13
Oct
Tinkerbell’s Taskmasters
Bob Ney has plead guilty, further exposing the depths of corruption in the GOP, and Red State, the blog for conservatives and conservative thought, is silent. Well, they are cheering about Air America going bankrupt.
Clap louder.
JWeidner
Not much of a surprise there. Just goes to show you how seriously they take their Republican cred. When all else fails…LOOK! Something shiny!
On a more positive note, it’s 4:25 Pacific time, and the A’s are down to their last 2 outs in Game 3. Go Detroit! (No, I’m not a Detroit fan…I just REALLY despise the A’s)
Pb
They were cheering about that last month—actually, they were proclaiming that Air America was bankrupt and shutting down, which was funny… it was news to Franken, at least, he was still on the air, and they were still paying him…
Proud Liberal
hmmmm… and looks like Curt Weldon has a little problem:
The FBI, which opened an investigation in recent months, has formally referred the matter to the department’s Public Integrity Section for additional scrutiny. At issue are Weldon’s efforts between 2002 and 2004 to aid two Russian companies and two Serbian brothers with ties to strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a federal law enforcement official said.
and of course we have another Gay Republican congressman in trouble for being unable to keep his hands off of 16 year old pages:
The Dems said months ago they were going to run on the “culture of corruption”. Seems like its working out for them.
jaime
Air America is STILL on the air and isn’t going anywhere. Do the mouth breathers at Red State know that?
John Cole
LOL proud liberal. I was writing a post about Weldon while you were commenting…
Proud Liberal
please…. the wingnuts have nothing.. nothing to cheer about. Scandals breaking out everywhere. Congressman under investigation, getting indicted and going to jail. Poll numbers plummeting. Woodwards Book. NIE out. The book that quotes Rove as calling the Christian right as “nuts”. Shays saying Abu Gahrib was just a little national guard sex ring. Everythign is going to shit for them. The war in Iraq imploding right before our eyes. Highest tool of casualties in a long long time. Afghanistan going in the wrong direction. North Korea thumbing its nose at us (btw we just detected radiation from the site so it was a nuke). Can it get any worse for the right? so.. let them enjoy the fact that Air America has been a financial loser. That will make them feel better.
Proud Liberal
John my sympathies for you or any blogger.. keeping up with Republican wrongdoing is getting to be quite time consuming I imagine.
Tsulagi
Took a look at the Red State post and had to agree with this: “Limbaugh created a product which they people wanted.” Using Bush English no less.
Yeah, Limbaugh gives them something to parrot so the right side of their brain doesn’t have to work. Now if they could get Dobson on radio, they could take care of the left side. Mission Accomplished…completely brain dead.
DougJ
It’s Clinton’s fault.
Perry Como
DougJ Says:
If it weren’t for Clinton’s disgrace of the office of the President, we wouldn’t see so many problems in DC today.
BannedByRedState!
it was news to Franken, at least, he was still on the air, and they were still paying him…
Actually, “Alan Franken, Inc.” claimed that AAR owed him money, and that’s born out by the BK doc, which appears to have him owed two months worth of pay.
Others owed include a couple people who look like they could be office staff ($200 and $700).
Another creditor: Mike_Piazza to the tune of $300.
Details on that here.
As for Red_State, they used to have a wide range of opinions, but after they started their .com/.org sites they appear to have switched into full-on GOP hack mode. Since the Domonech thing I haven’t seen too many mentions of them, so perhaps deciding to be complete hacks isn’t good for the credibility. Of course, I’m biased since I was one of those purged despite having a diary with around 75 entries.
Brian
Perry Como has a point. Clearly, when Clinton slept with Lewinsky, Bush had to invade Iraq and do it badly.
It’s as clear as 1+1=Clinton’s fault.
CaseyL
Well, there ain’t a whole lot for that collection of numbnuts to cheer about these days, yanno.
Screw ‘em. If the Dems take the House and Senate, they can have their stupid little party about Air America going bankrupt.
stickler
I’m looking forward to the day when President Hillary Clinton uses the newfound Unitary Executive powers to round up every one of those mouthbreathing bastards at Redstate. She’ll send their sorry asses to Gitmo, have them waterboarded until they admit to being the submissive love slaves of Osama, and then she’ll have them remanded to Syria.
And then she’ll issue a signing statement to an unrelated Forest Service bill, providing free abortions on demand to every illegal immigrant in the country.
Which will really make them howl in their Syrian spider-cages.
stickler
Wait. Free abortions to illegal immigrants … Hmmm. The neo-Confederates at Redstate might not oppose that, now that I think about it.
JC
Hey John,
While I’m a pragmatic liberal – not deeply progressive in any sense, but liberal – I would love if you could put on your conservative mindset and lecture us liberals on a good way to be CONSERVATIVE in your estimation of the political struggle – or at least a proper attitude to 2006 elections.
For myself, I don’t think we should get overexcited. “you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em”, and too many sites are getting giddy about Dem’s chances. Which I think is a bad thing.
I am thinking that this is a conserative trait – better to go forward doing your best, while expecting the worst (and PLANNING for the worst – being prepared) and then being pleasantly surprised if it is better than a decidedly cynical view.
But even though I “know” this, inside, I can feel part of myself doing the – “yay, we are going to win the House and Senate – wheee!”
There is something “not” reality-based about liberal prognosticating, I’m beginning to believe.
MyDD – the polling site for progressives – put all this effort into unseating Lieberman. And Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller wrote a few posts completely writing off Lieberman, after Lamont won the election.
I could not get my head around that liberal progressive triumphalism, that Lieberman was finished.
Now, don’t mistake me – I was glad that the “see no evil or mistakes in Iraq” Senator from Connecticut lost to Lamont. But I still thought he had a great chance for victory, and said so over there. (Half of Democrats, 80% of independents, most Republicans is going to be a Lamont victory – HOW???)
Kos is still holding out hasn’t given in to the “typical liberal” euphoria. But Bowers is starting to “lose his shit” thinking he (democrats) hold such a great hand. (Bowers clearly isn’t a poker player!) This is so even after the Democratic disappointments in 2000, 2002, 2004, and already being wrong this month about Lieberman.
So use your powers of a REAL conservative’s objective observation (which I think you still identify yourself as) – to give some advice to the Democrats who DO lose touch with reality, regarding attitude and temperament in these days before the 2006 elections.
Ugh
The propert name for Redstate is Bizarro World.
BannedByRedState!
stickler makes a common mistake in thinking that the GOP leadership or their lapdogs are opposed to illegal immigration. Most of my diary entries and comments at RS were about II, and occasionally – especially when I called Bush on a lie – were met with fierce opposition. (Of course, the Dem Party also supports II for a related set of corrupt reasons).
HH
“he was still on the air, and they were still paying him…”
Not according to the documents I’ve seen.
HH
“The Dems said months ago they were going to run on the ‘culture of corruption’. Seems like its working out for them.”
As long as you pay no attention to the guy leading them in the Senate anyway.
Steve
Isn’t it great? Ken Mehlman, who worked closely with Jack Abramoff for over a decade, who got political appointees fired at Abramoff’s behest, only has to send out an email calling Harry Reid “the leader of the Abramoff Dems” and the unthinking partisans are all like “ha! Democrats are the real corrupt ones!” Not to mention they heard there was this story about Harry Reid that said, uh, something that sounded vaguely sinister, and what more proof do you need?
Every successful movement needs its know-nothing followers, but that doesn’t make it any less striking to watch them in action.
RSA
To paraphrase rightwing talking points, the real question is how long the Republican leadership knew about the Reid situation but said nothing.
demimondian
Yeah, but since Frist is on his way out, anyway, his behavior really isn’t terribly interesting.
lard lad
As long as you pay no attention to the guy leading them in the Senate anyway.
Yawn. Oh, man, these repeated attempts to tar Harry Reid for trifling “irregularities”... taking money from “Jack Abramoff’s clients” (i.e. the Indian tribes Abramoff was fleecing), the free boxing ticket foofaraw, and now this silly land deal so-called scandal… they’re getting as boring and pointless as DHS terror alerts.
Seriously, HH… if this is the smelliest muck you guys have to sling at the Demos, then it’s no damn wonder that the GOP is coming apart at the seams.
Otto Man
It’s no use commenting on this administration’s many foreign policy failures when Michael Moore is still fat. Fat fat fat.
demimondian
Oh, by the way, Hewitt…great jacklope, dope. Pity that it isn’t working, isn’t it. Do you think the Dems are going to pull off a 1994-esque repudiation of the prez, or is it going to be more like 1982?
Crank
C’mon John, we front-paged this the day the news of the guilty plea came down. What’s even newsworthy about the latest announcement? “News flash: Bob Ney is still a crook”?
Steven Foley
John,
You must have missed these:
Bob Ney deigns not to seek reelection
Abramoff Nailed
Out of the frying pan and into the slammer…
Hardly silent!
What a shock a partisan conservative web site took a shot at Air America
Chris
It’s unfortunate that neither Mr. Cole nor most of the commenters here seem to have actually taken the time to review what’s been frontpaged at RedState on the issue of Bob Ney and political corruption in general… while it’s easier to cast about assertions which jive with one’s preconceived notions, we really need political discourse that rises above such actions. (And yes, I do try to act in such a manner myself.)
monkeybreath
RedState, so far as I can tell, does not even pretend to be open to debate. Its charter is to promote the GOP agenda (whatever that is these days). If you are not with that program, they ban you.
Beyond that, they ban you if you make them feel insecure or inadequate. Given that the ruling clique is a bunch of poseur lightweights mixed in with a busted plagiarist, you can get them blowing spittle out the corners of their mouths simply by questioning their facts.
In fact, spend just a bit of time there, and you get the definite sensation that the governing junta gets their sense of importance in this world by banning those who haven’t bathed in the kool aid.
In response to John’s post, they dug up some old posts as proof of how open they are to dissenting views and criticism of corruption in their own party. Yeah, right.
Charles Bird
John, you’re simply wrong on the facts, and Leon didn’t even bring up this post. I can’t think of a single Redstater who thought Ney should stay in office after his conviction.
Darleen
Proud Liberal
The two teens on a rafting trip with Kolbe were there as part of a group.
and you thing something was untoward because …heck, no one should trust Gay men around adolescent males?
And liberals go after The Boy Scouts as “homophobic” because they don’t want gay Scout leaders because of gay men alone with adolescent males in the woods???
What set of talking points are you working on today?
Chris
Monkeybreath,
RedState defends conservatism, not the GOP, as is evident in the many, many times RedState diarists and editors have criticized GOP leadership.
But if you actually read the site instead of what others say about it, you’d know that.
Pb
If only they had—conservatism could have used some defending, too:
“The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive,” concludes Scalia.
Oops.
Unfortunately, I have read the site. I even posted there once, long ago, hence, I already know far too much about it already—what it once was, what it could have been, what it now isn’t, and what it never will be—and more’s the pity.
monkeybreath
Chris:
Whatever. If you think the agenda they are promoting is a conservative agenda, then you probably think that record deficits, reckless nation building, humongous expansions of federal entitlements, systemized governmental corruption, and enabling powerful pederasts are conservative action points. They are a bunch of chickenhawk wankers sucking up to those in power, and principles, conservative or not, are not part of the equation.
monkeybreath
Chris:
I do sometimes read the site, although if my doctor knew he would forbid it due to its impact on my blood pressure (I didn’t spend decades helping to build the conservative movement only to have it turn into Redstate).
The thing they do well is present polling data pretty thoughtfully. They are not so result oriented there, and both on the main site and the satellite polls site they can be worth reading if you want to know what polls are out and what they probably really indicate.
On everything else, many of their blog entries are light weight, but that’s pretty standard for any group blog site working with amateur talent. They also have a strong neocon warmongering bent, but that’s a matter of personal taste, I suppose. Where they move below the norm is in the comments section, where rather than reasoned discussion the mission is banning anyone who has a divergent viewpoint. They have developed an unhealthy culture there, and it hurts the site.
In your heart, you know I’m right. Ten to one you self censor your posts there because you aren’t ready to be banned.
Krempasky
decades, eh? how so?
monkeybreath
Don’t worry about me, Mike. Go get with your Edelman buds and slap up another fake citizen blog for Walmart – or is that what you are already doing at Redstate? Pretending to be all grass roots and cashing the corporate check? Inquiring minds . . .
Krempasky
Well, monkey what a pleasant exchange. I was asking, because I was genuinely interested. That, and we likely have a lot of mutual friends.
But for your inquiring mind – RedState has never taken any corporate money and exists on the same kind of advertising that balloon-juice does.
monkeybreath
Sorry to not be more collegial. We may have friends, or at least acquaintances, in common. Many of mine are retired or otherwise out of the business. It’s a young man’s game, and I’m getting old.
But I wasn’t asking about Redstate. I was wondering if your posts here and elsewhere were sponsored by corporate clients. Even there, it was just a passing thought.
Krempasky
Nope, no ‘sponsored’ posts. Considering the breadth of clients of the company, it’s even tough to avoid posting anything that mentions any of them. (and every know and then I find out after the fact that some firm or issue is connected to a client in another office) Do my best to disclose it – and I think my politics are pretty clear regardless.
I’d probably even know a lot of the older folks. I worked for Blackwell and Viguerie for a few years.