TDS: Negative Campaigning

Case in point:

Something Someone Else Said

"There is almost no downside if you want to make an extreme claim about Barack Obama. You generate outrage from the left but you get attaboys from the conservative base. Is this much different than the rewards that liberals could get for making extreme claims about George W. Bush? I think it is, because the conservative media -- Fox, talk radio, all the way down to forward e-mails -- is a fantastic transmission device whose consumers are ready to believe that the rest of the media is lying to them. There is really no downside for Frank Gaffney when he says that Obama or his nominees are bringing radical Islamic law to America. It gets to the conservative base, which makes it a "controversy," which means that the rest of the media has to cover this Very Important Issue Americans Are Concerned About," -David Weigel, Slate.com.

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Picture Of The Day

Class, class, class:

At Barack Hussein Obama's taxpayer-funded Ramadan dinner last night, not only did the alleged president give the assembled Muslims the tremendous gift of support for building the Ground Zero mosque, but he also gifted them with the multi-purpose "Presidential Seal Boxcutter" which will soon be available in the Cordoba House gift shop.

This handsome and practical souvenir is an exact replica of the one which Barack Hussein Obama uses to direct the flight destinations of Air Force One!

The pattern from the political right starts to become clear after a while: first insist that President Obama is a secret Muslim for a couple years, then proceed with the current theme of conflating Islam and all Muslims with the radical extremists who attacked us on 9/11. He directs Air Force One with a box cutter: get it? The president's a terrorist! And he approves of and arms other terrorists! Do you think they'd be calling him by his middle name all the time if it was "Holden"? Subtle these guys are not.

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Florida Tea Party Candidate's Plan For Illegals

If only most illegal immigrants were also gay Muslims as well, then the political right in this country could really concentrate their vilification and scapegoating on one group of people rather than having to spread it so thin across so many:


It's a good thing there's no unfortunate historical precedent from the 1940's for the government rounding up a minority group and putting them into camps or else this woman might appear a bit callous and ignorant as it concerns her fellow human beings. Oh wait... Of course the federal government only imprisoned 110,000 Japanese during World War II while the current estimates of the number of illegal immigrants currently in country are around 11 million, fully one hundred times that amount. That's a lot of internment camps. If only we had a source of cheap plentiful labor to help us build Ms. Barker's grand vision of detention. Oh wait again...

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Something Someone Else Said

" When Andrew Breitbart offers $100,000 for a private email list-serv archive, essentially all bets are off. Every blogger or writer who has ever offered an opinion is now on warning: your opponents will not just argue against you, they will do all they can to ransack your private life, cull your email in-tray, and use whatever material they have to unleash the moronic hounds of today's right-wing base.

Yes, the Economist was right. This is not about transparency, or hypocrisy. It's about power. And when you are Andrew Breitbart, power is all that matters. There is not a whit of thoughtfulness about this, not an iota of pretense that it might actually advance the conversation about how to deal with, say, a world still perilously close to a second Great Depression, a government that is bankrupt, two wars that have been or are being lost, an energy crisis that is also threatening our planet's ecosystem, and a media increasingly incapable of holding the powerful accountable.

Meanwhile, the GOP leaders, having done all they can to destroy a presidency by obstructing everything and anything he might do or have done to address the crippling problems bequeathed him by his predecessor, are now also waging a scorched earth battle to prevent the working poor from having any real access to affordable health insurance.

This is what the right now is: no solutions, just anger, paranoia, insecurity and partisan hatred." -Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish.

I find this whole Dave Weigel/Journolist kerfuffle quite disgusting. Yes, he wrote some very rude things that he has admitted he should not have but they were written in private emails (in so much as a list-serv of 400 people can be considered private). The point is that those emails were not written for public consumption and the fact that I'm reading and watching conservative journalists gleefully squealing about how they would be the first ones to sell that list-servs archives means that they are tacitly endorsing the following philosophies: that all emails and other digital correspondence should no longer carry any expectation of privacy, that it's OK to betray the trust of another journalist as long as there's enough money involved in doing so, that journalists can no longer express any type of private opinion on any issue in any forum and that if any evidence of said private opinions becomes public knowledge they should immediately be fired for holding them. No wonder the Fourth Estate has forgotten how to do its job.

Something Someone Else Said

"I bought some BP stock recently because I liked the odds that the top engineers and scientists in the solar system, with unlimited funding, presumably somewhat freed from management meddling, could plug a hole...I also assumed that the liberal media's coverage of the oil damage would depress the stock more than necessary. It's a catastrophe, no doubt, but even catastrophes have levels. I'm betting the financial damage will be very, very, very bad and not very, very, very, very bad.

This is also a test of my theory that you should buy stocks in the companies that you hate the most. In general, you hate the companies that have the most power. And BP is the frickin' Death Star of companies. They're in the process of destroying an entire region of the world and there's still no talk of cutting their next dividend. I admire them in the same way I admire the work ethic of serial killers. There's an undeniable awesomeness about BP. I hate BP, but I still want to have their baby." -Scott Adams, The Scott Adams Blog.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this world view. Sure, it makes sense from an economic stand point and I have nothing against capitalistic investment but there's a part of me that finds the whole thing just a bit too distasteful. I too admire the work ethic of serial killers but I'm not going to invest in and encourage their success killing people. Ethics matter in a civilized society, or at least they should.

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Comedy Central And Religious Hypocrisy

So it seems that certain religions are still acceptable for ridicule by Comedy Central:

Comedy Central might censor every image of the Prophet Muhammad on "South Park," yet the network is developing a whole animated series around Jesus Christ.

As part of the network's upfront presentation to advertisers (full slate here), Comedy Central is set to announce "JC," a half-hour show about Christ wanting to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic father" and live a regular life in New York City.

In the show, God is preoccupied with playing video games while Christ, "the ultimate fish out of water," tries to adjust to life in the big city.

"In general, comedy in purist form always makes some people uncomfortable," said Comedy Central's head of original programming Kent Alterman...

Like all Comedy Central executives, Alterman declined to address the recent controversy over "South Park," where the network aired a heavily redacted episode after the show's creators were threatened by an extremist Islamic Web site.

I'm sure what Alterman meant to say is that "comedy in purist form makes some people uncomfortable but the fact that it makes a certain group of people uncomfortable is unacceptable and so it must be censored". Again, this isn't about making fun of one particular religion but rather the un-American idea that one particular religion should be off limits from being made fun of when doing so to all the others. Nobody in this world has a right not to be offended.

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TDS: Bernie Goldberg Fires Back

I was watching The O'Reilly Factor a few days ago when Bernie Goldberg went off on Jon Stewart and at the time thought to myself, "I know Stewart is going to respond to this but I wonder what he'll say?" As always, he didn't disappoint:

Why Does A Salad Cost More Than A Big Mac?

Because of massive federal farm subsidies that encourage Americans to eat the very foods of which federal nutrition programs say we should be eating less:

The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

The government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods.

I myself am personally against federal farm subsidies. I find it ludicrous that our government pays corporate farming companies (let's face it, the traditional image of the small American family farmer is now nothing more than just that: an image) to grow, and in many cases not grow, certain foods. What ever happened to free market principles as they pertain to economic consumption? And the fact that this same government actively encourages the consumption of unhealthy foods by the nation's poor is to me akin to class warfare, much like zoning laws that allow poorer neighborhoods to be flooded with fast food restaurants. Why are there no nutritional guidelines for these food assistance programs? Answer: because lobbyists for Big Agro have more say over what you and your children will eat than you do, especially if you're poor. Remember when the Reagan administration tried to reclassify ketchup as a vegetable for school lunch programs? This is not the way government is supposed to work.

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Congress Went To Denmark, We Got The Bill

This is disgusting, especially in the middle of a national recession:

(CBS) Thanks to recently filed Congressional expense reports there's new light shed on the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Denmark and how much it cost taxpayers.

CBS News Investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports official filings and our own investigation show at least 106 people from the House and Senate attended - spouses, a doctor, a protocol expert and even a photographer.

For 15 Democratic and 6 Republican Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,406 tax dollars each. That's $2,200 a day - more than most Americans spend on their monthly mortgage payment.

CBS News asked members of Congress and staff about whether they're mindful that it's public tax dollars they're spending. Many said they had never even seen the bills or the expense reports...

Total hotel, meeting rooms and "a couple" of $1,000-a-night hospitality suites topped $400,000.

Flights weren't cheap, either. Fifty-nine House and Senate staff flew commercial during the Copenhagen rush. They paid government rates -- $5-10,000 each -- totaling $408,064. Add three military jets -- $168,351 just for flight time -- and the bill tops $1.1 million dollars -- not including all the Obama administration officials who attended: well over 60.

In fairness, many attendees told us they did a lot of hard work, and the laid groundwork for a future global treaty.

Now obviously global climate change is a serious problem that requires action on the part of every major government around the world so I'm not trying to vilify those who are working to make headway on this important issue but come on, people! This incident and many others like it prove that there needs to be a vetting process for all congressional expense reports over a certain dollar amount and that it needs to be much more than the mere formality of a rubber stamp, even if those reports are filed by the House Speaker herself as they were in this instance. I realize that tax dollars must often be spent in order to deal with the myriad problems facing this nation and the world at large but there's no reason that this can not be accomplished with at least a minimal level of accountability from our elected officials. And for me it's just one more reason amongst many to dislike Nancy Pelosi a bit more than I do already.

Negro-Gate: Harry Reid Is No Trent Lott

If you have not yet heard:

WASHINGTON – The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate apologized on Saturday for comments he made about Barack Obama's race during the 2008 presidential bid and are quoted in a yet-to-be-released book about the campaign.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Obama is the nation's first African-American president.

"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments," Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were first reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.

"I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama's legislative agenda."

This is one of the most racist things I've ever heard and Harry Reid should resign from the United States senate immediately. Just kidding. I was just imagining what it would be like to be a partisan reactionary douchebag there for a second; could you imagine if I was really like that? *shudder* And yet many such Republicans are indeed tripping over their own feet in the rush to condemn Reid because finally someone who actually isn't a member of their party said something racist in public. And let's be clear here: if we're to analyze what Reid said about Obama in the context of every other statement we as an all too politically correct society have deemed racist, then this was certainly a racist comment.

That's not to say however that it wasn't true, and Reid was in fact giving Obama a compliment by stating that those previously mentioned attributes would work to Obama's advantage as he ran for president (his was also one of the first major endorsements Obama received from the Democratic establishment). Now personally I'm not entirely convinced that the specific skin tone of a black political candidate has an appreciable effect on their electability but it also wouldn't surprise me were it true. After slavery was officially abolished in the U.S. during the 19th century many light-skinned blacks and Mulattoes took advantage of their ability to "pass" as white for a time, and on a personal note when I was employed in downtown Oakland I worked with a guy named Mike whose last name I thought was Black. I eventually found out that all of the other black guys we saw every day called him "Black" because his skin was so dark. So one can't deny that we notice such differences as a multi-racial society and thus they must have some effect on elections, even if it's speculative or somewhat negligible.

Reid's comments about Obama's lack of a "Negro dialect" that he can turn on and off at will also hold truth. Let's face it, if Obama normally spoke like the average NBA star or hip hop artist he never would have been selected as the editor of the Harvard Law Review, much less elected president of the United States. But instead Obama is perceived as an intelligent well-educated man and his impressive public speaking skills are his strongest attribute as a successful politician. Another asset is his ability to act hip (or as hip as a nerd like Obama can manage) by speaking popular street slang, connecting him with voters who don't necessarily relate to his usual professorial speaking style. These are advantages that Reid was attempting to praise with his idiotic, ill-phrased comments.

And those comments were most definitely idiotic and ill-phrased, there's no doubt about that. Really, what experienced politician walks around saying the word "negro" in public in the year 2008? The fact that congress is almost completely composed of old white guys is an image that they're trying very hard to move away from, not call attention to. So now of course Republicans, never a party to pass up a chance to twist the rhetorical knife into their political opponents (although the Democrats are hardly much better most of the time), have begun the all too predictable calls for Reid to resign as the Senate majority leader with a pathetic display of faux moral outrage. The most popular avenue of attack thus far has been that of comparing Reid's remarks to those of former Republican Senator and majority leader Trent Lott about Republican Strom Thurmund at his 100th birthday celebration:

When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.

Now you're probably saying to yourself, "Hey self, those remarks don't really seem all that racist." And you'd be correct, if only Lott hadn't been saying them about a man who ran for the presidency on a platform of strict racial segregation. That's right, Lott was saying that he was proud to have voted for a man who's presidential stump speech included statements like, "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches" and that if Thurmond had only won the presidency and been able to implement his racist vision of barring black people from white society America would have been better off as a result (since this was the late 1940's we'll forgive Thurmond's use of the word "negro" as merely a sign of the times). Lott was subsequently forced to resign as Senate majority leader as a result of these comments and rightly so, but I have to take exception with the current comparisons some Republicans are trying to draw between that incident and Senator Reid's moronic statements.

Reid wasn't trying to disparage black people with his remarks, he was merely trying to strategically handicap a political race by enumerating some of a candidate's positive electoral attributes (admittedly phrased in an extraordinarily stupid manner). This is hardly ethically equivalent to stating that one is proud to have voted for a segregationist and that a segregated America would be a better country. Add to that Lott's longstanding ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization established by former activists in the segregationist White Citizens' Councils that advocates white supremacy and white separatism, along with Lott's consistent grade of "F" on the NAACP's legislative report card and his remarks about Thurmond begin to provide a fairly accurate portrayal of the man's views on race relations.

Senator Reid, on the other hand, has consistently received a 100 percent rating from the NAACP and is well known for his decades-long efforts to integrate Las Vegas' casino industry. Now in the past I've stated my displeasure with Reid on numerous occasions (I consider him to be an ineffectual pussy of a Senate majority leader and somewhat of an annoying dork to boot) but it's obvious to any objective American that he's no racist and thus should not be forced to resign his seat over this incident. At worst, he's guilty of being an old white man who has trouble relating directly to the black community but his actions as a legislator rightfully outweigh any stupid remarks he might have made during the last election.

The real villains in this tale are the serial opportunist Republicans who wasted no time in quickly moving to exploit Reid's situation by attacking him with that same faux moral outrage I spoke of earlier. They've made it abundantly clear that they would rather stoke the flames of racial discord in America than use their elected positions to pass legislation like health care reform that would significantly benefit the economically disadvantaged in this country, a group disproportionately composed of minorities. This makes it fairly obvious that black America has some real problems with the Republican party and its current drift even further to the right of the political spectrum will do little to make those problems disappear.

Based on this track record, it's entirely possible that the Republicans really don't understand the difference between a terrible choice of words and pining for segregationism. This is no excuse for their despicable actions of course, and one could argue that it actually makes them appear even more disingenuous and out of touch with the rest of America, but at least it would be the truth. Although they seem to have a real problem when it comes to that, don't they?

Senator Franken Takes Citizens Capitol Tour

This is one of the many reason I like that this guy is a United States Senator:

Like thousands of other Americans, my wife and I signed up months ago for a tour of the U.S. Capitol building during the Christmas holidays. Back in our twenties we used to ride a lot of Amtrak; with a couple of hours to kill changing trains at Union Station, we used to love walking up to the Capitol building and roaming its beautiful interior unattended. Since 9/11, you can only tour the building with a guide, but the elegant new Capitol Visitors Center offers a partial consolation.

This afternoon, after watching the required orientation film that precedes the tour, I'm exiting the theater when I hear Al Franken's distinctive bass voice right in front of me. It can't be him: why would Franken be on a public tour? I edge around for a glimpse and confirm it's the Senator. I have a split second to decide whether to say something or leave the man alone on his day off. I choose the latter and we end up in different tour groups.

About halfway through our tour, our guide asks if any of us noticed that Senator Franken was in the theater with us. He mentions that its very unusual for Senators to take the public tours when they can easily use their position to schedule V.I.P tours that are able to visit parts of the building off-limits to the general public. Our guide clearly thinks it's pretty cool that Franken has chosen to see the U.S. Capitol from the perspective of ordinary Americans. I agree.

Since I didn't take the opportunity on the tour, I'll take it here: Senator Franken, thank you. Thank you for being genuine and courageous, for being a voice that cuts through the bullshit that seems to be the stock and trade of most people in Congress, for doing the things we'd like to think we'd do if we were in the Senate.

I obviously can't even imagine that I will one day be a United States Senator but if I were, I'd model myself off of this nerdy little man.

Something Someone Else Said

"Journalists should strive for accuracy, and fairness. Objectivity is impossible, and is too often confused with balance. And the problem with balance is that we are not living in a balanced time. For instance, is it patently obvious that at this point in our history, the leading luminaries on one side of the American political spectrum are considerably less tethered to reality than those on the other side. Madly trying to split the difference, as so many of my mainstream-media colleagues feel impelled to do, does a disservice to the concept of the truth." -Dan Froomkin, The Economist


CNN's Campbell Brown put it this way when she was on The Daily Show: "If one person says it's raining outside, and another says it's sunny, the journalist should have the common sense to look out the window and report which person ought to be gently led away." Or to be less diplomatic about it, which one is a damn liar.

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TDS: For Fox Sake!

Jon Stewart , as usual, presents the definitive explanation for why you should never consider FOX News an actual news organization:

You Can't Make A Death Omelet...

Growing up in Texas taught me that Americans love their death penalties but I still find these kinds of numbers disturbing:

An October 13th Gallup Poll found that more than half of all Americans who support the death penalty believe that someone innocent has been executed in the past five years. (About two-thirds of Americans support capital punishment, a figure that has been steady for years.) David Dow, the director of the Innocence Project of Texas, argues that this is not surprising. "Most people, whether they’re death penalty supporters or not, are going to acknowledge that the system makes mistakes," he says. He argues that for capital punishment, as with everything else, it comes down to a cost question: can a state afford to execute people, with all the years of legal wrangling that usually entails?

The economic argument made here is a good one but it's the ethical considerations that cause me to object to a state run death penalty. Now this is not to say that I don't believe that there aren't many good reasons to punish a criminal offender by killing them; that isn't my concern. What does bother me are the myriad flaws within our justice system that allow for innocent men and women to be executed: evidence tampering, inaccurate eye witnesses, crime scene contamination, dirty cops, etc. In the face of so many human flaws I just can not countenance putting the power of life and death over American citizens into the hands of our government.

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There's A Rep For That

Don't let anyone tell you that the modern Republican party isn't diverse:


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Cato's Sanchez Fisks FOX News

The libertarian Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez delivers a point for point rebuttal to FOX News' coverage of the Patriot Act renewal:


Not even close to truthful. Yet for several million Americans this channel is their primary source for news coverage. Is it any wonder that many of us ridicule their opinions and so-called "facts" as wholly inaccurate and grossly irresponsible? Remember this the next time you're debating someone who comes at you from this side of the ideological aisle. Fair and balanced, my ass.

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FOX News Discovers Obama's "Death Book"

OK, it's actually Bush's "death book" and it's actually not even a "death book" but rather one of several end-of-life planning books referred to and distributed by the Department of Veterans Affairs:


First "death tax", then "death panels" and now "death book". Those Republicans are marketing geniuses, I tell ya.

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Freedom Of The Press Isn't Always Free

This is the danger in allowing an American military that is well-versed in the art of propaganda and public relations (as it invariably must be at the dawn of the 21st century) to also be the sole arbiter of who can and can not cover the actions of that same military during a time of war:

As more journalists seek permission to accompany U.S. forces engaged in escalating military operations in Afghanistan, many of them could be screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light.

U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan acknowledged to Stars and Stripes that any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group, which gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for its work helping to create the Iraqi National Congress. That opposition group, reportedly funded by the CIA, furnished much of the false information about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion.

Rendon examines individual reporters’ recent work and determines whether the coverage was “positive,” “negative” or “neutral” compared to mission objectives, according to Rendon officials. It conducts similar analysis of general reporting trends about the war for the military and has been contracted for such work since 2005, according to the company...

...U.S. Army officials in Iraq engaged in a similar vetting practice two months ago, when they barred a Stars and Stripes reporter from embedding with a unit of the 1st Cavalry Division because the reporter “refused to highlight” good news that military commanders wanted to emphasize.

Professional groups representing journalists are decrying the Pentagon’s screening of reporters.

As well they should. Now, I understand the need for positive propaganda and effective PsyOps to win a war but the ability of a free American press to document and report on the activities of its government halfway around the world should not be subject to military approval based on their history of "pro-military" stories. If George W. Bush had run his White House press corps this way during his tenure as president FOX NEWS, the National Review and The Wall Street Journal op/ed page would have been very lonely in that room all by themselves with the Press Secretary.

And even more disturbing is that this business with The Rendon Group is still going on a full seven months after Barack Obama entered office. Yes, as the Commander-in-Chief it's obviously now his military to command so I can see why he would want it portrayed in the best possible light but manipulation of the press on any level is something that should be avoided by any honest administration, regardless of the subject matter and location. And the fact that very few Americans read Stars and Stripes and thus will never hear about this officially sanctioned practice of military censorship only makes it that much worse.

Something Despicable Someone Else Said

"Liberals seem to be under the impression that health care reform will be like a new entititlement, and that Republicans will run against it at their own peril -- as was the case with Social Security reform in 2005. And they may be right, but not until this monstrous bill actually goes into effect some time in 2013. Which means that for the next four years, Republicans will be able to say whatever they want about the health care reforms that were passed but won't come into effect for years. Republicans will be able to come up with another "death panel" every week." -Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard.

The Republican party has hit upon a winning strategy: Lie, make sure that enough people are scared by your lies, and repeat. The American people need to wake up to this soon or we're all really going to be screwed.

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