The Safe Zone

And Rand Paul gets the Fox"News" softball treatment.



Let's look at this from a few angles.

There's a "concerted effort" to make Rand Paul ( and by extension the Tea Baggers ) look bad? Truth-be-told, they do a pretty good job on their own without any assistance. There's this bizarre concept that conservatives ought to look into, considering they preach it on a daily basis - it's called accountability. If Rand Paul is seeking to blame his opposition for his own, well documented, statements, then he'll likely only have a few people on his side come election day in November. The problem is that we are talking about Kentucky Republicans, some of whom really don't care for blacks in America at all.

And you notice how he said he "presents himself" as this kind, gentle, understand person that wants to have thoughtful discussion? It's fairly clear that he really isn't this type of person underneath that facade. This is a common tactic of the conservative movement - create this caricature of a considerate and understanding individual while projecting your own faults and shortcomings on your opponents while offering no verifiable information to back up your statements. It works because most conservatives are willing to buy into the lies, the hype, and the hysteria as they lack the intellectual honesty to move to the "verify" portion of Ronald Reagan's "trust, but verify".

And while Rand is actually being true when he pointed out - though not directly - that he never claimed he would vote against the Civil Rights Act, what he's not admitting any longer and doing he level best to distance himself from is the very real aspects of what he said - that he favors private businesses being able to discriminate on the basis of race, or for any reason for that matter. And yes, Mitch McConnell was quite vocal about his displeasure with Paul's statements and you'll notice that Rand did a little word salad shuffle when pressed on whether or not he was asked to "stay low". Any guess on what McConnell really said to him?

So why is he now in favor of what he had earlier deemed "government intrusion" into private business? Well, to protect his ass for one reason. But the damage is already done, so no amount of back-peddling or revision of the previous weeks statements is going to help him out with people that are legitimately concerned about what he could potentially do if he makes it to Washington. The talking-point about public transportation in Boston is not only redundantly silly, but really doesn't help his cause. He's essentially calling people in the South lazy, racists. He's not far off in that regard, as I've met my fair share her in Western Kentucky throughout my life. And if there's one things racists don't like to be called is a racist.

There was, despite the semantics that Paul is trying to utilize, a shake-up in his campaign after the Rachel Maddow interview. He did hire a former campaign consultant and it was a pretty poor choice, considering his ties to Rand's father's Presidential bid and his sympathy to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. So to state that there wasn't a dramatic shift within the campaign is a blatant lie.

As Paul, again, tries to distance himself from his "that's so un-American" comments regarding BP, I'm reminded again of how conservatives love to tout accountability but rarely, if ever, require that people be held accountable - that is, unless they aren't Republicans. It's a wonderfully transparent little dance that Rand Paul is doing, shift in his seat, swallowing hard, and visibly aching to get his new script out there to all the Fox"News" viewers so they can spit it out at the water-cooler or at Denny's on Sunday morning before church. There should be and there will be villains in every aspect of American life. Right now, Rand Paul is a villain of not only the truth but of progress in America.

Planting The Seeds Of Misinformation

It's a great tactic used by conservatives and their media masters at Fox"News". All you have to do is hint that there "might" be suspicious activity going on within the Obama administration but then offer just enough wiggle room to be able to defend yourself should the time come.

The newest allegation from the drooling, prattle-boxes on the Right is that Barack Obama "bought" Congressman Jim Matheson's vote by offering his brother a judicial seat. Even thogh there is no substantial evidence to back up this claim, it's already being spread by some of the loudest voice within the conservative movement.

From Glenn Beck...



...to Michelle Malkin...

There are no coincidences in Obama world, I’ve joked many times on this blog.

This one looks like a quid pro quo, smells like a quid pro quo, and quacks like a quid pro quo....

But then she also starts to side-step the claim and try and make Obama look stupid - a favored meme of conservatives.

Let us consider the possibility, for a brief moment, that it is merely coincidence.

Is the White House so fantastically blind and tone-deaf that it failed to detect the blood-red flags and blaring alarm bells that Scott Matheson’s judicial nomination would raise coming on the very day President Obama is wooing his brother, Jim?

Incorrigibly corrupt or incorrigibly stupid. Take your pick.

.....and Neil Cavuto and Michelle Bachman....



But as Think Progress has noted, the Weekly Standard writer, John McCormack, that started this new narrative literally backed out of his thesis as soon as he stated it:

Was there an explicit quid pro quo? Probably not...

And that's all the "seed" that is needed. Just give people a taste of what may or may not be and they will run with it like it is canonized Gospel.

No Thank You, Yes Please

I'm not entirely sure if Cavuto is being honest in his questioning of these two Republicans regarding Economic Stimulus requests or if he's trying to play "coach" and tell them "No, you're supposed to be saying no. Don't you realize how stupid you're making us look?"



One can't but wonder exactly what type of relationship these members of Congress have with their constituents. After all, if the residents of the states they were elected to serve are asking for stimulus funding and Congressional Republicans are taking it with the full knowledge they voted against the stimulus bill, what does this say about the state of modern conservative ideology?

Think Progress

Why Didn't This Play Out Differently?

While this has been a point that has been continually validated by the Right, it's not focused on enough.



While it is interesting to note that conservatives and former members of the Bush administration continually laud Bush's complete lack of reaction as the appropriate course of action, this was the first signifier that we had that George W. Bush completely lacked any sort of leadership capabilities in the face of a national emergency.

Not only that, but where were the Secret Service during this? There was a verified attack on the nation and they weren't concerned about getting the president to safety? And not only that, but the remaining members of the Bush administration staff that were there seemed to show some signs of concern. Was it over the situation in New York City or was is that the man that they had to answer to simply sat there, an utter look of confusion playing across his face, and did nothing? Did they quesiton his ability to lead at this point, or were they just as confused as he. After all, there had been intel delivered to them for over a month that this may happen.

Naturally, it is to be expected that Fox"News" would give airtime to someone like Andrew Card to continue the validation process of a man that prefered to just sit there than act.

Weighted Against Her Position

You can often find the people at Fox"News" creating issues out of whole cloth. They love to pick people apart, find nuances that aren't even there, and generally take up a contradictory position to any and all things that don't bare the mark of the status quo conservative Republican.

Neil Cavuto is a master of the question that has no relevance to the situation. John Stewart has pointed out Cavuto's use of the question mark as the Cavuto Mark - is your mother a whore? Have you stopped beating your wife? You get the picture.

Now it seems that Cavuto is ready to take a stance against Obama's choice of Surgeon General. Not because she is less qualified than others. Not because she's a woman - well, maybe a little because of that. But it's because she's "fat". No, really.



Micheal Karolchyk appears to fit that stereotype of douche-master, weight trainer who take suppliments and drinks protien shakes three times a day. You've seen the type - guy that spends all his time in the gym talking about his 1% body fat, snapping wet towels on his friends bare asses in the locker room.

But more to the point, it appears that Cavuto set up a piece that he knew would get people talking and then realized that his guest was that oafish prick that has taken so many energy drinks that his dick has shriveled into a flacid string. Why else would he speak ill of a woman in power?

TPM has more.

Perhaps Karolchyk doesn't realize that a "lazy" person isn't exactly one that excells in the medical field, much less one that is going to be our new Surgeon General. I would think it's safe to say that this woman isn't running 10 miles every morning in favor of doing her job making sure that her patients are healthy.

So, is this the new vetting segment for conservatives? Your weight is directly related to how you can do your job? I'll have to look into how Reagan's SG was on the body mass index.

Like Godwin's Law On Steroids

Never one to actually come out and say that Barack Obama is something, instead resorting to hosting guests that are more than willing to do so or using the "cavuto mark", Neil Cavuto - on his Fox"Business" show - thinks he has this one in the bag.

He was wrong.



Swing, and a miss.

I'm guessing that some producer that is responsible for booking Cavuto's program just got fired.

One has to wonder what Obama's speech has to do with "business". Perhaps they thought that doing this interview with the stock-crawl at the bottom of the screen would let them claim that simply discussing the Obama speech, and their attempts to equate it with Nazi appeasement, had a direct effect on the positive gains on the DOW for that day.

However, I would have loved to see Churchill take Cavuto to task for his "powerful 5%" nonsense.

Padding The Teabaggers

Thanks for proving our point Neil.

Cavuto And O'Reilly On Obama's Budget

O'Reilly love to do the "look at me, I'm rich" schtick so much that it completely overshadows his continually pathetic dronings about how he is "just one of the folks".

Here, he talks with Neil Cavuto about how they are about to lose their tax break under Obama's budget.



It's interesting that Cavuto says that he would be "funding their vision of America" in realation to healthcare.

The "American Dream" has long since been debated, reframed, postulated, debunked, altered, and tilted to fit any number of idological bents; but since when is the average person's ability to care - not only for themselves - but for their family a bad thing for the "fair and balanced" network?

I supposed that Cavuto was thinking about women that prefer to not get married and have a child via sperm donor. Maybe O'Reilly and Neil were speaking of a gay couple that have built a small-business ( and not what the lunatic-fringe is calling "small-business" ) and want to have healthcare for the shop that they run on their own 7 days a week. Perhaps one or both of them were refering to the college student that opts to venture forward with a degree in film production ( or any other degree who's job placement isn't as guaranteed as a teaching degree is ) in order to chase the dream that he/she has had since a child.

Lots of variables. But, one thing is still true. Cavuto and O'Reilly are so seperated from the "real world" that they have no idea what is going on.

A Manifest Distortion

Recently, Michelle Malkin - who now apparently carries the label "Whore For The Far Right" - decided that she would weigh-in on Obama's proposed stimulus plan. Not content with approaching this from a perspective that just might be beneficial to the national discussion ( oh, wait, almost forgot who I was talking about ) she goes full tilt and insists that Robert Reich has dealt the dreaded RACE CARD ( OOOoooooh ) by insisting that this plan be beneficial to ALL that need it, not just white people.



Wow.

From the jump, Cavuto is setting this up as "minorities only".

The party of "context" attacks again.

And Malkin wasn't the only one. Hannity and Limbaugh had their own man-on-man-on-racism-disguised-as-socio-political-discourse too.

So, Reich responded to the nonsense:

In a time like this, when tempers are riding high and many Americans are close to panic about their jobs and finances, you have a special responsibility to consider the accuracy of what you say and the consequences of inflammatory and erroneous statements. In the last few days, manifestly distorting my words and pulling them out of context, you have accused me of wanting to exclude white males from jobs generated by the stimulus package. Anyone who takes a moment to examine what I actually said and wrote knows this to be an absurd misrepresentation of my position (see this). My goal is and has always been to create as many opportunities for as wide a group as possible, and not exclude anyone from access. There is and has never been any ambiguity about this. The hate mail I have received since your broadcast suggests that the mischievous consequences of your demagoguery are potentially dangerous, in addition to being destructive of rational and constructive political discourse. I urge you to take responsibility for your words. Words and ideas have real world consequences, and you have demonstrated a cavalier disregard for both.

The "this" in his post was a source that the Right continually froths and salivates over because it, well, exposes nonsense from the Right.

Malki saw this as her chance to pounce, lips fully pursed this time:

Reich’s lone citation to prove his accusation? Media Matters!

Reich refuses to link my post on the subject because I provided full context for his remarks — quoting both his testimony and his blog post advocating for government racial preferences favoring unskilled and non-white workers over skilled and white workers

Well, when checking this context-laden post that Michelle is twitching and crying about, we find that not only isthe video she linked severely cropped, but she seems to have lost the ability to even read words that she has posted from Reich's blog

The stimulus plan will create jobs repairing and upgrading the nation’s roads, bridges, ports, levees, water and sewage system, public-transit systems, electricity grid, and schools. And it will kick-start alternative, non-fossil based sources of energy (wind, solar, geothermal, and so on); new health-care information systems; and universal broadband Internet access.

It’s a two-fer: lots of new jobs, and investments in the nation’s future productivity.

But if there aren’t enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many new jobs in these fields. And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most — women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed — will be shut out.

What to do? There’s no easy solution to either dilemma…

People can be trained relatively quickly for these sorts of jobs, as well as many infrastructure j0bs generated by the stimulus — installing new pipes for water and sewage systems, repairing and upgrading equipment, basic construction — but contractors have to be nudged both to provide the training and to do the hiring.

I’d suggest that all contracts entered into with stimulus funds require contractors to provide at least 20 percent of jobs to the long-term unemployed and to people with incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. And at least 2 percent of project funds should be allocated to such training. In addition, advantage should be taken of buildings trades apprenticeships — wich must be fully available to women and minorities.

So, did you see anywhere in Reich's post that these jobs HAVE to go to "unskilled" or "minorities"? Also, there was an emphasis on training that Malkin and the others completely ignored.

Nope. That's because he didn't say that.

In manual labor fields, people expect you to be "trainable". That's something that any manager or foreman worth their salt looks for.

Perhaps Malkin and company need to check out the definition of "context".

Are people like Malkin liars for things like this?

Of course. You shouldn't even have to ask.

Worst In The World v 3.5 - 3.8

Neil Cavuto

Sausage And Hotdogs (?)

Steve Doocy



Barack Obama

Sean Hannity

Karl Rove



Robbers from Kuala Lampur

Bill O'Reilly

Congresswoman Michelle Bachman (R)



Congressman Steve King (R)

Fox"News" Correspondant Brian Wilson

Bill O'Reilly