Digby sent me an e-mail saying that a reader from the Burnt Orange Report had mentioned doing a takeoff of the “Leave Britney Alone” video from Chris Crocker, this time about Rush Limbaugh.
Since Limbaugh is running the GOP now, I thought that he could use a little back up from us lefties, right? Michael Steele certainly hasn’t helped the GOP much.
Anyway, I wanted to have a little fun with a webcam…
I see he forgot the eyeliner, but otherwise, a brilliant parody.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow Digby to present our self-absorbed media in action:
And on the subject of economics, their perspective is from the perch of the upper class, particularly those media celebrities who pretend they are men and women of the people, but who aren’t good enough actors to hide that they don’t want to see their taxes go up under the Obama budget.
Barack Obama has proposed a budget that, among other things, would reduce taxes on over 90 percent of the population and increase taxes on around 2 percent of the population. Flipping through the Sunday talk shows, it’s striking to see how uniformly wealthy media celebrities think it makes sense to characterize this is a “tax increase” or “raising taxes” and to leap immediately to a discussion of what the impact of these “higher taxes” will be. I think that the majority of people whose taxes are set to go down might be more interested in learning about the impact of lower taxes.
Gee, ya think?
As Sean Quinn noted one reporter saying after the briefing, “Did you notice all the questions about taxes came from reporters making over $250,000 a year, especially the TV guys?”
Jamison Foser tackled this today, especially the way in which the media acted like this was a brand new idea and not a central part of the President’s campaign platform:
What sparked this sudden concern about “class warfare”? President Obama indicated that in order to fund things like health care, the very wealthiest Americans (individuals who make more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000) might have to pay slightly more in taxes, via the expiration of President Bush’s tax cuts for those earners. Under this plan, the wealthiest Americans (again, those making more than $200,000) would be subject to the same income tax rate they paid in the 1990s — when, it should be remembered, the rich got richer and the economy did quite well.
If this plan — raising taxes slightly on people who make more than $200,000 a year in order to pay for things like health care for people who don’t — sounds familiar, it’s because Obama campaigned on it for roughly two years. Conservatives, amplified by the news media, ridiculed it with labels like “socialism” and “class warfare” and used all kinds of scary rhetoric. And the American people voted for it anyway.
In droves, even. And, considering Obama’s popularity keeps increasing, I do believe everyone’s still happy with Obama’s plans, except for those poor dears who will be thrown into poverty because they’re paying a few extra percentage points’ worth of taxes on their already obscene salaries.
The vast majority of our nation’s media is about as ridiculous as the Republicon party. And it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if they became just as irrelevant.
Oh, Josh Marshall, you are sooo right.
You may remember that Michael Steele temporarily showed a backbone when he called Limbaughtomy’s rhetoric “incendiary” and “ugly.” You probably wondered when Steele would be forced to come to Rush on his knees begging forgiveness.
That didn’t take long:
Politico reports that Steele “reached out” to Limbaugh today to say that he didn’t mean what he said.
“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” […]
“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. “It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not.”
Steele made clear that he will welcome Limbaugh into the party,” calling him a “very valuable conservative voice for our party.” “He does what he does best, which is provoke,” Steel said. “My job is to try to bring us all together.”
Awww, isn’t that sweet? The Dems certainly think so:
Just out from Gov. Tim Kaine, Steele’s counterpart at the DNC …
“I was briefly encouraged by the courageous comments made my counterpart in the Republican Party over the weekend challenging Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party and referring to his show as ‘incendiary’ and ‘ugly.’ However, Chairman Steele’s reversal this evening and his apology to Limbaugh proves the unfortunate point that Limbaugh is the leading force behind the Republican Party, its politics and its obstruction of President Obama’s agenda in Washington.
Limbaugh’s stranglehold on GOP leaders’ testicles is the Dem’s dream come true. Here’s the Cons having to bow down to the man who wants Obama to fail in every possible way. And here’s the numbers that prove that a) Rush Limbaugh is a fucktard and b) the vast majority of Americans know it:
| FAVORABLE | UNFAVORABLE | DON’T KNOW | NET CHANGE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PRESIDENT OBAMA | 71 (69) | 25 (26) | 4 (5) | 3 |
Looks like roughly 71% of the country isn’t interested in seeing Obama fail, doesn’t it just? But while those numbers should have Cons getting a wee bit nervous, these numbers should positively make them weep:
| CONGRESSIONAL DEMS: | 46 (41) | 45 (53) | 9 (6) | 13 |
| CONGRESSIONAL GOPS: | 17 (18) | 68 (70) | 15 (12) | 1 |
| DEMOCRATIC PARTY: | 58 (57) | 36 (38) | 6 (5) | 3 |
| REPUBLICAN PARTY: | 32 (31) | 64 (62) | 4 (7) | -1 |
The more the Cons throw their tantrums, scream “socialist!” and join Rush’s fail conga line, the worse their numbers get. Their solution? Increase the tantrums, scream “socialist!” more, and abase themselves before their mighty god Limbaugh.
Will Dems even have to campaign by 2010?
Welcome to Science Sunday, wherein we will deconstruct denialists, pummel presuppositionalists, and cap it off with Neil deGrasse Tyson’s absolute awesomeness.
First, the denialists.
George Will stands by his thoroughly-debunked column, and so does “editor” Fred Hiatt (can you really call someone an editor who refuses to edit?). In fact, Will’s spewing more lies, and Hiatt’s throwing down gauntlets, demanding people debate rather than decry his dear Georgie.
Be careful what you ask for, bitches:
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the first member of Congress to weigh in on George F. Will’s egregiously mendacious “global cooling” columns. In a Huffington Post column, Kerry delivers a withering critique of one of his “favorite intellectual sparring partners,” stepping up to the plate on behalf of science and scientists everywhere, including Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and White House Science Adviser John Holdren..
And if you think this column is some mealy-mouthed, polite political pablum, you’ve got another think coming. Kerry’s breathing fire. I swear he’s channeling Val Kilmer’s Halliday: “I’m your Huckleberry. That’s just my game.” Oh, hells, yes:
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see Will embracing the idea of recycling, but I’m very troubled that he is recycling errors of fact to challenge the science on global warming.
[snip]
Dragging up long-discredited myths about some non-existent scientific consensus about global cooling from the 1970s does no one any good. Except perhaps a bankrupt flat earth crowd. I hate to review the record and see that someone as smart as George Will has been doing exactly that as far back as 1992. And it’s especially troubling when the very sources that Will cites in his February 15th column draw the exact opposite conclusions and paint very different pictures than Will provides, as the good folks at ThinkProgress and Media Matters for America have demonstrated so thoroughly.
[snip]
No matter how the evidence has mounted over two decades — the melting of the arctic ice cap, rising sea levels, extreme weather — the flat earth caucus can’t even see what is on the horizon. In the old Republican Congress they even trotted out the author of Jurassic Park as an expert witness to argue that climate change is fiction. This is Stone Age science, and now that we have the White House and the Congress real science must prevail. It is time to stop debating fiction writers, oil executives and flat-earth politicians, and actually find the way forward on climate change.
[snip]
“Facts are stupid things,” Ronald Reagan once said. He was, of course, paraphrasing John Adams, who could have been talking about the science on global change when he said, “Facts are stubborn things.”
Stubborn or stupid — lets have a real debate and lets have it now.
Oh, George Will, you’ve been served.
Intrepid reporter Liz Sedoti must be auditioning for the Cons’ Opposite Day Award:
In an AP piece today, she made the following seemingly alarming assertion about Obama’s alleged stance on Social Security:
He said he would reinstitute a pay-as-you-go rule that calls for spending reductions to match increases and would shun what he said were the past few years’ “casual dishonesty of hiding irresponsible spending with clever accounting tricks.” He called the long-term solvency of Social Security “the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far” and said reforming health care, including burgeoning entitlement programs, was a huge priority.
Well, not exactly.
In fact, not at ALL, because this is what Obama ACTUALLY said today:
Now, I want to be very clear: While we are making important progress towards fiscal responsibility this year in this budget, this is just the beginning. In the coming years, we’ll be forced to make more tough choices and do much more to address our long-term challenges, from the rising cost of health care that Peter described, which is the single most pressing fiscal challenge we face by far, to the long-term solvency of Social Security.
Hey, Liz? Got a message for you and the fact-checkers at the AP:
This, my darlings, is a thing of beauty. To briefly recap: George Will, fact-challenged Washington Post columnist extraordinaire, recently penned a climate change denialist column so egregious in its errors that it nearly defies description. Days went by as we waited with baited breath for the WaPo to publish a correction. None was forthcoming. And then, a response!
I have also been following the various requests for comment from the Washington Post, and wondering when the Post might respond. Now they have:
“Thank you for your e-mail. The Post’s ombudsman typically deals with issues involving the news pages. But I understand the point you and many e-mailers are making, and for that reason I sought clarification from the editorial page editors. Basically, I was told that the Post has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible. In this instance, George Will’s column was checked by people he personally employs, as well as two editors at the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors. The University of Illinois center that Will cited has now said it doesn’t agree with his conclusion, but earlier this year it put out a statement that was among several sources for this column and that notes in part that “Observed global sea ice area, defined here as a sum of N. Hemisphere and S. Hemisphere sea ice areas, is near or slightly lower than those observed in late 1979,”
Best wishes,
Andy Alexander
Washington Post Ombudsman”
Until I read this, I had been under the impression that newspapers didn’t do as much fact-checking as magazines, because of deadline pressure; and I had imagined that the inaccuracies in George Will’s column might result from applying standards designed for reported stories to columns. But on reading that Will’s column had been subjected to a “multi-layer editing process”, and that this “process” had checked the facts “to the fullest extent possible”, I realized that I had been wrong. Naturally, I clicked the link Mr. Alexander provided, and read it. Did he? I don’t know what would be worse: that he did, and takes it to support Will, or that he didn’t take his job seriously enough to bother.
Hilzoy takes Mr. Alexander’s link, and beats him thoroughly with it. Then she continues the beating by reading the Science article Will quoted in defense of his indefensible position. Go witness. It’s a classic in the annals of correction, destined to go down in history as one of the most merciless trips to the woodshed in blogging history. She does the job that the WaPo’s “multilayer editing process” somehow found impossible.
It’s incredible to me that a national paper could not only publish something so insanely wrong on every level, but then claim they’d fact-checked it. Were I the Post, I’d be claiming an unprecidented breakdown in the editing process – it would be far less embarrassing than demonstrating that multiple people failed to read so much as the two most easily-accessed papers cited in Wills’ column, both of which take a howitzer to his conclusions.
Alas, one trip to the woodshed, even one as epic as this, will not be enough for the WaPo team. They need to be set back a grade and placed in special education for the clueless on climate change. Thankfully, a class is available, and it has a proven track record helping the climate change challenged wake up and smell the CO2.
Let us hope it can rescue the WaPo before they become the identical twin of the Moony Times.
Someone needs to explain Godwin’s Law to our more hysterical national newspapers. This is the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth insanity I expect from people in mental wards, not the pages of a staid ol’ business newspaper. But here we are, staring at Hitler over breakfast:
If the Wall Street Journal’s fabled editorial section has been letting in too many drafts of puzzling and infuriating reality during these past few weeks, why not head over to the Washington Times or Investors Business Daily, grab yourself a straw and snort the Kool Aid straight up your nose?
Above: Washington Times editorial page, 2/11/09Actually, it’s a fortunate day to visit the Washington Times editorial page, because you can go a lot of Hitler-free days over there before getting the Hitler. I mean they don’t always give it up. Sometimes it’s all teasing and tassels and then the curtain closes and you’re standing there with no more Hitler than you came in with.
This was not one of those days, nor was this or this. Nor for that matter this.
[snip]
What we learn today from the Washington Times is that medical records must not be digitized like that Obama plan proposes, but can only exist in paper form because YOU KNOW WHO LIKED EFFICIENCY HITLER THAT’S WHO. And certainly, such naïve, Godwin-unaware amuse-gueules of instaHitler are in the category of always-funny.
Somehow, I don’t think bringing medical records into the 21st century will lead to the return of the Reich. Yet this is the claim of one of the (formerly) most respected newspapers in the country. [edit: Um, nevermind. Peter’s right – it wasn’t merely purchased by Moon, it was founded by him. So much for my memory…]
I thought we lived in a country with a booming market for psychotropics. Why, then, are such obviously delusional people left unmedicated and suffering episodes of acute paranoia on the editorial pages?
The bastards who’re using ’em obviously don’t deserve ’em:
President Obama will host a prime-time news conference tomorrow night, presumably to answer questions about the economy and his stimulus package. We’re in a time of crisis, and it stands to reason the president wants to respond to Americans’ concerns.
The networks, however, are apparently having a fit. The press conference, they say, will eat up an hour of prime time, which may cost broadcasters “more than $9 million in lost ad revenue.”
One network exec whined, “Do people really want to come home after looking for a job, or after being at a job they hate, sit down to veg out in front of their favorite show — and he’s on again?” The exec went on to say that the typical American’s reaction might be “nothing he’s going to say is going to help me get a job, or put food on the table,” adding, “He could lose a lot of goodwill doing this.”
Eric Boehlert responded:
Combined, the networks control more than one hundred hours of primetime programming each week. Obviously, they can make-up a handful of lost ad slots because of Obama’s primetime address, just as networks have done for decades.
And then there are the bitter, nameless TV execs quoted in the article. (Ungrateful suits whose networks have made billions using the public airwaves free of charge.) The unvarnished disdain for Obama and the contempt for public discourse expressed is just astounding.
You know what? These stupid fucks are forgetting a little feature of the licenses the FCC grants: “…broadcast licenses are to be renewed if the station meets the ‘public interest, convenience, or necessity.'” I would say that having the President address the nation in a time of economic meltdown is most certainly in the public interest, and is a vital necessity to our democracy. If they don’t like it, they can figure out another way to pump their puffery into American homes. We don’t have to renew their fucking licenses.
If these tantrums keep up, it looks like it’ll be time to roll back all that deregulation and return these little shits to the days when their ability to hold on to their licenses was dictated by how well they served the public interest. Either that, or we reconsider this “free of charge” stuff. Spoiled brats get their privileges taken away. Simple as that.
dday and I share a sentiment:
I think every post I write gets me angrier and angrier, so I may need to take a time out. But first:
Max Baucus spoke at the Academy Health National Policy Conference today. His first words were:
The 19th Century British philosopher Herbert Spencer wrote: “The preservation of health is a duty.”
I believe that this Congress has a duty to reform health care.
And he continued, “this morning, I’d like to spend some time talking about the potential obstacles we may face as we move forward – and the reasons why those barriers can be overcome.” So his talk was a kind of analysis, setting out the barriers and how they can be surmounted.
The Washington Times watched that performance, listened to it, and wrote this.
A key Senate Democrat charged with overseeing his party’s swift push for universal health care indicated on Tuesday that reform may have to wait until next year, as other priorities related to the economy and wars take precedent.
“Why might reform not happen this year? As is often the case, the new administration and the new Congress face competing priorities,” said Sen. Max Baucus, Montana Democrat and Senate Finance Committee chairman, at a health policy conference in Washington hosted by AcademyHealth and Health Affairs magazine. “These priorities compete for time on the agenda and attention in the press and in public.”
“The president’s dance card is indeed full,” he added.
Seriously, shoot me in the face.
If you read nothing else today, pop an extra dose of blood pressure meds and go finish dday’s post.
I’ve been getting steadily more steamed. A democracy is nominally run by its citizens. To make good decisions, you need good info. And this is the kind of codswallop we’re fed. Anyone wonder why I get my news from the blogs rather than the MSM? I’m going to need that gun when dday’s done with it.
I’d boycott the networks, but I don’t watch teevee anymore anyway, so it’s a rather empty gesture. I can’t watch. Not even when Obama’s on trying to correct all of the bullshit they’ve spewed:
But this is good stuff from the Prez. More like it, please:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, Charlie, if you take a look at the bill, the fact is, there are no earmarks in this bill, which, by the way, some of the critics can’t claim for legislation they’ve voted for over the last eight years. There’s no earmarks in it. We’ve made sure that there aren’t individual pork projects in there.
The criticisms have generally been around some policy initiatives that were placed in the bill that I think are actually good policy, but some people may say is not going to actually stimulate jobs quickly enough. I think that there’s legitimate room for working through those issues over the next several weeks to make sure that we get the best possible bill. But here’s the thing that I think we have to understand. The economy is in desperate straits. What I won’t do is adopt the same economic theories that helped land us in the worst economy since the Great Depression. What I will do is work with anybody of good faith to make sure that we can come up with the best possible package to not only create jobs and provide support to families, but also to lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth.
CHARLES GIBSON: CBO says only 25 percent of this bill would get to people within a year. [Memo to Charlie: that’s been debunked, you dumbshit. Don’t make me come over there with the Smack-o-Matic 3000.] Republicans now say it needs to be more stimulative, there needs to be more money on infrastructure, there needs to be more tax cuts, there needs to be more help for homeowners, maybe even guaranteeing 4, 4.5 percent mortgages. [Memo to Charlie ctd.: Cons are saying all sorts of shit trying to excuse themselves for not voting for the stimulus, and you’ve already repeated it endlessly. Be a fucking reporter for once and note they were against help for homeowners way before they were for it, and just voted down more infrastructure spending. If you can’t fact check, STFU.]
Would you accept those things?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, keep in mind, for example, some want to put more infrastructure in the bill, and they’re also complaining that it doesn’t spin out fast enough. In some cases, there are contradictions there. I mean, we may want to spend on a whole bunch of great infrastructure, but it may take seven or eight years to do it, in which case we’re vulnerable for the criticism that it’s not spinning out fast enough. I think that in a package of this sort, that has to go to Congress with 535 opinions, at least, then there’s going to be some give and take.
What I’ve said is that any good idea thrown out there to improve this legislation I’m for. But I want to be absolutely clear here that the overwhelming bulk of the package is sound, is designed to put people back to work, help states that are in desperate straits, help families who are losing jobs and health care, and it’s designed to make sure that we’ve got green energy jobs for the future. In fact, most of the programs that have been criticized as part of this package amount to less than one percent of the overall package. And it makes for good copy, but here’s the thing — we can’t afford to play the usual politics at a time when the economy continues to worsen.
I wonder what it’s going to take to get that through the Cons’ thick skulls? We already paddled them soundly, not once but twice, at the polls. What more does it take to make them grow the fuck up and start acting like responsible adults? How, in fact, do you play ball with tantrum-throwing toddlers who take their ball and go home when they
don’t get their way?
And what is it going to take to break the media of the habit of being stenographers for the Cons? Do we need to add a remedial training program to the stimulus that will send these fake journalists back to school so they can learn to be the real thing? I’m not even sure it’s an educational issue – I think they know they’re supposed to fact-check, but they’re too addicted to Con bullshit to stop swallowing it. Which, I suppose, makes this more of a heath-care issue. We need to stage an intervention. Get those media clowns into detox, stat.
This is why the left seems so angry, folks. Ten metric tons of dumbfuckery dumped on one’s head on an hourly basis while you have nothing but a dessert spoon to shovel it off with rather has that effect.
I’ll know the Apocalypse has arrived when Fox News actually reports a story accurately.
That time is not upon us (h/t):
Reacting to President Obama’s executive order to close down Guantanamo in the coming year, Pennsylvania Congressman Jack Murtha said that the Gitmo detainees could be relocated to prisons in his home state. To find out what residents of Murtha’s district think of this proposal, Fox News headed to Pennsylvania.
They should’ve packed a map.
Our reader alerts to the actual boundaries of Murtha’s district, which don’t include Mel’s Restaurant in Somerset Borough—which Fox said was in the “heart” of Murtha’s district and popular with “constituents”—the pub where the reporter conducted his interviews.
Oops.
When a news channel is this egregiously, consistently stupid, can they still be called “news”?
