Here
is today's daily Red Scare Index -- our search of CNN, CNN Headline
News, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, MSNBC and CNBC for uses
of the following terms: Socialism, Socialist, Socialists, Socialistic,
Communism, Communist, Communists, Communistic, Marxism, Marxist,
Marxists, Marxistic, Fascism, Fascist, Fascists and Fascistic.
Here are the numbers for yesterday, Wednesday, July 01, 2009:
* Done no original reporting on the Washington Post's firing of Dan Froomkin
* Failed to ask Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank about a controversy over whether Milbank called another reporter a nasty name during a taping of Kurtz' television show
* Gotten scooped by a rival publication on an explosive story about the Washington Post auctioning off access to its reporters and editors to lobbyists and other interest groups.
Is it really too much to expect the nation's most famous media critic to be able to cover significant media stories that happen right under his own nose?
UPDATE: More from Marcy Wheeler on flaws in Kurtz' (eventual) article about the Post/lobbyist scheme. And from Adam Serwer on what Kurtz was writing about while Politico was drinking his milkshake.
As
Think Progress noted,
during the 2006
elections, the Ohio Republican Party included the doctored "2004 AP photo" of Al
Franken - now the Senator-elect from Minnesota -- in a press release attacking
then-Senate candidate Sherrod Brown (D) and Franken, who was campaigning for
Brown at the time. From
ThinkProgress:
From a July 2 Washington
Timesarticle,
headlined "Democrats' supermajority may be illusory":
"The problem Democrats will run
into now is that they can no longer blame 'obstruction' by Republicans for
delaying their agenda," one senior Republican aide said. "There's
nothing stopping them from moving anything they want, as long as they're all
willing to accept responsibility for the consequences of passing a national
energy tax, government takeover of health care, more bailouts and running the
auto industry."
From NRSC chairman John Cornyn's (R-TX) June 30 statement
on Senator-elect Al Franken's (D-MN) election victory:
The implications of this Senate race
are particularly significant because the Democrats will now have 60 votes in
the Senate. With their supermajority, the era of excuses and finger-pointing is
now over. With just 59 votes, Senate Democrats in recent months have passed
trillion-dollar spending bills, driven up America's debt, made every
American taxpayer a shareholder in the auto industry and now want Washington to
takeover America's health care system. It's troubling to think about
what they might now accomplish with 60 votes.
"We need a public plan to keep the private plans honest."
But then why stop there? Eating is even more important than health
care, so shouldn't we have government-run supermarkets "to keep the
private ones honest"? After all, supermarkets clearly put profits ahead
of feeding people. And we can't run around naked, so we should have
government-run clothing stores to keep the private ones honest.
Supermarkets make money by selling people food. Clothing stores
make money by selling people clothes. If they don't give people
food/clothing, they don't get money.
Insurance companies, on the other hand, make money by selling people insurance -- and they make even more money by selling insurance, and then denying claims.
In a July 1 column,
syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell asserts of Judge Sonia Sotomayor:
"Performance matters. And Judge Sotomayor's performance provides no
reason for putting her on the Supreme Court." Sowell then asserts:
Although the case of the Connecticut
firefighters is the latest and best-known of Judge Sotomayor's reversals by
the Supreme Court, an even more revealing case was Didden v. Village of Port Chester,
where the Supreme Court openly rebuked the
unanimous three-judge panel that included Judge Sotomayor for "an evident
denial of the most elementary forms of procedural due process."
But
Sowell's attack on Sotomayor's "performance" falls
flat. While it is not unusual for the
Supreme Court to reverse federal appellate court decisions, the Supreme Court
did not reverse Sotomayor in Didden,
as Judith Schaeffer and Mike Sacks noted
in a post on the Constitutional Accountability Center's Text and History
blog. Indeed, the Court refused
to hear the appeal of the opinion Sotomayor joined.
Sowell's quote can actually be found
in a brief
by several law professors urging the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the
case.
Here is today's daily Red Scare Index -- our search of CNN, CNN
Headline News, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, MSNBC and CNBC for uses
of the following terms: Socialism, Socialist, Socialists, Socialistic,
Communism, Communist, Communists, Communistic, Marxism, Marxist, Marxists,
Marxistic, Fascism, Fascist, Fascists and Fascistic.
Here are the numbers for yesterday, Tuesday, June 30, 2009:
Taranto writes the Journal's Best of the Web column, and boy the Sanford story couldn't be of less interest to the very serious conservative writer. Forget that an embattled Republican governor, who used taxpayer money to visit his girlfriend and is in danger of being driven from office. For Taranto, who covers the waterfront each day for the Journal highlighting the day's most important political developments, the Sanford saga is a total non-starter.
In the five Best of Web editions published since the Sanford shocker broker, Taranto has linked to approximately 250 items. How many of those dealt with Sanford? Approximately ten. Which means yes, less than three percent of the stories that Taranto has been flagging since the middle of last week are about Sanford, because his very public fall from grace is of no interest to Journal writers; the same Journal writers who literally could not sleep at night during the 1990's knowing that Bill Clinton had not yet been impeached or put in jail for his allegedly abusive and selfish ways.
UPDATED: If and when Sanford is forced to resign from office (driven by Republicans, is my hunch), will ''journalists' at the WSJ opinion pages then decide to weigh in? Or is the story still going to be pretty much ignored on the paper's editorial page?
UPDATED: The Journal couldn't care less about Sanford, but if you want to learn how Franken stole the Minnesota election, then today's Journal is the place for you.
And yes, the Journal called Norm Coleman's nearly eight-month-late concession "graceful."
ABC
News' Yunji de Nies reports: ABBA's "Dancing Queen" filled the East
Room, as more than 200 prominent gays and lesbians gathered for the first ever
celebration of Pride month at the White House. The President and First Lady
entered to thunderous applause. President Obama told the group he is committed
to equality for their community.
"This
struggle continues today, for even as we face extraordinary challenges as a
nation, we cannot and will not put aside issues of basic equality," he
said, "We seek an America in which no one feels the pain of discrimination
based on who you are or who you love."
[...]
He ended his speech
with a promise to champion their cause in the days to come.
"I want you to
know that, in this task, I will not only be your friend; I will continue to be
an ally and a champion and a president who fights with you and for you,"
he said.
Maybe
next he can repaint the White House a nice shade of pink and hang the rainbow
flag in front to show his commitment to the gay cause.
But if there’s an upside in not having a [Sotomayor] battle, the ruling allows the GOP to refocus its energies in advance of next month’s hearings. It’s back to judicial philosophy and temperament, and away from identity politics and Rush Limbaugh/Newt Gingrich-fueled name-calling.
While we’re talking course corrections, the GOP is honing its health care message. From the memo going out to Republicans leaders nation-wide today, being sent by RNC Chairman Michael Steele:
The Note then went on to quote what is basically Steele's press release for several paragraphs.
But note how openly The Note speaks on behalf of the GOP: it's a good thing there wont' be a Sotomayor fight because it will allow the GOP to tweak its persona. And here's how the GOP chairman is going to fix the party's messaging.
There seems to be no daylight between what The Note writes and what, for instance, Republican consultants might be emailing friends and colleagues.
Last week, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski
downplayed Mark Sanford's Argentinean affair, saying that unlike
Bill Clinton, who "risked, you know, things that were happening in
the White House by his behavior," Sanford is just a guy who "had
an affair with someone it sounds like he is in love with." You
really have to watch
the video to get the full effect of Brzezinski's excuse for
Sanford's conduct.
Brzezinski's suggestion that, unlike
Clinton, Sanford didn't "risk" anything was absurd, for reasons I
explained
in a column a few days ago.
But so was her sympathetic portrayal of Sanford as
just someone who fell in love. Brzezinski has no idea if
Sanford loved his mistress. None. (Neither do I. And I don't care
one way or another.) That was clear a week ago, and it's even
more clear today:
South Carolina
Gov. Mark Sanford says he "crossed lines" with a handful of
women other than his mistress - but never had sex with them.
The governor says
he "never crossed the ultimate line" with anyone but Maria
Belen Chapur, the Argentine at the center of a scandal that has
derailed Sanford's once-promising political career.
Here's how the AP reported on the Minnesota Supreme Court's ruling in favor of Al Franken:
Coleman's campaign didn't immediately return a call for comment. Nor did Gov. Tim Pawlenty, whose signature is required on the election certificate Franken needs to be seated.
Pawlenty,
a Republican, has said he would sign the certificate if ordered to do
so by the court. The court's ruling stopped short of explicitly
ordering the governor to sign the document, saying only that Franken
was "entitled" to it.
That's some pretty fine hair-splitting.
UPDATE: And here's how Chris Cillizza describes
Pawlenty's comments from Sunday: "On Sunday, Minnesota Gov. Tim
Pawlenty (R) indicated he was inclined to sign the
certificate of election for Franken if the state's Supreme Court
ruled in favor of the Democrat."
Well, no, Pawlenty didn't say he was "inclined" to sign
the certificate. Here's what he said: "I'm going to follow the
direction of the court, John. We expect that ruling any day now. I
also expect them to give guidance and direction as to the certificate
of election. I'm prepared to sign it as soon as they give the
green light. ... I'm not going to defy an order of the Minnesota
Supreme Court. That would be a dereliction of my duty."
Here’s a highlight of Purdum’s reporting: “More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--’a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy’--and thought it fit her perfectly.”
Is there any real chance that "several" Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don’t believe it for a moment.
I'm with Kristol; this doesn't pass the smell test. Then again, Purdum's work for the mighty VF has often failed to pass any kind of common sense test.
UPDATE: Don't you love how Purdum zeroed in on how self-obsessed Palin is; how (clinically) narcissistic she is? I'd be curious to find out how many VF features in recent years about male politicians stopped to ponder the me-me-me tendencies of those powerful players.
Maybe I imagined this, but I could have sworn I heard a collective sigh of relief last week from the press, and especially the cablers, when it realized it wouldn't have to spend more time discussing health care reform (borrrring!) now that Michael Jackson had died.
As Jim Rutten at the Los Angeles Timesnoted, Jackson's death was huge news, and news consumers responded in record numbers:
When Jackson's death was first reported, traffic across the Internet spiked to virtually unprecedented levels. Google's search engine slowed to a crawl; Yahoo reported "one of the biggest things" in its history; social networks Twitter and Facebook nearly collapsed under the weight of traffic. This newspaper experienced 12 million page views at its website, apparently because it was widely credited with confirming the death.
The funny part is Rutten was complaining about the "serious" media's wall-to-wall Jackson coverage on Saturday. (Rutten thought it was excessive.) If anything, the coverage seems to have become more intense/monotonous since the weekend.
Behold CNN's primetime last night, four days after Jackson died. Since Jackson's passing, very little actual news had been uncovered (the official cause of death won't be known for weeks), but CNN devoted pretty much its entire night, starting with Lou Dobbs Tonight, to the Jackson story.
I realize that for TMZ and Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight (not to mention US and People), the Jackson passing requires all hands on deck. But I guess I'm not sure why on CNN the "Jackson" references have out-numbered "Honduras," which just experienced a traumatic military coup, nearly 10-to-1 over the last two days, according to TVeyes.com
Jamison just highlighted the dreadful WashPost effort, as the Beltway press corps continues to fictionalize the tale about Obama's falling poll numbers. (Fact: According to the latest from WashPost/ABC News, his approval rating stands at a very robust 65 percent.)
In my column this week, I focused attention on the ABC News team and how they did their best to ignore, play down and just plain misinform viewers and readers about their own polling data.
For instance, on his blog, This Week host George Stephanopoulos posted an item under the headline: "Obama's Poll Numbers Falling to Earth?" In his post, Stephanopoulos stressed that Obama was "slipping a bit," but never once mentioned that Obama's approval rating stood at 65 percent, down just 1 point from March.
Oops.
Jake Tapper's report last week on GMA perfectly captured the ABC unsightly phenomena. Watch below, and then read the column to see exactly why his report was so dismal.
Washington Post reporter Ed O'Keefe,
during today's
"Post Politics Hour":
I think we're
already starting to see signs of Obama taking the blame. Look at last
week's Post-ABC poll that showed that while most Americans still like
Obama personally, they've got serious concerns about how he's going
to address the deficit, the economic stimulus plan and health care
reform efforts.
The poll
to which O'Keefe refers does not say anything about whether
Americans "like Obama personally." The poll asked whether
respondents "approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is
handling his job as president?" Personal favorability and job
approval ratings are not the same thing, no matter how much
journalists conflate
them.
Saying Americans "like Obama
personally" but have "serious concerns" about how he is going
to do his job is a distortion of the poll's actual findings, which is
that a strong majority of Americans approve of how Obama is doing his
job.
As for those "serious concerns,"
the poll finds that 56 percent of Americans approve of Obama's
handling of the economy while only 41 percent disapprove. Health
care: 53 percent approve, 39 percent disapprove. The public is
split, 48-48 on his handling of deficits. O'Keefe's description of
the poll as showing "serious concerns" about Obama's handling of
these issues is misleading.
Actually, it's worse than that looks.
O'Keefe's phrasing is forward-looking: "serious concerns about how
he's going to address ..." The Post and ABC also asked
whether respondents trusted Obama or Republicans in Congress to
handle a variety of issues; that question is pertinent to O'Keefe's
phrasing. On health care, Obama had a 55-27 advantage; on the
economy, he led 55-31; and on the budget deficit he led 56-30.
Martin
Luther King can rest easy. His dream is being protected by the Supreme Court -
against and over the opinion of Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
The high
court's landmark decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven, Conn.,
firefighters case, is a dramatic stride toward the cherished goal of achieving
a colorblind society. In Ricci, the court told us that people of ability can
succeed regardless of skin color, and government bureaucrats seeking racially
biased outcomes can be thwarted in their racist designs.
In addition to wondering about the
fate of the party nationally, Schieffer also asked about Sanford's
political future: "Should he also resign as the governor of
South Carolina?...This seems to go beyond just the fact that, you
know, he became involved in this relationship. He was basically
missing in action for five days... Isn't this more than just a sex
scandal here? I mean, this is dereliction of duty, isn't it?"
It's interesting that Schieffer
never leveled such a charge against Bill Clinton during the Monica
Lewinsky scandal.
Uh ... maybe that's because Clinton
never skipped town, ditching his security detail and lying to aides
about where he was going and leaving the Vice President unable to
reach him and the nation essentially without a president for five
days?
Seriously, Drennen is complaining -
sorry; he finds it "interesting" -- that Schieffer never accused
Clinton of being "missing in action for five days"? No, it isn't
"interesting." Shieffer never accused Clinton of being "missing
in action for five days" because Clinton was never missing in
action for five days.
Media Matters: Limbaugh's Off the Wall spin on Michael Jackson's death
Howard Kurtz's wasted opportunity
