If They Weren't Confused Before, They Certainly Are Now

Another fine example of ignorance in advertising from the fine folks at NOM.



You remember when you were a kid and you played at school with ALL the kids, no matter what sociological background, what ethnicity, how rich or how poor their families were? Kids can clearly see past all that and know what is important in life.

The willfully ingorant controlling the words of children is not only scary, but shows the depth of dishonesty which they are willing to go.

Suddenly, I'm reminded of the mouth-agapes grunt from seething, wing-nut, prattle-heads about children being used in the debate over SCHIP.

Is this alright with you guys?

The Alchemy Of Conservative Punditry: The Chrysler Edition

One of the conservative-right's latest claims, though they have little to no verifiable information which this is based on, is that the Obama administration are "threatening" corporations. This talking-point has its origins within the resignation of GM CEO Rick Wagoner and the simple fact that Obama is from Chicago - you know, gangsters and what-not.

Since the Right is, by all accounts, out of power on multiple fronts, the only option they have left is to embellish what the Obama administration is doing or outright fabricate their paranoid ramblings from whole cloth.

The latest is their telling of how Obama is using the White House press corp as a weapon against Chrysler.

I'll let some of the lunatic-fringe best tell their side of it first.

Ed Morrissey at HotAir writes:

An attorney representing several Chrysler bondholders accused the Obama administration of intimidating his clients by issuing threats of public humiliation if they opposed their brokered deal to resolve the automaker’s debts. Speaking to WJR, Thomas Lauria said that the White House called the bondholders “vultures” for insisting on their rights as senior creditors and told them that the Obama administration would use the White House press corps to attack them in the media.

Michelle Malkin

Over the weekend, news broke about the Obama administration’s reported threats against an investment firm that opposed its union-friendly Chrysler bankruptcy plan.

Tom Lauria represents a few of the non-TARP Chrysler creditors. He reported the threats on WJR radio host , radio show in Detroit

John Hinderaker @ Powerline

The Chrysler reorganization is shaping up as another milestone in the decline of the rule of law under Barack Obama. We've said for quite a while that bankruptcy is the only viable option for Chrysler and General Motors, not--as Obama claims--because they don't know how to make the right kinds of vehicles, but because their unsustainable union contracts make it impossible for them to be profitable. That reality has now been turned on its head, as the administration has tried to bully Chrysler's secured creditors into going away, while the United Auto Workers Union, solely on the basis of political clout, would be paid at an implied rate of 50 percent and would emerge owning 55 percent of the company, with the government also holding a stake.

The hedge-funders wanted a quarter-of-a-billion more than what the treasury was willing to offer and decided to see who would finch first. The Obama adminstration declined their deal and this is where the "thuggery" claim of the Right comes in.

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post writes of the Hedge Funds and their desire to drain as much out of this deal as they can.

Since when did any of these guys ever worry about fairness?

Certainly fairness was not an overriding concern of hedge-fund managers when they threatened to move even more of their operations to the Cayman Islands if forced to pay a regular tax rate on their exorbitant management fees.

But now that these hedgies are looking at the butt end of a government-imposed cramdown that would give them only 30 cents of each dollar owed by Chrysler, suddenly they're all about fairness and the rule of law.

What you need to know about these vultures is that their idea of fairness is throwing 100,000 people out of work and denying retirees their pensions and their health benefits just so they can liquidate the company and maybe squeeze an extra 15 cents on the dollar from their Chrysler debt.

A corporate lawyer who is representing the hedge funds - under the name "Committee of Chrysler Non-Tarp Lenders", because the words "non-TARP" is quite appealing to Republicans - first laid out the claim that the Obama administration had "threatened" one of their investment firms investment firm Perella Weinberg.

Interestingly enough, Weinberg was a former investment partner of Rahm Emanuel.

*note the blatant right-wing spin in the accompanying video*



The Rahm / Weiinberg connection provides covering fire for the hedge fundies in nothing more than a thinly veiled accusation. But, lives have been distroyed and companies reduced to nothing on less than this. Such is the operation of the lunatic-fringe Right.

But, they don't stop there.

After Frank Beckmann interviewed Tom Lauria, it was time to peddle the story to the WH Press Corp. You know, that entity that is so often ridiculed by the Right and now - all of a sudden - they are afraid of.



Of course, this just may be a coincidence, but Jake Tapper works for ABC - just like Mark Levin.

Tapper reported:

A leading bankruptcy attorney representing hedge funds and money managers told ABC News Saturday that Steve Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration's Auto Industry Task Force, threatened one of the firms, an investment bank, that if it continued to oppose the administration's Chrysler bankruptcy plan, the White House would use the White House press corps to destroy its reputation

And just like clockwork, Drudge picks it up.



And once everything came to a boil, Weinberg and The White House have told ABC that Lauria's and the lunatic-fringe Right are wrong.

...representatives for the Obama administration and Perella Weinberg challenged the accuracy of the account by Thomas E. Lauria, the White & Case lawyer representing the handful of hedge funds calling themselves the Committee of Chrysler Non-Tarp Lenders.

“The charge is of course false as both parties who would know the facts have pointed out,” Bill Burton, a White House spokesman, told DealBook. “It is neither substantiated by people involved in the conversations nor by what has transpired over the course of the last couple of days

But will it matter to the fringe conservative bloggers, pundits, Fox"News", and their base? Not at all. The metaphorical mmixture has been stirred into a frenzy and the desired reaction has already started.

More from Think Progress.

From the alchemist's perspective, you have your individual components that you have manipulated and have - in some cases - meshed together. Others, you have filtered and split into their base elements and then taken pieces of each compound and attempted to create a whole new chemical. In this case, that new chemical is a lie.

An Open Letter To Conservative Prattle-Heads / Re: Kentucky Winter Storm

While the bulk of my diaries here have been about people like Bill O'Reilly, Fox "News", and various lunatic-fringe conservative bloggers, and movies, I thought I would tie all this together and write somethng serious about not only them, but how they have used this disaster and my state as a new stick to beat people with.

I live in Madisonville, Kentucky.

The storm initially started late Monday night.

People at work were already talking about not being able to come in the next day. The weather reports from local and regional stations were as accurate as I had ever seen them.

However, when talk of "the worst winter storm in decades" was being floated, I didn't really believe it.

Tuesday morning came and started to pass. The snow and ice wasn't that bad. I went to work. Then, it got bad.

Powerlines were starting to bend, be pulled from poles, transformers started to explode.

The power went off at my house around lunchtime on Tuesday.

After grabbing some clothes, some food that I knew I could save, and as many batteries, flashlights, and candles I had, I slide across the street to my neighbors and we fired-up the Kerosene heater and started to wait it out.

When I awoke on Wednesday, everything was covered in ice and snow. You could hear tree-limbs breaking and crashing to the ground

--- I'll have resized photos up shortly ---
Since the average temperature was around freezing, or just barely above, the entire time we were without power, we made use of this as well.

With no communication with the outside world - aside from my cellphone which didn't work but a few hours a day - I was cut off.

Several churches were converted to shelters and even served free, hot food and handed out supplies.

At night, I wondered just what people in the media were saying. I wondered by bloggers and talk radio had to say about this.

When power was restored to work late Wednesday afternoon, I thought I'd take a look online to see what was going on. It was as predictable as I had imagined.

Michelle Malkin chimed-in and took a jab at Obama's "thermostat".

Will President Obama leave his 77-degree-heated Oval Office and visit the Kentucky ice storm disaster area? Over/under?

Even though she asked for people to provide info to charitable organization that were assisting, people were already coming together without Malkin's shrill platitudes.

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John Hinderaker at Powerline spouted off about the response of FEMA as well as Kentucky's National Guard.

Is Barack Obama an insensitive lout who serves $100 per pound steaks to his elite guests and turns up the heat in the White House high enough to grow orchids while a million of his countrymen are without power and dozens are freezing to death? If not, why not?

Solely because that is not the story the media want to tell. Many on the web--but no one in the mainstream media--have commented on the fact that Obama has not even pretended to do anything about the massive ice storm that has disabled much of Kentucky and neighboring states. It took days for FEMA to swing into action. Why is that not a scandal? Days went by before Kentucky's governor called out the National Guard. Why did no one blame Obama for failing to call out the Guard sooner? Probably because he lacks the constitutional power to do so; but the Constitution hasn't changed since 2005.

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Jeff Emanuel at RedState had a "clever" title for his piece:

Heckuva job, Nancy

Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Katrina, Kat...well, you get the idea

42 people dead; communities iced in and without lifesaving power for heat and cooking; conditions worsening — and FEMA nowhere to be found.

This isn’t a lefty caricature of disaster-response under the Bush administration; it’s real-life unresponsiveness under the leadership of President Obama (whose accession was supposed to mark a “return to competence” in government).

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And Dan Mclaughlin - also at RedState - had this to say.

The state of Kentucky has, for the past six days, been under a state of emergency declared by Gov. Steve Beshear last Tuesday in the aftermath of heavy winter storms that knocked out power lines and is being followed by flooding as the snow melts. * On Saturday, the state finally called up the entire Kentucky National Guard, its largest mobilization in its history, and the storms have been blamed for at least 42 deaths across the region. * As many as 700,000 people were without power at one point, including nursing homes and shelters, and hundreds of thousands remain so. Some could be without power for weeks. As of Friday, things were getting worse in some places:

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Many were pleased with how The National Guard and FEMA repsonded, even the governor. But, what was more telling, what showed that Obama's call for a return to "responsibility" had been heard was the effort of te average citizens of not only my community, but others as well.

Not once did I hear people crying, "Where is FEMA?!"

Not once did I hear people shrieking, "Where is Obama?!"

So, the question stands; why are peole like Malkin, McLaughlin, Hinderaker, and other lunatic-fringe prattle-heads decrying the emergency response as "slow"?

First, and foremost, these people need a serious lesson in rural, Western Kentucky geography.

If roads are covered in ice - if fallen trees block your path - how do you think these responders are going to get there?

This isn't like Katrina, where you could use boats and helicopters. The landscape is the polar opposit. The response has to be calculated, paced, timely, and safe all at once.

Those that needed the National Guard and FEMA the most were in some of the most remote regions that you can possbly imagine for this area of the US. This isn't a metropolis like New Orleans. This is "country" country. You're likely to see large stretches of wooded areas and not realize that there are dozens of homes within those areas. It's remote, secluded, some with but one or two access roads in or out.

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None of this would ever enter into the mind of these bloggers.

The stereotype of a blogger is that they are nothing more than a"keyboard commando". They talk, but rarely if ever act.

To this, I would as Malkin, Hinderaker, McLaughlin, and their jubulantly ignorant commentors what it was that they did to help those in need these past few weeks?

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Some have claimed that the slow response and Obama's lack of visiting the area is due to the fact that Kentucy is a "Red" state.

This has got to be one of the most foolish and out-of-touch statements that I have read these past few days.

We all helped one another.

People came together.

Obama acted in a manner that was not only appropriate, but entirely fitting to the sitation at hand.

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Do I blame FEMA for not being here the moments the snow, ice, and sleet started to fall? No.

This is a group that still has rebuilding to be done within itself. This is a organization that was given to Obama is such disarray that it still needs to better itself. You don't give someone a worn-out car and tell them it's safe to drive cross-county with..

Do I blame my governor or my National Guard? No.

They have worked to the best of their ability and beyond it.

Do I blame Obama? No.

He has acted in a responsible, calm, and reasonable fashion and I am glad he is my President.

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But, what of the media?

The cries from right-wing bloggers is that there weren't any cameras, no microphones, no satellite trucks. No Chris Matthews, no Geraldo. Not even Shepard Smith.

Aside from what I have already mentioned about the ability of vehicles to move in and out of many of these areas, what good would they have done anyway?

If i had ran into Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, or even Keith Olbermann, I would have handed them some work gloves and said, "Are you ready to help out? Leave the camera here."

While reporting on an incident is vital, what good would it have been to have a member of the media here, just as likely to be trapped as anyone else?

Some bloggers / commentors whined about the lack of "Hollywood" members that weren't there. Provided that they could use a snow shovel, could bring supplies, or could opperate a bucket truck or haul or cut wood, they would have been a great help.

I think they leared their lesson from Katrina as well.

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And while i'm at it, where were you Michelle?

How about you John?

Dan, I didn't see you taking food to those in need.

And where was your boy Joe "The Non-Pumbling Former Welfare Queen Tax Cheat War Tourist"?

Oh, that's right, American's don't deserve him.

No members of FreeRepublic, Little Green Footballs, or Hot Air.

Where were you guys at?


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To those from other states that responded, that helped to bring Western Kentucky back to life, there are no words to accurately tell you how much you are appreciated.

My area of Kentucky survived this storm not just because of one person, one group - they survived because Americans, no matter their political affiliation, from all over, came together.

Is Obama A Good "Talker"

Many uber-conservatives are falling over themselves like Pentacostals during a rather jubulant sermon at the thought of Obama leading this nation. This isn't a joyous type of flailing about, this is out of abject fear and disgust.

One such twitching mass of flesh is John Hinderaker.

While some on the losing side of the aisle have chosen to accuse Obama as being the catalyst for the recent economic disaster, and some are insinuating that he will bring about a new form of Marxism, and others even insisting that he will plot with terrorists in order to declare martial law, John take what can only be seen as the most massive leap of logic and claims that Obama doesn't know how to speak in public.

I bet you can guess who John thinks is the perfect model of the oratory arts:

It appears that Obama may have been careless again yesterday, with international consequences. He spoke with the President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, on the telephone. Afterward, Kaczynski wrote that Obama "said that the missile-defense project would continue." The Obama camp then released a statement to the effect that Obama had said no such thing: "President Kaczynski raised missile defense but President-elect Obama made no commitment on it."

It's possible that President Kaczynski deliberately misquoted Obama, but that seems highly unlikely. It's much more probable that Obama indulged in his usual ambiguity, failed to choose his words carefully, and thereby conveyed a misleading impression.

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn't raise his standards, he will exceed Bush's total before he is inaugurated.

More here from Powerline


No gaffes?

John Hinderaker is a prime example of why the conservative movement lost this time around. This isn't even spin. I don't know what this is. It's actually quie embarassing.