Blogs

As a probable Coakley loss became apparent over the past few days, the liberal excuse machine has been gearing up to spin away as much as it can to dismiss a Scott Brown victory as inconsequential to the national political climate, despite the crucial nature of the seat to a Democratic super-majority.

Not one to disappoint, liberal apologist-cum-journalist Eleanor Clift offers a fresh excuse at Newsweek's Gaggle blog. 

Coakley, you see, was never in the good graces of that royal American family, the Kennedy clan:

While the broadcast and cable news media have paid plenty of attention to Martha Coakley's embarrassing Curt Schilling gaffe, much less attention has been paid to more serious matters that exemplify Coakley's hard-left campaigning tactics, such as her insulting devout Catholics as unfit for working in emergency rooms or insisting that Scott Brown wants to "turn away" rape victims from hospitals. [image at right via William Jacobson's Legal Insurrection blog]

It's that sort of insane, false hyperbole that has even Democrat-friendly media outlets like Time magazine reeling, even if the broadcast networks are asleep at the switch.

Take for example Michael Scherer's January 17 blog post at the magazine's Swampland blog (emphasis mine):

It is a strange paradigm among much of the mainstream  media that plummeting poll numbers are of far greater import for Republicans than  they are for Democrats. That, at least, is the logical conclusion of the relative silence of major media outlets on the steep decline in President Obama's poll numbers compared with the decline in President Bush's.

According to an Allstate/National Journal poll released Wednesday, 50 percent of Americans would vote against President Obama if the presidential elections were held today. Only 39 percent say they would vote to re-elect the president.

But so far, this stunning development--given the President's sky-high approval ratings upon entering office--has gone seemingly unnoticed by the major television networks and most prominent print publications. Aside from some prominent blogs (whose coverage is by no means substandard), the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Washington Examiner are so far the only major outlets to report on the poll, according to a google news search (as of 2:00 PM).

Today, Roger Alford and Bruce Schreiner of the Associated Press, reporting from Frankfort, KY, are giving leftist bloggers, columnists, journalists who assumed or gave the impression of assuming that the death of Census worker Bill Sparkman was some kind of right-wing hit job another chance to come clean with an unconditional "I was wrong, I amy sorry." The list of those needing to post corrections and apologies includes the Associated Press itself.

You see, not only is it crystal clear that Sparkman (may he rest in peace) indeed killed himself, Alford and Schreiner tell us that he told a friend of his plans:

Jan 15, 6:09 PM EST

Police: Ky. census worker had told of suicide plan

An eastern Kentucky census worker found naked, bound and hanging from a tree had told a friend he intended to kill himself and that he had chosen the time, place and method to do it, police records show.

Lamenting how Nancy Pelosi's archbishop has "slap[ped] her down," in an online statement addressing the House Speaker's excuse-making for her pro-abortion record, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift used a January 15 Gaggle blog post to praise Pelosi, no stranger to pastoral rebuke, as both a good pro-choice Democrat and a good Catholic:

It's anybody's guess whether in the new world of Internet media the archbishop's online commentary rebuking Pelosi falls under his pastoral duties, or public advocacy. Either way, Pelosi remains unshaken in her views, and in her Catholic faith.

For the benefit of her readers, Clift quoted on piece of Archbishop George Neiderauer's rebuke:

"Free will cannot be cited as justification for society to allow moral choices that strike at the most fundamental rights of others. Such a choice is abortion, which constitutes the taking of innocent human life, and cannot be justified by any Catholic notion of freedom."

Yet Clift left out another key excerpt from Neiderauer's "archbishop's journal" column (emphasis mine):

Andy Barr at Politico shamelessly slanted the fuss over Haiti hot talk on Friday, insisting it was only about Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, and slamming NewsBusters as one of the "very few" sites defending Rush’s Haiti commentary.

The story was featured on the Yahoo! home page on Friday with a picture of Limbaugh and the headline "Limbaugh criticized." Barr insisted:

John Amato from the left-leaning website Crooks and Liars added that "with thousands of people dead already and as the suffering continues in Haiti, Limbaugh and his ilk only care about one thing: destroying Obama."

The conservative media watchdog site Newsbusters stepped up to defend Limbaugh, saying his comments were not put in proper context, but very few others are backing the conservative firebrand’s latest controversial remarks.

File this under "WWJD FAIL."

It's one thing for a sainted icon of the secular Left like Keith Olbermann to wish perdition on a controversial American televangelist, but a Christian preacher?

Yet that's exactly how Huffington Post religion editor and ordained American Baptist minister Paul Raushenbush went off on Pat Robertson for his controversial "pact with the devil" remarks about this week's devastating Haitian earthquake in a January 13 blog post:

Haiti is suffering, and the only response from Christians and other decent human beings is compassion, love, and all the concrete support we can supply. [...] Instead, Pat Robertson opined on his TV show, the 700 Club that this happened because, in order to gain liberty from the French, Haiti (read: black people) made a pact with the Devil. [...]  Go to Hell, Pat Robertson -- and the sooner the better. Your 'theological' nonsense is revolting. Don't speak for Haiti, and don't speak for God...

"Radical cleric" is a term many news outlets, including the Associated Press, have used to describe Islamic clerics who encourage and/or train radical Muslims for jihad against civilians in the West. Case in point: Anwar al Awlaki, who reportedly inspired Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan's shooting spree.

But a commenter on Time magazine's Swampland blog seems to have convinced writer Karen Tumulty that the term is appropriate to apply to Pat Robertson, given his loopy pronouncement that a long-ago "pact with the devil" made by Haiti has cursed the Caribbean nation and resulted in yesterday's devastating earthquake:

Regular viewers of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart are accustomed by now to the verbal battles that ensue when Stewart brings conservative guests on his show. The guests usually leave with a bit of egg on their faces, and Stewart comes off as the hard hitting, divisive and sarcastic critic.

But viewers were treated to a rare dose of sincerity and intelligent debate on Monday, when Stewart hosted former legal counsel for the Bush Justice Department John Yoo. Following up on what was a meaningful and intelligent interview Monday night, Stewart apologized to his audience on Tuesday for not being his usual cutthroat self, and daring to discuss issues in a civilized tone.

Yoo and Stewart duked it out for almost 30 minutes (videos below the fold), but the host did not manage to get the better of Yoo, who is now infamous among liberal circles for writing the legal briefs justifying expanded executive powers to combat terrorism under the previous administration.

Stewart ended the segment with a very uncharacteristic--given his tendency to demonize conservatives--call for civility in the public discourse (brief partial transcript after videos):

What's up with Keith Olbermann's strange obsession with STDs?  A few months ago, the Countdown host invoked "syphilis" in slurring Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.  Olbermann had venereal disease on the noggin again tonight . . .

Trying to trash Tucker Carlson for accepting sponsorship for his new Daily Caller website, Olbermann suggested that, for money, Carlson might consider endorsing "gonorrhea."

Olbermann indulged his odd obsession in the course of naming his quondam MSNBC colleague tonight's "Worser" person in the world.

Andrew Take-No-Prisoners Breitbart of Big Hollywood, Big Government, and Big Journalism fame has an important column that appeared yesterday at Tucker Carlson's new enterprise, the Daily Caller.

In it, he clearly delineates the difference between "the news" as establishment media outlets want it dispensed and the "market for information" that technology has created. Its only shortcoming is that he gives Arianna Huffington a pass for "coming to the table as an honest broker." I'll point out glaring examples that will disprove that notion later.

First, though, behold the beauty of Breitbart's treatment of the issue of "objectivity" and his clear statement relating to the two types of information choices we have:

The launch of the Daily Caller is a necessary step toward creating ideological parity in the all-too-clearly biased mainstream media. It is a good thing that you, Tucker, are admitting that you come to the table with certain ideological baggage, and my new site Big Journalism will be there to watch your back when the well-funded, organized left’s knives come out to try to discredit and attempt to destroy you. Believe me, they will.

"Harry Reid is no Trent Lott," argues Newsweek's Ben Adler in a January 11 The Gaggle blog post by the same name.

Of course, nowhere in his brief blog post does Adler acknowledge the media's role in why that double standard is in play.

Instead, Adler defends Reid, praising his "frank political assessment":

While he conceded that liberal labor unions, particularly "reactionary" teachers unions have had a role in California's fiscal mess, Time columnist and blogger Joe Klein placed the lion's share of the Golden State's woes on conservatives who have pushed for lower taxes.

Upset that conservative writer George Will had chalked up "all that is wrong in California at liberalism's doorstep," Klein used a January 10 Swampland blog post to slam the columnist for failing to assign any blame on the 1978 property tax-limiting Proposition 13 and the resulting "public pathology that we've inherited from the Reagan Era" whereby "the public wants a modified welfare state, excellent schools, a clean environment, low college tuitions...but it's not willing to pay for them."

But the problem with Klein's argument is that reliably blue-state Californians -- or rather the ones who haven't moved out in disgust -- are all too willing to shoulder a high tax burden, as data from the Tax Foundation shows:

On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office issued its Monthly Budget Review for December 2009. It estimates that December's federal deficit will be $92 billion when the Treasury Department releases its Monthly Treasury Statement on Wednesday, and that the deficit for the first fiscal quarter will be "about $390 billion." The CBO director's related blog post is here. The establishment press has virtually ignored it.

Here is the initial result of a Google News search on "CBO deficit" (not in quotes) for articles relating to the Congressional Budget Office's Thursday estimate of the federal government's deficit for the first quarter of its fiscal year:

Clicking on the "all 10 new articles" reveals that there are really only four results, that three of them are at blogs, and that only one of the blog posts is from an establishment media site:

On his radio show Friday, Rush Limbaugh expressed frustration with how the Obama administration’s economic policies are designed to squelch economic recovery: "This government is governing against its own citizens. This president and his party are governing against us. We are at war with our own President, we are at war with our own government. They’re the ones standing in the way of the private sector rebounding. They’re the ones standing in the way of job creation – purposely!"

But in the hyperbolic imaginations of the bloggers at Daily Kos, this is a call for violent revolution and harming President Obama. So wrote Lauren Monica:

Today, on his radio show, The Head of the Republican Party is officially asking His Dittoheads to harm the President of the United States and other Dems Leaders in Congress. He said "We are at war with our own President, we are at war with our own government". Translation, Mr Limbaugh just had committed treason by calling for a "violent" revolt (with the use of the word "War") against the President Of The United States.

"Not in sync with the current program" is how former CNN host Tucker Carlson describes his new website, the Daily Caller, which is scheduled to launch Monday. Designed as a conservative answer to the Huffington Post, the Daily Caller will do what few center-right blogs have attempted: report hard news.

Carlson and his partner, former Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel, have raised $3 million in startup capital for the site, according to the Washington Independent. That impressive sum is enough to keep the Daily Caller operating for about a year. The site will employ a reporting staff or 21 in its Washington, D.C. office.

With Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism, which launched earlier this week, Carlson hopes to be on the cutting edge of a new effort on the right to circumvent major media outlets--and overcome the significant obstacles to conservative news of traditional media outlets.

The Obama presidential campaign indisputably used new media better than any before it to build a virtual army of grassroots supporters, and to wield that army as a powerful tool for fundraising, rapid response messaging, and boots-on-the-ground campaigning.

But the energy that surrounded Obama and his team after the election, and supporters' expectations that President Obama would be the empowering community organizer that was Candidate Obama, fizzled as it became clear--campaign slogans notwithstanding--this administration represented less change then it would have the country believe.

After the election, commentators buzzed about the potential for a small-d democratic upheaval in the American political process that the Obama camp's mastery of new media could bring about. Newsweek summed up the excitement in the lede of an article in late November:

If there was ever any doubt National Public Radio had a political slant, check out the animated video posted on the network's Web site. That should clear up any doubt.

This video dated Nov. 12, 2009 was created by Mark Fiore, a political animator, who NPR reports is described by The Wall Street Journal as "the undisputed guru of the form." The video demonstrates for viewers how to speak "tea bag," which is a term lefties for whatever reason seem to find absolutely hilarious.  (h/t Jesse Hathaway via Bob Parks). Transcript as follows:

Moderator: Finally, learning a new language doesn't have to be hard. You can be fluent in conversational tea bag in just a few short minutes. Lesson one: Don't get distracted by the confusing words of other languages.
Character: I think the public option and the competition it would foster would really -- socialist, socialist.
Moderator: Good, very good. Lesson two: If you're having trouble understanding the words of others or being understood yourself, use teabag's stronger, more descriptive words.
Character: The Nazi, Nazi, Nazi

Video Embedded Below Fold

Wow: David Shuster really lets it all hang out on Twitter . . .

In current tweets, the MSNBCer accuses Karl Rove of "hypocrisy," calls conservatives "wingnuts," claims Baucus wasn't wasted, and denounces Drudge as "repulsive" for supposedly suggesting otherwise.

Excerpts from Shuster's current Twitter feed [screencap after the jump]:

• Thank you Wingnuts! By mentioning my tweets, you are bringing more attention to @karlrove hypocrisy
• Wingnuts, just because you want to believe something is true does not make it so. Obama wasn't born in Kenya. Baucus wasn't inebriated.
• Baucus speech was at 430pm in the afternoon. He was incensed at Wicker. He was emotional. To smear him, as drudge does, is repulsive.
• Re Baucus emotional floor speech last week: He always speaks in a halting fashion. The wingnut claims are lies and disgusting smears.

And as for David's countless fans among NB readers, worried he might disappear from the MSNBC airwaves: never fear . . . 

Bear this one in mind next time you hear a liberal bemoaning that conservatives show insufficient respect for Pres. Obama and VP Biden . . .

On this evening's Hardball, Chris Matthews called Dick Cheney "the bath-tub ring of the Bush administration."

Chris' calumny came in reaction to the news that the estimable Human Events magazine has named the former VP Conservative of the Year.

When it comes to freedom of speech, liberal journalists are the staunchest of defenders, right? Not so much when it comes to blasting Republican senators opposed to ObamaCare for "borderline sedition" that "comes dangerously close to inciting violence."

That was the complaint of Time's Joe Klein, who griped today on the magazine's Swampland blog about Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) saying:

"The crisis of confidence in this country is now at an apex that has not seen in over 150 years, and that lack of confidence undermines the ability of legitimate governance," he said. "There's a lot of people out there today who...will say, 'I give up on my government,' and rightly so."

Of course, many liberals said similar things about losing faith in their government during the previous administration, one with which Klein had many disagreements, most if not all of which he took to Time's pages or Web site to bluster about. I don't recall any concern from Klein about seditious liberals or Democrats when George Bush or Dick Cheney was the object of harsh rhetoric.

But leave it to a Republican senator to criticize the pork barreling and special exemptions Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has given to fellow Democrats to buy a cloture vote, and it's damn near seditious to Klein:

Bad blood brewing between Ed Schultz and Chris Matthews?

Schultz today invited a guest on his show for the express purpose of taking shots at fellow MSNBCer Matthews!

On yesterday's Hardball, Matthews criticized the netroots who are trashing the watered-down ObamaCare bill.  "I don't consider them Democrats," said Matthews, dismissing them as "troublemakers." Concluded Chris: "they get their giggles sitting in the back seat and bitching."

On his show this evening, Schultz invited netroot-in-chief Markos Moulitsas on to fire back at Matthews.  Not merely did Schultz offer Kos a platform, he prodded him with leading questions sure to stir up a pointed response. Kos was only too happy to take up the cudgel, accusing Matthews of being "trapped in a bubble," "not learning from his mistakes," and warning that Matthews "has a thing coming."

Reminiscing about how her father would end dinner table squabbles between her and her sister, Newsweek's Katie Connolly on Tuesday rejoiced that President Obama had said "Enough!" in order to get Senate Democrats in line:

Today, it sounds like the president has finally reached that point with the Senate Democrats and their increasingly aggravating health-care squabbles. He's ready to issue a steely "Enough." And not a minute too soon.

Not a minute too soon? Isn't Connolly supposed to be an objective reporter, not a cheerleader for a political party and its agenda? Oh, that's right, this is Newsweek, the magazine whose editor actually aspires to a smaller (and more liberal?) audience.

Remember all those blog posts from the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan bashing Sarah Palin for employing a ghostwriter? Well, it turns out many of those posts may have been written by...a ghostblogger! Apparently Sullivan's busy schedule prevented him from writing everything on his site, so, without informing his readers, he employed a few ghostbloggers to write in his name.

Daily Dish readers were surely surprised at the announcement--posted by one of the ghostbloggers on Saturday--given Sullivan's insistence that his "one-man blog" is "honest" and "personal". They may have been a bit perturbed to learn, in Ace's words, that "half the blog isn't personal to Sullivan at all, and all of it is dishonest."

Wrote ghostblogger Patrick Appel,

On Wednesday’s Situation Room, CNN correspondent Jeanne Moos exposed some of the left-wing rage being directed at Senator Joe Lieberman, especially on the Internet. Moos’s examples of “liberal hate” at the Connecticut politician ranged from fantasy Hanukkah gifts, such as a muzzle, to a YouTube video of a woman having her cats attack a string which stood in for the senator [Moos's full report is available here].

The correspondent’s latest light report for CNN highlighted Liberman’s “new low among liberals.” Along with the multiple examples of leftists mocking the senator on YouTube.com, Moos noted the strong reactions from “progressive radio hosts,” such as Mike Malloy, and attacks on liberal blogs like The Huffington Post and Daily Kos:

A former war correspondent for CNN is threatening legal action against bloggers who suggest that video of him reporting the first Gulf War from a television studio is "fake news." The video shows Charles Jaco and another correspondent dramatically recounting events from the Persian Gulf, and later shows Jaco and the camera crew joking around in what appears to be a television studio (video embedded below the fold).

"My attorneys intend to act immediately against those of you receiving this who have sent and forwarded these emails accusing me of falsifying coverage," Jaco wrote in a memo to a local blogger who circulated the video via email. He also announced his intention to demand that LiveLink and YouTube remove the video from their respective sites.

Tackling "The Myth That Democrats Are Soft on Crime," Newsweek's Ben Adler took to the magazine's The Gaggle blog to critique New York Times columnist Ross Douthat for his latest column.

Adler praised Douthat for saying that conservatives need to "take ownership of prison reform" to "correct the system they helped build" but took strong exception to his suggestion that, even so, Democrats "still lack credibility on crime policy."

As evidence for how Democrats are tough on crime, however, Adler pointed to gun control, Clinton's gimmicky COPS program, Waco, and the Elian Gonzales ordeal:

A number of the conservative movement's prominent online figures are battling to be the right's equivalent of Talking Points Memo or Huffington Post--political organizations that report hard news. Many believe that to truly harness the power of the Web, political organizations must report their own news, rather than comment on reporitng from traditional outlets.

"The left needs Daily Kos, but they also need the Huffington Post," Politics Daily columnist Matt Lewis told Politico. He praised the roles of activists and opinion commentators on the right such as Red State's Erick Erickson, but noted that the conservatives have not yet matched the left's capability for original reporting.

Though HuffPo, TPM, and other politcally stilted but journalism-oriented sites, liberals "have the ability to amplify stories into the mainstream media conversation," according to Politico. Conservatives have a large void to fill when it comes to producing original content, rather than solely commenting on what is already out there. There are conservative sites providing original reporting, but there are so far no center-right equivalents to the left's powerhouse online news operations.

In what is easily the dopiest question I've read from a religion blogger in a while, Chicago Tribune's Manya Brachear closed her  December 8 The Seeker blog post by asking readers if "dissenters" like pro-choice nun Sister Donna Quinn of Chicago "strengthen the church." In November, Quinn went public with news that she has "been rebuked for escorting patients into a Hinsdale clinic that provides abortions."

In "Pro-choice nun still fighting for women's care," Brachear explained how Quinn "is not backing down from her support of abortion rights, applauding the defeat of an amendment today that would have added restrictions to the health care bill for women seeking abortions."

Oh, it gets worse. Quinn apparently used the Virgin Mary as cover for sanctifying her pro-abortion views:

Battling the "Democrat-media complex" is hard work, but Andrew Breitbart shows no signs of letting up. He announced today in an interview with Mediaite that he will launch a new site entitled "Big Journalism" in January designed solely, in his blunt words, to "fight the mainstream media."

Big Journalism will be the latest addition to the prominent network of Breitbart's sites, which include aggregator Breitbart.com, video site BreitbartTV, and center-right blogs Big Government and Big Hollywood. After Big Journalism, he told Mediaite, will come Big Education, Big Tolerance, Big Jerusalem, and Big Peace.

As for Big Journalism, Breitbart says he is determined to combat liberal media outlets "who have repeatedly, and under the guise of objectivity and political neutrality, promoted a blatantly left-of-center, pro-Democratic party agenda."