during the HCR summit, they would only cut away for commercials and “analysis” when democrats were speaking.
2.
ItAintEazy
Wait, you didn’t see that question mark at the end? That just means, ya know, SOME people say that maybe they ought to call themselves the “Dept. of Jihad” and it would be irresponsible not to report that gossip.
But yeah, they’re not making me regret giving up cable three years back.
3.
Julia Grey
Gad.
I can’t think of anything else to say. Just….just…
.
4.
ItAintEazy
Wait, you didn’t see that question mark at the end? That just means, ya know, SOME people say that maybe they ought to call themselves the “Dept. of Jihad” and it would be irresponsible not to report that gossip.
But yeah, they’re not making me regret giving up cable three years back.
5.
Nick
This is why I defend my belief that putting Bush Administration officials on trial would be a terrible idea.
With the media defending them, we’d be out of power before any possible conviction and they’d easily have their cases thrown out or be pardoned with the complete support of the media and the American people and given lucrative jobs in the Pawlenty Administration.
And we’d be left wondering if there’s any decency left in our country. Can we just be happy we elected a guy who doesn’t continue their crimes?
The new shipment, which arrived this week, ups the ante: 12 percent of the entire cup is made from post-consumer recycled content — and 99 percent of the interior liner is post-consumer, too.
Interior liner 99% post-consumer … Eew?
Seriously, Politico? You actually assigned a reporter to write about the White House’s paper cups?
When do these innocent mistakes ever make conservatives look bad?
Next, they’ll put a (D) beside the name of the next GOP scandal-tarred congresscritter. Then we’ll know they have graduated the Fox School of Propaganda.
The gap between young adults’ favorable view of President Obama and that of seniors is considerably bigger than the differences between those groups for former Presidents Clinton and Bush, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Since Obama’s inauguration, an average of 66 percent of young adults approved of his job performance. Older age groups, meanwhile, gave Obama a 51 to 57 percent approval in that time, Gallup says.
In February, young adults gave Obama a 60 percent approval rating, while 43 percent of seniors did. Young adults also have had a higher opinion of Obama than other age groups since before he became president.
Bush and Clinton, by contrast, showed less variation among age groups: The biggest range for Clinton was three points, while the biggest for Bush was six points.
11.
Joseph Nobles
Wolf Blitzer did get Victoria Toensig to admit, right at the end of the interview, that the “Al Qaeda Seven” label was a bullshit tactic meant to get this out in the public eye.
Her argument was that why put people opposed to the system in charge of the system. I expect her crusade against the Bush Administration’s use of this to kick in any second now.
PS: Continuing my one-man campaign to get these servants of the law called the John Adams Seven. Please help!
heh. I thought it had something to do with bras. I was confused, especially by the post-consumer interior lining stuff.
16.
Mike Kay
Wolf Blitzer serial child rapist?
Wolf Blitzer Chinese spy?
Wolf Blitzer wears women’s underwear?
Wolf Blitzer heroin addict?
17.
Comrade Jake
Well that’s a “situation” if I’ve ever seen one, gosh darnit!
18.
jl
One of my theories as to why they do this stuff is that they dearly want the wingnut audience.
Because wingnuts are stupid and ultra gullible, and once you establish authoritarian credibility and they tribally identifify with your organization as one of the Good, they will do any damn thing you tell them.
Like buy all the worthless garbage shown in the 30% of the time devoted to advertisments for worthless garbage.
Good for profits.
Could that be it?
I’m wearing my corporate ‘management hat’ here, and trying to see if that idea works.
The problem with my theory is that intrepid journalists like Blitzer and King would never sell their integrity for a few pieces of silver. Or go hang themselves in the potter’s field of the informed and thinking population’s contempt and outrage. Would they? I ask you that.
Cable news is a fucking wasteland. Did anyone see the seg on MSNBC with Stephen Hadley. A big steamy pile of history revisionism on Iraq by this sociopath. Say what you will about the Bushies, but they were some world class pathological liars and could prolly sell firewood in Hell. And they might later on.
22.
jl
John Adams was a Unitarian who did not believe in the Trinity, was not a real Christian or a real conservative. His treachery in trying to undermine our Holy Revolution after the Boston Massacre will soon be revealed by Glenn Beck, who can diagram it out and connect it all through Van Jones.
He also did not like fancy financial corporate freedeom to take whatever they could, meaning he wanted to kill both your gramps. Just for evil wicked kicks and fun of it.
Everyone will know this soon. You watch.
He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. just like the Maoist oppressionist death and misery loving fascist progressive Teddy Roosevelt.
The conservatives are cleaning house, and the attic, and church graveyard, and we all better be with the sheep, not the goats!
It’s not like they were producing riveting, informative journalism before this proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back. They are watered down beltway tabloidists. And they’ve been that way for a long time.
They’ve been useless since before the invasion of Iraq, and the last time I felt anything less than nauseous about the way they do the news, was when Soledad O’Brien had her WTF moment with Michael Brown in the aftermath of Katrina.
Sometimes Rick Sanchez will neck punch some insane person, but they keep booking them! We get it! You’re not news, you’re a live feed of a Pinata being beaten. Phew that was cathartic, now let’s bring out the next Pinata, and let’s give it to Blitzer, who is going to talk to Eric Erickson and find out of the Republicans are going to be receptive to the White House’s statement today regarding…
Wyatt Cenac posited months ago, that it is all just the theatre of Pro-Wrestling, with Iron Sheik’s fans hating on the Ultimate Warrior’s, and vice versa. I got rid of cable years ago, and haven’t looked back since. Fuck them all.
/rant
24.
Zifnab
@Nick: I think the media wouldn’t do itself any favors rushing to the defense of the Bush Administration. That said, I think every day that goes by with Bush Admin officials skirting accountability is another day the GOoPer revisionists get to rewrite history.
When Reagen left office, he was plagued by scandal and the economy was rocked by the S&L crisis. His legacy was spared only by the absolute implosion of the Dukakis campaign, allowing Reagen to gain credit for extending the White House to Bush Sr and leveling Bush Sr with the blame for the inevitable collapse in ’92. Ten years later, the GOP wurlitzer had built Reagen’s administration up from two term political icon to Conservative Demigod. Past scandals were turned into badges of honor. Policy was completely ignored and charisma was hyper-inflated to a level Reagen himself would have only dreamed of. He went from Coolidge to Kennedy inside a decade.
I have no doubt the Bush history will be rewritten even more rapidly and with greater historical abandon. I’m sure we’ll be hearing how Bush tried to stop Clinton from fucking planning the 9/11 attacks in a couple of years, and how Iraq and Afghanistan were the crown jewels of the administration’s success. :-p
But they can’t do that shit with Nixon. He’s got a black market he can’t escape. He resigned and had to be pardoned by his VP. That’s the kind of history it’s much harder to shake off. Throwing Bush and his buddies through the legal ringer would generate a media circus and it would hyper-polarize the entire process. And when the case hit the SCOTUS (as it inevitably would), I have no doubt a 5-4 decision would clear the entire administration of all charges. But it would be a Gerald Ford pardon.
Throwing Bush and his buddies through the legal ringer would generate a media circus and it would hyper-polarize the entire process. And when the case hit the SCOTUS (as it inevitably would), I have no doubt a 5-4 decision would clear the entire administration of all charges. But it would be a Gerald Ford pardon.
I think that’s completely different. Gerald Ford’s pardon wasn’t a final judgment, it just prevented a final judgment from ever occurring. If the courts exonerate Bush Administration officials or the public throws out Obama and elects someone who will toss out the case, that doesn’t work the same as a pardon, a pardon can only occur if there has already been a judgment or a conviction is imminent. In this case, neither judgment or conviction would be imminent, they would’ve gotten acquitted…their crimes become justified and accepted as legal. We would have sanctioned their actions in a court of law. Nixon’s crimes weren’t justified and accepted by his pardon. Nixon’s pardon did not sanction his actions, only accepted them as criminal and moved on.
27.
Comrade Dread
I am so tired of fighting ‘conservatives’ who are so suspicious of government power that they’re willing to let the president unilaterally declare a person an enemy combatant and the Constitution no longer applies.
I’m so f***ing tired of debating small government, freedom loving conservatives who believe that if the government arrests you or accuses you of a crime, they can cage you and you don’t deserve a defense, basic human dignity or a trial.
And I’m really tired of everyone in power kissing these small government, freedom loving conservatives on the ass instead of calling out their hypocrisy, stupidity, and b***s***.
These brave, stalwart patriots who give up the protections others have died for in order to gain a little bit more security from the State so they can live out their miserable little spiteful lives.
A part of me, I regret, hopes that they live to see the results of their cowardice. That the State turns its attentions on one of their favored groups and they find themselves at its tender mercies of the monster they created.
These brave, stalwart patriots who give up the protections others have died for in order to gain a little bit more security from the State so they can live out their miserable little spiteful lives.
A part of me, I regret, hopes that they live to see the results of their cowardice. That the State turns its attentions on one of their favored groups and they find themselves at its tender mercies of the monster they created.
Someone here not too far back said:
[They]would be happy living homeless under a bridge cooking sparrows over a trash can fire, as long as the family under the next bridge over didn’t have any sparrows.
29.
J
In Glenn Greenwald’s coverage of this stirring moment in the history of American journalism he mentions that Wolf Blitzer has been awarded by Edward R. Murrow award. That in itself is an amazing indictment of our times.
30.
Blahblah
Cancel cable television. You’re paying MONEY to assholes who lie to you. If you hate the propaganda, stop paying for it!
A part of me, I regret, hopes that they live to see the results of their cowardice. That the State turns its attentions on one of their favored groups and they find themselves at its tender mercies of the monster they created.
In a small way, the experiment has already been run. Remember when Homeland Security released a report, originally commissioned by the Bush administration, saying that home-grown rightwing extremist groups might be worth keeping an eye on? The wingnuts started screaming like that peasant in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_: “Help, help, I’m being repressed!”.
-dms
33.
Alex S.
Cable news are irrelevant in the age of the internet. The audience will get older and more conservative. CNN tried to be the neutral force, but it doesn’t work. People don’t need cable news to be informed anymore. The news junkies use the internet now. So the use of cable news is to present a stage for popular pundits and to provide entertainment. That only works if you have got an opinion. And it is more lucrative to have the conservative opinion.
Wolf Blitzer did get Victoria Toensig to admit, right at the end of the interview, that the “Al Qaeda Seven” label was a bullshit tactic meant to get this out in the public eye.
__
Her argument was that why put people opposed to the system in charge of the system. I expect her crusade against the Bush Administration’s use of this to kick in any second now.
I’m sorry — did I fall into some parallel universe where Ms. Toensing’s party didn’t spend the last 35 years running for office on a platform of “the government is the problem?” Because in my universe, the Republicans keep asking to be put in charge of the system that they oppose.
35.
cathaireverywhere
I haven’t been able to read all of today’s comments, and therefore don’t know if anyone has mentioned it, but yet another conservative, anti-gay Republican has been caught with a young man. Oh, the irony! This idiot is from my area and it is so great to have his hypocrisy exposed. Seems to me that a closeted, self-hating gay man would do well to just avoid the topic of homosexuality, instead of coming out so stridently against it- would make it less newsworthy when he’s caught drunk driving in his state car accompanied by a young man. He is being termed out, and many have speculated what he will try to do next, since he has been in politics forever. After today, he may have to join Larry Craig in opening that thrift store.
36.
Comrade Dread
Yes, I remember. What I meant was the more Kafkaesque treatment of actually being imprisoned for years without recourse to courts or access to lawyers.
But I wouldn’t really wish that on anyone.
Hence why I am an outcast conservative/libertarian here instead of a raving lunatic over at RedState.
I actually like limits on government power, even if it means that people get to make choices I don’t agree with and the government has to actually prove someone did something bad before they lock them up forever.
Well, that, and I actually think society works better if you have real regulations governing the market and correcting negative externalities, strong infrastructure, and state/federal regulation of common resources.
And I’m actually willing to pay my damn taxes to fund it all.
37.
Eric U.
I wish I could choose my own cable channels. For one thing I’d get rid of the news republican propaganda channels and the religious republican propaganda channels.
38.
demimondian
@Eric U.: Yeah, but customer choice is UNAMERICAN!
39.
Joseph Nobles
Ah, yes, remember the days when someone who didn’t believe in the Trinity could help create this country and become President?
OT- anyone who reads Ed Brayton’s blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars over at Scienceblogs, he’s going to be on Maddow tonight.
He’s always about 36-48 hours behind everyone else in terms of catching bigger stories, but he often catches smaller, local, more ridiculous things that usually go unnoticed.
One of my theories as to why they do this stuff is that they dearly want the wingnut audience.
I’m sure they’d love it, but CNN doesn’t stand a chance. The people I know who watch FOX News still call it the Communist News Network even though it hasn’t been remotely liberal for a decade.
I see CNN dumbing it down like they did on Headline News, which consists of 24 hours of Nancy Grace screaming about child predators. That is, of course, if Larry King ever dies, which is a big if.
There’s a kind of odd but familiar dynamic at work here. The accuser sets the agenda with an accusation, however baseless. The issue then becomes whether the accusation is true, and the best that one can hope for is that some doubts be raised on this score. But the story somehow remains ‘Liberals bathe in blood of babes: true or false?’ and doesn’t become as it should, ‘scoundrels lie and slander to obscure the truth and advance their selfish interests’. What we really need is something like an old Perry Mason courtroom melodrama: not only are the blameless innocents completely vindicated, but their oh-so-upright and respectable seeming accusers turn out to be the true guilty parties. The real story is not, or shouldn’t be, ‘are public servants in the justice department in league with Al Quaeda, yes or no?’–something which there is not the slightest reason to suspect–but rather, as so often before, ‘are a group of utterly shameless people, utterly lacking in honor and without a scrap of decency, willing to tell any lie, spread any slander, to get their way (and will they get away with it)?’ To which the answer can only be a sad but resounding yes. Yet it will be those accused of witchcraft, not those leveling the fantastic accusations, over whom a shadow will hang.
I’m w. JGC. This is the kind of sh*t that makes me just want to give up.
Wolf Blitzer is a suit and a baritone and nothing more. There is something about the elite media that reminds me of the last days of Rome; my fear is that they bring the rest of us down with us.
48.
Leelee for Obama
I do not watch CNN after 3 PM, unless there is some sort of disaster. In those instances, they jump the gun, unforgivably, but if there is any real info to be had, somehow, they get it. I think it could be because they actually have a few field reporters who can get to these places and actually have some knowledge about where they are.
Anyhoo, Wolf Blitzer getting the Murrow award is truly proof that the Apocalypse may be nigher than we think.
Saw an interview that Ailes did with a National Review guy, and he actually admitted that Fox’ coverage of the Obama WH may indeed deserve some of the push-back they get! And yesterday, Broder told a truth, prolly by mistake, but there it was!
Well. This is an fascinating smear job we have going here.
Glad to see the media are climbing aboard, unquestioningly.
Again.
How long’s it been since they recklessly destroyed those ACORN employee’s reputations? 3 months? I guess it’s time to obliterate some more good people to placate the freaking bloodsuckers on the Right.
It won’t work though. Next week, next month, they’ll have identified another enemy.
You gotta wonder, though. Who’s next on the hit list?
Now there’s a poster child for birth control if ever i saw one. Has she ever done anything worth knowing about? I know I should remember her, but I can’t think from where!
57.
Mike E
@Mark S.:
I’m typing one-handed here! Give me a break.
58.
Mike Kay
Wolf Blitzer – 20th hijacker?
59.
ajr22
Its just a normal right wing move. They start saying something insanely ridiculous, but have the people on fox repeat it over and over. Then CNN comes in and says, “we should discuss what they are talking about”, and there you go you have rightwing bullshit inserted into the news cycle. The left could do this to its just not there style, look at Grayson.
CNN: Caliphatic Nutcase Network? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
62.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Has anyone in California been following this Chelsea King thing?
It seems wingnuts (and even a lot of moderates) are up in arms with “we need harsher punishments for sex offenders ZOMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!111!”. I think mandatory lifetime incarceration for sex offenders would be a great complement to our overrun three-strikes crazy prison system.
Clearly, a quixotic quest for absolute security is worth any price. ::sigh::
Ugh! I hated Victoria Jackson back when she was relevant. She seemed good at playing the sweet dipshit wife in sketches and that was about it. But never funny.
The sad thing about washed-up wingnut actors is that I could understand it if they were just trying to jumpstart their careers, but this guys are in it for the Cause.
64.
Mouse Tolliver
Campbell Brown is married to a Bush Administration official.
Howard Kurtz is married to a Republican strategist.
Rush Limbaugh’s girlfriend used to be one of CNN’s daytime anchors.
No one should be surprised by that chyron.
65.
Mike in NC
There’s a Commie Living In the White House
Victoria Jackson: Somebody with a Lower IQ than Sarah Palin
66.
ksmiami
All I can say is this – when the revolution comes, we’ll have the scientists on our side. These so-called tea bagging Repukes are total fu-wits who don’t deserve the benefits of the “liberty” they claim to be so supportive of. Not even 24 months into a different administration, they are acting like the whole American Experiment should be thrown out… I am sick of these fat ffers and if they start in the bloodlust, well, they will get what they deserve.
p.s. I really do not see how a 3% increase on marginal tax rates is a reason to end the Republic, but that is what these people are fighting 4… oh and to kill mooslims all over. Hmmm, I really do not think that they have thought this through…
67.
Leelee for Obama
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: Sorry, Gauche, but I have to disagree with you on this one. I haven’t seen any evidence that child predators can be rehabilitated. In fact, any evidence I have seen is to the contrary. If that’s the case, then life without parole makes sense. That’s not about a false sense of security, that’s protecting the most vulnerable in a society from known threats. As an opponent of the death penalty and most three-strike laws, to say nothing of the ridiculous laws for drug offenders who spend more time in prison than many violent criminals, this is not an opinion I come to lightly. But child sexual predators are a cancer that we can cure by removing them from the society where their victims live.
Wolf Blitzer forgot to mention that Ted Olsen — hardly a liberal — wrote an article that completely refutes Liz Cheney. He argued strongly that terrorists should have legal representation, and that DOJ should be prosecuting them…He argued that our rule of law is what separates us from other countries and should be respected and followed.
Exactly. And, what is also scary is that the media ignores voices of conservatives who actually do have principles, even if I don’t agree with them. Same thing happened before the Iraq war, when some prominant conservatives came out against the invasion, and they were completely marginalized by neocons and other extremists and crazies like Cheney, who just wanted to invade.
72.
El Cid
People who believe that defendants should have legal counsel are un-American and un-Constitutional, according to the document which exists in my head.
Oh, I agree totally if you conflate sex offender=child predator. But “sex offender” encompasses a lot of criminals that aren’t child predators. The problem I have is that laws in CA seem to want to treat them as equivalent “just to be safe”.
Wolf Blitzer forgot to mention that Ted Olsen—hardly a liberal—wrote an article that completely refutes Liz Cheney. He argued strongly that terrorists should have legal representation, and that DOJ should be prosecuting them…He argued that our rule of law is what separates us from other countries and should be respected and followed.
Not only is Ted Olson a true-blue conservative — he argued for Bush in Bush v. Gore and he served as the Soliciter General for the first four years of President Bush’s administration — but he’s got more reason than most to hate al Qaeda. He became a widower on September 11 when terrorists crashed the plane on which his wife was a passenger into the Pentagon. In any just world, the fact that he is standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law would shame people like Liz Cheney into silence.
In any just world, the fact that he is standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law would shame people like Liz Cheney into silence.
The problem is that the Liz Cheneys of this world can not be shamed. While they are crapping on the one document that is supposed to provide the foundation for everything this country stands for, people for whom they care nothing will defend them. And so they are empowered by the very people they endanger.
I sometimes feel such despair, it breaks my heart.
But Ted Olson is obviously an unserious wild-eyed radical. He tried to represent the case against Prop 8. Obviously that erases all his conservative legal credentials.
OMG. I forgot that Olsen’s wife died on 9/11. This makes what Liz Cheney is doing is more disgusting. And, the fact that CNN never interviewed him even more despictable.
And yet, I’m sad to report, Liz Cheney’s group has Debra Burlingame sitting on the board, whose brother Chuck was the pilot of Flight 77, the plane Barbara Olson was on. So in the minds of a wingnut, it all balances out.
@Eric U.: This is one reason I don’t have cable. ComCast door-to-door dude gave me this long, incoherent reason why I can’t buy three or four channels, and the answer was pretty much, “We support sockulism.” Really. Some of the eleven-billionty channels don’t make money (imagine that), so I have to pay over a hundred bucks a month for three channels so the other channels don’t go broke. No thanks!
This bullshit is bullshit of the first order. Good fucking god.
82.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: For this reason I have a PC hooked up to the TV and simply watch the Daily Show and Colbert and Rachel Maddow and Countdown via their podcasts / Hulu, which also have the benefit of no commercials.
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Mike Kay
The pod people have taken over cnn.
during the HCR summit, they would only cut away for commercials and “analysis” when democrats were speaking.
ItAintEazy
Wait, you didn’t see that question mark at the end? That just means, ya know, SOME people say that maybe they ought to call themselves the “Dept. of Jihad” and it would be irresponsible not to report that gossip.
But yeah, they’re not making me regret giving up cable three years back.
Julia Grey
Gad.
I can’t think of anything else to say. Just….just…
.
ItAintEazy
Wait, you didn’t see that question mark at the end? That just means, ya know, SOME people say that maybe they ought to call themselves the “Dept. of Jihad” and it would be irresponsible not to report that gossip.
But yeah, they’re not making me regret giving up cable three years back.
Nick
This is why I defend my belief that putting Bush Administration officials on trial would be a terrible idea.
With the media defending them, we’d be out of power before any possible conviction and they’d easily have their cases thrown out or be pardoned with the complete support of the media and the American people and given lucrative jobs in the Pawlenty Administration.
And we’d be left wondering if there’s any decency left in our country. Can we just be happy we elected a guy who doesn’t continue their crimes?
Zifnab
Wow. Classy indeed.
JGabriel
The Politico ups the inanity: White House Replaces Bush-Era Cups:
Interior liner 99% post-consumer … Eew?
Seriously, Politico? You actually assigned a reporter to write about the White House’s paper cups?
Fuckwits.
.
Radon Chong
Free the Al Qaeda 7!
Also, too: @JGabriel: I see what you did there.
danimal
Words fail.
When do these innocent mistakes ever make conservatives look bad?
Next, they’ll put a (D) beside the name of the next GOP scandal-tarred congresscritter. Then we’ll know they have graduated the Fox School of Propaganda.
lamh31
Age gap
Poll: Obama tops 42 among youth
Joseph Nobles
Wolf Blitzer did get Victoria Toensig to admit, right at the end of the interview, that the “Al Qaeda Seven” label was a bullshit tactic meant to get this out in the public eye.
Her argument was that why put people opposed to the system in charge of the system. I expect her crusade against the Bush Administration’s use of this to kick in any second now.
PS: Continuing my one-man campaign to get these servants of the law called the John Adams Seven. Please help!
Elisabeth
@lamh31:
Obama’s trying to kill granny. Of course, they’d be unhappy about that (except some grandpas).
jharp
Republican free market health care reform. Finally.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/03/mich-man-charged-with-performing-circumcisions-on-adult-males-without-a-license/1
demkat620
@JGabriel: He replaced the cups? Oh jesus will somebody please impeach this motherfucker now?
Will no one think of the children?
Elisabeth
@JGabriel:
heh. I thought it had something to do with bras. I was confused, especially by the post-consumer interior lining stuff.
Mike Kay
Wolf Blitzer serial child rapist?
Wolf Blitzer Chinese spy?
Wolf Blitzer wears women’s underwear?
Wolf Blitzer heroin addict?
Comrade Jake
Well that’s a “situation” if I’ve ever seen one, gosh darnit!
jl
One of my theories as to why they do this stuff is that they dearly want the wingnut audience.
Because wingnuts are stupid and ultra gullible, and once you establish authoritarian credibility and they tribally identifify with your organization as one of the Good, they will do any damn thing you tell them.
Like buy all the worthless garbage shown in the 30% of the time devoted to advertisments for worthless garbage.
Good for profits.
Could that be it?
I’m wearing my corporate ‘management hat’ here, and trying to see if that idea works.
The problem with my theory is that intrepid journalists like Blitzer and King would never sell their integrity for a few pieces of silver. Or go hang themselves in the potter’s field of the informed and thinking population’s contempt and outrage. Would they? I ask you that.
Allan
@Mike Kay: It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
JGabriel
@Mike Kay: Jihadi Blitzer?
.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Cable news is a fucking wasteland. Did anyone see the seg on MSNBC with Stephen Hadley. A big steamy pile of history revisionism on Iraq by this sociopath. Say what you will about the Bushies, but they were some world class pathological liars and could prolly sell firewood in Hell. And they might later on.
jl
John Adams was a Unitarian who did not believe in the Trinity, was not a real Christian or a real conservative. His treachery in trying to undermine our Holy Revolution after the Boston Massacre will soon be revealed by Glenn Beck, who can diagram it out and connect it all through Van Jones.
He also did not like fancy financial corporate freedeom to take whatever they could, meaning he wanted to kill both your gramps. Just for evil wicked kicks and fun of it.
Everyone will know this soon. You watch.
He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. just like the Maoist oppressionist death and misery loving fascist progressive Teddy Roosevelt.
The conservatives are cleaning house, and the attic, and church graveyard, and we all better be with the sheep, not the goats!
freelancer
Is CNN good for anything though?
It’s not like they were producing riveting, informative journalism before this proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back. They are watered down beltway tabloidists. And they’ve been that way for a long time.
They’ve been useless since before the invasion of Iraq, and the last time I felt anything less than nauseous about the way they do the news, was when Soledad O’Brien had her WTF moment with Michael Brown in the aftermath of Katrina.
Sometimes Rick Sanchez will neck punch some insane person, but they keep booking them! We get it! You’re not news, you’re a live feed of a Pinata being beaten. Phew that was cathartic, now let’s bring out the next Pinata, and let’s give it to Blitzer, who is going to talk to Eric Erickson and find out of the Republicans are going to be receptive to the White House’s statement today regarding…
Wyatt Cenac posited months ago, that it is all just the theatre of Pro-Wrestling, with Iron Sheik’s fans hating on the Ultimate Warrior’s, and vice versa. I got rid of cable years ago, and haven’t looked back since. Fuck them all.
/rant
Zifnab
@Nick: I think the media wouldn’t do itself any favors rushing to the defense of the Bush Administration. That said, I think every day that goes by with Bush Admin officials skirting accountability is another day the GOoPer revisionists get to rewrite history.
When Reagen left office, he was plagued by scandal and the economy was rocked by the S&L crisis. His legacy was spared only by the absolute implosion of the Dukakis campaign, allowing Reagen to gain credit for extending the White House to Bush Sr and leveling Bush Sr with the blame for the inevitable collapse in ’92. Ten years later, the GOP wurlitzer had built Reagen’s administration up from two term political icon to Conservative Demigod. Past scandals were turned into badges of honor. Policy was completely ignored and charisma was hyper-inflated to a level Reagen himself would have only dreamed of. He went from Coolidge to Kennedy inside a decade.
I have no doubt the Bush history will be rewritten even more rapidly and with greater historical abandon. I’m sure we’ll be hearing how Bush tried to stop Clinton from fucking planning the 9/11 attacks in a couple of years, and how Iraq and Afghanistan were the crown jewels of the administration’s success. :-p
But they can’t do that shit with Nixon. He’s got a black market he can’t escape. He resigned and had to be pardoned by his VP. That’s the kind of history it’s much harder to shake off. Throwing Bush and his buddies through the legal ringer would generate a media circus and it would hyper-polarize the entire process. And when the case hit the SCOTUS (as it inevitably would), I have no doubt a 5-4 decision would clear the entire administration of all charges. But it would be a Gerald Ford pardon.
Nick
@freelancer:
Serving as a mouthpiece for neocons to brainwash undecided, moderate, independent voters?
Nick
@Zifnab:
I think that’s completely different. Gerald Ford’s pardon wasn’t a final judgment, it just prevented a final judgment from ever occurring. If the courts exonerate Bush Administration officials or the public throws out Obama and elects someone who will toss out the case, that doesn’t work the same as a pardon, a pardon can only occur if there has already been a judgment or a conviction is imminent. In this case, neither judgment or conviction would be imminent, they would’ve gotten acquitted…their crimes become justified and accepted as legal. We would have sanctioned their actions in a court of law. Nixon’s crimes weren’t justified and accepted by his pardon. Nixon’s pardon did not sanction his actions, only accepted them as criminal and moved on.
Comrade Dread
I am so tired of fighting ‘conservatives’ who are so suspicious of government power that they’re willing to let the president unilaterally declare a person an enemy combatant and the Constitution no longer applies.
I’m so f***ing tired of debating small government, freedom loving conservatives who believe that if the government arrests you or accuses you of a crime, they can cage you and you don’t deserve a defense, basic human dignity or a trial.
And I’m really tired of everyone in power kissing these small government, freedom loving conservatives on the ass instead of calling out their hypocrisy, stupidity, and b***s***.
These brave, stalwart patriots who give up the protections others have died for in order to gain a little bit more security from the State so they can live out their miserable little spiteful lives.
A part of me, I regret, hopes that they live to see the results of their cowardice. That the State turns its attentions on one of their favored groups and they find themselves at its tender mercies of the monster they created.
freelancer
@Comrade Dread:
Someone here not too far back said:
J
In Glenn Greenwald’s coverage of this stirring moment in the history of American journalism he mentions that Wolf Blitzer has been awarded by Edward R. Murrow award. That in itself is an amazing indictment of our times.
Blahblah
Cancel cable television. You’re paying MONEY to assholes who lie to you. If you hate the propaganda, stop paying for it!
Mike Kay
@J: any coverage of this at GOS?
dmsilev
@Comrade Dread:
In a small way, the experiment has already been run. Remember when Homeland Security released a report, originally commissioned by the Bush administration, saying that home-grown rightwing extremist groups might be worth keeping an eye on? The wingnuts started screaming like that peasant in _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_: “Help, help, I’m being repressed!”.
-dms
Alex S.
Cable news are irrelevant in the age of the internet. The audience will get older and more conservative. CNN tried to be the neutral force, but it doesn’t work. People don’t need cable news to be informed anymore. The news junkies use the internet now. So the use of cable news is to present a stage for popular pundits and to provide entertainment. That only works if you have got an opinion. And it is more lucrative to have the conservative opinion.
JasonF
@Joseph Nobles:
I’m sorry — did I fall into some parallel universe where Ms. Toensing’s party didn’t spend the last 35 years running for office on a platform of “the government is the problem?” Because in my universe, the Republicans keep asking to be put in charge of the system that they oppose.
cathaireverywhere
I haven’t been able to read all of today’s comments, and therefore don’t know if anyone has mentioned it, but yet another conservative, anti-gay Republican has been caught with a young man. Oh, the irony! This idiot is from my area and it is so great to have his hypocrisy exposed. Seems to me that a closeted, self-hating gay man would do well to just avoid the topic of homosexuality, instead of coming out so stridently against it- would make it less newsworthy when he’s caught drunk driving in his state car accompanied by a young man. He is being termed out, and many have speculated what he will try to do next, since he has been in politics forever. After today, he may have to join Larry Craig in opening that thrift store.
Comrade Dread
Yes, I remember. What I meant was the more Kafkaesque treatment of actually being imprisoned for years without recourse to courts or access to lawyers.
But I wouldn’t really wish that on anyone.
Hence why I am an outcast conservative/libertarian here instead of a raving lunatic over at RedState.
I actually like limits on government power, even if it means that people get to make choices I don’t agree with and the government has to actually prove someone did something bad before they lock them up forever.
Well, that, and I actually think society works better if you have real regulations governing the market and correcting negative externalities, strong infrastructure, and state/federal regulation of common resources.
And I’m actually willing to pay my damn taxes to fund it all.
Eric U.
I wish I could choose my own cable channels. For one thing I’d get rid of the news republican propaganda channels and the religious republican propaganda channels.
demimondian
@Eric U.: Yeah, but customer choice is UNAMERICAN!
Joseph Nobles
Ah, yes, remember the days when someone who didn’t believe in the Trinity could help create this country and become President?
freelancer
OT- anyone who reads Ed Brayton’s blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars over at Scienceblogs, he’s going to be on Maddow tonight.
He’s always about 36-48 hours behind everyone else in terms of catching bigger stories, but he often catches smaller, local, more ridiculous things that usually go unnoticed.
Mark S.
@jl:
I’m sure they’d love it, but CNN doesn’t stand a chance. The people I know who watch FOX News still call it the Communist News Network even though it hasn’t been remotely liberal for a decade.
I see CNN dumbing it down like they did on Headline News, which consists of 24 hours of Nancy Grace screaming about child predators. That is, of course, if Larry King ever dies, which is a big if.
Mike Kay
@Mark S.:
Larry king IS dead. He’s just part of the undead.
AhabTRuler
@Mike Kay: Wolf Blitzer: moronic asshat!
J
There’s a kind of odd but familiar dynamic at work here. The accuser sets the agenda with an accusation, however baseless. The issue then becomes whether the accusation is true, and the best that one can hope for is that some doubts be raised on this score. But the story somehow remains ‘Liberals bathe in blood of babes: true or false?’ and doesn’t become as it should, ‘scoundrels lie and slander to obscure the truth and advance their selfish interests’. What we really need is something like an old Perry Mason courtroom melodrama: not only are the blameless innocents completely vindicated, but their oh-so-upright and respectable seeming accusers turn out to be the true guilty parties. The real story is not, or shouldn’t be, ‘are public servants in the justice department in league with Al Quaeda, yes or no?’–something which there is not the slightest reason to suspect–but rather, as so often before, ‘are a group of utterly shameless people, utterly lacking in honor and without a scrap of decency, willing to tell any lie, spread any slander, to get their way (and will they get away with it)?’ To which the answer can only be a sad but resounding yes. Yet it will be those accused of witchcraft, not those leveling the fantastic accusations, over whom a shadow will hang.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
OT
Don’t know what to make of this. Shooting at Pentagon, or near it.
Mike E
@freelancer:
Short answer: self-abuse.
thomas Levenson
I’m w. JGC. This is the kind of sh*t that makes me just want to give up.
Wolf Blitzer is a suit and a baritone and nothing more. There is something about the elite media that reminds me of the last days of Rome; my fear is that they bring the rest of us down with us.
Leelee for Obama
I do not watch CNN after 3 PM, unless there is some sort of disaster. In those instances, they jump the gun, unforgivably, but if there is any real info to be had, somehow, they get it. I think it could be because they actually have a few field reporters who can get to these places and actually have some knowledge about where they are.
Anyhoo, Wolf Blitzer getting the Murrow award is truly proof that the Apocalypse may be nigher than we think.
Saw an interview that Ailes did with a National Review guy, and he actually admitted that Fox’ coverage of the Obama WH may indeed deserve some of the push-back they get! And yesterday, Broder told a truth, prolly by mistake, but there it was!
Makes me wonder if 2012 was just an estimate…..
freelancer
@Mike E:
I already met the quota on that, long time ago.
Cain
@Comrade Dread:
Dirty hippy. I can smell your patchoulie stink from here.
cain
kay
Well. This is an fascinating smear job we have going here.
Glad to see the media are climbing aboard, unquestioningly.
Again.
How long’s it been since they recklessly destroyed those ACORN employee’s reputations? 3 months? I guess it’s time to obliterate some more good people to placate the freaking bloodsuckers on the Right.
It won’t work though. Next week, next month, they’ll have identified another enemy.
You gotta wonder, though. Who’s next on the hit list?
Mark S.
@Mike E:
Anyone who jacks off to CNN has a very sad life. A very sad, tragic life.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Talk about Classy. From our Really Weird Shit file (comedy section) at the Bj Superficial Department.
There’s a Commie Living In the White House
For you wingnut art lovers out there.
Cain
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I wonder if the right wingers will make the same jokes they made when that guy ran his airplane into an IRS building.
cain
jeffreyw
@freelancer:
There’s a quota? I thought age was the upper limit.
Leelee for Obama
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Now there’s a poster child for birth control if ever i saw one. Has she ever done anything worth knowing about? I know I should remember her, but I can’t think from where!
Mike E
@Mark S.:
I’m typing one-handed here! Give me a break.
Mike Kay
Wolf Blitzer – 20th hijacker?
ajr22
Its just a normal right wing move. They start saying something insanely ridiculous, but have the people on fox repeat it over and over. Then CNN comes in and says, “we should discuss what they are talking about”, and there you go you have rightwing bullshit inserted into the news cycle. The left could do this to its just not there style, look at Grayson.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Leelee for Obama:
A little background on Ms. Jackson
Tonal Crow
CNN: Caliphatic Nutcase Network? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Has anyone in California been following this Chelsea King thing?
It seems wingnuts (and even a lot of moderates) are up in arms with “we need harsher punishments for sex offenders ZOMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!111!”. I think mandatory lifetime incarceration for sex offenders would be a great complement to our overrun three-strikes crazy prison system.
Clearly, a quixotic quest for absolute security is worth any price. ::sigh::
AhabTRuler
Ugh! I hated Victoria Jackson back when she was relevant. She seemed good at playing the sweet dipshit wife in sketches and that was about it. But never funny.
The sad thing about washed-up wingnut actors is that I could understand it if they were just trying to jumpstart their careers, but this guys are in it for the Cause.
Mouse Tolliver
Campbell Brown is married to a Bush Administration official.
Howard Kurtz is married to a Republican strategist.
Rush Limbaugh’s girlfriend used to be one of CNN’s daytime anchors.
No one should be surprised by that chyron.
Mike in NC
Victoria Jackson: Somebody with a Lower IQ than Sarah Palin
ksmiami
All I can say is this – when the revolution comes, we’ll have the scientists on our side. These so-called tea bagging Repukes are total fu-wits who don’t deserve the benefits of the “liberty” they claim to be so supportive of. Not even 24 months into a different administration, they are acting like the whole American Experiment should be thrown out… I am sick of these fat ffers and if they start in the bloodlust, well, they will get what they deserve.
p.s. I really do not see how a 3% increase on marginal tax rates is a reason to end the Republic, but that is what these people are fighting 4… oh and to kill mooslims all over. Hmmm, I really do not think that they have thought this through…
Leelee for Obama
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: Sorry, Gauche, but I have to disagree with you on this one. I haven’t seen any evidence that child predators can be rehabilitated. In fact, any evidence I have seen is to the contrary. If that’s the case, then life without parole makes sense. That’s not about a false sense of security, that’s protecting the most vulnerable in a society from known threats. As an opponent of the death penalty and most three-strike laws, to say nothing of the ridiculous laws for drug offenders who spend more time in prison than many violent criminals, this is not an opinion I come to lightly. But child sexual predators are a cancer that we can cure by removing them from the society where their victims live.
Svensker
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
OMG.
Annie
Wolf Blitzer forgot to mention that Ted Olsen — hardly a liberal — wrote an article that completely refutes Liz Cheney. He argued strongly that terrorists should have legal representation, and that DOJ should be prosecuting them…He argued that our rule of law is what separates us from other countries and should be respected and followed.
Mark S.
@Annie:
What’s scary is the GOP no longer feels the need to have beards like Olsen.
Annie
@Mark S.:
Exactly. And, what is also scary is that the media ignores voices of conservatives who actually do have principles, even if I don’t agree with them. Same thing happened before the Iraq war, when some prominant conservatives came out against the invasion, and they were completely marginalized by neocons and other extremists and crazies like Cheney, who just wanted to invade.
El Cid
People who believe that defendants should have legal counsel are un-American and un-Constitutional, according to the document which exists in my head.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Leelee for Obama:
Oh, I agree totally if you conflate sex offender=child predator. But “sex offender” encompasses a lot of criminals that aren’t child predators. The problem I have is that laws in CA seem to want to treat them as equivalent “just to be safe”.
JasonF
@Annie:
Not only is Ted Olson a true-blue conservative — he argued for Bush in Bush v. Gore and he served as the Soliciter General for the first four years of President Bush’s administration — but he’s got more reason than most to hate al Qaeda. He became a widower on September 11 when terrorists crashed the plane on which his wife was a passenger into the Pentagon. In any just world, the fact that he is standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law would shame people like Liz Cheney into silence.
Leelee for Obama
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason: Point taken.
Leelee for Obama
The problem is that the Liz Cheneys of this world can not be shamed. While they are crapping on the one document that is supposed to provide the foundation for everything this country stands for, people for whom they care nothing will defend them. And so they are empowered by the very people they endanger.
I sometimes feel such despair, it breaks my heart.
Kryptik
@JasonF:
But Ted Olson is obviously an unserious wild-eyed radical. He tried to represent the case against Prop 8. Obviously that erases all his conservative legal credentials.
Michael D.
I know!! It’s completely BULLSHIT that Continental offers more legroom.
CNN, DO YOUR RESEARCH!!!
What a fucking joke.
Annie
@JasonF:
OMG. I forgot that Olsen’s wife died on 9/11. This makes what Liz Cheney is doing is more disgusting. And, the fact that CNN never interviewed him even more despictable.
Joseph Nobles
@Annie:
And yet, I’m sad to report, Liz Cheney’s group has Debra Burlingame sitting on the board, whose brother Chuck was the pilot of Flight 77, the plane Barbara Olson was on. So in the minds of a wingnut, it all balances out.
asiangrrlMN
Why no Cavuto mark tag on this post?
@Eric U.: This is one reason I don’t have cable. ComCast door-to-door dude gave me this long, incoherent reason why I can’t buy three or four channels, and the answer was pretty much, “We support sockulism.” Really. Some of the eleven-billionty channels don’t make money (imagine that), so I have to pay over a hundred bucks a month for three channels so the other channels don’t go broke. No thanks!
This bullshit is bullshit of the first order. Good fucking god.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: For this reason I have a PC hooked up to the TV and simply watch the Daily Show and Colbert and Rachel Maddow and Countdown via their podcasts / Hulu, which also have the benefit of no commercials.