A Blog Version Of The Inside Of My Head. The place where politics, film, the media, music, pop culture, and random topics collide in an orgy of neo-philisophical randomness that would make your mother scream.
This morning on MSNBC, Gen. Stanley McCrystal spoke about his new book, his time in Afghanistan, his resignation, but most importantly - assault weapons in American society.
Please watch:
As I had posted in regards to his resignation, I thought it VERY appropriate that he do so. He - and some of those under his command - acted in a fashion that could easily be deemed insubordonate. He did, fractionally, address this on Morning Joe, and let it be known that his wife supported his decision and thought it the right thing to do.
But that is ancillary to the topic of this post. His most powerful statement was this:
I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a .223 caliber round which is 5.56 mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that,” McChrystal explained. “That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America.
As of now, the Modern American Right are silent. It is, to hold to the well-known phrase - deafening. Why? They were so eager to champion him after the Rolling Stone article? Oh.......I guess when a man that has devoted over 30 years in service to risking his life for this country speaks out against weapons designed and sold to murder humans, then that's where the line is drawn. How typical.
We have heard for years from the Modern American Right about how the Left "never lets a crisis go to waste". To that, I would offer the easily recognized point that the Modern Right never consider the deaths of innocent children, women, wives, teachers, daughters, sons...............and in the name of ensuring that they can have access to assault weapons and never consider that criminals can get them too.
I have two daughters. My friends have daughters, and sons, and grandchildren. They have brothers and sisters - all in not only the education community, but in public service of a wide variety. Are we to honestly accept the narrative that handing any or all of them a firearm, of removing a sign that designated that firearms aren't allowed, that ignoring basi building safety precautions in favor of allowing a marginally trained person with a gun at the door is going to fix the problem?
Are we.........?
It's not a secret that MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell gives a hard hitting interview and actually turns the tables on his conservative guests by treating them the way people like Hannity, O'Reilly, and Meghan Kelly treat them on their respective shows.
The same was true on The Last Word recently when Congressman Steve King was on:
When a prominent member of the modern American Right is pressed on the issues - or even chided for their ridiculous positions - the cry from their supplicants is one of "stop beingso mean"!
When examining how the Right completely distorts and misinforms regarding their how their "leadership" is questioned, it reveals that they have an overbearing sense of entitlement in regards to media exposure. Granted, it's a legitimate complaint to point out media distortions of a given position regardless of your socio-political bent, but to claim that a particular member of your political party HAS to be interviewed a certain way, then that shows a lack of credibility and honestly before the first question is even asked.
ASIDE: You'll notice that King immediately launched into a rationale regarding how many times O'Reilly interrupted Obama - a topic that was discussed on many left/progressive blogs - but was not even the reason why King was brought on O'Donnell's program. What is more striking about King's excuse is that it is predicated on the notion of "getting even". That's pretty much par for the course, considering how the new Tea Bagger Congress is approaching their legislative duties.
Having been at work most of last night as further news unfolded about Keith Olbermann, I feel I need to respond to at least some of it, as most of it has ended up as either rank speculation or nothing more than sophomoric prattling disguised as intellectual discourse.
First, here's Glenn Beck - the man that recently donated a HUGE amount of money to the US Chamber of Commerce. And let's not forget that that action was predicated on the fact that they were doling out money to help bolster the campaigns of conservative, Republican, candidates.
--- clink link to watch clip ---
Beck is most certainly the last person that should be deriding Olbermann for his stance on not voting but giving donations instead.
I'm not going to try and reconcile how the two are different means of socio-political action, but I do think that there is a separation between the two. Though that difference is subtle, Beck would rather take the approach of that of a spoiled rich kid taunting a classmate. To put it a more blunt way, Beck's only ammunition is to either fabricate to insight fear or too mock the messenger rather than address the message. Classic conservative posturing.
Hot Air's mysterious Allahpundit took the predictable route of saying "Fox is more news than MSNBC" - a stance somewhat akin to sticking your thumbs in your ears, wiggling your fingers, while sticking your tongue out and making a mouthy drone. How "professional" of him.
In his response to Olbermann's suspension and the completely unfounded accusation that Keith won't be back - from an anonymous source on less - he referenced a challenge laid forth from the same man that gave Olbermann the temporary boot. That challenge was to show where MSNBC openly "fundraised" for Democrats.
The link provided was to Olbermann stalker Johnny Dollar who referenced less than a handful of examples from Ed Schultz and one from Keith. And while the guests on those specific shows do mention their respective websites, this is nothing in comparison to what the "fair and balanced" folks at Fox"News" do every night. Fox"News" openly encourages their guests that are currently engaged in campaigns to openly ask for support. Then again, that's nuance that conservatives don't seem to understand.
But this is ultimately about the continued war between Fox and MSNBC. For former quite literally coddles to conservativism while the later has booted hosts for even lesser offenses than what Obermann has done.
Michelle Malkin, in full on purse-lipped rage might as well have put her foot in her ever gaping maw as she went on a none-to-clever tirade about "disclosure". Really, Michelle?
Olbermann’s sanctimony and hypocrisy only compound his core failure to disclose the donations before Election Day — especially during the show in which he hosted one of the beneficiaries of that cash.
Whatever NBC’s guidelines may be, it was the basic journalistic failure of the Murrow wanna-be to disclose the donation on the night he hosted one of his cash recipients that seals his fate and undermines whatever iota of credibility his station has left.
So, financial contributions are "free speech" unless an individual does it.
In terms of Malkin's accusations - and actually everyone within the modern conservative movement - that all news networks that aren't Fox are somehow "in the tank" for liberal causes is not only preposterous when even given a rudimentary glance, but that narrative is completely destroyed when considering what MSNBC has done to it's more left-leaning commentators in the past.
To end, here is Racheal Maddow's response to all of this:
Even thought some of the people that I follow on Twitter, some of those in the liberal/progressive blogosphere, and some within my community that I have discussed this with are saying that it's not right for Maddow - or any Democrat - to simply say "well, if Fox does it we can to" is to clearly be missing the point that Racheal put forward; a point that can be seen daily when one watches Fox"News".
What this boils down to is Fox openly campaigning for their Republican and hosting events to raise funds, MSNBC is simply at fault for not attacking their Democratic guests for mentioning their campaign websites on air.
Another distinction that should be noted is that Fox does not have an "ethics" policy like MSNBC does. Also, MSNBC doesn't operate under the false premise of "fair and balanced", and has a clear separation between their news and commentary. But also, isn't that something that Olbermann's detractors are clearly not admitting - that his show is "news and commentary"? After all, those exact words are part of his intro.
To end, I'm not going to remove the fact that Olbermann violated alleged company policy by not disclosing his financial contributions. Also, I'm not going to pretend that this isn't at least fractionally connected to Comcast's take-over of NBC Universal - even though that process is not fully complete. This action by Phil Griffin is clearly one to curry favor with his new bosses prior to their complete placement as NBC Universal owners.
Regardless of what happens to Olbermann, MSNBC management has made a poor decision and conservatives are equally as ignorant to claim some sort of moral victory in this.
Who else is thinking that this is going to not be just a none-to-clever angle on the "donation disclosure" debate that conservatives are going to exploit in favor of of the realities of how the Citizens United ruling played a massive role in this weeks elections? Moreover, is this really the approach they want to take, considering their own media masters handy work in more than a handful of victories Tuesday night?
Would it shock anyone to know that Keith Olbermann donated thousands of dollars to three Democrats in the midterms? Two House incumbents from Arizona and Jack Conway, the Senatorial candidate fro Kentucky who lost after running the notorious “Aqua Buddha” attack ad, received the maximum donation from Olbermann in the final days of the general election season, a fact discovered by Politico when reviewing FEC filings. The donations violate NBC’s stated ethics code for its journalists, and it may apply even more since one of the recipients appeared on Countdown at the same time Olbermann made the donation
What Morrissey is clearly doing is providing much needed covering fire for people like Glenn Beck, and most notably, Sarah Palin. The former because of his "singular money bomb" to the US Chamber of Commerce and the later because of how her PAC unblushingly supported Republican candidates across the US. Both of these were done for clearly partisan reasons while in the employ of a network that is, despite Morrissey's and all conservatives assertions, more partisan than any channel on cable.
Make no mistake, journalists of all stripes who have the liquidity to do so are going to make campaign contributions if they feel they should. And that most certainly includes those that mask themselves as "fair and balanced". I'm not even going to pretend to be naive enough to think that Fox"News" frowns upon people like Beck, Palin, O'Reilly, or Hannity donating thousands to people like Marco Rubio or Carl Paladino. With that in mind, how much did the entire staff at Fox give to the McCain/Palin campaign in 2008? Does it really matter, considering Palin was hired by the network not long after the Republicans lost that election. But also, does that excuse Fox from any "ethics" violations? Now those are two words you should never use together - "ethics" and "Fox".
But back to the point at hand - if there even is one coming from Morrissey.
I don’t think that Olbermann’s contributions mean too much on their own. We all know from watching his broadcasts that he dislikes Republicans and cheerleads for Democrats, so these contributions do nothing for his credibility in any direction. The question here is whether NBC will hold MSNBC to its ethical standards, and the hypocrisy of shrieking about Fox’s contributions while donating his own.
So Olbermann "lacks credibility" because of his political donations and the entire Fox"News" line-up is representative of "real Americans" because of theirs? Try wrapping your brain around that one.
Here's something that Morrissey, and all that will parrot this completely preposterous theory, clearly aren't considering - how many people in the employ of NBC donate to Republican candidates? Clearly that wouldn't mesh with the "liberal media bias" meme that has threaded itself through the modern conservative movement. Don't ever expect that a question like that will ever be asked.
But in terms of the "cheer-leading" that Morrissey and his easily led droogies think Olbermann participates in, let's take a look at reality:
Now, does that sound like a full-throated water carrier to you?
BREAKING UPDATE
Olbermann suspended without pay indefinately.
MSNBC has suspended star anchor Keith Olbermann following the news that he had donated to three Democratic candidates this election cycle.
"I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay," MSNBC president Phil Griffin said in a statement.
This comes as a bit of a surprise to some, is apparently just posturing to Ed Morrissey, and actually is a rather expected move considering who just yanked Olbermann from the air.
In recent months, Griffin has taken several bold steps to declare his authority over the network and its sometimes unruly talent: he sent a stern memo warning hosts to not publicly fight with each other, he suspended David Shuster indefinitely for filming a CNN pilot, suspended Donny Deutsch, banned Markos Moulitsas from the network, and reprimanded Ed Schultz for threatening to "torch" the network
So how's that "liberal media bias" meme working out now.
And while NBC is tempering this decision by stating that Olbermann is not yet about to be fired, conservatives are likely to use this in conjunction with the notion that the entire American media - well, aside from Fox"News" that is - is in full temper tantrum mode.
Back to Little Eddie's hypothesis:
The more I think about this, the more ridiculous it gets. MSNBC offers the most ridiculously biased televion coverage of politics possible, crowning it with Election Night coverage that had people wondering if NBC needed to hire grief and anger counseling for the entire on-air staff. And now, because Olbermann contributed to three Democrats last month, suddenly Griffin suspends him because “these activities jeopardize his or her standing as an impartial journalist because they may create the appearance of a conflict of interest”?
Again, is Morrissey really wanting to go the route of "conflict of interest"? The complete lack of honest perspective from this man is staggering. By that, I mean, are we to assume now that Presidential hopefuls on the Fox"News" payroll are to be suspended as well?
I'm not about to say that we should expect breaking news that Palin has been suspended from her duties at Fox"News", but if she even comments on this issue, the gods of hypocrisy would surely be ready with swift retribution. Oh, wait, I forgot that doesn't happen on their side.
UPDATE II
Seems that mine, andother's assumptions about Fox"News" policy on political donations are founded in reality:
Fox News is alone among the four major TV networks in placing no restrictions on campaign contributions. According to Open Secrets, Sean Hannity has given almost $12,000 to Republican candidates since 2005. Adam Serwer writes, "If FOX instituted an MSNBC-like ethics policy, would they actually be able to continue operating?"
UPDATE III
So why is Griffin letting Scarborough and Buchanan get away with exactly the same action.
From that Griffin banned because of "Morning Joe's" whining - Morkos Moulitsas
Real smart, Phil! Olbermann isn't just MSNBC's highest rated show, but it's the only one that breaks Fox News' stranglehold on the top 10 cable news shows.
Of course, this is par for the course for Griffin -- letting his lowest-rated host Joe Scarborough call the shots, to the point where Scarborough has dictated Olbermann's guest list by blackballing me from the network. As Atrios pointed out on Twitter, Pat Buchanan gave five political contributions between 2005-08, and he keeps his permanent cot in the MSNBC green room.
CNN's ratings are in the gutter. I'm sure they could use the boost in the ratings that Olbermann would provide.
This even furthers the point that MSNBC doesn't have the completely unhinged "liberal bias" that conservatives claim it does. And more to the point, I recall how Olbermann - the man Griffin is attempting to make an example of - was tasked with replacing Phil Donahue simply because he was against the Iraqi invasion just a little too much.
My polling place was a local Baptist Church - something I found rather odd - and I immediately noticed that there were more people there than the Presidential election. Taking a quick glance around the room, it was populated largely with white males who's median age was easily over 60. And upon returning to the parking lot, I started to count the Rand Paul bumper stickers. Needless to say there were a great deal of them.
I didn't get exit polled - I never have, actually - but I did decide to drive around town to check and see if the Tea Baggers were out on street corners shouting as cars passed by.
Not a soul.
Were they all posted up on couches having their premature victory talking points spoon fed to them by Fox? Were they at work talking about how great America will be since the Republicans are "taking their country back"? Who's to know.
But here's one thing I do know - the Republicans who do win tonight should really start to consider what they are going to do once they move into those cozy offices on Capital Hill.
I'm not so naive to think that there won't be a majority of Republicans in the House, but they won't control the Senate. Sadly, though, that's enough for them to be even more of the obstructionists than they already have been. And that is precisely what they are going to do. And they are already framing this as "it's all Obama's fault":
And if they are to create spending bills that "cut funding", what exactly will they cut?
Recently on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed some "leaders" within the "leaderless" Tea Bagger movement about what they think should be cut and how "Socialism" plays into these decisions - a constant cry from Republicans. Turns out that they had some, shall I say, interesting views.
As I watched this Sunday night, I realized that this is exactly how the candidates that the Tea Baggers vote for - the ones that actually win that is - are going to approach their legislative tasks, like a freshman fumbling at his first girlfriend's bra strap.
No clear goals. No battle plan. No forward movement.
And it's not just the Tea Bagger backed candidates that aren't taking their potential assignments as representatives of the people seriously. Their media masters are more in favor of pushing the narrative that Democrats and all other media outlets are going to completely lose it come Wednesday morning:
If anything, the next two years will be legislative gridlock - not that the last two years were as evenly paced as most would have liked. And we will surely see pointless investigations, attempts to repeal virtually every aspect of the Democrats agenda, and possibly articles of impeachment. But don't think for one moment that Republicans are going to work for America - it will be an all out push "against" Democrats.
Will conservatives wake up Wednesday and claim that their "freedom has been restored" - that their "liberties have returned"? I doubt that, even though the opposite is what happened the day after Obama was elected. My guess is that their will be a full blown push to blame Obama for everything that they will fail at.
I'm fully ready for conservatives to shout "context" in response to this. Either that, or they will simply ignore the fact that their precious Tea Baggers are more than willing to destroy large segments of American life just so they can prove a point.
Standard fare from Rush, but I think this should be examined.
Notice how Rush immediately starts his defense of how mouth-agape conservatives are reacting to Cordoba House ( not a mosque by it's strict definition. Also, the name is now Park 51 ) by creating the "what if" narrative that has nothing to do with the form, function, or name of the building. From the jump, Rush has completely contorted the issue from one of freedom of religion to retail. But more on that later.
While Rush's incessant and seemingly amphetamine fueled blatherings about Park 51 are not grounded in reality for one second, it's interesting to note that there is already a Muslim "chapel" at the Pentagon that not one conservative seems to even be remotely bothered with. And this was something that Limbaugh brayed about like a donkey with dysentery. Do these people not do any research?
But more to the point; conservatives like Rush are all too eager to run headlong into that brick wall that is labeled "what if". It's not even partially connected to the issue at hand. It's a tactic that is utilized to distract you from what is really going on. The same can even be said about the name AND the location of Park 51. It's almost 3 blocks from the most northern edge of Ground Zero as well as not even being a mosque.
Keith Olbermann had something to say about this that I think bares repeating.
Possibly the one point that Keith brings up that I think needs to be highlighted is that conservatives are so intellectually lazy when it comes to reporting on issues such as Park 51 - which shouldn't be an issue to begin with. There has been a place of Muslim worship within a comparable distance to what is now known as Grown Zero for longer than I have been alive; even almost as long as people that are up in arms against Park 51 have been alive and yet we have heard nothing from them.
Why is that?
While Rush as attempting to conflate the very real and very honest issue of a big package store pushing the "mom and pop" "small businesses" that he claims to champion out existence, I sat back and listened to this nearly 3 minutes of inane drivel and finally got it.
As much as I have said that conservatives like Rush lack the ability to exercise rational thought, reasoning, even basic query on issues like why Park 51 is going to be located where it is, I have to say that I am wrong. Conservatives do have that ability - they simply choose not to use it. Why? There is only one answer - that they can't be seen as wrong.
When a person like Rush Limbaugh has so much invested in his position, so much drool and heavy breathing put into his false premises, there's no way he's going to pass up the opportunity to make people believe something that simply isn't there. There's no way that he will deny any moment where he can say the building ( that is essentially on par with a YMCA ) is going to be a breeding ground for terrorists.
Does any conservative have the ability to be honest about this?
And this was the guy that helped George W. Bush steal the election away from Al Gore. How's that for a slice of irony?
What Christie is doing is nothing new for conservatives, but I still have to ask - why teachers? Why not look at freezing the salaries of government officials first. After all, nothing says "fiscal responsibility" like making sure that your position in the political landscape isn't damaging the area you are attempting to govern. I think this is the first step that Christie should have taken. After all, conservatives are continually trying to make sure that no member of Congress has a pay increase.
Certainly, everyone should have to sacrifice, but to hear Chris Christie talk down to a teacher and essentially tell her to quit if she doesn't like it, you get the feeling that he isn't so much concerned with the financial well-being of those in his state as he is in maintaining the caricature of a modern conservative.
As an aside, something I found rather odd and somewhat unsettling. It involves education in the state of New Jersey, but a style that Christie might endorse. It doesn't paint a pretty picture of the future of private education in New Jersey.
I've gotten into quite a few debates with conservatives on Twitter regarding their love for high ratings and their inability to understand that a higher Neilson score and the accuracy of the alleged reporting are mutually exclusive. To put it another way, conservatives believe that the more Fox"News" viewers there are, the more truth they must be telling.
This. Is. Not. True.
To follow conservative logic, as Rachel Maddow correctly points out, if your rating score is high, then your program - no matter what the subject matter - is proportionately true. So is there really a talking sponge under the sea that hangs out with a star-fish and has wacky adventures with celebrity guest stars? Of course there isn't. That's like saying since O'Reilly claimed that there wasn't a homeless Veteran problem that there isn't one.
Fox"News" enjoys it's ratings success largely due to the very nature of modern Americans. We are voyeuristic in nature. We crave entertainment, confrontation, and programming that is sensational. The consumerist nature of Americans is tapped into by Fox on virtually every program they air. It's info-tainment porn. We tune into Fox because of who they are and how they act. It's the proverbial car wreck that you slow down to take a look at, the fight in the school-yard that you know you can stop but are having too good of a time standing back and watching unfold.
The reality of it is that people watch Fox"News" for a variety of reasons. I would speculate that it's a minority within the country that watch Fox purely for informational purposes.
So now this sort of thing is acceptable to conservatives?
A biography of the former Alaska governor and self-described "mama grizzly" is set for release in September by Christian book publisher Zondervan.
"Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story," is one in a series of biographies aimed at 9- to 12-year-old readers. Others feature 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and U2 frontman Bono.
Kathleen Kerr, an acquisitions editor for Zondervan's Zonderkidz division, said the subjects are prominent figures who children hear about in the news and role models for tweens who are "working for the betterment of the world in which we live and who are motivated primarily by their Christian faith."
Or what about this, even more blatant, form of indoctrination by a conservative icon...
Granted, the book isn't written by Palin - I known you're shocked - but the message is still the same, target students in an effort to rewrite even recent history in order to continue to frame a consistently false and misleading narrative.
Anyone remember the optional video speech that Obama was to give to students? Yeah, you remember the is got from prominent conservative.
Here's Michelle Malkin, in all her purse-lipped faux rage.
The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher's unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.
There was even a call to keep children at home on that day, fearing that a message of working hard, studying, and bettering yourself would somehow turn all the kids in public schools into brainless automatons. From my point of view, the standardized testing mandated by No Child Left Behind has already done enough damage in that regard.
Conservatives have a long and well-recorded timeline of distorting and destroying history. We haven't seen this type of push to re-write who and what our country ever - at least not in my lifetime. We won't see Beck challenged when he makes specious claims regarding FDR. We will never hear parents' concern over a book that is geared towards pre-teens that has a clearly established religious bent. We won't hear these challenges from conservatives because they actually favor indoctrination, because the world that they live in isn't the "real America". There's is a fantasy world where they are the perpetual victims of bias, intimidation, and smears. So to compensate for their inability to see this nation for what it is, what it was, and what is truly should be, they must project their own failings upon everyone else.
It's about fucking time someone did some comparative analysis of Reagan and Obama - specifically on the whole amnesty issue that conservatives are screaming and crying about. But he doesn't stop there, as he even pointed out another aspect of Reagan's administration that I have talked about for years - leaving Lebanon after the Marine barracks was attacked and over 200 of our soldiers were killed.
This idea that Reagan was the second coming of Christ - and that's pretty much how conservatives have framed his presidency - is not only laughable, but seriously uninformed and a danger to socio-political discourse. I wouldn't go so far as to call Obama more conservative than Reagan, but I completely agree with Cenk that Obama isn't nearly as liberal as he could be or even should be.
Someconservatives are already crowing that Jan Brewer has won the war on this one since Obama and her sat down to chat. My only problem with this is that this is pure political posturing on her part and I think that Obama should have been more forceful in his approach to this. Then again, he's far more adept at playing political chess while his opponents look at the politics of America as a game of checkers - you jump over one Democratic piece and they start screaming "KING ME" and there not even half-way across the board yet.
I will give Governor Brewer credit on the fact that she played this post-sit-down presser as if Obama was frightened and on the defensive. You'll notice that she didn't say whether or not he had read the law. That was so unblushingly planned on her part and I'm fairly certain that this is going to be a major talking-point generator for conservatives for the next few weeks.
The main problem I have with this is the fact that Obama didn't come out and speak with her. It's a safe bet that if he had she wouldn't be posturing nearly as much and the mouth-agape press, ever eager to get a juicy sound-bite, wouldn't be asking the "have you read it" question.
So when will we hear from Obama about his meeting with Brewer? Gibbs will likely be fielding questions from the press pool today about it and no matter what answer he gives, conservatives will claim that they have won. But when the final act of this like Republican play is over, I'm looking for conservatives to not be crowing, but eating it.
It's almost a given now that Kentucky is going to be watched very closely by the media, considering Rand Paul won the primary this week for the Republican Senate seat. And with such attention to Paul, the conservative movement will be all in a frenzy to defend his every word and action. It'salreadystarting.
Here's Rachel Maddow's fantastic interview with Paul. You get the sense that he has really met his match with this one.
"First Floor Jobs"? Do they get their own drinking fountain as well?
As Paul says, "isn't it interesting" that he would never once answer Rachel's questions - not once. But as any person watching this show that wasn't about to attempt to defend Paul's stance on Civil Rights would see, he is completely in favor of anyone that owns a business to discriminate against anyone they don't agree with.
I'm reminded of signs in restaurants that read "management reserves the right....". One could say that Paul takes that stance to it's utmost extreme ends. While he has been quite clear of what he thinks is acceptable behavior by private business, it appears that some former Tea Bagger heroes are distancing themselves from Paul's point of view.
It's quite clear that Paul is completely fine with racism as long as it's not in a "publicly owned" area.
Did Senator Orin Hatch just do what I think he did?
Republicans are still bitter at the fact that Sotomayor is on the Supreme court, so getting a cheap shot against her when the time presents itself will always get you in the good graces of people like Limbaugh and Beck. Hatch knew precisely what he was doing - lying. Ironic, isn't it.
It would have been nice for Chuck Todd to press Hatch on this, but that's not what he's known for doing. And that's one thing that really irritates me about interviews like this - when the anchors are presented an opportunity to challenge anyone that makes specious claims like this, they simply don't do it as much and as often as they should. Then again, maybe they are afraid that they will be accused of "badgering" the person being interviewed. Palin pulled that same stunt and got away with it when she couldn't answer even the simplest of questions.
I don't expect Hatch or any Republican to vote for her to be confirmed, so to hear a Republican talk about what they would and wouldn't like to hear is a complete waste of airtime.
Failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, poses a very interesting problem for not just the Obama administration, but the entire country - that includes conservatives, by the way.
While conservatives are forming the narrative that this was an abject failure of Homeland Security, I have to question several aspects of those claims. True, the no-fly list was ineffective on this front, but Federal agents spotted Shazad's name on the passenger manifest and were able to capture him.
It's called a "fall-back provision". When one system doesn't catch something or someone up-front, the secondary provisions are there to correct the incident. And while this paints the picture for conservatives that the Feds were nothing more than bumbling keystone cops. The reality is that law enforcement did great job in gathering information that lead to Shazad's arrest. The only caveat to that was how he was able to make it onto the plane.
The reality of using tracking systems like the no-fly list is that the reliability of them are largely predicated on one person making the proper call at the right time. Considering the timeline of actions between Shazad's poorly constructed "bomb" and police discovering his identity, I'm not too surprised ( but still troubled ) that a TSA screener missed the opportunity to catch him up front.
------------------------------------
Conservatives are foaming at the mouth with this one. They are doing their level best to play all the angles that they refused to look at when Bush was in office and even are creating the narrative that the "mainstream media" are about to blame Bush for this incident. Predictable and quite frustrating to deal with as well.
Malkin seems to be taking the "Arizona" approach by hinting that we should prevent immigrants from the middle east from marrying. This is already an issue of sorts in various portions of America, as immigrants will attempt to marry a natural born citizen to gain their own citizenship. This has not been shown to be the case with Shahzad, though Malkin is cultivating that theme. And while her piece takes to task how at various points in the past 20 years some "terrorists" have been shown to use the marriage angle to gain entrance into America, I'm wondering where all the abject rage and purse-lipped anger was in regards to the Bush administration. After all, this is surely a touchy subject for an anchor baby.
There were many instances like this that occurred on Bush's watch - Richard Reid, The Ft. Dix Plot, and the JFK airport plot.
Conservatives weren'teven a fraction as critical towards the Bush administration and how the investigations were handled. These were all "terrorists" that were equally as amateurish as - if not more so - Shahzad.
The intel and resources used to capture Shahzad worked, even with the lapse in communication. There's even a report out that an army surveillance plane was the key in finding out where Shahzad was headed - they traced his call while he was reserving his ticket. However, this story is slowly being walked-back, likely due to the fact that this was more than likely not to be reported.
And while conservatives and their media masters are going to spin this incident to their own ideological advantage, the reality is that Shahzad was captured in less than 54 hours from when the make-believe bomb was intended to go off.
I'm not going to claim that this was a perfect situation and it was handled with 100% accuracy - that's never going to happen. Anyone claiming the contrary is so divorced from reality that they honestly shouldn't be commenting on issues like this to begin with. There will likely be steps taken to improve communication and intelligence gathering, and that's already starting to happen, and with the information garnered from Shahzad during interrogation ( which is ongoing as of yesterday ) we will learn more about any possible connections he may have had.
Despite what conservatives claim, the Obama administration has a far better record than the Bush administration regarding specific aspects of combating terrorism. And while "close calls" such as this shouldn't be minimized, it's just as bad - if not worse - to over-inflate and issue. Neither approach will benefit this country in any fashion.
I'm very impressed with how Maddow handled herself against this sanctimonious prick. There was a moment where she did seem to exude some amount of frustration, but she knows what she's doing, and she does it well. Let's just say that you'll not see this type of interview happening over at Fox"News".
Muzikal203 at Daily Kos has a nice piece up about this now.
The fact-checking has already shown that Stein is a blatant liar.
Twitter friend GottaLaff from The Political Carnival has coined a new term - "Steined".
One has to simply see the look on Dan Stein's face to see that he honestly doesn't care what Maddow presents to him, what is revealed about his organization, or what associations he and former members have had. This is the face of conservativism at it's rancorous worst. Racism writ large.
I know this has been reported before, but really, how many of these people are out of work? How many of these people get Social Security benefits? How many of these people utilize government assistance? And why, while groups like Code Pink and most of the anti-war movement are largely ignored and marginalized as freaks of the highest order, are the Tea Baggers given such credibility withing the media as to warrant non-stop coverage.
Sure, Olbermann rightly takes the piss out of them nightly, but for fuck sake, when are Americans going to wake up and realize that these people are no better than your average nut job on the street corner that pantomimes with guitar with no strings and sings about how the giant spaghetti monster is coming for us?
Perhaps it was just me, but I noticed a little more grey in Keith's hair last night. I wouldn't doubt if it were true, after all he's been through lately.
That aside, Olbermann's intimate knowledge of how healthcare works and the how insurance companies we have to deal with operate, it's comments like these that the GOP and the mouth-agape rage monkey's like Michelle Malkin, Ed and Allah at Hot Air, and pretty much all of Fox"News" love to mock. It would be far too easy to say that they do it because they are "afraid" of Olbermann ( a favored tactic of their own when defending people like Beck and Limbaugh ) but I honestly believe they do it because his words make sense.
After all, conservatives make a living ( and a great sum of cash ) by contorting, rearranging, and molesting reality.
Michelle Malkin is having to play defense again, after what is becoming all too typical for her - berating a denigrating a child.
Her response is to this clip from Countdown hosted by her new favorite liberal/progressive target, Lawrence O'Donnell.
Malkin uses the following as one of the keystone of her blubbering thesis:
As usual, he gets basic facts wrong — like accusing Rush and me of being “desperate to catch up” with Beck. Actually, he’s got the timeline upside-down...
Malkin is apparently attempting to blatantly misrepresent O'Donnell's statement. It's quite clear that the words "catch up" infer that Malkin and Limbaugh are increasing their crazy output to match Beck's. After all, Beck has set the benchmark so high at this point that it really is virtually impossible to "catch up".
But Malkin takes considerable issue with Chris Hayes' statement that the Right are hellbent on pointing out "errors" when it comes to issues like this. I wouldn't call them errors at all, I would call them distortions. Malkin is certainly no stranger to these type of tactics.
Malkin's hamfisted attempts to clear her name of the widely recorded actions she has so lauded in the recent past is one of the ultimate signifiers that conservatives simply cannot stand behind that which they claim to champion - accountability.
Here is something that I think should be pointed out. Malkin is a mother. How in the hell can she attack children like this. Simply disgusting. I often fear for the intellectual safety of her children.
And while I must sincerely apologize for equating Rachel with such twitchy blatherings, we really should look at the nature of Liz Cheney's thesis.
Straight away, this whole storyline is being given credibility by some of the loudest voices within the conservative movement, so you have to wonder why they didn't so their research on this to begin with.
As much as I want to be able to wrap my head around this issue from a conservative perspective - you know, those people that claim to worship at the feet of our judicial process and the rights afforded to those arrested, caught, or captured - it amazes me that they AND Liz Cheney have conveniently forgotten that these alleged terrorists were captured and consulted by these people while George W. Bush was in office. Oh, the irony is so delicious.
We should break this down into simpler terms.
1 - only three cases tried in the allegedly pristine tribunal setting during the entirety of the Bush occupation of The White House.
2 - over 140 civilian proceedings of terrorists have successfully taken place in the last 15 years.
The numbers don't lie.
Military tribunals require an alleged terrorist to be represented by someone, so her little horror show is moot. But don't expect conservatives to admit this.
