A Liberal's Hit List: Sep 21, 2009

Krauthammer, Pots and Kettles

Monday, September 21, 2009

By Steve Benen
Washington Monthly

Charles Krauthammer devotes his column today to questioning President Obama's honesty. Given Krauthammer's track record, that's really not a good idea.

Most of the piece is predictable -- and ironically, deeply misleading -- but it's hard to overlook Krauthammer's complaints about proposed Medicare savings.

Obama said he would largely solve the insoluble cost problem of Obamacare by eliminating "hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud" from Medicare.

That's not a lie. That's not even deception. That's just an insult to our intelligence. Waste, fraud and abuse -- Meg Greenfield once called this phrase "the dread big three" -- as the all-purpose piggy bank for budget savings has been a joke since Jimmy Carter first used it in 1977.

Moreover, if half a trillion is waiting to be squeezed painlessly out of Medicare, why wait for health-care reform? If, as Obama repeatedly insists, Medicare overspending is breaking the budget, why hasn't he gotten started on the painless billions in "waste and fraud" savings?

To the extent that politicians like to target "waste, fraud, and abuse" in any system as a generic way to save costs, Krauthammer's right that it can be a hollow cliche. But the problem here is that Krauthammer hasn't been paying close enough attention to the debate -- the White House isn't just throwing around shallow rhetoric, it's identified specific areas within the Medicare system where the government can save an enormous amount of money, and subjected the claims to CBO scrutiny....(Remainder.)

Where Will Right-Wing Anger Lead?

By Max P.
The Progressive Puppy

Take a look at this first flyer. It's been preserved in the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealy Plaza, previously known as the Texas School Book Depository. This "advertisement" is one of about 5,000 distributed in downtown Dallas several days prior to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Hate jocks on the radio, right-wing fearmongers on Fox News, websites filled with unspeakable vitriol against President Obama, tea parties, birthers, conspiracy theorists, racist cartoons, racist emails, loaded guns at presidential rallies, Republican politicians denigrating our Commander-in-chief.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the hateful grandstanding needs to stop. I'm not a big fan of Pelosi's but I do agree with what she said today:

"I saw this myself in the late seventies in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric was very frightening and it gave. It created a climate in which violence took place. I wish that we all again would curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made, with the understanding that some of the ears this is falling on are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume."

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Matt Drudge have been doing their very best to incite a race war. (Limbaugh has even suggested that we need to return to segregated busing.) You want to see a race war? Just wait until someone from the far right fringe takes a shot at the President after being nudged on by these cretins.

What the ultraconservative paranoiacs don't comprehend (or maybe they do comprehend and simply don't give a fuck) is that when they spit on the President, they're spitting on the sixty-six million of us who voted for him. They're not just calling him despicable names, they're calling all of us those names....(Remainder.)

Birther Orly Taitz Faces California Bar Complaint Over Attack On Judge

By Justin Elliott
TPMMuckraker

Things just keeping getting worse for Queen Birther Orly Taitz. Yesterday, a federal judge not only threw out her latest "birther soldier" lawsuit, but also took the time to demolish Birtherism generally and threaten Taitz with sanctions if she files more frivolous suits.

Now, in response to Taitz's comments to TPM calling the judge corrupt and suggesting he should be tried for treason, a fellow member of the California bar has filed a formal complaint against Taitz.

"I respectfully request that you investigate Ms. Taitz's conduct and impose an appropriate sanction. She is an embarrassment to the profession," writes Subodh Chandra, who practices in Ohio and is also an inactive member of the California bar.

Read Chandra's full complaint right here. Chandra was a Democratic candidate for Attorney General of Ohio in 2006 and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention last year.

Taitz's comments to TPM going after U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land violate section 6068(b) of the California Business & Professions Code, the complaint charges. That section of the law requires attorneys to "maintain the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers."...(Remainder.)

There's No Denying Obama's Race Plays a Role in Protest

By Tony Pugh
McClatchy Newspapers via truthout

Washington - In the pre-dawn hours of last Nov. 5, while much of the nation celebrated Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president, three white men in Springfield, Mass., doused the partially completed Macedonia Church of God in Christ with gasoline and burned it to the ground.

After their arrest, the men told police they'd torched the black church because they were angry about Obama's election and feared minorities would be given more rights.

At about the same time, newspaper Web sites were filled with millions of hateful messages about Obama, and the computer servers of two large white supremacist groups, the Council of Conservative Citizens and Stormfront.org, crashed because they got so much traffic.

"You immediately got the sense that something significant was happening," said Mark Potok, who investigates hate groups as the director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

Potok's instincts were correct. Obama's victory had stirred immediate racial anger among a small portion of Americans....(Remainder.)

Rep. Michele Bachmann Advocates For Zero Insurance Company Regulations

This Is How You Ambush Fox Newser Jesse Watters

By Steve Krakauer
Mediaite

At the Values Voters Summit this weekend, Think Progress caught up with infamous Fox News ambusher Jesse Watters for an ambush interview of his own.

And unlike Gawker’s attempt to ambush Watters outside his home in June, this one was fairly successful.

The video is below. Also, Fox Nation published their own video of the ambush which could end up on The O’Reilly Factor Monday, which essentially provides another angle to watch Watters be a cowering hypocrite.

Some background first: In March Watters ambushed Amanda Terkel, an editor at Think Progress. She wrote about the experience, and it started a run on ‘ambush tactics’ stories, including this one from Brian Stelter of the New York Times.

“So you’re trying to ambush the ambusher?” says Watters at the beginning of the video. Then things get a little creepy. “Amanda Terkel? Tell her I said hello,” he says. “Tell Amanda and her boyfriend I say hi. Amanda, how you doing?”

Watters is asked why he wouldn’t be interviewed for the Times story. “I didn’t refuse to comment to the New York Times,” he says, smiling. “Don’t believe everything you read in the New York Times.” Meanwhile, Stelter refuted this on Twitter: “I called Mr. Watters repeatedly at his office #, and he referred my calls to Fox’s PR people. He refused to comment.”...(Remainder.)

Mike Huckabee is the Darling of the Anti-Gay, Hate-Mongering Right

By Michael A. Jones
Change.org

The GOP sure has a way of resurrecting their dead. Or rather, their losing Presidential candidates. There was Richard Nixon (lost in 1960). There was the first George Bush (lost in 1980). Bob Dole (also lost in 1980). John McCain (lost in 2000). And now there's former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who while getting his clock cleaned in 2008 after a few surprise primary victories, has again emerged as a darling of the radical, anti-LGBT right-wing.

Huckabee won a 2012 GOP presidential straw poll at this weekend's ~~Ku Kluk Klan Rally~~ "Value Voters Summit" in Washington, D.C., a gathering sponsored by the extremely anti-gay Family Research Council. Not only did he win, but he mopped the floor with the other candidates, beating them by more than 2 to 1. Huckabee's 28 percent bested Mitt Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence (all of whom finished with about 12 percent).

What does this say? Well, perhaps not much, given that 2012 is three years away. But on another level, it's a sign that instead of learning from the drubbing that the GOP took in 2008 (and 2006), they're not backing away from extreme right positions on social issues that go against the grain of the American public. Huckabee was only too thrilled to echo that sentiment at the Value Voters Summit....(Remainder.)

A Case for Republican Secession (From Itself)

By Michael B. Laskoff
The Huffington Post

As a country with a rather horrific civil war in its past, its no easy to thing to bat around a concept like secession. It's filled with evil reminders of an unjust past that sought, amongst other things, to preserve slavery. And yet, sometimes the body from which a political party springs is so filled with bile and corruption that its healthiest components should seek to go their own way. A case in point is today's Republican Party.

This is supposed to be the party of Lincoln, but its two loudest voices are those of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. At worst, these gentlemen are unrepentant racists; at best they are crass, self-serving race-baiters. Under either circumstance, they have become the 'credible' voices of leadership in a party that has denuded itself of anything approaching centrism, rationalism or moderation.

The Republicans are also supposed to be the party of strong, conservative family values. And yet, this same party insists on standing by Governor Mark Sanford, an adulterer who almost certainly broke state law by letting the state fund trips to visit his mistress. He only refunded the money after getting caught. And while the governor's personal life is really none of my business or anyone else's but his family's, he has certainly behaved like an ass ever since. In doing so, he has robbed his state of credible leadership in a time of crisis. Refusal to resign has tangibly hurt the people of South Carolina. Despite this, Senator Lindsey Graham, as recently as today, defending Sanford just today....(Remainder.)

“Coon Huntin'” in New York City

By Glen Ford
Black Agenda Report

"They piled into a car on a mission to show African Americans that whites were still boss in that part of the world."

Nightriding white terrorists are not confined to the South. They also roam the streets of New York City, in search of Black victims. The election of 2008 was especially rough for Up South white supremacists. Barack Obama's victory provoked four young New Yorkers to go on a Black-bashing spree that last week earned them serious prison time.

White folks used to call it "coon hunting" – terrorism as community sport. I've witnessed it myself: caravans of cars filled with white men in varying stages of drunkenness cruising country highways or the fringes of Black neighborhoods, in search of victims. In the Deep South, such "coon hunting" parties were not necessarily hitched to any special occasion or specific racial incident; any excuse would do to demonstrate that Blacks' very existence in a White Man's Country was a privilege that could be arbitrarily and violently revoked at any time.

"Coon hunting" and related white racist rituals were never confined to below the Mason-Dixon Line. New York City contains enclaves of entrenched bigotry as concentrated and vicious as anyplace in Dixie. Last November, on learning that Barack Obama had won the presidential election, four young white men in Staten Island – the whitest of New York City's boroughs – piled into a car on a mission to show African Americans that whites were still boss in that part of the world. They drove to a Black neighborhood, found a teenager walking by himself, and beat him with a metal pipe and a police baton. Not satisfied, they assaulted a Black man in another minority neighborhood, and drove off in search of a third victim. This time, they slammed their car into a man they thought was African American, but who turned out not to be. The victim's head smashed the car's windshield, and he stayed in a coma for weeks....(Remainder.)

Fox News Fear Mongering Lie of the Day: Obama is Coming After Your Yard Sale

By Ellen
News Hounds

Fox News is so eager to smear the Obama administration that it doesn’t even seem to mind if its own news story contradicts the smear. A headline, at the top of the Foxnews.com home page blares:

SELLER BEWARE: Yard Sales Targeted In Fed Crackdown. Thinking of emptying out the attic to sell that Easy-Bake Oven or SpongeBob spiral notebook? Think again — each could cost you a $100,000 fine.

But if you actually read the article, it says clearly, albeit buried in the eighth paragraph, that "The CPSC says it won't be sending enforcers to garage sales or yard sales." (H/T reader Rich H)

The inflammatory headline is followed by a similarly incendiary first paragraph:

Americans who slap $1 pricetags on their used possessions at garage sales or bazaar events risk being slapped with fines of up to $15 million, thanks to a new government campaign.

(Remainder.)

FCC to Propose 'Net Neutrality' Rules

By Daniel Lovering
Associated Press via Yahoo! Tech

The head of the FCC plans to propose new rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with the free flow of information and certain applications over their networks, an official at the agency said Saturday.

The Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, will announce the proposed rules in a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, the official said on condition of anonymity because news of the announcement had not been formally released.

The proposals would uphold a pledge Barack Obama made during the presidential campaign to support Internet neutrality — the equal treatment of Internet traffic. That would bar Internet service providers such as Verizon Communications Inc., Comcast Corp. or AT&T Inc., from slowing or blocking certain services or content flowing through their vast networks.

Without strict rules ensuring Net neutrality, consumer watchdogs fear the communications companies could interfere with the transmission of content, such as TV shows delivered over the Internet, that compete with services the ISPs offer, like cable television.

Internet providers have opposed regulations that would inhibit the way they control their networks, arguing they need to be able to make sure applications that consume a lot of bandwidth don't slow Internet access to other users....(Remainder.)

The Making of Glenn Beck

His roots, from the alleged suicide of his mom to Top 40 radio to the birth of the morning zoo.

By Alexander Zaitchik
Salon.com

Early one morning in May 1979, a 41-year-old divorcee named Mary Beck went boating in Washington's Puget Sound. Her companions on the expedition were a retired papermaker named Orean Carrol, whose boat she helped launch near the Tacoma suburb of Puyallup, and Carrol's pet dog. Exactly what happened next remains

shrouded in morning mist, but among the crew, only the dog would survive the day. The boat was recovered late that afternoon adrift near Vashon Island, just north of Tacoma. It was empty but for two wallets and the frightened animal. Mary Beck's body was discovered floating fully clothed nearby. Carrol's corpse washed ashore at the Vashon ferry terminal the following morning.

The county coroner found no evidence of violence on either body. Police investigators told Tacoma's News Tribune that the double drowning appeared to be a classic man-overboard mishap -- a failed rescue attempt in which both parties perished.

At the time of Beck's death, she held custody of her 15-year-old son, Glenn, with whom she had moved to Puyallup. She had left her estranged husband William behind in Mt. Vernon, Wash., another small city 100 miles due north. After producing two daughters and a son, the Becks' marriage had collapsed in 1977 under the weight of Mary's chemical addictions and manic fits of depression. It was in the two years bridging this divorce and his mother's drowning that a teenage Glenn Beck launched one of the most bizarre and unlikely careers in the history of American broadcasting.

Since launching his talk radio career in the late '90s, Beck has constructed a persona anchored in a biography of struggle and redemption. It is a narrative with shades of another haunted Washingtonian who found entertainment fame, Kurt Cobain. Both men hailed from broken homes in the drizzly Pacific Northwest. Both men would find youthful fortune behind microphones while struggling with drugs, prescribed and recreational. Both would contemplate suicide before their tethers finally snapped in 1994. That year Cobain would wrap his mouth around a loaded shotgun. Beck, after contemplating doing the same while listening to a Nirvana album, would not....(Remainder.)

Right-Wing Hatemongering Fueled by Christianity?

The ugly side of Evangelical Christianity is very much to blame for the anti-Obama hyperventilating.

By Frank Schaeffer
AlterNet

Former president Jimmy Carter went on the record to point out that he believes that racism is at the heart of the great deal of the extreme animosity being leveled at President Obama (NBC News September 15). Carter identified himself as a Southerner with an insider's understanding. There's something he didn't mention however: the special culpability of his own religion -- Evangelical Christianity -- for the anti-Obama hyperventilating and furious reaction to our first black president. And that reaction has less to do with race and more to do with the ugliest side of religion.

The fact is that if you're going to blame one group above all others for the willful ignorance and continuing ugliness of the response to President Obama the best candidate would be the evangelical/fundamentalist community. The angry part of the South Carter spoke of is racist because it's dominated by a certain type of "Christian" culture.

Since Carter is also an evangelical Christian (as well as a Southerner) he would have done well to use his evangelical insider status to point to not just racism but to scream bloody murder about a bigger problem today: the hijacking of Christianity as the source of the hate and anger directed against all things "other" by a vocal (and health care lobby-organized and funded) angry minority of voters who are poisoning the American body.

American Christianity Is At The Heart Of Our Worst Problems

Are the New Atheists leading us to enlightenment? The problem with the recent New Atheist attacks on Christianity is that they mirror the hostility of the evangelical/fundamentalist subculture toward the secular society that it so disdains. The real answer to the question; "Can Christianity be saved from the Christians?" is not going to be found coming from people like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris et al. Instead that answer may be found in the life and work of Christians such as former president Jimmy Carter, President Obama, the late writer John Updike, and other public figures from Desmond Tutu to Nelson Mandela who's faith can be taken seriously because of the moral authority given them by their achievements outside the realm of theology....(Remainder.)

Leavin’ on a Jet Plane

By Jeff Koterba
Omaha World Herald

Sunday Loon Watch: The GOP's Strategy of Attack, Whine and Delay

For Gays Under Islamic Rule: Living Hell (or a Bloody Execution)

By Max P.
The Progressive Puppy

Everett Rowson, professor of Islamic Studies at NYU, says that in the Koran, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah didn't contain overt references to homosexuality until the early 20th century, when Europeans introduced their

prudish sexual mores to conquered Mideast countries: "Many attitudes with regard to sexual morality that are thought to be identical to Islam owe a lot more to Queen Victoria than to the Koran." (Which would explain the wave of homophobia that subsequently swept over the Islamic world, a place once known for fairness, tolerance - and homoerotic literature.)

These days, gays and lesbians live in terror under Islam. Spiegel International:

In most Islamic countries, gay men and women are ostracized, persecuted and in some cases even murdered. Repressive regimes are often fanning the flames of hatred in a bid to outdo Islamists when it comes to spreading "moral panic." ...More than 30 Islamic countries have laws on the books that prohibit homosexuality and make it a criminal offense. In most cases punishment ranges from floggings to life imprisonment. In Mauritania, Bangladesh, Yemen, parts of Nigeria and Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Iran convicted homosexuals can also be sentenced to death. In those Muslim countries where homosexuality is not against the law gay men and women are nonetheless persecuted, arrested, and in some cases murdered. Although long known for its open gay scene, Egypt has recently started to clamp down hard. The lives of homosexuals are monitored by a kind of vice squad who tap telephones and recruit informants. As soon as the police have accumulated the kind of evidence they need they charge their victims with "debauchery."

Scott Long of Human Rights Watch: "The most repressive are secular regimes such as those in Egypt or Morocco which are under pressure from Islamists and so try to outdo them with regard to morals. In addition the persecution of homosexuals shows that a regime has control over the private lives of its citizens - a sign of power and authority."...(Remainder.)

Orly Taitz’s Client Files A Complaint Against Her

By David Weigel
The Washington Independent

Bad news for Orly Taitz, the indefatigable birther attorney. On September 17, she filed a motion of consideration on behalf of her client Capt. Connie Rhodes, asking for her deployment to be delayed. It was, typically for Taitz, overheated and incoherent: "[T]his court ignores some of the soundest and most carefully researched and professionally assembled and presented evidence, collated and substantiated by a former agent of England's Fabled 'Scotland Yard.'"

Taitz's motion was dismissed in an exasperated decision by Judge Clay Land that should definitely be read in full–I've provided an excerpt after the jump. (Erick Erickson of RedState is a fan of the dismissal.)

But the twist today comes from Capt. Rhodes herself. She has sent a letter to Judge Clay Land, blasting Taitz for filing the motion to stay her deployment without even asking her.

I do not wish for Ms. Taitz to file any future motions or represent me in any way in this court. It is my plan to file a complaint with the California State Bar due to her reprehensible and unprofessional actions.

Full letter after the jump.

RHODES v MacDONALD – 18 – Letter regarding from plaintiff regarding withdrawal of motion to stay – Gov.usco…(Remainder.)

One Backwards Leap for Texas

By Phil Plait
Bad Astronomy at Discover

I keep wondering what kind of dumbosity people associated with the Texas Board of Education can come up with next, and I keep being surprised at the depths of teh stoopid. And this time it’s not creationism!

It’s NASA. According to Houston Chronicle blogger Eric Berger, there’s a proposal to remove Neil Armstrong’s name from social studies textbooks.

Yes, you read that correctly. The proposal was suggested by teachers and parents reviewing materials, because Armstrong "is not a scientist".

Wha wha whaaaa?

I could argue that technically that’s correct, since Armstrong’s an engineer, which is different than a research scientist. Still, he did do some modicum of science when he walked on the frakking Moon. I think maybe he should be given the benefit of the doubt on this one*

Plus, his foot was the first planted on another world, and maybe we’re not being too tough on students to know that. And the irony that this is Texas! They have a big city there called Houston which has some NASA ties, as in "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

So, to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills review team, this one’s for you:

Does Hateful Rhetoric Really Lead to Violence? History Gives Us the Clear Answer: Yes

By David Neiwert
Crooks and Liars

Chris Matthews decided to take seriously Nancy Pelosi's choked-up discussion of concern about the violent undertone of recent right-wing rhetoric -- which of course has the right-wing a-holosphere chortling in blithe dismissal -- on Hardball earlier this week. So he brought on author Gerald Posner and the SPLC's Mark Potok to talk about it.

It prompted an interesting discussion about the relationship between the wild rantings of right-wing talkers and the ugliness that is manifesting itself on the street in our discourse -- especially now that we have right-wing nutcases who attend churches where the preacher tells them killing Obama would not be murder showing up at presidential rallies with AK-15s.

MATTHEWS: ... The question here is very serious. What is it in the atmosphere that allows a person to feel comfortable showing up at a political event carrying a gun, in some cases two guns, and letting people know they're armed? What is it in the atmosphere that lets a person bring a sign that compares the president of the United States to an animal or to a Nazi? What is it makes them feel comfortable doing that kind of crap in public? I wonder if it isn't the atmosphere of language that's being used today. Your thoughts, sir, Mark.

MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: I think it is the atmosphere, the language that's being sort of ejected into the atmosphere, I think that, you know, what we're hearing, in particular from our—quote, unquote—“leaders,” from both political leaders and commentators.

I mean, you know, yesterday Rush Limbaugh was on the air talking about an incident in which black kids attacked a white kid on a school bus, an incident that police said was not racially motivated, and saying that what we need are segregated buses, that this is the only way, I suppose, that white people can be protected from black people.

I think when we have characters like Limbaugh saying that on the air to millions of Americans, many of whom actually revere the man, you know, it's not surprising that people feel that, you know, the race war is around the corner and that we're allowed to say these kinds of things.

...

GERALD POSNER: ... Chris, you have hit the nail on the head. It's a license that allows somebody who's on the edge to cross the edge from thinking about acting out to actually crossing the line and being violent and thinking they can change history with a single bullet. And we have shown time and time again that that's possible.

It's not simply the overt threat to the well-being of the president that's important here. There's also the threatening nature of packing heat openly at a public meeting where the presence of guns is highly likely to be interpreted by your fellow citizens as an implied threat to their well-being should they happen to disagree. That is, they not only threaten the president, these guns intimidate and silence your fellow citizens.

The flip side of this was Glenn Beck, responding also to Pelosi's remarks, and insisting that we pay it no mind, because the people she's concerned about are just crazy, and there's nothing we can do about them....(Remainder.)

Birther Fail: Judge Ready to Slap Oily Taint with $10,000 Fine

By Heather
Crooks and Liars

Poor old crazy birther Orly Taitz just can't get any respect. Dylan Ratigan treats her with the disdain she deserves in this segment where she's asked to react to the ruling against her. And it looks like the judge has had a belly-full of her as well.

Judge ready to slap Orly Taitz with $10,000 fine:

Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the Birther movement, may have finally crossed one too many lines. The courts will, after all, overlook the occasional frivolous lawsuit, even when filed by an attorney who can't get basic procedural issues right -- just the cost of doing business. But even a federal judge has a breaking point, and Clay Land appears to have reached his.

Earlier this week, Land dismissed a suit that Taitz had brought on behalf of Army Capt. Connie Rhodes, a surgeon who claimed that she couldn't follow her orders to deploy to Iraq because she's not sure President Obama is eligible, under the Constitution, to hold his current position. At the time, Land warned Taitz that if she filed any more "similarly frivolous ... actions in this Court" she'd face sanctions....

Propagandaministerium Latest Conspiracy—Obama Pressured CBO to Give Baucus Plan Good Score

By Media Matters

On the September 18 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, guest co-host and serial health care misinformer Peter Johnson Jr. suggested that Sen. Max Baucus' (D-MT) health care plan received a favorable score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) because the office was "taken to the woodshed by the president earlier in the summer, when they uncovered hundreds of billions of dollars of real deficits in the House plan." Johnson offered no criticism of the scoring by the CBO -- which analyzed the Baucus plan when it was introduced, not "after being taken to the woodshed" -- and which is an independent agency that reports to Congress....(Remainder.)

President Obama Weekly Address: Progress in the Global Economy

Reichsführer Beck Latest Target is SEIU

After Scrawling a Magic Fairyland Tree On His Chalkboard, Reichsführer Beck Attacks "Mainstream 'Fringe' Media." Um...Huh?

Reichsführer Beck & Comandante Generale O'Reilly Argue Over "Communist Thing"

Reichsführer Insane Fuck-Monkey's Missile Defense Conspiracy Theory "Sold Out Poland for GE"

In a Stream of Insanity Reichsführer Beck Attacks Nancy Pelosi's Milk Comments

Little Whiny Bitch Chris Wallace, Stomps His Feet Because Obama Won't Go On Fox Propaganda Network

Campbell Brown Slams Fox Ad: They Forget There is a Different Between Covering and Promotion

CNN Launches Ad Responding to Lies of Fox Noise

Ed Schultz Mocks Teabaggers' Bitching Over Public Transportation

Fox's Morning Hate-Fest Thinks Pelosi is "Giving People Ideas About Assassination"

Chris "Daddy Never Loved Me" Wallace, Whines & Moans Obama a Bunch of Crybabies

Fox's Resident Skank, Carlson Thinks OK for Beck to Call Obama "Racist," Not OK to Call Right Out for Racism

Sean "Dumber than a Sack of Vomit" Hannity Attacks Nancy Pelosi

The Retarded Baby Jesus Gets His Demagoguing Ass Handed to Him by Environmentalist

By David Neiwert
Crooks and Liars

Sean Hannity devoted to the entire hour of his Fox News show Thursday to a special reported titled "The Valley That Hope Forgot," all about the water crisis in California's San Joaquin Valley that many right-wingers -- including Sean Hannity -- are blaming on the diversion of water to maintain the fishery on the San Joaquin Delta.

It's actually a classic case of resource juggling: Giving water to the farmers in drought years might keep farmed produce turning, but it would destroy the fishery that supplies millions of fish -- and not just the delta smelt -- to the oceans and ultimately to our food supply. For the time being, the fish have won in the courts. Moreover, there are signs the water is returning to the valley on its own, since the recent drought appears to be subsiding.

Still, Hannity was more interested in demagoguing than in producing an accurate portrait of the situation, let alone helping find a resolution. He blamed the high unemployment rate in the San Joaquin Valley on the lack of water for farmers, and blamed that solely on the delta smelt lawsuits.

Near the end of the show, he had on his usual Intended Liberal Victim, for whom he could reserve such deep journalistic questions as "And I just want to know: How did you get your priorities so screwed up in life? What happened to you?"...(Remainder.)

Bill Maher Destroys Baucus's Multi-Billion $ Boondoggle to Insurance Industry

Corporate & Right-Wing Media Lie About Pelosi's Warning Against "Anti-Gov" Rhetoric

By Media Matters

Media figures including Candy Crowley, Carl Cameron, Brian Kilmeade, and Gretchen Carlson have mischaracterized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments that recent "anti-government rhetoric" reminded her of "the late '70s in San Francisco" when "it created a climate in which violence took place," to claim that she was criticizing opponents of health care reform. In fact, Pelosi was directly responding to a question not about health care reform, but one that explicitly noted "people talking about anti-government rhetoric and so on and the possibility of violence."...(Remainder.)

Fucktard O'Reilly Does Not Agree with Reichsführer Beck's Obama-SEIU Attacks

Michael "Neo-Nazi Poster Child" Savage Tries to Compare CNN to a Skinhead Group

Scarborough Calls Out Beck for His Pussified Mika Attack

Fox Noise Producer Shown Aggravating Crowd Before Fox Live Shot of Klan Rally

“Liberal Bias” Myth Lives On

By Jamison Foser
Media Matters

In his Sunday column, Washington Post Ombudsman Andrew Alexander addresses conservative complaints that the Post doesn't do enough to cover topics they are interested in. In doing so, Alexander quotes Pew's Tom Rosenstiel and Post editor Marcus Brauchli agreeing that the Post -- and other news organizations -- aren't responsive enough to conservative viewpoints:

One explanation may be that traditional news outlets like The Post simply don't pay sufficient attention to conservative media or viewpoints.

It "can't be discounted," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. "Complaints by conservatives are slower to be picked up by non-ideological media because there are not enough conservatives and too many liberals in most newsrooms."

"They just don't see the resonance of these issues. They don't hear about them as fast [and] they're not naturally watching as much," he added.

Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said he worries "that we are not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It's particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view."

I don't find the Rosenstiel/Brauchli position quotes the least bit convincing....(Remainder.)

Slingshot

By Nick Anderson
The Houston Chronicle

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