Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: Brian Williams

NBC News anchor Brian Williams on Donald Trump’s election night tweets(see image below):

“Donald Trump, who has driven well past the last exit to relevance and peered into something closer to irresponsible here, is tweeting tonight.”

“driven well past the last exit to relevance” is a perfect description of Trump.

The image depicts Trump’s tweets on election night. Since then, Trump has deleted several of them, but note the crazy-ass Trump’s calls for a revolution.

Adding……Trump went on to harass and insult Brian Williams on Twitter after Trump learned of William’s comment. Williams never responded to him.

Quote of the Day

Rahm Emanuel on the media narrative that President Obama is “aloof”:

“You guys are the ones who keep saying, ‘Oh, he's not approachable’.That's not what the American people say. I think maybe you guys should evaluate where you're coming from. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's the elite journalists who aren't all that approachable.”

Emanuel is right. Just ask the American people.

Via Taegan Goddard

Image credit Larry Downing  /  REUTERS

On Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy Speech

No time today to post, but this topic is important so I urge you to read this post on it because it summarizes the media and the Republican pundit reaction to Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech. Which sucked. Big.

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

During a speech at the Value Voters Summit on Saturday, Rick Santorum attacked “smart people” and the media:

“We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

Santorum then proceeded to attack members of his own party:

“When it comes to conservatism libertarian types can say, “oh, well you know, we don't want to talk about social issues”. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is no basic values of America.”

VIDEO: Tea Party Chair Amy Kremer Taken DOWN by CNN

I know, I know. I almost couldn’t believe it either. Watch:

CNN reporters (unbelievably) take the Tea Party’s Amy Kremer DOWN.

The question begs to be asked given this and a few other recent media actions…..is the media finally beginning to get it?

Jake Tapper Echoes Republican Lies on Solvency of Social Security Program

Karoli (of Crooks and Liars) decimates claims that Jake Tapper made today about Social Security on ABC’s ‘This Week’, emphasis mine:

Social Security is a retirement plan. It is not an "entitlement" in the sense that we're a bunch of little piggies with our snout in the bowl snuffling for more. It is part of the tools we have used for our entire working lives to plan for retirement. Start with that. Calling Social Security and Medicare "entitlements" is a right-wing frame intended to make them sound like some kind of handout. They are EARNED. They are earned with the sweat of every working person's brow. Someone should tell Tapper that.

Next, lose the whole nonsense whine about the baby boomers. Boomers' retirement benefits under Social Security were accounted for and funded from the Reagan Administration forward. No one but Jake Tapper, evidently, is surprised that baby boomers are retiring now. This, by the way, is why some of us in that generation have to wait until we're 66 or 67 to retire. We were staggered in order to extend the life of the fund without forcing higher payroll taxes.

It should also be known that if the wage base upon which Social Security benefits are funded had been raised instead of frozen for several years, there would be more money in the fund. However, Tapper is simply incorrect about it being "out of money in 20 years."

That's false. As in a total falsehood, as in a lie, Romney-style. Tapper should have to retract that publicly and apologize for his scare tactics.

Here, straight from the 2012 Trustees' report, is the projection on Social Security:

After 2020, Treasury will redeem trust fund assets in amounts that exceed interest earnings until exhaustion of trust fund reserves in 2033, three years earlier than projected last year. Thereafter, tax income would be sufficient to pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2086.

So no, Jake Tapper. Social Security is not "bankrupt" in 20 years. I would like for you to find one other government program that is able to provide full benefits through 2033, and 75% through 2086 without any change to it. Just one. Go ahead.

Why is it that it is so rare for major media news people to actually understand the issues about which they report? It boggles my mind that these people are even allowed to speak about the most important issues because they usually manage only to completely misinform the American public. And I’m not even talking about Fox Cable News, which is, of course, the worst.

This is why I can no longer stand to watch the Sunday shows.

Morning Quote: Chuck Todd on Republican Lies About Obama Welfare Policy

Another corporate media person questions Republican lies as Chuck Todd called out Gov. Terry Branstad (R-Iowa) during an interview after Branstad repeated the Obama welfare reform lie, emphasis mine:

“Wait a minute... I can’t let that go... You leveled a charge about the welfare work requirement. It turns out that’s not true. Where did you get your information? ... Nothing about this issue, every charge that has been leveled about this welfare reform order that the president signed, every accusation that has been leveled by some Republicans have been proven to be not true.”

Finally we’re seeing a little pushback against the lies of the Republicans from corporate media, beginning with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, and now NBC’s Chuck Todd. It is certainly unusual enough that it warrants commendation.

Morning Quote: Ron Fournier

National Journal editor, Ron Fournier, issued a memo to his staff telling them to refuse “quote approval”, a process which allows public officials/politicians the right to clear their own quotes prior to publication, emphasis mine:

“I'm sure you have been following the dust up over government officials demanding that news organizations permit them to clear their quotes [touched off by a piece last week by NYT's Jeremy W. Peters ... A quotation is just as important as any other paragraph in your story. ... So how is ceding control of an interview or quote any different than letting a press secretary edit any other paragraph? The entire story? All your stories? It's not. Don't do it. If a public official wants to use NJ as a platform for his/her point of view, the price of admission is a quote that is on-record, unedited and unadulterated. Proposed exceptions can be discussed case-by-case with your editor. We can't hold leaders accountable while allowing them to pull our punches.”

Thus far, the media outlets declining to participate in the quote approval process are the National Journal, the Associated Press, McClatchy Newspapers, and the Washington Examiner.

Morning Quote: Jay Carney

Press Secretary Jay Carney offers some advice to reporters on Air Force One:

“ I simply make the point, as an editor might say, to check it out; do not buy into the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.”

Mr. Carney is right, and in fact, he very much understated the problem with our media. Meanwhile, in his column on Huffpost, Bob Cesca, puts the lie to the right wing claim that President Obama is a tax and spend liberal.

Press is Silent on Mitt Romney's Tax Havens

Economist Kenneth Thomas on the media silence regarding Mitt and Ann Romney’s offshore accounts:

Obama Campaign Maps Romney's Tax Havens, (Almost) No One Notices

If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really happen? That's what you've got to wonder in the wake of this week's (non-)coverage of Mitt Romney's tax haven use.
Via Tax Research UK, The Hill reports that the Obama campaign has published a handy map of presumptive opponent Mitt Romney's tax haven holdings around the world. So Tax Research UK obviously noticed. But a search ("Romney tax havens map) of the premium Nexis database shows virtually no one else did. Agence France Presse ran a story the same day (May 1) and India's The Pioneer mentioned it in a story on May 4, but that's the sum total for the week. Running the same search on Google yields the Tax Research UK article and one at The Political Carnival, plus Bob Cesca picking up The Political Carnival and then Political Ruminations picking it up from him.
Where is the U.S. press on this?

“Where is the U.S. press on this?”

Is the answer that the tax havens of a U.S. presidential candidate aren't important?

Not so much.

The real truth is the same as it always is in this country: our corporate media, which our founders considered important enough to convey constitutional protections upon, tries very hard, and with great success, to ignore stuff which isn't to the liking of their corporate owners. And that simple truth is devastating for any democracy.

Fox News Channel "The Five" Lacking Serious People

Political pundit Bob Cesca describes the show and the panelists of said show, “The Five” (airs on Fox News Channel):

“The Five” — an obvious cable news knock-off of The View (and all of its imitators) in which four conservatives and one liberal (for balance) snark about the issues of the day. If Fox News was trying to create a show that would augment the intellectual stature of the usually moronic Fox & Friends, they totally succeeded.

The moderator of the show is serial race-baiter Eric Bolling and the panel consists of a Lazy Susan of cackling simpletons. Greg Gutfeld, whose previous credits include both Fox News Channel’s overnight show and The Huffington Post where he blogged about his calf muscles and made hilariously smart cracks about Cenk Uygur’s name, is evidently the designated jokester, dickbag and misogynist of the group. There’s also former Bush press secretary Dana Perino and legal analyst Andrea Tantaros. “Democratic strategist” Bob Beckel, who recently said “fuck” on the Hannity show, is the token liberal and, in keeping with Fox News policy, makes really weak points and often appears to be drunk. A perfect target for the conservatives on the panel.

Just in case you were wondering.

Adding...“a Lazy Susan of cackling simpletons” –bwahahahahaha

Quote of the Day: The GOP Five as the Rear Guard of the Republican Army

Journalist Robert Parry on The Washington Post’s admonishment to President Obama over his remarks to the Supreme Court’s five right wing, highly partisan, justices:

“Official Washington’s polite society – led by the neocon Washington Post – is chastising President Barack Obama for his faux pas in defending the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and in urging the Republican-controlled Supreme Court to show due deference to a law approved by the elected branches of government.

Since Monday when Obama uttered his statement, the Post’s editors have been suffering from the vapors – publishing two breathless editorials and various columns – and sputtering about Obama’s “jarring” comment.

While rapidly fanning themselves and trying to control their heart flutters, the Post’s editors lamented again on Wednesday that Obama’s “comments strayed perilously close to a preemptive strike on the court’s legitimacy if it were to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional.”

The Post’s editors were apoplectic, too, “that some liberal supporters of the law are preemptively trying to delegitimize a potential defeat, as if no honest justice could possibly disagree with the mandate’s constitutionality. The president’s initial remarks added unnecessary fuel to this contention.”

The Post then lectured Obama about maintaining his proper posture while in the Establishment salons of Washington. “Given the power of the bully pulpit, presidents are wise to be, well, more judicious in commenting about the high court,” the Post said.

What you’re seeing in the Post’s overwrought reaction is its protection of a favored fiction of Official Washington, that the deeply partisan GOP Five, who now run the High Court on behalf of the Republican Party, are not really partisans at all, just responsible jurists fairly applying constitutional principles.

You are not supposed to notice the ugly truth that the GOP Five (like an earlier incarnation of the group in the Bush v. Gore case in December 2000) has set itself up as the rear guard of the Republican army.

Thus, if somehow democracy breaks through the Republican lines – whether a state-court-ordered presidential recount in Florida or a new federal program pushed by a Democratic president – the GOP Five are there to mount a last-ditch counterattack, charging down the hill while shouting incoherent constitutional “principles.”

At other times – when the battle is less pitched – the GOP Five provide logistical support for the frontline political warriors, either opening supply lines for the delivery of massive campaign money from billionaires (via Citizens United) or empowering police to strip search (and thus terrorize) anti-corporate protesters.

That’s the troubling reality: the Supreme Court’s majority has become a reserve battalion of the GOP army. But the Post’s editors and other protectors of the hollowed-out pillars of the Republic can’t acknowledge this fact because it would threaten to crumble the thin layers of marble that remain of the pleasing façades of the capital.”

TPM’s “Obama Mangles U.S., World History In Energy Speech” Grasping at Straws

The web site ‘ Talking Points Memo’, better known as TPM, has long been a Liberal stalwart, a go-to site for a left wing point of view. Apparently no more.

A former reporter for the the right wing paper, The New York Sun, Benji Sarlin, blasted readers with a HuffPo type headline “Obama Mangles U.S., World History In Energy Speech” today, a headline that was false and intended solely to garner clicks, primarily from right wingers.

Sarlin explains:

President Obama got a laugh out of a Maryland audience on Thursday when he mocked the Republican Party in a speech, comparing their skepticism of alternative energy to the “Flat Earth Society” in Christopher Columbus’ day and President Rutherford B. Hayes’ apparent dismissal of the telephone. But while Obama thinks the GOP is in need of a science lesson, he may need to bone up on history himself.

In mocking the GOP, Obama cited an anecdote about Hayes in which, upon using the telephone for the first time, he said, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?”

“That’s why he’s not on Mount Rushmore,” Obama said. “He’s explaining why we can’t do something instead of why we can do something.”

In painting his energy critics as being mired in the past,  President Obama made a joking comparison with a predecessor,  the 19th President of the United States Rutherford B. Hayes.

The quote itself is often cited, is listed on Wikiquote, and was intended by the president to be humorous, a quality which Mr. Sarlin is apparently unfamiliar with. President Obama:

“One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes. He said “It's a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?” talking about the telephone. That's why he's not on Mount Rushmore. He's explaining why we can't do something instead of why we can do something. The point is there will always be cynics and naysayers who just want to keep on doing things the same way we have always done them.”

President Obama also made a quip about  Columbus and the flat earther type wingnuts:

“If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society,” Obama said. “They would not have believed that the world was round.”

Mr. Sarlin, I dislike having to disillusion you, but the majority of Americans still believes that during Columbus’ time most people thought that the earth was flat.

A reader offers an explanation for the outrage seen in the comment section:

“I think the nerve you've struck is that the substance of the "error" doesn't in any way match the language and primacy which you've shown it, to the point of being absurd. Obviously that's an editorial decision, and some thought goes into it. But this was so obviously a bad call, that it makes some of your long time readers here question what has happened to this site. Perhaps, it's time you guys, y'know, 'boned up' on some journalism.”

My contention is that anecdotal cracks regarding technologically impaired presidents such as Rutherford Hayes,  and flat earth societies used as a rhetorical device for laughs/humor, using generally/widely accepted, albeit erroneous, beliefs, does not qualify as a "mangling of history”.

Mr. Sarlin, I sincerely hope that your editor has enlightened you because your regular readers certainly tried in your comment section, and I think that if you are unable to do better, Josh Marshall would do best to kick you to the curb.

UPDATE: If you were as angered by Sarlin’s piece as I was, be sure to catch the Bob and Chez Show (podcast-also on DC radio) as Bob Cesca  had some pretty harsh words for TPM/Sarlin’s piece.

Moronic Quote of the Week

Mark Halperin, the former Palin worshipper, columnist hack for TIME magazine, regular contributor to MSNBC, and all around Conservative media jerk, called President Obama “a dick” on Morning Joe today:

MSNBC has suspended Halperin indefinitely, he has apologized both on air and on Twitter and has said that he “deeply regrets it”, but hey, I’m pretty sure Mark Halperin only regrets getting caught, and thus suspended.

In my view, Halperin has always been the dick in the room.

Alaska to Release Palin Emails Today

The release of Palin's old emails today is the latest Friday document dump, courtesy the State of Alaska, and former half-term governor, Sarah Palin. The New York Times, emphasis mine:

Even as Ms. Palin orchestrates much of her messaging through digital media — one moment she tweaks President Obama via Twitter, then she elaborates on Facebook, all from wherever she might be at that moment — her old e-mails are being released by the pound, not the pixel, in six standard paper boxes, a total of about 250 pounds at a printing cost of $725 per set. And at least initially, the documents can be had only by either picking them up here, in remote Juneau — a city accessible only by plane and boat — or by having them shipped, at considerable cost, to newsrooms across the country.

In addition, more than 2,000 pages of the e-mails have been withheld for various reasons, including executive privilege and privacy, according to Mr. Parnell’s office. Many of the documents that are being released have had details redacted by state lawyers.

“Why has your staff only implemented taxing ways to disclose these (redacted) public documents? What about scanning them?” Andree McLeod, a Palin critic who started filing records requests even before Ms. Palin became a national figure, wrote to Mr. Parnell recently.

The documents are to be released at 9 a.m. Alaska time on Friday — 1 p.m. in New York — and some news organizations are putting into place elaborate systems for scanning them and inviting the public to help search them online. MSNBC, ProPublica and Mother Jones magazine are working with a research company to create an online database of the documents. The company, Crivella West, created a similar database last year when the state released a much smaller set of documents related to the involvement of Ms. Palin’s husband, Todd, with state government. The company has not said when exactly its new database will be ready.

The New York Times will be putting up its own database, and has asked readers to help sift through the emails once they arrive.

Hmm…if we help them sort out the mess, will each email count as a part of the 20-article quota to which non-subscribers [to the digital paper] are limited? I’m only being half facetious here. Seriously.

Media and Democracy

From Bob Cesca’s excellent piece on hard news vs. “underpants” news:

Information is the life blood of democracy. The democratic process depends upon our active participation, and whenever real information is replaced with nonsense, democracy suffers due to an ignorant public.

This is the crux of the matter.

Our corporate overlords have an overwhelming interest in keeping the general populace ignorant of the true state of our “Democracy”.

As a currently relevant example, I would go so far as to say that if it were not for online, non-traditional media, Paul Ryan would very likely get his damn budget with out much in the way of pushback from traditional media.

The state of our media is one of the most important issues facing us in our time.

Quote of the Day II

Chez Pazienza on America’s public sex scandals:

“For the record, I really am tired of public "sex scandals" -- particularly ones where there was nothing unlawful involved -- further diminishing our cultural discourse in this country and distracting the already easily distracted and titillated dingbats in the mainstream political press. And I can't stress intensely enough how this belief is in no way a sudden reaction to the fact that I happen to like Anthony Weiner. Yes, the occasionally sordid sexual escapades of our elected officials are a breeze to point and laugh at, but reacting with shock to the notion that somebody is capable of infidelity or enjoys, quite frankly, getting laid as often and as creatively as possible is just laughably puritanical.”

Via Ben Cohen

Quick Take: One for the team

Returning to MSNBC after his suspension over the “slut” drama, Ed Schultz immediately went over the top and called for Anthony Weiner’s resignation.

LA TIMES Complains About Term “Lamestream Media”

Writer Paul Whitefield, of the LA Times, wrote (he intended this as criticism for those who constantly call the mainstream media by less flattering names, such as “lamestream”):

By regularly demonizing major, reputable media outlets, some political leaders have taken us to a very dark place, a place where people don't believe anyone: not the media, not the government, not elected officials. And that's a bad place to be.

Well, yes, it is a “bad place to be” but we the people did not get there by ourselves nor did we get there by listening to the right-wing decry the “lamestream media”. We got there because the curtain parted, and we finally see the Wizard in all his nakedness with his inglorious attributes of greed, corruption and narcissism.

I mean, are there really any “major, reputable media outlets” left? I can only think of maybe one. But only certain writers for that publication. And even on that one that I still consider 95% reliable, I always question, and frequently look for verification from other sources. And some of their writers I just won’t read.

I feel that way not because I listened to Palin, or some other loser decrying “lamestream media”, but because I have learned over the past few years that our media is not objective, and thus can not be counted on to present the facts in a truthful or secondarily important to me, objective light. After all, our mainstream media is entirely corporate owned. 

Whitefield goes on to further blame terms such as “lamestream media” for the lack of confidence in our media:

that's the real problem, because that's what this "lamestream media" nonsense has done: Too many people see political motives in everything; too many people believe anything but the truth.

Someone should remind Palin and her ilk of what Thomas Jefferson said, that given a choice between government without newspapers and newspapers without a government, he'd choose the latter.

Really, Mr. Whitefield? Really? It isn’t just Palin or the right-wing who see the media as lame. And what should we see when we look at corporate owned media?

It isn’t the term “lamestream” or any other derogatory term that has undermined our confidence in media.

It is the incompetence, and the corruption that much of the media exhibits or partakes in that is the cause of our disenchantment with media. It is the media’s participation in the ridiculous “both sides meme”, and their willingness to play simpering, stupid idiots for the dollars of their sponsors and the coffers of their corporate owners.

It is why people read the blogs, preferring them to more mainstream sources, particularly for political news. It is why I and many others blog. It is not, however, that we've been sucked in to the idea of the "lamestream media" as promoted by right-wingnuts such as Sarah Palin.

Morning Quote: Rachel Maddow

A segment from last week when Rachel Maddow questioned the prevalence of Republicans on the Sunday shows (video & transcript):

Here it is: Republican Senator Dick Lugar; Republican former presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani; Republican former Congressman Tom Davis; the Bush administration’s CIA director, General Michael Hayden; the Bush administration’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice; the Bush administration’s homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff; the Bush administration’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld; the Bush administration’s vice president, Dick Cheney; the Bush administration’s vice president’s daughter, Liz Cheney — the week the Obama administration announces it has killed Osama bin Laden, that’s the guest list on the Sunday morning political talk shows to talk about it.

The Sunday shows are supposedly the apex of political debate — the pulsing, throbbing heart of what’s going on in American politics. Is the biggest story in American politics right now retirees from the Bush administration and how they feel about stuff? Plus, Dick Lugar?

Honestly, this is the roster? This is Sunday morning in all of its thundering seriousness?

Now, among those nine Bush administration officials and other Republican politicians, there were three outliers: Senator John Kerry, also a former White House communications director named Anita Dunn, and one current White House official Tom Donilon, the national security adviser. So, there were those three.

But the week the Obama administration announces that bin Laden is dead, the invitees to the adult’s table, the measure of serious and importance in Washington is three-to-one, Bush administration and Republican officials.

Why is that?

Watch:

Why is that, indeed. The so-called “Liberal media” certainly doesn’t favor Liberals.

Adding…..the Sunday shows routinely feature a cast of Republicans to 1 or 2 Democrats at best. It is, in my humble opinion, a disgrace.