes for humor? (I suppose ...) at the fake "progressive" network that gives a Republican libertarian ASSHOLE like Joe Scarborough his morning show.
But that's not all: there's smoking, gambling, liquor and hookers, while Mika-the-liberal enforcer runs around in her dominatrix skivvies. Typical, juvenile Moron Joe libertarian "humor:" Celebrating our victimless social peccadilloes which the big bad state wants to regulate; be it the "pleasures" of cancer-causing/spreading smokes, the freedom to drink with sex-for-hire call girls (legalize the victimless crimes — prostitution and drugs — as Willie the Wingnut the alkie enjoys babes-for-hire), or the token Dem enjoying the "liberty" of homelessness because, well, it's his "fault." Nice.
Is this supposed to be cutting edge, or funny? Seems to be more stupid, glib, and insensitive/offensive than anything else. This Business Insider comment pretty much sums it up. Hard-edged and mean-spirited wingnut "humor" on view. Here's the weird extended Moron Joe promo, clips of which are aired on MSNBC. My guess is, it won't help his ratings one iota:
Moron Joe, it should be noted, is where reactionaries, plagiarists, nativists, and wingnuts hang out. Mark Halperin, conservative plagiarist annointed MSNBC "senior political analyst" who smirked that President Obama is "a dick" warms Pat Buchanan's seat. Pat was banished for a time at least for publication of his latest racist screed, probably deemed necessary by the suits given their large African American audience. Judging by the new ad campaign, Pat may be back once his "book tour" of racist and white supremacist media venues is done and deemed more benign by the passage of time.
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
President Obama Goes Progressive Invoking The Spirit of The Father of Progressivism: Teddy Roosevelt
I’ve said this many times before, but it’s worth repeating: Teddy Roosevelt was the last of the great Lincoln Republicans. If today’s liberal Democrats were transported in time to August 31, 1910 when President Theodore Roosevelt visited Osawatomie, Kansas and laid out his vision for a “new nationalism,” we would be Roosevelt Republicans. Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, pays homage to his foundational hero, Abraham Lincoln. The emphasis in Roosevelt's excerpted speech is mine:
The second great realignment of the parties occurred following the enactment of the Kennedy-Johnson transformative Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964-65. The southern Democrats bolted the Democratic Party en masse to pledge their allegiance to the Republican Party. These “Dixiecrats,” had long been an albatross around the necks of liberal Democrats, as exemplified by Strom Thurmond’s clash with Truman over the party’s civil rights platform leading to his 1948 independent bid for president. On the Republican side, this realingment had been percolating for some time as well. It came to a head when Barry Goldwater came out against the Kennedy-Johnson civil rights legislation. Goldwater’s thrashing by LBJ in 1964 in which he only carried his home state of Arizona and five states in the Deep South — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina — was instructive for right wing Republican strategists. By opposing civil rights legislation, Goldwater had garnered the racist southern white vote, which has become a staple of GOP presidential politics ever since. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” consolidated the South as a Republican stronghold, and Reagan further refined the strategy with code language and pregnant racist symbolism, such as kicking off his official post-convention campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the murder of three civil rights workers.
The Republican Party has effectively been transformed into a modern, southern confederate party. So when Rachel argues here that President Obama’s Teddy Roosevelt speech in Osawatomie was a return to his 2004 “Blue States-Red-States-We’re-All-The-United-States” Cumbaya rhetoric, I must respectfully disagree:
The reality is, never the twain shall meet. Racists and southern white right wing reactionaries will always vote Republican. President Obama was sharpening the differences, invoking the last of the great Lincoln Republicans, to drive home the point to the vast unwashed electorate in the middle — so-called “independents” really, an oxymoron — to consider what is it in historical, moral, and principled terms they’re voting for when they pull that “R” lever.
This was Teddy Roosevelt’s vision as excerpted here, in part, and paid homage to by the President of the United States, Barack Obama. Echoing Teddy Roosevelt — We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail." — President Obama declared yesterday in Osawatomie:
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, defines what today’s phony Republicans call “class warfare”:"Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said:
"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."
And again:
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a Communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the working man hear his side.
"Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; is a positive good in the world."
And then comes a thoroughly Lincoln-like sentence:
"Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of today. But this wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, defines what it is to be a “progressive” and why liberals (defined broadly as those of us who believe government has an indispensable role in achieving a more perfect Union for all) embrace and honor the name as part and parcel of the liberal ideal:"In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity … One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, lays down the markers for which progressives are still fighting today, against the forces of ignorance, reaction, and accumulated wealth and power to game the system in their narrow, special interests and privilege:"At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new. All I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the Civil War."
Here, Franklin Delano’s cousin Teddy, the Lincoln Republican, defines the “square deal” which was the precursor and cousin of the New Deal:"Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, says what he means: “We must drive the special interests out of politics.” He also warns the five right wing extremists on the Supreme Court of what the people know instinctively, and what the Court has codified into law as a cudgel for the rich, the privileged, the special interests, to bludgeon the people’s democracy: “The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.”"I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, explains the importance of regulation, which the ante-Lincoln phony “Republicans” of our day want to do away with, in the pocket and service of the rich and the corporations:"Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks today. Every special interest is entitled to justice — full, fair, and complete — and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, explains why even well-meaning corporate titans must be properly regulated by government because they cannot possibly compete against greed and a dog-eat-dog race to the bottom unless all are made to comply with the same rules of the road — which means safe consumer products, untainted food, and oil and coal exploration which does not pollute our environment and our drinking water. And should they break the law, that they be held liable:"The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.
There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.
We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, echoes the principal theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement — “We Are the 99%” — anticipating the economic crisis of 2007-2008 in which the “absence of effective state, and, especially national restraint upon unfair money-getting” (Wall Street gambling with our retirement income on exotic unregulated financial instruments, including bad real estate loans) heightened income inequality, promoting “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.”"It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, or coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well.
I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, argues for a progressive income tax in which the rich pay their fair share, including an inheritance tax — today called the “death tax” by the Orwellian wordsmiths of the (G)ods (O)f (P)rivilege, for whom the Paris Hilton tax cut benefiting fewer than 7,000 of the richest of the rich households is unalterable in a nation of more than 300 million people:"The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. …We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary."
Here Teddy Roosevelt, the Lincoln Republican, calls for strong financial institutions oversight; a system enacted by his cousin FDR in the New Deal, with creation of the SEC and FDIC, among other reforms, leading to ever-increasing prosperity for the middle class; today’s fake Republicans aim to dismantle it, including the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, proclaimed by the candidates as if it’s a badge of honor."No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered — not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective — a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate."
Teddy Roosevelt defined progressivism. But when he broke with the ascendant business wing of the Republican Party to launch the most successful third party bid in American history, for the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party, he precipitated the first modern realignment of the two major parties. After Teddy lost the three-way race, contributing to Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s victory over conservative business Republican, third-place finisher William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s progressive base left the Republican Party, eventually finding a home in the Democratic Party. They were to become the progressive core, the driving force of FDR’s New Deal. Teddy’s cousin Franklin picked up the flag, enacting many of the reforms Teddy Roosevelt had envisioned in his Osawatomie speech."The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown to the other nations, which approach us in financial strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and effectively revised as to make it certain that hereafter our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our needs."
The second great realignment of the parties occurred following the enactment of the Kennedy-Johnson transformative Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964-65. The southern Democrats bolted the Democratic Party en masse to pledge their allegiance to the Republican Party. These “Dixiecrats,” had long been an albatross around the necks of liberal Democrats, as exemplified by Strom Thurmond’s clash with Truman over the party’s civil rights platform leading to his 1948 independent bid for president. On the Republican side, this realingment had been percolating for some time as well. It came to a head when Barry Goldwater came out against the Kennedy-Johnson civil rights legislation. Goldwater’s thrashing by LBJ in 1964 in which he only carried his home state of Arizona and five states in the Deep South — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina — was instructive for right wing Republican strategists. By opposing civil rights legislation, Goldwater had garnered the racist southern white vote, which has become a staple of GOP presidential politics ever since. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” consolidated the South as a Republican stronghold, and Reagan further refined the strategy with code language and pregnant racist symbolism, such as kicking off his official post-convention campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the murder of three civil rights workers.
The Republican Party has effectively been transformed into a modern, southern confederate party. So when Rachel argues here that President Obama’s Teddy Roosevelt speech in Osawatomie was a return to his 2004 “Blue States-Red-States-We’re-All-The-United-States” Cumbaya rhetoric, I must respectfully disagree:
The reality is, never the twain shall meet. Racists and southern white right wing reactionaries will always vote Republican. President Obama was sharpening the differences, invoking the last of the great Lincoln Republicans, to drive home the point to the vast unwashed electorate in the middle — so-called “independents” really, an oxymoron — to consider what is it in historical, moral, and principled terms they’re voting for when they pull that “R” lever.
This was Teddy Roosevelt’s vision as excerpted here, in part, and paid homage to by the President of the United States, Barack Obama. Echoing Teddy Roosevelt — We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail." — President Obama declared yesterday in Osawatomie:
Chris Matthews hosted historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of the award-winning book Team of Rivals about Lincoln and his cabinet, to speak of her next project, Teddy Roosevelt:This is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement. ... And in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here to Osawatomie and he laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. “Our country,” he said, “…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”
Teddy Roosevelt, in his own words: "We stand for a living wage." What a radical concept!
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Martin Bashir INSULTS Our Intelligence Via Michael Steele — AGAIN!
Martin, all I can say is Jonathan Alter (whose two books I own) saved your sorry ass. WTF is WRONG with you bringing a partisan hack, a trainwreck JACKASS like Michael Steele whose initials suit the debilitating illness he represents as an MSNBC Republican spinmeister, to crap all over the joint, and your viewers, following one of President Obama's most important speeches of his presidency?!
It's disrespectful of MSNBC to President Obama not to match a serious speech with serious analysis. If not for Jonathan who used his spare time to provide some historical perspective and highlight the "irresponsibility" of the GOP's "religion" to not raise taxes on the rich, this would have become another Hardball Steele skit.
Shame on you, Martin, and SHAME on MSNBC. I am so fed up with their commitment to Steele, this JERK who steps all over the Democratic message with his insulting GOP crapaganda — what fools do you take us for? Jonathan's expression said it all; he was fuming at having to sit through MS's BS, and then you close it with Steele's snarky, sarcastic smirk: "Yeah, alright."
WTF is WRONG with you people?! Man, have I had it with MSNBC. You guys suck. Big time.
It's disrespectful of MSNBC to President Obama not to match a serious speech with serious analysis. If not for Jonathan who used his spare time to provide some historical perspective and highlight the "irresponsibility" of the GOP's "religion" to not raise taxes on the rich, this would have become another Hardball Steele skit.
Shame on you, Martin, and SHAME on MSNBC. I am so fed up with their commitment to Steele, this JERK who steps all over the Democratic message with his insulting GOP crapaganda — what fools do you take us for? Jonathan's expression said it all; he was fuming at having to sit through MS's BS, and then you close it with Steele's snarky, sarcastic smirk: "Yeah, alright."
WTF is WRONG with you people?! Man, have I had it with MSNBC. You guys suck. Big time.
Monday, December 05, 2011
Forget Gingrich, Bye Bye Cain; Here Comes Paul
As the MSM/Beltway Media/Idiot Punditocracy obsess over who's the next anti-Romney on the Republican presidential field of nightmares, reluctantly settling on the totally unelectable Newt Gingrich — he's a "great debater, knows the issues, has experience" etc., they mumble, pointing uncertainly to the polls showing a Newt "surge" — Ron Paul has been making quiet, but steady progress under the radar, suddenly looming behind the frontrunners and poised to spring a shocker in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Presidential primary politics is a game of expectations.
As such, Ron Paul doesn't need to win either of those states to precipitate a tectonic shift in the increasingly chaotic Republican primary process — of 1968 Democratic primary proportions. In 1968 Minnesota Senator Gene McCarthy, the Democratic peace (in Vietnam) candidate was given little chance by the media when he challenged a sitting president, LBJ. As with most things political, the media's analysis of voters' discontent with Johnson's handling of the Vietnam war was way off-base. Senator McCarthy actually lost New Hampshire to President Johnson, 50%-42%. But McCarthy's strong showing against Johnson who barely cracked 50% was viewed as a titanic defeat for the President. Bobby Kennedy jumped into the race and less than 20 days after his New Hampshire "victory" Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. It was the ultimate political Pyrrhic victory.
Cut to the present day: The "expectations" game in New Hampshire for Mitt Romney is similar to what it was for LBJ in 1968. McCarthy was viewed as a marginal candidate and President Johnson was expected to poll upwards of 60%-70%. The surprise came in that polling then was not what it is today. Even so, New Hampshire voters have a long tradition of independence and bucking polls. Just ask Hillary after they defied the polls and revived her presidential campaign in 2008. As the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, if not a favorite son Mitt Romney is at least a favorite cousin whose media expectation of a "clean" victory is well above that 50% Johnson magic loser's mark. And even accounting for a multiple candidates field, Romney's support has dropped precipitously this past month from 55% to 38% while both Gingrich and Paul have surged to 21% and 17% respectively. If Gingrich's support flatlines and Paul jumps ahead to second in NH behind a faltering Romney — a distinct possibility once voters get to see Newt up close and personal — all bets are off. Ron Paul is currently polling second in Iowa at 19% to Gingrich's 28% while Romney is fading at 17%. Ron Paul may well pull off a double surprise in Iowa and New Hampshire. Look out for the big Paul mo' just doing his "thing." He may yet force a brokered convention thus saving the Republican Party from itself.
Presidential primary politics is a game of expectations.
As such, Ron Paul doesn't need to win either of those states to precipitate a tectonic shift in the increasingly chaotic Republican primary process — of 1968 Democratic primary proportions. In 1968 Minnesota Senator Gene McCarthy, the Democratic peace (in Vietnam) candidate was given little chance by the media when he challenged a sitting president, LBJ. As with most things political, the media's analysis of voters' discontent with Johnson's handling of the Vietnam war was way off-base. Senator McCarthy actually lost New Hampshire to President Johnson, 50%-42%. But McCarthy's strong showing against Johnson who barely cracked 50% was viewed as a titanic defeat for the President. Bobby Kennedy jumped into the race and less than 20 days after his New Hampshire "victory" Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. It was the ultimate political Pyrrhic victory.
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