Via TPM, this gem:
Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line “H-E-R-O.” In response to Mr. Fournier’s e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, “How does our country continue to produce men and women like this,” to which Mr. Fournier replied, “The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight.”
Ron Fournier is the new head of the AP’s Washington Bureau.
Meanwhile, TNR takes on Rick Klein and Mark Halperin, both of whom are continuing national embarrassments:
So Obama will listen to his generals and consider the facts on the ground before fully withdrawing from Iraq. OMG! WTF? Rick Klein of ABC News exclaimed, “There’s been lots of speculation this week about whether Barack Obama has an Iraq problem. He does now.” Time’s Mark Halperin told Anderson Cooper, “This is one of the biggest things that’s happened so far in the general election.”
Yes, it’s stop-the-presses enormous: Barack Obama has affirmed a position that he has held for months.
At this point, the way the election coverage is going so far, I may have to get rid of the “Assholes” category and just append it to every post. Mark Halperin is so worthless reading him almost pains me physically.
*** Update ***
To hell with it.
jeffreyw
You read ‘im so we don’t have to. We salute you sir!
nightjar
We all know who pulls Mark Halperin’s strings.
Joshua Norton
Just hearing Halperin’s name me the willies. I have absolutely no respect for that man what-so-ever. I can’t imagine anyone with a single working brain cell hiring him to be a political analyst. He’s so busy sucking up to the wingnutz in such an obvious and ham-handed way that it’s physically painful to observe.
demkat620
I just can’t take anymore of the McCain pornography on my TV. I have to stop watching. It is just sickening. They are just determined that McCain will be the next president.
Noah
Yeah, I blog about Mark Halperin being a douchebag at my place sometimes, and I get lots of hits from people searching the Googles for “Mark Halperin douchebag.”
It’s awesome!
Martin
John, you know what makes a great dressing for mixed greens? Vodka.
Ninerdave
I’ve given up on the media and political coverage in general. It’s all complete shit. I used to watch Countdown, Hardball and Race for the White House…now I usually just leave the TV off.
I’ve trimmed my blog roll to here, Bennen, TPM and 538. Seriously if I read one more post by a single issue voter carping about Obama, I’m gonna fuckin’ loose it.
Maybe it’s political burnout, but more it seems that the media (and I include ALL media) is more about quantity, not quality.
Mean time, I’m contributing to Obama and will volunteer for him later this year. He needs to be president. The rest doesn’t much matter.
Ninerdave
Oh the other thing that bugs me, people who post about impeaching Bush. The ship sailed years ago and no amount of mental masturbation is going to bring it back. Shut the fuck up.
WereBear
What really frosts me is when the talking heads exclaim over how “people really believe these things we talk about without explaining it, over and over.”
They never give context, never define their terms, never attempt any sort of background preliminary.
Because they are only talking to each other?
Original Lee
As quoted over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money:
…Somerby: “Things have deteriorated to the point where staffers at People are mystified by the inanity of the political press corps.” Sad, but true.
El Cruzado
I must guess those e-mails happened before it was revealed that Tillman was a commie atheist that exchanged letters with luminaries of the freaky left and who in fact died accidentally fragged.
Ninerdave
Well if you look at the ratings for the Bobblehead shows, with the exception of Fox the rest never reach more than a million people.
DFD
We’ve outsourced our 4th estate to the BBC.
matt
John, was the “liberal media” something you bought into when you were a right winger?
Ted
At least Halperin admitted openly that amongst political “journalists” like himself, “Matt Drudge rules our world.”
evie
Don’t forget Cokie. On NPR this morning she said that Obama has a “serious problem with the left” because of his “changing” position on Iraq.
They just make shit up at this point. Make. It. Up. I follow “the left” pretty closely — FISA, yes, lots of pissed off people. Iraq? No. Even those of us who disagree on FISA agree on Iraq: Obama has not changed positions. He wants to get out. McCain doesn’t. End of story.
cain
Yeah, I’m probably volunteering too.. gettin trained. In Oregon, it looks like they’re doing a more hands off approach because they don’t have enough volunteers (since they have to do a 50 state strategy instead of the primary state de jour). Oregon is well set up for that. Volunteering is a big thing here and we know how to make independent decisions. We rock. Don’t move here.
cain
AnneLaurie
Oh the other thing that bugs me, people who post about impeaching Bush. The ship sailed years ago and no amount of mental masturbation is going to bring it back…
But we can still fantasize about bringing Dubya’s Dirty Boyz to trial for war crimes, right?
cyntax
“Don’t forget?” Are you sh*tting me? That woman tempts me to drink before I’ve even rolled out of bed in the morning. Though I’ve found the swift application of a ball-peen hammer is a fairly salutory compromise–followed quickly by a lot of aspirin.
GOms
As you do not seem to be aware of this already…the job of “News” organizations is no longer reporting the news. They are well-oiled businesses that do not thrive on mundanity (if that is a word) so they create news. This is something that is rampant here in Asia, as these companies are constantly throwing bullshit and unfounded rhetoric out there for the public (90% idiots) to mistake as fact and debate, thus causing the need for News coverage and stupid panel discussions…sorry, I thought you guys knew this stuff already!!!
calipygian
I guess Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage made AP cry with that clever Associated (with terrorists) Press photo shop.
theturtlemoves
Doh! Three years too late on that one. I don’t mind the DFHes, either. Except this weekend when they hosed my traffic going home on their way to the Oregon Country Fair (AKA Hippie Fest). Funny thing is, most of the cars were late model non-Volkswagons. Even Hippie Fest has sold out, it seems.
w vincentz
A very fine line separates the “hero” from the “fool”.
A much wider one separates the “truth teller” from the “liar”.
…and so it goes…
eric u.
most news operations seem to be a way to funnel unlimited contributions from corporations to the republican party. If they wanted to make money, they could easily do the job by simply reporting the news.
slag
That email exchange freaks me out.
Ninerdave
…and I’ll Tivo the frog march. :)
ThymeZone
Actually, that is the only service they can provide that is worth anything. Whether they do or not, up to them.
But according to the update link, the new theme at AP is “emotive reporting,” which I take to mean “Dems said A, Republicans said B, and reporter feels C.”
Useless.
The Grand Panjandrum
Please fucking kill me now. This might be the irony that finally causes the universe to implode into a heap of maggot oozing dung. This half-bright nose-picking piece of shit atavist did not even take 2 seconds to think. Tillman was an atheist. A VERY patriotic man, who was also an atheist. He did NOT have a god.
This great and free country sent him to a war they had no intention of winning. Afghanistan is slowly turning into a cesspool of death and destruction while the former Cheerleader and his Gang of War Criminals continue to dismantle this country, right by right. BTW Karl this country did not produce Tillman. His family did. His atheist family. Fuck you Karl. I look forward to the day I can watch your hanging on pay-per-view.
Is it 1.20.09 yet?
Punchy
OT, but I find this just amazing. You cannot haul around a bottle of shampoo, but you can pack a Glock9.
I bet this ends well. Darwin, bitches.
calipygian
Holy Shit.
On the other hand, if they would just follow my suggestion and take all the clothes from, and issue a Glock to, every single passenger boarding every plane, we’d never have to worry about a hijacking ever again.
No clothes. No annoying carryons. No stupid motherfuckers with a carryon roller bag too big for the overhead. Just you, your cock and your Glock.
SUCK. ON. THAT. JIHADIS.
Ninerdave
Yes. Useful would be Dem said A: here are the facts. GOP said B: here are the facts.
you decide C based of facts. Of course fact checking isn’t as sexy as manufacturing conflict.
Delia
B…b….b…but a terrorist might squirt shampoo in someone’s eyes. Betcha never thought of that one, huh?
Janet Strange
So I just finished reading Bush Gave Taliban $43 Million Four Months before 9/11, by Brandon Friedman (who served in Afghanistan) over at the GOS and followed his link over to the Cato Institute’s How Washington Funded the Taliban.
And then I come over here and read this about Pat Tillman.
And today’s NYT tells us “Taliban Breached NATO Base in Deadly Clash.”
Is there anything left to say? Anything?
Dennis - SGMM
And with a pair of easily available 33 round clips you can shoot 66 people with only one reload! Fighting to allow people to carry guns into one of the most crowded places in Atlanta: brilliant. And if one shot is fired, or even if some kid pops a balloon, you can be sure that everyone who’s packing will start blazing away too. I mean, what’s the point of carrying that baby if you can’t start firing wildly in “self-defense”?
Janet Strange
Sorry for the lack of links – couldn’t make ’em work, either the old-fashioned way or by using the buttons. Here’s trying again to the Cato article.
Andrew
To be fair, do you really think the nutjob intent on killing 66 people gives a shit if there is a law against carrying a gun?
Dennis - SGMM
Of course they won’t. OTOH, it might be prudent to deprive them of one target-rich environment. And, as I mentioned, the rest of the untrained, unpracticed gun-carrying knotheads will be likely to uncork as well. My guess is that they’d do more damage than the original nut.
Ninerdave
I was watching an MSNBC shock-doc called (I think) “Beyond the Blue Line” this weekend, it was one of those “caught on camera” type things, where you consistently scream “put down the fuckin’ camera and help the poor person that you are filming!”
(it was 3am and I couldn’t sleep leave me alone)
Anyway…they showed an Eastern European guy going berserk at a Canadian Airport. He was eventually tazered to death.
Turns out he’d been wandering around the International Arrival Terminal for about 9 hours looking for his Mom. This was his first time flying or out of his home country (I want to say Poland…but I’m probably wrong see above). He was confused, frustrated and didn’t speak English. Eventually when he started acting out, a whole slew of security surrounded him. Which scared the shit out of him. They tazered him to subdue him…multiple times. Killing him.
So yeah, if public “defenders” can’t handle a situation like that, I’m really fucking scared when people like this asshole start wondering around our airports playing “police”
Oh yeah…and they weren’t black…they were latino.
Back to the theme of the thread…what it’s say when a shock-doc is more relevant than the “bobbleheads”
Brachiator
Janet Strange Says:
So I just finished reading Bush Gave Taliban $43 Million
There are tons of things to say. People forget that the Taleban was not a monolithic group. There were pro- and anti-Western factions that fought for supremacy after their primary foe, the Soviets, had been defeated.
And almost everyone seems to forget how ruthlessly and effectively the anti-West Taliban faction consolidated power by purging its non-fundamentalist leaders.
The bigger mess is not so much Washington funding the Taleban, but the stupidity of the Bush Administration in not paying attention to the transformation of the Taleban. They too busy hatching their neo-con Middle East fantasies to recognize the growing threats that were right in front of their noses.
gbear
Cokie Roberts on NPR in the morning is the reason that snooze alarms were invented.
Well… Cokie and Tom Waits.
OriGuy
Robert Dziekański, from Poland.
Ned Ludd
Crooks and Liars posted a video of AP “reporter” Liz Sidoti and Ron Fournier giving McCain a box of doughnuts at a luncheon in April. I first heard the audio on Rachel Maddow’s radio show, and since then, I think of the AP as Fox News for people who can read.
Sidoti is also responsible for the awful piece: Obama chose winning over his word.
Ned Ludd
I googled Sidoti’s name to make sure I spelt it right and came across this amazing piece of anti-Obama cheerleading she wrote a few months back. (emphasis added)
Ninerdave
Thank you OriGuy.
Napoleon
I thought I had read at one point that a little known fact is that Rove is an atheist also (and had a gay father).
jake
And how can we make it stop? We need more cowards and bed wetters!
/Karl Rove
harlana pepper
I’m happy to see, from these comments, that I am not the only one burned out on the obsessive, highly superficial and biased coverage of the presidential race and have switched it OFF.
harlana pepper
MSM Analysis of Obama:
Obama = The Left
The Left = Out of Iraq Now
Hence, Obama = Out of Iraq Now*
Hence, Obama flip-flops. GOTCHA!
*Notwithstanding his pretty consistent statements to the contrary. See, he’s a leftie, okay?
Jim Pharo
Guess what? No, guess what!?!
I. Don’t Care. About. Mark Halperin. Any More.
Honestly, why don’t we hasten these people’s entry into permanent irrelevancy by ignoring them as completely as possible?
In the 1960s, the John Birch Society used to get people to try to hand out pamphlets and sign up members (much as Lyndon Larouche people do today). Children were told to steer clear of these people, not take anything from strangers, and generally try to avert one’s gaze.
That’s how I think any sentient person should treat the likes of Brian Williams, Tom Friedman and Mark Halperin — best not to look at them, it just encourages them.
Glocksman
Proof that leaving out vital information when making an outlandish statement isn’t the sole province of Sean Hannity.
FYI, the Georgia law only applies outside of the ‘secure areas’ of the airport.
The secure area is the one after you pass through the screening to board your flight.
Despite the attempt to portray otherwise, you cannot take a gun into the secure area of any airport*.
In other words, where you can pack your Glock, you can pack your Vidal Sassoon.
Where you can’t pack your Vidal, you can’t pack your Gaston.
*There are exceptions, but I don’t think any of us would argue with allowing FBI agents to travel armed.