Premature Anti-Deficitist
by digby
Rand Paul quote of the day:
“People say, ‘Oh those Tea Party people, they’re angry.’ I say: ‘No, they’re concerned and they’re worried.’ They’re worried that we could destroy the currency by adding such a massive debt. In Germany it led to Hitler.”
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“Most Americans Are Like Me”
by digby
All Villagers believe they represent the average American, but none more than the Village media:
I guess they were so upset about the “leftists” vilifying Bush that they showed their displeasure by electing Barack Obama? Ok.
I hate to tell Joe The Slummer, but millionaire celebrities who have their own national TV shows don’t have a lot in common with “most Americans.”
h/t to ch
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Chris Matthews Is An idiot Part XXVII
by digby
This is simply unbelievable. On Hardball today, Matthews asked Howard Dean and Joan Walsh about Shirley Sherrod’s lawsuit:
Dean: I’m not a lawyer Chris, but there are two things about this first of all he cut off the tape he didn’t show the whole story….
Matthew: He didn’t? What did he cut out?
Dean: No, he cut off the stuff about the redemption part
Matthews: I thought that was in there
Dean: No it was not on the tape that was aired on Fox News
Mattews: yes it was
Dean: It was not on what Fox news reported on their blog
Joan Walsh: It was not on the Brietbart …
Matthews: Of course it was on Breitbart. He didn’t edit it. Not that I know about.
Joan Walsh: Chris, Chris. He did. He says he didn’t edit it …
Matthews: Well he didn’t edit it. What did he edit?
Walsh: it’s a 43 minute tape I’m sorry Governor Dean, you can do this …
Dean: No go ahead Joan
Walsh: It’s a 43 minute tape Chris. It walks through her whole racial history. He clipped about three minutes where she seems to be saying I didn’t do my best for this white farmer because he was white. And that’s where it ends. And then later Chris she goes on to tell this amazing …
Matthews: oh I thought that in the tape that he did put out that it did include that part in it. What he did that mischaracterized it was to suggest that it was in current time in her role as a federal official, not back when she was in the cooperative.
Dean: No, he did that too
Walsh: He did that too. There were two lies but he absolutely clipped, or someone clipped the tape before she could say that powerful message of redemption that Democrats believe in.
Matthews: I am right and you’re wrong. Do we have the tape that we can show this because I’m believe is this guys narration is the problem where he said that this is something that goes on in this administration and it suggested heavily that this was her point of view as an appointee of this administration…
Dean: he did that but he also clipped the tape…
Matthews: No it includes in the tape that she changed
Walsh: No it doesn’t Chris you have to trust me and the Governor on this…. it’s not in the tape that Breitbart put out.
Matthews: Yes it is! Yes it is!
Then he criticized the blogosphere and said that he has made no mistakes on this story.
When they tagged up the tape for him, which had the one sentence about it not being about white and black just before she said she “took him to one of his own” he triumphantly proclaimed: “That redemptive revelation was in the tape Joan” and completely dismissed the criticism of Breitbart. In other words, the clip that posted was only incorrect because Breitbart implied that she’d done all that stuff recently. he should make a great witness for Breitbart in the trial.
This man makes five million dollars a year.
Update: In fairness, Howard Dean sputtered foolishly and said that wasn’t the clip he’d seen. Ayeyayay. This really is the stupid season.
Update: Matthews called Walsh back to the studio to re-do this story on his second broadcast with Mark Vogel of Politico instead of Dean. He slightly back tracked and seemed to understand the real narrative a little bit better. Walsh and Vogel were both able to explain it more fully, with Vogel filling in the fact that the little snippet of “white and black” in the Breitbart tape was probably left in there out of amateurishness. The person apparently didn’t have the skills to send the clip via email.)( I’m still not sure Matthews really understands this but it’s obvious that somebody talked to him.
The good news is that Joan argued with Vogel about Breitbart being called a journalist rather than a propagandist and brought up the ACORN videos. Vogel admitted that that story needed to be corrected as well. Huzzah!
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The ACORN Doesn’t Fall Far From The Nutball
by digby
Eric Alterman goes where the mainstream press still refuses to go, despite the egg dripping from every square inch of their credibility:
Remember, the very same techniques deployed to defame Shirley Sherrod and discredit the NAACP were employed to destroy ACORN, albeit aided by the idiocy of a couple of low-level ACORN employees. Breitbart’s underlings, the admitted criminal James O’Keefe and his associate Hannah Giles, lied to ACORN about their respective identities for the purpose of surreptitiously taping their words and actions and then releasing a doctored version of the tape to the credulous media. They misrepresented their own dress and demeanor in this visit—they were not dressed up as a comic-book pimp and ho—and O’Keefe also claimed that an undercover video campaign was a “nationwide ACORN child prostitution investigation” implicating numerous ACORN employees. In the heavily edited videos Breitbart released of their encounters at eight ACORN offices, he (and they) failed to note that in at least six of these, they did not get their desired result. (Some ACORN employees contacted the authorities.) Of course, we did not learn any of this until after the MSM conspired with Breitbart and company to help destroy ACORN based on this false and defamatory narrative.
Recall, again, that vis-à-vis ACORN, media machers could not flagellate themselves fast enough for their previous failure to follow Breitbart into the gutter. Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism explained, “Complaints by conservatives are slower to be picked up by non-ideological media because there are not enough conservatives and too many liberals in most newsrooms.” Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli worried, “We are not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It’s particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view.” Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander added that “traditional news outlets like The Post simply don’t pay sufficient attention to conservative media or viewpoints.” New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson admitted “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.” Meanwhile, on ABC News, George Stephanopoulos thought the ACORN fable worthy of being raised in a rare one-on-one interview opportunity with President Obama, who replied that he wasn’t following the story very closely and, by the way, had more important problems to address. (US grants to ACORN, already suspended at the time, accounted for less than one-thousandth of 1 percent of annual US government spending.)
In the now infamous case of Shirley Sherrod, Breitbart deployed doctored video again to falsely accuse Sherrod of discriminating against whites as a federal employee, pretending that a story about overcoming racism was really one endorsing it. When that lie was exposed, he insisted that his real target had been the NAACP, for allegedly cheering on Sherrod’s alleged racism. This too was a lie. There was no applause in the undoctored video for any racist statements. Nothing Breitbart said about the story checked out once the full video became available.
And the MSM machers? Well, they can’t help but notice that they got taken this time, but they prefer to chalk it up to “ideology.” “There’s been this proliferation of partisan media—whether it’s MSNBC and Fox at night, or it’s Breitbart on the right or Huffington Post on the left,” complains Politico executive editor James VandeHei, and it makes honest folk like MSM reporters “overreact.”
See, just as the teabaggers were “provoked” into spitting on black congressmen, the mainstream media is provoked into overreaction by the “partisan” media. They just can’t help it. (I’d be very interested to see a case where the MSM has overreacted to a ratfuck or a bogus hit by a left leaning member of the new media. I can’t think of one but I suppose it’s possible.) But shouldn’t these so-called professionals be held to account for overreacting to something that any sentient being should be able to see is complete bullshit? Isn’t that their job?
Be sure to read Alterman’s whole piece. He illustrates the Brietbart/Tucker/MSM symbioses very effectively…
Update: Joe Conason reveals evidence that Fred Barnes, one of the more sanctimonious of the Tuckerite Fussbudgets, actually takes money from the Republican Party. perhaps he doesn’t see that as being on the “GOP team” — maybe he’s just a plain old whore who just happens to take GOP cash and the GOP line coincidentally — but it is perfectly indicative of the absurdity of right wing media criticism of liberal journalists.
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Move-On Is Myth Busting
by digby
Move-On just sent this out to its members. Please email it far and wide to people you know. The amount of propaganda coming out of the deficit scolds is piling high and it’s important that everyone understand the basic facts:
Top 5 Social Security Myths
Rumors of Social Security’s demise are greatly exaggerated. But some powerful people keep spreading lies about the program to scare people into accepting benefit cuts. Can you check out this list of Social Security myths and share it with your friends, family and coworkers?
Myth: Social Security is going broke.
Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.6 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a ‘T’). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.1 After 2037, it’ll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits–and again, that’s without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers retirement decades ago. Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.
Myth: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
Reality: This is red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than did 70 years ago.3 What’s more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly–since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.4 But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.
Myth: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.
Reality: Social Security doesn’t need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here’s a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come. Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income. But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.
Myth: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs
Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn’t full of IOUs, it’s full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market–which would have been disastrous–but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.
Myth: Social Security adds to the deficit
Reality: It’s not just wrong — it’s impossible! By law, Social Security funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can’t add one penny to the deficit.
There are two things going on here. First, the Big Money Boyz have always been hostile to Social Security, going all the way back to the beginning and they have used a variety of arguments to rationalize their position, changing them as circumstances require. It’s a matter of ideology and philosophy.
The other thing is that at present, the same Big Money Boyz are afraid they are going to be asked to pay the gambling losses incurred by their pals on Wall Street. So they are trying to get the poor and middle class elderly to foot the bill. (See: raising taxes on the wealthy vs cuts in social security.)
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The Good News Is The Poison
by digby
Rush Limbaugh has been saying the oil spill is nothing more than a little leak that has caused almost no damage. Time Magazine is backing him up saying since the news that the slick “disappearing” evidence points to the fact that the whole thing was over-hyped for ratings and fundraising by environmental groups. (Seriously.)
But perhaps “disappearing” the wrong word. The right word is “dispersing.” And there are just a few niggling issues to discuss about that. Sean at Donkey on the Edge has more:
While the release of over a hundred million gallons of crude into the gulf is an unmitigated ecological and economic disaster, the use of almost 2 million gallons of the dispersant Corexit makes it quite possibly the largest human and environmental experiment on record. EPA whistle-blower, Hugh Kaufman, explains:
Corexit is one of a number of dispersants, that are toxic, that are used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that it’s invisible to the eye. In this case, these dispersants were used in massive quantities, almost two million gallons so far, to hide the magnitude of the spill and save BP money. And the government—both EPA, NOAA, etc.—have been sock puppets for BP in this cover-up. Now, by hiding the amount of spill, BP is saving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines, and so, from day one, there was tremendous economic incentive to use these dispersants to hide the magnitude of the gusher that’s been going on for almost three months.
He continues:
Consequently, we have people, wildlife—we have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do. EPA now is taking the position that they really don’t know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death age is around fifty. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an economic—it’s an economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.
And it’s not only used on the surface:
Well, not only do you have airplanes flying and dropping them on the Gulf region, like Agent Orange in Vietnam, but a large amount of it is being shot into the water column at 5,000 feet to disperse the oil as it gushers out. And so, you have spread, according to the Associated Press, over perhaps over 44,000 square miles, an oil and dispersant mix. And what’s happened is, that makes it impossible to skim the oil out of the water. One of the things that happened is they brought this big boat, Whale, in from Japan to get rid of the oil, and it didn’t work because the majority of the oil is spread throughout the water column over thousands of square miles in the Gulf.
Read on for more at th. BP seems to have ably headed off the worst of the PR disaster by keeping the worst of the oil more or less off the shoreline. The actual disaster may have been made worse by the use of toxic chemicals. So it’s all good.
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Warrants Are So Annoying
by digby
Kevin Drum sez, “You know, if I’d wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him. Me too.
Read about the latest abuse of civil liberties. The way the government is going, within a decade or so the Bill of Rights will be a distant memory. I guess they figure as long as the second amendment and corporations’ right of free speech are protected, it’s all good.
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Willing or Unwilling Dupes?
by digby
A group of oil companies including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Citgo, Chevron and other polluters are using a front group called “America’s WETLAND Foundation” and a Louisiana women’s group called Women of the Storm to spread the message that U.S. taxpayers should pay for the damage caused by BP to Gulf Coast wetlands, and that the reckless offshore oil industry should continue drilling for the “wholesale sustainability” of the region. Using the age-old PR trick of featuring celebrity messengers to attract public attention, America’s Wetland Foundation is spreading a petition accompanied by a video starring Sandra Bullock, Dave Matthews, Lenny Kravitz, Emeril Lagassi, John Goodman, Harry Shearer, Peyton and Eli Manning, Drew Brees and others.
I really doubt that Harry Shearer and Dave Matthews are knowing oil company shills. Still, I would have thought that anyone would question whether or not they should back a group that supports offshore drilling, though.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were approached by Democrats in the area which is even more depressing. Whatever the case, someone needs to alert them to who they’re shilling for and give them a chance to back off if they want to.
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Own It
by digby
Yes, another teachable moment. And it’s a particularly stupid one, but teachable nonetheless. First, watch this Jon Stewart segment:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Lost in Race | ||||
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Ok, I’m sure you get the joke, right? Well, according to Media Matters, the right, including Breitbart, take that segment as a validation of Breitbart’s integrity. Media Matters says this is pathetic and sad because they don’t seem to understand that Breitbart stated publicly that he is trying to destroy the “institutional left.” But they do. They just don’t think there’s anything wrong with openly trying to destroy the institutional left. They consider it their job and when someone says they are honest about that, they take it as validation.
In their view, Stewart was giving them props and criticizing the Democrats for failing to play the same game — which he sort of was. Now, know that Stewart thinks Breitbart is a malignant tumor on the body politic, honesty about it notwithstanding, but they don’t care about that. They care about getting the job done by any means necessary and they are proud to be acknowledged for doing that.
The teachable moment here is for liberals. There’s a lot of sturm and drang about the selective Journolist leaks featuring liberal writers saying mean things about conservatives and openly rooting for Obama. It’s as if they were caught in some sort of secret conspiracy when their public writings perfectly reflect their political views.
But why shouldn’t they own their liberalism? You’ve got people out there like Fred Barnes rending his garments over liberals being liberal, and saying that conservatives are all “lone wolves” when he appears every day on a thoroughly partisan television network devoted to conservatism. Nobody on the left finds him to be unbiased. Why should he find them unbiased?
Newsflash: Liberal and center-left writers are liberal and center-left. Conservative writers are conservative. Right wing hitmen like Breitbart are right wing hitmen. And Villagers who claim to be “objective” are purveyors of useless establishment conventional wisdom — much of which is “objectively” conservative, at least partially because they are so subject to right wing ref working, as perfectly illustrated by Chuck Todd’s panicked whine today about being tainted by association with liberals. I see no reason why any liberal writer should care about that. They should care about journalistic ethics that require adherence to the facts in pursuit of the truth, which the journalists on that list do, even if you disagree with their conclusions.
In other words, they shouldn’t worry about being called liberal by Tucker Carlson. By letting alleged bias be construed as unethical, they are playing the wrong game by the wrong rules.
*Full disclosure: I was a member Journolist along with about a dozen or so other listservs although I rarely have time to participate in any of them. The only thing I will say about it is that if it’s an example of the vast left wing conspiracy, the blogosphere must be revolutionary anarchist invasion. Let’s just say that the idea that it was a hotbed of radical liberal agitation and organizing is hilarious to me.
Update:
Joe Conason’s piece on this is useful. This for instance is worth remembering:
Perhaps it is appropriate to give the last word to the American Spectator’s John Tabin, who has written a striking dissent from the right-wing hysterics over Journolist:
Since 1993, Grover Norquist has held an off-the-record meeting every Wednesday where conservative activists, policy wonks, and government officials exchange ideas about policy and politics. Sometimes journalists attend. Depending on a particular journalist’s ideological and partisan disposition — which can vary quite a lot given the state of our media landscape, which includes both ‘straight news’ reporters (i.e. people who attempt to hide the almost-always-left-of-center opinions that shape their journalistic choices) and opinion journalists with various worldviews and temperaments — journalists may be there to get ideas that will influence how they think about issues, or they may just be there to get perspective on how conservatives are thinking about the issues of the day. The Wednesday Meeting has periodically been the source of breathless fear-mongering on the left about the all-powerful conservative conspiracy to control media narratives. This is, of course, absurd. Much of the hyperventilating over Journolist is equally absurd … Everyone who has been shown to have their work influenced by conversations on Journolist is, likewise, a commentator. That Chris Hayes tries to get perspective from other liberals before he goes on TV to opine on a topic, or that Joe Klein incorporates ideas from off-the-record exchanges into his blog posts, is not exactly earthshaking news. Commentators on the right do exactly the same thing — it’s just our emails don’t get leaked because we’re smart enough not to conduct these exchanges on listservs where we let the audience expand to include 400 people.
Update II: And then there’s this, if you want an example of journalists in bed with the White House (from Bush At War)
“Rove also kept in touch with the party apparatus and leading conservatives. One important-looking confidential communication came in to Rove from one of Bush’s senior friends, so Bush took it to the Oval Office.
“Roger Ailes, former media guru for Bush’s father, had a message, Rove told the president. It had to be confidential because Ailes, a flamboyant and irreverent media executive, was currently the head of FOX News, the conservative-leaning television cable network that was enjoying high ratings. In that position, Ailes was not supposed to be giving political advice. His back-channel message: The American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible. Support would dissipate if the public did not see Bush acting harshly.”
Just saying. They own it.
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Democrats Are, By Definition, Racists
by digby
I think that despite the fact that Jeffrey Lord was roundly criticized, even by conservatives, for saying that Shirley Sherrod was lying when she described a beating of a black man in custody as a lynching, his comments today to TPM reveal a larger critique that may well have some resonance on the right:
“I have felt for a long time that my friends on the American left, in the Democratic party have just had this atrocious history with racial issue,” Lord said. “I mean it just can’t possibly be any worse. I’ve gone back and read all the platforms for the Democratic party starting in 1840 which was the first one.”
What’s changed in the last generation, according to Lord, is simply the nature of the Democratic party’s racism.
“What struck me about [the Sherrod speech] was that sort of little, casual aside, where she says something about health care, and ‘I’ve never seen people so mean’ … The implication is — and she uses the phrase at one point ‘the black president’ and ‘we endured the Bush years’. And the implication to me was that she was saying ‘if you didn’t agree with Obamacare then you’re a bigot,'” Lord said. “The essence of the formula is ‘scare race X to death that race Y or Z is coming after them in some fashion, and then, you know, you get all the votes and the money, etc, etc, etc. And that all that’s gone on over a couple years of history of the Democratic party is that the races have changed.”
“What is the difference, really, between Jimmy Byrnes trying to pursue a “white” agenda, and Sonia Sotomayor’s wise Latina comment?” Lord asked rhetorically.
For Lord, the key inconsistency is that Democratic southerners were to blame both for Hall’s murder, and for ultimately overturning the conviction of his killers, and yet, decades later, Sherrod sympathizes with the Democratic party.
“I understand that people on the other side are going to go poopoopoo and the Nixon Southern Strategy and all that kind of thing,” Lord said. “To think that this was just, all these people just switched their party and made the Republican party segregationist is just nuts. I was there.”
What about the black people who all switched their party?
That’s pretty slick, actually. The Democrats have always been the racist party and still are today now that whites are suffering discrimination everywhere at the hands of the people of color — who switched to the racist party the minute they achieved civil rights. (It’s always something with “those people” …)
It’s not that the right hasn’t been saying this in other terms, but this draws it all together in one nice little package. It is completely divorced from reality of course, completely leaving out the civil war, Jim Crow etc, but I can see a whole lot of really dumb Fox viewers taking to this view. Republicans have always been on the right side, not just during Lincoln’s day, (which never had much salience since it was so long ago) but in modern times as well, when the racists are all black and brown.
Read the whole interview. He explains why the beating of a black man while in custody can’t be called a lynching (there has to be a mob and a rope involved) and that Sherrod really is a racist because she was riling up the blacks. But then so are all Democrats, always have been always will be. It’s definitional. Thomas Jefferson had slaves. Obama hates white people. Need I say more?
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