Month: December 2007

Together, They Do Better

by digby

Everybody’s a little bit upset with the Democratic leadership for being impotent and ineffectual (and allowing the media to gleefully portray them that way.) But I’m with Greenwald. In light of the impressive bipartisan vote they got yesterday, it’s just wrong to say they can’t get anything important done:

To be fair, the Democratic-led House was able to pass an extremely important bipartisan resolution yesterday — by a vote of 372-9 — which “recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world”; proclaims that Christmas is “a holiday of great significance to Americans”; decrees that “Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization”; explains that “on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ”; and “expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.”

So it’s important to temper the criticisms of the Congress with an acknowledgment and appreciation for these brave and important achievements — one of the bravest and most consequential acts of Congress since they solemnly banded together to condemn MoveOn.org’s newspaper advertisement.

I don’t think people understand just what an achievement this was. The stood up to the obstructionists and refused — refused — to fund the war on Christmas.

Shouldn’t that count for something?

Oh, and in case you haven’t seen it elsewhere:

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Torture Works

by digby

A commenter points me to this account of a successful “enhanced interrogation;”

. . . On Wednesday, June 28, 1628, was examined without torture Johannes Junius, Burgomaster at Bamberg, on the charge of witch-craft: how and in what fashion he had fallen into that vice. Is fifty-five years old, and was born at Niederwaysich in the Wetterau. Says he is wholly innocent, knows nothing of the crime has never in his life renounced God: says that he is wronged hefore God and the world, would like to hear of a single human being who has seen him at such gatherings [as the witch-sabbaths].

Confrontation of Dr. Georg Adam Haan. Tells him to his face be will stake his life on it [er wolle darauf leben und sterben], that he saw him, Junius, a year and a half ago at a witch-gathering in the electoral council-room where they ate and drank. Accused denies the same wholly.

Confronted with Hopffens Elsse. Tells him likewise that he was on Haupts-moor at a witch-dance; but first the holy wafer was desecrated. Junius denies. Hereupon he was told that his accomplices had confessed against him and was given time for thought.

On Friday, June 30, 1628, the aforesaid Junius was again without torture exhorted to confess, but again confessed nothing, whereupon, . . . since he would confess nothing, he was put to the torture, and first the [Page 24] Thumb-screws were applied. Says he has never denied God his Saviour nor suffered himself to be otherwise baptized; [1] will again stake his life on it; feels no pain in the thumb-screws.

Leg-screws. Will confess absolutely nothing [and] knows nothing about it. He has never renounced God; will never do such a thing; has never been guilty of this vice; feels likewise no pain.

Is stripped and examined; on his right side is found a bluish mark, like a clover leaf, is thrice pricked therein, but feels no pain and no blood flows out.

Strappado. He has never renounced God; God will not forsake him; if he were such a wretch he would not let himself be so tortured; God must show some token of his innocence. He knows nothing about witchcraft. . . .

On July 5, the above named Junius is without torture, but with urgent persuasions, exhorted to confess, and at last begins and confesses.

[…]

Burr’s note: So ended the trial of Junius, and he was accordingly burned at the stake. But it so happens that there is also preserved in Bamberg a letter, in quivering hand, secretly written by him to his daughter while in the midst of his trial (July 24, 1628):

Many hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head and–God pity him–bethinks him of something. I will tell you how it has gone with me. When I was the first time put to the torture, Dr. Braun, Dr. Kotzendorffer, and two strange doctors were there. Then Dr. Braun asks me, “Kinsman, how come you here?” I answer, “Through falsehood, through misfortune.” “Hear, you,” he says, “you are a witch; will you confess it voluntarily? If not, we’ll bring in witnesses and the executioner for you.” I said “I am no witch, I have a pure conscience in the matter; if there are a thousand witnesses, I am not anxious, but I’ll gladly hear the witnesses.” Now the chancellor’s son was set before me . . . and afterward Hoppfen Elss. She had seen me dance on Haupts-moor. . . . I answered: “I have never renounced God, and will never do it–God graciously keep me from it. I’ll rather bear whatever I must.” And then came also–God in highest Heaven have mercy–the executioner, and put the thumb-screws on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see from the writing. . . . Thereafter they first stripped me, bound my hands behind me, and drew me up in the torture. [2] Then I thought heaven and earth were at an end; eight times did they draw me up and let me fall again, so that I suffered terrible agony. . . .

[…]

And so I made my confession, as follows; but it was all a lie.

Now follows, dear child, what I confessed in order to escape the great anguish and bitter torture, which it was impossible for me longer to bear.

Burr’s note:Here follows his confession, substantially as it is given in the minutes of his trial. But he adds:

Then I had to tell what people I had seen [at the witch-sabbath]. I said that I bad not recognized them. “You old rascal, I must set the executioner at you. Say–was not the Chancellor there?” So I said yes. “Who besides?” I had not recognized anybody. So he said: “Take one street after another; begin at the market, go out on one street and back on the next.” I had to name several persons there. Then came the long street. [3] I knew nobody. Had to name eight persons there. Then the Zinkenwert–one person more. Then over the upper bridge to the Georgthor, on both sides. Knew nobody again. [Page 28] Did I know nobody in the castle–whoever it might be, I should speak without fear. And thus continuously they asked me on all the streets, though I could not and would not say more. So they gave me to the executioner, told him to strip me, shave me all over, and put me to the torture. “The rascal knows one on the market-place, is with him daily, and yet won’t name him.” By that they meant Dietmeyer: so I had to name him too.

Then I had to tell what crimes I had committed. I said nothing.

. . “Draw the rascal up!” So I said that I was to kill my children, but I had killed a horse instead. It did not help. I had also taken a sacred wafer, and had desecrated it. When I had said this, they left me in peace.

Now, dear child, here you have all my confession, for which I must die. And they are sheer lies and made-up things, so help me God. For all this I was forced to say through fear of the torture which was threatened beyond what I had already endured. For they never leave off with the torture till one confesses something; be he never so good, he must be a witch. Nobody escapes, though he were an earl. . . .

Dear child, keep this letter secret so that people do not find it, else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers will be beheaded. So strictly is it forbidden. . . . Dear child, pay this man a dollar. . . . I have taken several days to write this: my hands are both lame. I am in a sad plight. . . .

Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more. July 24, 1628.

Burr’s note:And on the margin of the letter he adds:

Dear child, six have confessed against me at once: the Chancellor, his son, Neudecker, Zaner, Hoffmaisters Ursel, and Hoppfen Els–all false, through compulsion, as they have all told me, and begged my forgiveness in God’s name before they were executed. . . . They know nothing but good of me. They were forced to say it, just as I myself was. . . .

No Regrets

by digby

Gene Lyons, from his privileged perch inside the belly of the Arkansas beast, succinctly explains the Wayne Dumond-Huckabee atrocity in his column today.

He brings up the insane right wing delusions that drove this story, particularly those concocted by Steve Dunleavy, a pre-Drudge Clintonhate entrepreneur, who made a name for himself in the character assassination industry with the Dumond case:

New York Post columnist and “Current Affairs” correspondent Steve Dunleavy churned out articles of near-hallucinatory inaccuracy championing DuMond’s cause. He portrayed DuMond as a blameless Vietnam vet with no criminal history. In fact, DuMond avoided prison in Oklahoma by testifying against men tried and convicted of beating a man to death with a claw hammer. He’d been convicted of second degree assault in Oregon, and charged with but not tried for a previous rape in Arkansas.

Dunleavy claimed DNA evidence exonerated DuMond, but that a vengeful Clinton prevented his release. Both were categorically false. No DNA evidence existed; Clinton had recused.

DuMond became a right-wing cause célèbre. One Guy Reel wrote a book entitled “Unequal Justice,” parroting the same bogus claims. Most significantly, Jay Cole, a Fayetteville, Ar., Baptist pastor and pal of Huckabee’s, bought into the delusion.

I would recommend that you keep Lyons’ piece bookmarked. If Huckabee gets the nomination, and he might, you may need it to send around to those of your friends and relatives who think Old Huck might make a good president.

While it’s true that the Dumond story was a wingnut cause, there were plenty of liberals who had internalized the nonstop drumbeat of irrational Clinton hatred that came out of the right wing noise machine during that period.

This guy, for instance, who cleverly smeared Clinton by juxtaposing his refusal to pardon poor Wayne Dumond with his pardon of the white collar criminal Marc Rich. If you ever wanted to see a weaselly response to criticism, this is it:

Regarding the recent fuss about hillbilly presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s parole years ago of convicted rapist Wayne DuMond (who went on to rape again) and my March 2001 story about Bill Clinton’s involvement, “The Castration of Wayne DuMond: A Pardon That Clinton Didn’t Grant,” Denis O’Brien writes:

It looks like you’re sure to get some national coverage for your idiot 2001 VV article supporting release of rapist Wayne DuMond.

Man, if Huckabee takes shit over this, you really ought to get dumped on. Murray Waas over at HuffPost has been on this case since the beginning. He should have a field day with you. Hey, the First Amendment cuts both way, eh?

How you sleeping anyway? Was it hard on you after you helped get DuMond released only to have him rape and kill some more. And without testicles, too. Wasn’t he something? I know you loved the guy. It was a shame the way Clinton wanted him to stay in prison.

Hope you’re sleeping well.

Thanks for writing, Denis. No, I’m not sleeping well, but it has nothing to do with my story about DuMond, who was castrated by a crooked sheriff in Arkansas before he even went to trial. I didn’t call for DuMond’s release, and I didn’t say he was innocent. I stand by my story, which I focused on the vigilante castration and wrote in the wake of revelations about Clinton’s pardon of billionaire schnook Marc Rich.

Fellow tabloidist Steve Dunleavy was the one who trumpeted DuMond as innocent, way back in 1996. He even cast doubt on whether the rape occurred. See his piece, “A Travesty of Justice: How Gov. Clinton Denied an Innocent Man His Freedom.”

DuMond was hardly innocent. After his parole by Huckabee, he moved to Missouri and raped and murdered.

That was after my March 2001 story, which I began this way:

As Wayne DuMond listened last week to billionaire fugitive Marc Rich’s explanation that Bill Clinton pardoned him for “humanitarian” reasons, he couldn’t help but darkly snicker.

DuMond had been accused of raping a Clinton cousin in 1984 and was hog-tied and castrated before he even went to trial.

He used to be enraged about it, especially when the cracker sheriff, who was a pal of the rape victim’s father, scooped up DuMond’s balls, put them in a jar, and showed them off.

“They were mine. Those were my testicles,” DuMond told a sickened courtroom in 1988. “He didn’t have no right to take them and he didn’t have no right to show them around and he didn’t have no right to flush them down the toilet.”

This is yet another Clinton saga of genitalia that fell into the wrong hands.

The rape victim’s daddy, mortician Walter E. “Stevie” Stevens, was part of a Democratic machine that ruled the Arkansas Delta and nurtured Clinton’s career.

Wayne DuMond, guilty or innocent, didn’t have a chance at justice.

As Clinton was abandoning Arkansas for national politics, he stymied DuMond’s release from prison, ignoring the judgment of his own parole board in June 1990 that DuMond’s continued incarceration was a “miscarriage of justice.”

That’s it. He not only pretends that he has nothing to be ashamed of, he repeats his earlier smear as if it somehow exonerates him. And then he says this:

The fact is that Clinton made the right decision for political reasons, and Huckabee later made the wrong move — releasing DuMond — for stupid reasons.

I honestly don’t know what to say. Clinton didn’t pardon Dumond because Dumond was a psychopath — Huckabee arranged Dumond’s release because he was listening to a bunch of hysterical wingnuts who’d deluded themselves into believing that the psycho was some sort of martyred patriot to the conservative cause. It was one of many sick, absurdist “Arkansas gothic” tales (as Lyons calls them) that were circulating at the time. I can’t believe he thinks there’s nothing wrong with these heinous accusations, which he eagerly passed on — even now.

And Huckabee wasn’t just stupid and didn’t “make the wrong move” by insisting that Dumond be released (even sending him a Dear Wayne letter taking credit for it.) He showed himself to be a craven, political opportunist who would ignore the pleadings of several female victims who begged him not to release this sick bastard, in order to curry favor with the bizarro-world backwater of Arkansas wingnuttia.

Clinton=right. Huckabee=wrong. It’s not complicated. You can hate Clinton all you want but this is one clear-cut obvious smear job and anyone who can’t see that is simply too muddle headed to be writing in a respectable newspaper. If such a thing exists.

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Supersmearrific

by digby

So, I see that I’m being slammed quite hard on Daily Kos for posting a link in an earlier post which stated that Oprah Winfrey runs a non-union shop. Dkos diarist Bob Johnson claims this was a smear and condemns me for linking to an unsubstantiated article that claimed she pays sub-standard wages and benefits.

First of all, this kind of thing happens all the time in blogging. We link to articles as a matter of course, and sometimes they are wrong. The way we normally deal with it is to write a note to the blogger and ask them to correct the error rather than write a DKos diary calling him or her a lazy smear artist based upon a four word error and a link to an article. But this is primary time and people are not especially courteous about anything so I won’t take it personally.

It’s true that I did personally write that Oprah Winfrey “runs a non-union shop” and quoted from the article. Johnson refutes this:

Is it true that Winfrey “refuses to allow union representation of any sort inside the doors of her studio?” Doesn’t look like it. Meet 74-year-old Delores Olofson, an SEIU member profiled in the SEIU newsletter, Stronger Together [WARNING: pdf], from the Summer of 2005:

Olofson works part-time in Guest Services at the Harpo Studios, where Oprah is taped. Her main responsibilities are checking guests’ i.d.’s and hanging their coats. She has been a Local 1 member for more than a decade and a steward for eight years.

So, I was wrong and I will correct that in the earlier post. Clearly she does have at least one union member working for her studio. Johnson can’t verify that Harpo productions has contracts with any other unions, but supposes that she must since there is no public outcry in Chicago about that. He may very well be correct on that and I won’t speculate further.

I can state, however, (and knew with absolute certainty before I wrote the post) that she runs a non-WGA shop and it might behoove people, before they condemn me, to take a look at my post and see that it was about the WGA strike and was written in response to the news that the the studios had hired Chris Lehane. The thrust of it was that anti-union and big money interests in the entertainment industry had influence over the Democratic party in ways that were detrimental to progressivism. Clinton’s association with Lehane and Mark Penn were mentioned as well as Winfrey’s union issues. And I still maintain that is an important thing for progressives to think about — especially netroots progressives for whom an open media environment and a strong union movement are essential.

Perhaps Oprah has a contract with her writers that gives them residual rights and all the other union benefits that writers already get and the new ones they are fighting for in the strike. Likewise, if she isn’t unionized, I hope her other below-the-line workers get the same kind of protections that the entertainment craft unions would offer them. It’s not as good as unionization, of course, since she is still in production and therefore making money at the expense of others who are observing the strike, but it’s certainly better than exploiting your own workers.

And although Bob Johnson explains that reality show performers, such as those being sought for Oprah’s new non-union reality show, haven’t been allowed guild membership because they stand to win big bucks if they make it to the finals, I’m not sure why we should support that. Reality show writers for instance, desperately want to be represented by the writer’s guild. (Read this from United Hollywood.) I don’t know if Oprah’s writers (or whatever her production company is is calling them) for this new reality show will be union or not, but I do know that they should be.

I like Oprah as much as the next person. She’s an American icon. And I have written exactly zero criticisms about her political support for Obama. It’s perfectly fine with me that celebrities support the candidates of their choice — they’re citizens too. But just as I worry about any powerful rich progressives who show “flexibility” when it comes to applying progressive principles to their own businesses, I also worry that Oprah may be a mixed blessing for the movement as a whole. I don’t think that’s a smear.

To sum up: from what I learned today on DKos, the article I excerpted is inaccurate or at least unsubstantiated in asserting that she pays substandard wages. (It appears that while she works her staff members extremely long hours, she does pay them overtime for it.) I will append a correction to the original post. I also do not know that she runs a wholly non-union shop, only that she runs a non-WGA shop. I will also append that clarification. (If it turns out that she does not hire union workers in other areas, I will update with that as well.)

But my larger point still stands. All progressives should support unions, especially incredibly wealthy progressives like Oprah Winfrey. She is not a WGA signatory and is not supporting the strike.

And we should all be on the lookout for what promises members of the entertainment industrial complex are extracting from our politicians for their support. If you care about our new participatory democracy, it’s important. Money has a way of making even the most passionate progressive get greedy.

And btw, if I wanted to smear Oprah, there are some truly kooky whacked out allegations out there on this subject that I could have used. I linked to the article I did because I’d read a lot about her being non-union in the context of the WGA strike. There wasn’t anything more to it than that.

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Middle Class Aristocrats

by digby

Man, these Republicans sure are funny. Romney just said he didn’t worry too much about how much money rich people were paying in taxes and that he was more worried about the middle class. Fred Thompson went next and got big laughs saying that he hoped he’d someday make as much money as Mitt Romney so he didn’t have to worry about taxes either.

Poor Fred. After all he’s just an average Joe who’s suffering terribly because of his tax burden:

In 2006 he took in about $3.6 million for his acting roles, another $3.6 million as a commentator for ABC Radio, plus $1.6 million for making speeches. He collected an additional $200,000 or so from his investments.

He’s worth 8 million dollars. Just like me.

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Moral Clarity

by digby

Remember that? it seems like only yesterday we were being told that our foreign policy had been distilled to a distinct, black and white battle between good ‘n evul.

Here’s what it is in practice:

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Legal Rights of Guantanamo Detainees” this morning, Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, repeatedly refused to call the hypothetical waterboarding of an American pilot by the Iranian military torture. “I’m not equipped to answer that question,” said Hartmann.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who asked the hypothetical, pushed Hartmann on his answer, asking him directly if it would be a “violation of the Geneva Convention”:

GRAHAM: You mean you’re not equipped to give a legal opinion as to whether or not Iranian military waterboarding, secret security agents waterboarding downed airmen is a violation of the Geneva Convention?

HARTMANN: I am not prepared to answer that question, Senator.

That’s moral clarity for you.

It’s obvious to me that that because the administration has clearly committed war crimes, they have to take the Alberto Gonzales position that the Geneva Conventions are quaint artifacts of an earlier time and simply abrogate them altogether. They are left with relying on the “good for me but not for thee” conventions in which, like children (or sociopaths) the United States will declare its goodness in the face of evil as justification for anything it might do and dare the rest of the world, and its own citizens, to defy it.

This Air Force General, a legal advisor for Guantanamo, is unwilling to say that waterboarding an American airman is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. That means that the new policy of the United States is that waterboarding is a-ok.

Bush has made his position quite clear:

Bush said, “It doesn’t make any sense to tell the enemy whether we use those techniques or not.”

In other words, he wants the world to believe we torture our enemies if they are captured. There can be no other point to that statement. Once you’ve said that, then the Geneva Conventions are no longer operative because we are saying that we don’t believe we are bound by them, which means that other signatories can feel justified in saying they aren’t bound by them either. (Certainly, since we know for a fact that we actually do torture, all bets are off.)

The United States has clearly abrogated the Geneva Conventions. In fact, the treaties may now just be dead altogether. The Bush administration killed them.

With other recent revelations of America’s complete disregard for international law, (like this) and the fact that there seems to be little outcry here in the United States against it, we are going to find ourselves in an increasingly isolated position in the world.

Moral clarity simply means the US can do whatever it wants and I have a feeling the rest of the planet might not find that reassuring these days.

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Inquisition For Dummies

by digby

If you want to see how a sixth grader would approach the philosophical and practical ramifications of torture, I urge you to watch Hardball today.

I’m really surprised that Matthews hasn’t run for office as a Republican. He’s that dumb.

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Bruised Genitalia

by digby

Gosh, I sure hope nobody tore up these photos over the week-end before the Attorney General finally got around to ordering everyone to cease destroying evidence:

Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture. The photographic evidence will be vital to clear Binyam Mohammed, 27, who the Americans want to bring before a Military Commission on charges of terrorism, say his lawyers. Last week it emerged that Britain had negotiated the release of four detainees who have British residence status but Mr Mohammed, who speaks with a London accent, and at least three others are being held back. In a letter sent to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Britain is urged to ask the US to stop the CIA destroying the pictures. Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve representing Mr Mohammed, said that he also knows the identity of the agents who were present when his client was allegedly beaten and tortured. Writing to Mr Miliband, he said: “Given the opportunity, we can prove that the evidence was the fruit of torture. Indeed, we can prove that a photographic record was made of this by the CIA. Through diligent investigation we know when the CIA took pictures of Mr Mohammed’s brutalised genitalia, we know the identity of the CIA agents who were present including the person who took the pictures (we know both their false identities and their true names), and we know what those pictures show.” He added: “I have been privy to materials that allegedly support the finding that Mr Mohammed should be held, and while I cannot discuss some here (due to classification rules), I can state unequivocally that I have seen no evidence of any kind against Mr Mohammed that is not the bitter fruit of torture.”

But hey, I’m sure he deserved it. After all, the Bush administration insists that all of these people at Guantanamo are terrorists. And they had to torture them to confirm it.

Next time maybe they could just do the old trial by ordeal dunking test:

If it was good enough for the puritans, it should be good enough for us.

Update: If anybody believes this nonsense, I’ve got a used Escalade that gets 45 miles to the gallon to sell them…

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Now it Makes Sense

by digby

The banks get by with a little help from their friends:

But unfortunately, the “freeze” is just another fraud – and like the other bailout proposals, it has nothing to do with U.S. house prices, with “working families,” keeping people in their homes or any of that nonsense.

The sole goal of the freeze is to prevent owners of mortgage-backed securities, many of them foreigners, from suing U.S. banks and forcing them to buy back worthless mortgage securities at face value – right now almost 10 times their market worth.

The ticking time bomb in the U.S. banking system is not resetting subprime mortgage rates. The real problem is the contractual ability of investors in mortgage bonds to require banks to buy back the loans at face value if there was fraud in the origination process.

And, to be sure, fraud is everywhere. It’s in the loan application documents, and it’s in the appraisals. There are e-mails and memos floating around showing that many people in banks, investment banks and appraisal companies – all the way up to senior management – knew about it.

I can hear the hum of shredders working overtime, and maybe that is the new “hot” industry to invest in. There are lots of people who would like to muzzle subpoena-happy New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to buy time and make this all go away. Cuomo is just inches from getting what he needs to start putting a lot of people in prison. I bet some people are trying right now to make him an offer “he can’t refuse.”

Despite Thursday’s ballyhooed new deal with mortgage lenders, does anyone really think that it can ultimately stop fraud lawsuits by mortgage bond investors, many of them spread out across the globe?

Angry Bear comments:

I believe many have contracts that have some sort of guarantee of return of principle written in as part of the sale, especially in the last year and one-half of the grand financial innovation.

aaaaahhhhh…

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Inside Edition

by digby

If anyone questions the view that the Village isn’t like the rest of us, check this out from the Politico:

For Sunday talk shows, thriving in the D.C. ratings — although clearly trumped in size by New York — provides bragging rights over which show reaches more political insiders.

But more importantly, since the Sunday shows’ objective is not only to reflect on the past week’s events but to get political leaders to break news and move the conversation forward in the newspapers and the blogosphere on Monday morning, it’s essential for both leading Republicans and leading Democrats to reach members of D.C.’s chattering class.

[…]

Despite missing some candidates from the other side of the aisle, Wallace — along with the Fox public relations team — will happily boast that in the D.C. market, there have been big gains.

That’s been evident in the past month as influential media blogs like FishbowlDC and TVNewser seized upon the November ratings — the latter declaring in a headline “Washington Likes Wallace.”

“I think we’re doing a variety of things to distinguish ourselves from the other shows, and Washington, especially, seems to be noticing the difference,” Wallace said.

Wallace’s show is fourth in the ratings everywhere but DC.

Andrew Tyndall, an independent television news analyst, noticed increased attention recently being paid to Wallace’s D.C. numbers.

“It’s sort of funny publicity they’re putting it out,” Tyndall said. “The way they’re spinning it is that inside the Beltway he’s doing well.

“You could spin it the other way,” he added. “How come no one’s watching him in the rest of the country?”

Good question.

But we all know what it really means when the Village tunes in, don’t we?

First they nurse it,
then rehearse it,
and send out the news
that Murdoch’s baby
gave birth to…. convention wisdom.

Read the whole thing for the full effect of Wallace blubbering and whining about how he’s being snubbed and how the Democrats will come running back to Fox because they know they’re going to need that tiny group of cranky, old rabid wingnuts who watch his show out in the country. Get out your handkerchiefs.

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