Garance Franke-Ruta

"The more we learn of Boston bombers the more they seem like bumblers. And there's the rub: any idiot can terrorize, doesn't require genius."

Thus tweeted The Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta earlier this morning. While some followers agreed, others shot back that it was a woefully inaccurate take, to say the least.

Updated: Franke-Ruta tweeted back | In a segment on the November 5 Now with Alex Wagner, Garance Franke-Ruta argued that it was "not preordained" that the devastation from Hurricane Sandy and Obama's subsequent photo-op responses would "work in his favor. The Atlantic magazine writer made those observations during a panel discussion on how, in Wagner's words, the hurricane "broke Mitt Romney's momentum" and that a "meme" the GOP can "seize on" should Gov. Romney fail to win tomorrow is to outright blame the cyclone for the loss.

Franke-Ruta offered that if Hurricane Katrina had happened eight days prior to Bush's 2004 reelection, it would have sunk his reelection chances and offered that, unlike Bush, Obama had not let the problems in the devastated areas "fester." Something tells me a number of Staten Islanders would take issue with you. From a November 4 item at the Huffington Post, no right-wing rag it (video follows page break; emphases mine):

The Washington Post's Reliable Source gossip column noticed Sarah Palin reported a new neighbor in Wasilla on her Facebook page: liberal author Joe McGinniss. The once-highly esteemed author of The Selling of the President 1968 took a major tumble in 1993 with his Ted Kennedy book The Last Brother, which was blasted for plagiarism and patches of invented dialogue, tactics used against Ted Kennedy, not some loathsome Red State conservative. The Post relayed:

She blasted his work as biased but mostly poured on the sweet sarcasm: "We're sure to have a doozey to look forward to ... Wonder what kind of material he'll gather while overlooking Piper's bedroom, my little garden, and the family's swimming hole? ... Come borrow a cup of sugar if ever you need some sweetener." We couldn't reach McGinniss; his publishing house, Broadway Books, told AP he "will be highly respectful of his subject's privacy as he investigates her public activities."

The Post's edit was interesting, and misleading. Right before the "Doozey" sentence were these words: