media clowns

Can Obama Save Journalism?

Dana Hunter

Maybe if he follows Kevin Drum’s excellent advice:

Gossip and chatter have always been part of politics, of course, but over the past decade or two, at the same time that gossip has practically taken over political journalism, it’s gotten so inane that it’s hard to tell where Access Hollywood ends and Hardball begins. It’s nearly impossible to turn on a talk show on any of the cable nets these days and hear anything that’s even remotely enlightening.

And I’ll bet McQuaid is right: it probably bugs the hell out of a guy like Obama who takes politics and policy seriously. When he said in his inaugural address that “the time has come to set aside childish things,” I wouldn’t be surprised if he was addressing the media directly.

So how does he work to change things? McQuaid warns that tightly controlling media access the way George Bush did isn’t the answer, and I agree. Instead, I’d say that he should send a consistent message about the value of serious journalism by providing the best access to the most serious journalists. Not the ones who are the most famous, or have the biggest audiences, or who agree with him the most often, but the ones who have written or aired the sharpest, liveliest, most substantive, most penetrating critiques of what he and his administration are doing. He should spar with them, he should engage with them, he should take their ideas seriously. Eventually, others will start to get the message: if you want to get presidential attention, you need to say something smart. It’s too late to for this to have any effect on media buffoons like Maureen Dowd or Chris Matthews, but you never know. It might encourage a few of the others to grow up. It’s worth a try, anyway.

At this point, anything would. There’s a damned good reason I rarely turn on the teevee or crack open a magazine – the flood of inanity that pours out is enough to drown a stronger swimmer than I.

Dday has the rundown of the Sunday morning talk shows. T’ain’t pretty:

The Sunday talk shows were filled with conservatives (it really is a new era on Sunday mornings, isn’t it?) trashing the Obama recovery plan and demanding more concessions in exchange for their votes, despite the fact that they have almost no leverage in the Congress.

You know what? I need a drink. I’ll even take one of those fake margaritas at this point. I just hope to hell that Obama takes Kevin’s advice. It would be a simple way to try to coax a smidgen of actual journalism out of these assclowns.

Can Obama Save Journalism?
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AP Compares Apples to Oranges and Goes Bananas

Dana Hunter

Sorry. I couldn’t help that post title. I needed something just as fruity as this:

This week, inaugural festivities are a pretty big deal — in D.C., throughout the country, and even around the world — but it appears some news outlets have found a way to find fault with the celebration.

The AP, for example, reported, “Unemployment is up. The stock market is down. Let’s party. The price tag for President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration gala is expected to break records, with some estimates reaching as high as $150 million.”

[snip]

Eric Boehlert set the record straight, explaining, “[T]he Obama figure of $160 million that got repeated in the press included security costs associated with the massive event. But the Bush tab of $42 million left out those enormous costs. Talk about stacking the deck.”

…For years, the press routinely referred to the cost of presidential inaugurations by calculating how much money was spent on the swearing-in and the social activities surrounding that. The cost of the inauguration’s security was virtually never factored into the final tab, as reported by the press. […]

For decades, that represented the norm in terms of calculating inauguration costs: Federal dollars spent on security were not part of the commonly referred-to cost. (The cost of Obama’s inauguration, minus the security costs? Approximately $45 million.) What’s happening this year: The cost of the Obama inauguration and the cost of the security are being combined by some in order to come up with the much larger tab. Then, that number is being compared with the cost of the Bush inauguration in 2005, minus the money spent on security.

In other words, it’s the unsubstantiated Obama cost of $160 million (inauguration + security) compared with the Bush cost of 42 million (inauguration, excluding security). Those are two completely different calculations being compared side-by-side, by Fox & Friends, among others, to support the phony claim that Obama’s inauguration is $100 million more expensive than Bush’s.

So, how much did Bush’s 2005 inauguration actually cost, using the standard the media is applying to Obama? Boehlert crunched the numbers and came up with a total of $157 million.

In fact, the majority of his inauguration festivities are being paid for by small donors:

Julia has more on the inaugural cost nonsense that seems to be sweeping the media today. But this really takes the cake:

Bush’s inaugural donors were mostly individuals, lobbyists and companies with a vested interest in high oil prices, deregulation,** and the mortgage bubble. The Obama team isn’t taking money from lobbyists or companies, has lowered the top donation from Bush’s $250k to $50k, and (we find tucked into the bottom of a Politico story about “big donors”) all but 5,632 of the 200,000 donations they’ve received were less than $200, for an average donation of $34.

Note to all of you fuckwits desperate to start some kind of controversy over Obama: stop making such absolute asses of yourselves by making shit up. He’s the President. He’s popular. He’s hard to smear. Get the fuck over it.

AP Compares Apples to Oranges and Goes Bananas

Eric Holder Does Not Believe In 24. Neocon Heads Explode

Dana Hunter2 Comments

There’s very bad news for our Jack Bauer-worshiping, torture-loving neocon class.

First, let’s have a look at Faux News and their inability, along with the vast majority of the fuckwits who ran this country into the ground the last several years, to tell the difference between fiction and reality:

Beck and the Fox & Friends hosts also invoked 24 as a justification for the use of torture. Referring to the show’s recent season premiere, in which protagonist Jack Bauer, a former member of the fictional “Counter Terrorist Unit,” defends his use of torture during a hearing before Congress, Beck said: “[I]t’s going to take somebody who sits in front of Congress who is not afraid of them anymore and does what Jack Bauer did. And that is, ‘Yes, I did torture, and I’m proud of it.’ And it’s time for these things to come out of the closet.” Introducing an excerpt from 24, in which Bauer is seen answering questions from a congressional committee about torture, Kilmeade stated: “Let’s listen to what happened in the fictional series 24 and see if this helps build your argument.”

After the clip, co-host Steve Doocy said: “In particular, in that clip, you know, the guy [fictional Sen. Blaine Mayer] goes, ‘You tortured them.’ And he [Bauer] goes, ‘Well, it probably was torture under your definition. But ask the people whose lives I saved whether or not it was worth me going over the edge’ — they would probably — you ask the average person, ‘Is it OK to do something, rough somebody up, to save lives?’ You ask the person on the street, they’d say, ‘Yeah, why not?’ “

Well, there’s plenty of people on the street who would say “Not no but HELL no!” to a hypothetical like that. I’m one, and I’m average enough. Keifer Sutherland isn’t quite so average, but it’s worth mentioning that those stopping him on the street for a rousing endorsement of torture would be coming away mightily disappointed:

If right wingers see Bauer as an example of how to prosecute the war on terror, they might be disheartened to learn that even the man that plays Bauer, actor Keifer Sutherland, doesn’t see his character’s torture techniques as effective in real life. “You torture someone and they’ll basically tell you exactly what you want to hear, whether it’s true or not, if you put someone in enough pain,” Sutherland said last year.

Let me put this in somewhat simple terms for the hard-of-thinking: Jack Bauer thinks torture is effective because he’s a character in a television series. Keifer Sutherland knows it’s ineffective because he’s a real man with an actual brain. The Faux News babblers, our soon-to-be-former rulers, and very nearly the entire neocon chickenhawk crowd cite Jack Bauer instead of Keifer Sutherland on these matters because they’re a raving bunch of lackwits. No wonder they yawp about violent video games and immoral movies being harmful to the younguns – since they can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, they think no one else can, either.

But I digress. I said I had bad news for them. And that’s because Obama’s Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, is fucking awesome.

Check out these moves:

When Alberto Gonzales was the nominee for Attorney General, he went to great lengths to avoid describing waterboarding as torture, or even addressing whether the practice is legal. Michael Mukasey’s A.G. nomination was nearly derailed by his unwillingness to address similar questions.

It wasn’t a trick question. Today, Eric Holder answered it.

Holder’s response was both unequivocal and encouraging: “If you look at the history of the use of that technique, used by the Khmer Rouge, used in the Inquisition, used by the Japanese and prosecuted by us as war crimes. We prosecuted our own soldiers for using it in Vietnam. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) followed up, asking if foreign countries would have the authority to waterboard U.S. citizens, if they deemed it necessary for their national security. “No, they would not,” Holder replied, “It would violate the international obligations that I think all civilized nations have agreed to — the Geneva Conventions.”

And finally, Leahy asked whether the president has the authority to override the law regarding torture. Holder responded, “Mr. Chairman, no one is above the law. The president has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.”

My darlings. I love this man. Love him, love him, love him.

But wait! There’s more. Clever John Cornyn attempted to trip him up with a clever hypothetical. Oh, noes! It’s the ticking time bomb scenario! We know how Jack Bauer would respond – what about Holder?

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) could not fathom that an Attorney General would reject a practice that both is unlawful and endangers Americans. He tried to get Holder to back off his anti-torture stance by presenting an absurd “ticking time bomb” hypothetical in which thousands of American lives are at stake. “You would still refuse to condone aggressive interrogation techniques?” Cornyn asked. When Holder replied that waterboarding is not the only interrogation method, Cornyn insisted, “Assume that it was”:

HOLDER: I think your hypothetical assumes a premise that I’m not willing to concede.

CORNYN: I know you don’t like my hypothetical.

HOLDER: No, the hypothetical’s fine; the premise that underlies it I’m not willing to accept, and that is that waterboarding is the only way that I could get that information from those people.

CORNYN: Assume that it was.

HOLDER: [Laughs] Given the knowledge that I have about other techniques and what I’ve heard from retired admirals and generals and FBI agents, there are other ways in a timely fashion that you can get information out of people that is accurate and will produce useable intelligence. And so it

Eric Holder Does Not Believe In 24. Neocon Heads Explode

Reason #1,879,482 Why I Love Obama

jacob1 Comment

He knows how to spend his Sunday mornings:

I’ve noticed that the Politico has been reporting quite a bit since the election on Barack Obama’s church attendance, or in this case, the lack thereof. Yesterday, it had another item, from the estimable Ben Smith, under the headline, “Another Sunday without church.”

As my colleagues Jonathan Martin and Carol Lee noted last week, Barack Obama — despite undergoing a campaign maelstrom over his pastor — isn’t a regular churchgoer. He didn’t often attend Sunday services on the trail, and — unlike Presidents-elect Bush and Clinton — hadn’t been since his election.

He extended that streak this morning, with the pool report saying only that he’d been a bit late for his regular workout this morning.

[snip]

If Obama had pledged to attend weekly services during the transition, I could see his Sunday schedules being of some interest. But since that isn’t the case, maybe we can do without the regular reporting on the president-elect’s worship routine, at least until after the inauguration.

I sense some annoyance on Steve’s part there, but he’s missing a prime opportunity for snark here. These reporters are just begging for it. Aren’t they precious? I treasure the image of them staked out in the bitter cold on a Sunday morning, waiting in vain for Obama to set foot inside a church, but the moment never comes.

*cue mock-sad music*

I think they’re missing an important point in their little speculations. There’s probably not a single pastor of a single church in this country that they wouldn’t attack him for being associated with. So it’s really their fault that poor President-Elect Obama has to sweat it out in a gym rather than a pew come Sunday morning.

Either that, or he knows there’s more important things to do than worship a magic sky fairy.

Reason #1,879,482 Why I Love Obama

Fun With Wingnuts

jacob

The sublime idiocy must be highlighted.

We haven’t bashed Dana Perino for a few days. Let’s see what paddle-worthy nonsense she’s been up to:

Today in Oslo, Norway, over 100 countries began signing the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The nations signing the cluster bomb treaty argue that the unexploded munitions pose a “deadly hazard to children, farmers and others long after a conflict ends.” In a surprising last-minute change of policy, Afghanistan agreed to join the treaty.

Russia and the U.S. remain two of the key holdouts to the agreement. Today during the White House press briefing, veteran reporter Helen Thomas pressed spokeswoman Dana Perino to explain the Bush administration’s opposition:

THOMAS: Is the President going to sign the anti-cluster bomb treaty? Apparently this is –

PERINO: Right, this is a treaty that was passed out of the U.N. Security Council several months ago. We said then that, no, we would not be signing on to it. And so I think that the signing is actually — we did not participate in the passage of it, and therefore we’re not going to sign it either.

THOMAS: Why not?

PERINO: What I have forgotten is all the reasons why, and so I’ll get it for you.

Is it me, or does she sound like she’s been taking lessons from Sarah Palin?

In case you’re curious, the State Department’s excuse for not banning child-maiming cluster bombs is that “these are weapons that have a certain military utility and are of use. The United States relies on them as an important part of our own defense strategy.” I’m sure those other hundred countries could have used the same lame bullshit excuse, but they didn’t. Once again, the United States proves less humanitarian and less rational than the majority of the world.

Fanfuckingtastic.

But there’s excellent news on the Iraq War front:

Last night in New York, ABC News correspondent John Donovan moderated a debate between the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, former Bush aide Karl Rove, Slate editor Jacob Weisberg and Guardian columnist Sir Simon Jenkins. The most contentious part of the debate came during discussion over the invasion of Iraq, in which Kristol proclaimed outright that the United States has won:

But [Kristol] and Mr. Rove both maintained that while the initial occupation was mismanaged, the surge of troops begun in 2007 has placed the U.S. on the cusp of victory in Iraq.

“We’ve won the war,” Mr. Kristol said.

Terrific, Mr. Kristol! Tell it to the idiot generals who haven’t yet been informed of our glorious victory. I’m sure they’ll be very excited.

I guess they just didn’t realize how well things are actually going because they’ve been too busy fighting to watch Fox News.

Fun With Wingnuts

Think Progress Dances on Ignorant Politico "Reporter"

jacob


It’s not often that I see Think Progress really let go, but apparently two fucktarded articles in one day was too much for them. Brad Johnson borrows the Smack-0-Matic and goes to town:

Erika Lovley, the Politico’s energy and environment reporter, today wrote a full-page article on the dying breed of global warming deniers that promotes their brand of toxic stupidity.

Lovley unquestioningly quotes extremist denier Joseph D’Aleo, Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) aide Marc Morano, and Cato Institute fellow Patrick Michaels in a piece littered with bald assertions and slanders against the scientific community without any basis in reality.

Brad then bashes her with real science, and annihilates her second article (he treats the two as one idiotic whole), before delivering the coup de grace:

In fact, this piece only provides evidence that the Politico is comprised of stupendous hacks who scorn the very concept of responsible journalism.

Thank you, Brad. May I have the Smack-o-Matic back before you break it, please? Thankee kindly. I’m sure Steve Benen appreciates the chance to get in a whack of his own:

How many scientists are quoted defending the global warming consensus of the scientific community? Zero. Lovley’s article reads like something one might find on World Net Daily.

All too true. I’d hope the stupid git could feel a touch of shame at being so outrageously moronic, but anyone who swallows anti-science pablum pushed by far-right fucktards and believes that the Old Farmer’s Almanac is equivalent to a peer-reviewed science journal likely has no shame at all.

We’d better get good, sturdy dancing shoes, my darlings. Looks like we’ll have plenty of dwarves of ignorance to stomp down, despite the fact we just elected a man whose major “failing” is his use of complete sentences.

Think Progress Dances on Ignorant Politico "Reporter"

Glenn Beck Inspires Hate, Wonders Why People Hate Him

jacob2 Comments

From the chronicles of extraordinary dumbassitude (h/t):

Glenn Beck has been telling a personal story illustrating what he says is a particularly intense level of hatred on the left.

According to the newly signed Fox News host, he was verbally assaulted by a truck driver while standing in line at a Wendy’s restaurant at a truck stop. Writing on his blog, Beck says the truck driver called him a “racist bigot,” blaming the talk show host and conservatives “for everything.” Wrote Beck, “The hatred was palpable.” As his security detail stood between him and his assailant, Beck says the truck driver ended his rant by threatening to run him over.

It was ugly stuff, and Beck was shocked by the level of hate: “I wanted to say, I think you have me mistaken for someone else, but I knew he knew who I was and he just hated me for who I was…. Wow. Is this who we’ve become? Is this who we’ve become?”

You reap what you sow, Glenn. Enjoy that whirlwind.

We won’t even get into the fact that, for every paltry handful of hate on the left, you need a shipping container for the hate spewing from the right. But if anyone’s really in so much doubt that they need examples, I’ll be happy to find a few hundred after NaNo. Shouldn’t take me more than an hour or so.

Glenn Beck Inspires Hate, Wonders Why People Hate Him

The Economy's Gone Up In Flames, and It's All Our Fault

jacob1 Comment

No, it’s not Obama’s fault. The Cons got that one wrong.

No, it’s not those greedy selfish bastards who talked the Cons into deregulation so that they could then rape and pillage the country unfettered.

No, it’s not the inherent weaknesses of a free-market system, with its boom-and-bust cycles.

None of those things are responsible for the financial crisis. Oh, no, my darlings: we are:

Just to add to my assessment of the pervasive influence of know-nothing Dominionism on the right, here’s Daniel Henninger, a columnist paid money by the Wall Street Journal, a working writer for a newspaper with an economic focus, blaming the financial crisis on greeters who don’t say “Merry Christmas” at shopping malls:

This year we celebrate the desacralized “holidays” amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin — fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man’s theory: A nation whose people can’t say “Merry Christmas” is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.

[snip]

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

Shorter Daniel Henninger: Bad, bad secular progressives! Bad, naughty atheists! Bad, awful people of other religions! Because you forced Wal-Mart greeters to stop saying Merry Christmas, because you demanded Hallmark put out a line of “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” cards, because you forced WASPS to acknowledge that there are, in fact, people in this country who are not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, you caused the entire financial sector to lose its morals and cause all sorts of mayhem. Shame on you!

Do you know what this fucking assclown illustrated his post with? Mad Max. Seriously. In the Wall Street Journal, we have a screed claiming that, because “Northerners and atheists” dereligioned America, that poor weak Christian majority lost its way, and since we no longer say Merry Christmas, we will end up living in a Mel Gibson movie.

“Unhinged” is a word that comes to mind, but does not begin to describe the utter batshit insanity, the rubber-room quality of the schizophrenic reasoning, the sheer foaming-at-the-mouth paranoid ramblings of this supposed Wall Street “journalist.”

What I would do, if this man were in any condition to be reasoned with, is sit him down with me. Right here, in my room, I have Books. I have Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which investigates several economic bubbles that burst. I have books on history, books on religion, and books on politics galore. I would very much like to sit Mr. Henninger down with them, and go through them page-by-page, and ask him to explain to me how, when these people were more than happy to say “Merry Christmas” and go to church and were in fact Christians in good standing, they also managed to fuck up their economies by being insanely greedy bastards?

The only problem with this scenario is, I don’t invite madmen into my home. Alas.

The Economy's Gone Up In Flames, and It's All Our Fault

Nice Try, Bill-O, but You're No Proof of God

jacob2 Comments

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Bill writes:

Next time you meet an atheist, tell him or her that you know a bold, fresh guy, a barbarian who was raised in a working-class home and retains the lessons he learned there.

Then mention to that atheist that this guy is now watched and listened to, on a daily basis, by millions of people all over the world and, to boot, sells millions of books.

Then, while the non-believer is digesting all that, ask him or her if they still don’t believe there’s a God!

I still don’t believe there’s a God, Bill. In fact, I just found my God Belief Quotient sinking further into the negative numbers with that statement of yours.

What I do believe is that you’re one of the most deluded, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, fucked-up megalosers of all time. The only reason you “succeeded” in life is because an appreciable fraction of America consists of fucked-up megalosers with an inferiority complex who are looking for a Fucked-up Megaloser Messiah to tell them that their rampant stupidity, apalling ignorance, and stunted religion are signs that they’re actually somebodies rather than nobodies. You got put on the air because you’re not afraid to strut your ignorance and bigotry in public, and advertisers know your listeners are guillable enough to buy anything, including your books.

I don’t believe in God because there are excellent, rational reasons for not doing so. I’m happy I don’t believe in God because of fuckwits like you. I feel sorry for those friends of mine who believe in God, because their belief is tainted by your megaloserocity.

You’re the anti-proof of God, Bill. I’m glad that evolution isn’t a conscious process, because it would be tragic to think that it intentionally created someone as ridiculous as you.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go bleach my brain.

Nice Try, Bill-O, but You're No Proof of God

Faux News Impervious to Reality's Bitch-Slap

jacob3 Comments

It takes a special sort of (for want of a better word) mind to be confronted with clear, unequivocal reality, and promptly make up your own:

Thankfully, the Faux News team is full of such (for want of a better word) minds.

If any of you can’t watch videos online (pity), what you would have witnessed is this: Faux News “reporter” asks folks in a diner who’s voting for McCain. Only the “reporter” raises his hand. Upon being asked who’s voting for Obama, every hand except for the reporter’s goes up. “Reporter” declares a split decision and announces that this is why Pennsylvania’s a battleground state.


If this is what battleground states are going to look like this November, I think I can stop worrying about the election now.

Faux News Impervious to Reality's Bitch-Slap