Howard Jones - No One Is To Blame

Okay, here we go. I pull myself from my sickbed to look at the Sunday line up and you know what it looks like to me? A bunch of Republican jokers lining up their rationalizations and justifications and figuring out the best way to divest themselves of any and all responsibility and to pin all failures on the yet-to-even-start Obama presidency. We got Ahnuld on This Week, as well as the reliably partisan Newt Gingrich and Bobby Jindahl on Face the Nation, Marsha Blackburn on Late Edition, Tim Pawlenty and wannabe RNC head Michael Steele on Fox News. But the major "tell" is good ol' Tweety himself. What kind of framing is this? Who is in charge while the economy tanks -- Bush or Obama? and When Obama takes office, will he postpone much of his ambitious agenda? Really? So the poor man hasn't even taken the Oath of Office and we're already looking at blaming him for the economy and assuming that he'll flake out on his platform?

ABC's "This Week" - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.; Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La.; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Shelby; T. Boone Pickens, chairman of the energy investment fund BP Capital.

CNN's "Late Edition" - Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez; Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Ted Turner, CNN founder and author of a new memoir.

"Fox News Sunday" - Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, R-Md.

"The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Howard Fineman, Erin Burnett, Michelle Norris and Michael Duffy. Topics: Who is in charge while the economy tanks -- Bush or Obama? Will Republican leaders try to stop Palin from becoming their 2012 nominee? Meter Questions: When Obama takes office, will he postpone much of his ambitious agenda? YES: 4 NO: 8 Will the GOP pick a young rising star instead of an older "heir apparent" in 2012? YES: 12 No: 0

Sigh. So what's catching your eye this morning?

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Heather sent this clip from Thursday's O'Reilly Factor for the uncharacteristically honest aside Shepard Smith makes about Sean Hannity being in the business of electing Republicans. Frankly, anyone who has spent any time watching Fox News and listening to Fox Radio can glean that in about 1.35 seconds. Hannity makes no bones about his bias, although he will occasionally weasel out of his crossing journalistic ethical lines (like he even knows what journalistic ethics are) by alternately claiming to be a commentator rather than a journalist. Between you and me, let's just call him a propagandist and be done with it.

But what struck me as I was writing up the transcripts is Bill O'Reilly's state of mind. More specifically, Bill is apparently in a war within his own mind that bears little to do with the actual conversation he was having with Shep. He evokes this bravado of wanting to physically harm Barney Frank as a way to show empathy for Shepard Smith's recent calling out of Joe the Plumber and Ralph Nader, which is more than a little disturbing. He then launches into a strangely dissonant and (I guess in his mind) facetious slam that "the media" launches against Fox News after Smith says he was trying to champion the truth. I'm not sure who this "media" is for Billo, unless suddenly the liberal blogosphere has been elevated in his mind from guttersnipes to the mainstream media. But watch Billo in this clip...he never lets Smith finish a sentence and it's all about a conflict that exists nowhere but in his mind.

O’REILLY: Okay, but you work for the Fox News Channel, which is the most unfair channel, always trying to get the Republicans elected. So you can’t be doing this stuff, you can’t be challenging Joe the Plumber and Ralph Nader…
SMITH: Well, as you know, and thank you for the softball, that’s silly. That’s Sean …
O’REILLY: [laughs] It was a little facetious here…
SMITH: That’s Sean Hannity’s job. Sean Hannity…
O’REILLY: Well, Sean Hannity is a Republican…
SMITH: That’s what I said and the bottom…
O’REILLY: So what’s the beef?
SMITH: The beef…I have absolutely no beef …
O’REILLY: I have no beef with him. Calls him a Communist…
SMITH: Absolutely. But the bottom…But that’s labeled like an op-ed page opinion. Mine is labled news.
O’REILLY: But the media attacks on Fox News just fall apart when you watch Hume’s broadcast, you watch The Factor, we have just as many liberals as conservatives on here, but the media doesn’t really care, do they?

Maybe it's me, but I think Billo is right there on the abyss of a breakdown.

Transcripts below the fold:

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I'm too distraught to write about this.

So go read Jesse Wendel. He pretty much sums it up: This was a media hit job.

It wasn't just the Seattle Times, incidentally, though they led the charge. Local talk radio -- particularly two very well-known jagoffs on the two biggest stations in town -- played a big role too.

I don't know if there will be a "next time" for Darcy. I do know that the Times' karmic bitch will be biting them in the ass for this in a big way.

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So Bill O'Reilly is finally confronted with the reality that Daily Kos is nothing like a neo-Nazi hate site.

Give BillO credit: He decided to air a segment on the anti-Obama hate sites that can be found on the Web. He had on Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter, who reported to O'Reilly that the virulent hatred of Obama found at neo-Nazi and white-supremacist websites was something truly stomach-churning.

At the height of the discussion he asks:

O'Reilly: OK, now, the Kos is a hate site on the left, uh, how would these neo-Nazi things compare to that?

Carpenter: Ah, these are ... it's, it's much worse than Kos.

O'Reilly: Yeah?

Carpenter: Because it's filled with the worst slurs you could think of against a black person. You know, they talk about aborting black children. The degree of casualness to which it's done is most alarming. I mean, I was frightened in there. I mean there's literature, you know, different kinds of bombs --

O'Reilly: Anything else? Sure. I mean, these are people like Tim McVeigh, who blow -- you know, those people --

Carpenter: Right.

Right. Those whose Name Must Not Be Spoken. And so we quickly move on ...

Except that this kind of blows a hole in O'Reilly's horseshit claim that Kos is a "hate site" just like the Nazis. As we noted at the time, there's a wee problem with this thesis: what real Nazi/hate sites are like.

Ah, but instead we quickly move on to even more specious crap ...

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From The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin cites a study by the Pew Research Center on the percentage of negative stories about McCain and asks his panel of the panel of Eleanor Clift, Derek McGinty, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan if it means the press is in the bag for Obama and of course he, Monica Crowley and Pat Buchanan all agree that they are. Monica Crowley thinks some poll of the White House press corps after the Presidential elections which shows most of them voted for Democrats proves the bias. Pat Buchanan thinks there is also some "white guilt" going on and that the New York Times covering Cindy McCain's past problems with prescription pills and not covering Obama's cocaine "problem" is the proof. Of course it couldn't possibly have anything to do with McCain doing anything to deserve the negative coverage. Oh no...

FO writes to the C&L inbox after watching Tom on Meet the Press Sunday: "What is a "senior Republican" doing calling Brokaw for campaign advice?"

MR. BROKAW: Chuck, a very senior Republican was startled the other day when he called me and said, ‘What in the world is going on in Florida? Why are we in trouble there?’

He is moderating Tuesday's Presidential Debate so I think it's called "working the refs." I'd kind of like to know who that Republican is.

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We've shown before that since his naming as Tim Russert's interim replacement how completely one-sided Tom Brokaw has been in terms of Republican framing.   But this truly takes the cake.  After letting McCain spokesman (and Official WATB) Steve Schmidt let loose with a bunch of lies (more on that later) against Obama that campaign manager David Axelrod easily shows for the crap it is, Tom Brokaw in the interest of fairness cites an NBC/WSJ poll that says that more Americans think McCain is "best equipped" to be Commander in Chief.

AXELROD: What has happened is, as Sen. Obama predicted from the beginning, that we got distracted in Iraq and now Osama bin Laden, who is the person who attacked the United States, killed 3,000 American citizens is now resurgent. He is stronger and that is the result of the misbegotten decisions of John McCain and he stubbornly wants to continue, even as the Iraqis won't take responsibility, sitting on $79 billion of their own surplus, while we spend $10 billion a month. It doesn't make sense. We can't take more of the same, Steve.

BROKAW: In fairness to everybody here, I'm just going to end on one note and that is that we continue to poll on who is best equipped to be Commander in Chief, John McCain continues to lead in that category, despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC/WSJ poll.

See, here's the problem, Tom.  I have the latest NBC/WSJ poll (.pdf) taken September 19-22.  Guess what?  THOSE NUMBERS AREN'T IN THERE.  Pulled out of thin air, or an orifice of your choice.  In fact, in the MSNBC.com political coverage of this poll, the headline read: Obama Up 2 in NBC/WSJ Poll.  So where exactly are these numbers, Tom?  If you go to Gallup, the lead is even stronger (50 to 42%), which is pretty close to the numbers you attributed to McCain.

So Tom Brokaw -- in the interest of fairness to whom exactly, I'm unclear, since he is deliberately MISinforming the public -- tries to mitigate Axelrod's deft defense of Obama's judgment by lying and saying that most people believe McCain is still better equipped to be Commander in Chief. You can leave a comment at the Meet The Press Comment Form on Brokaw's campaigning on behalf of McCain.

And by the way, Schmidt's assertion that McCain called for Rumsfeld's resignation?  Big fat, stinking lie.  From the Obama campaign: 

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Business Week:

The McCain campaign had adopted an ad strategy that has been dubbed "desperate" by Time Magazine political columnist Joe Klein. Klein was writing in response to this latest ad from McCain's new ad/communications honcho Steve Schmidt.

Klein writes that a candidate air (this) ad only if: "1. You're desperate. 2. Your Middle East policy has been superseded by events and abandoned by your allies. 3. You apparently have nothing substantive to say about America's future role in the region and the world."[..]

This ad asserts a McCain campaign talking-point that Obama wouldn't make time for wounded troops unless cameras were allowed to follow him, but did make time to work out at a gym. This, of course, is a lie. It's a blatant lie. Steve Schmidt, a disciple of Karl Rove's who worked on George W. Bush's 2004 ad/communications effort, though, is playing the Rovian playbook that says that it doesn't matter if it's true as long as your target audience (non-college educated white working class voters) won't bother to find out the actual truth, and believe that it "sounds like it might be a true."

For the second time in a week the non-partisan www.factcheck.org takes McCain to task for a false ad [false, btw, is another word for lie].[..]

What the McCain campaign doesn't want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that's political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents-a lie.

This is what some people are calling the Hannity strategy. Right wing nut-muffin Sean Hannity employs a slick strategy of repeating canards very quickly over and over, day in and day out, which aren't challenged by his TV co-host Alan Colmes or by any of his radio listeners. By relentlessly repeating falsehoods day after day, the theory goes, it becomes embedded in the media.

Let the transcript speak for itself: 

SCARBOROUGH: Is the media turning against him? Is the media going to start seizing on things like this to prove that they're not in the tank for Barack Obama?

HALPERIN: There's been a little bit of the paradigm shift. I think that McCain web video might have had the same effect as the Saturday Night Live parody that...on the Clinton/Obama race. I think some reporters recognize going forward if we replicate the way the coverage has been, the imbalance, the unfair pro-Obama coverage going forward, it would do a disservice in the general election. This...whenever I go on TV and say, ‘this election is about a referendum on Obama, that's the whole thing,' those guys with the Cheetos on the end of their fingers...

BRZEZINSKI: [laughs] Exactly...

HALPERIN: ...attack me and say, ‘that's just some dodge, it's about McCain too'. McCain deserves scrutiny and he'll get some. But I think Barack Obama has to find the right balance between this seeming presidential, getting people comfortable with him, and this kind of stuff, the presidential seal, the faux seal, the kind of quote that The Washington Post has. I think that's stuff is dangerous. I think that's the one way he can lose the election.

SCARBOROUGH: People don't understand the dynamics of this race, the landscape, the battlefield, the political battlefield. And it is this: Republicans have had power for 8 years. We've gotten in trouble in Iraq. We've gotten in trouble in Afghanistan. We're going to have a $500 billion deficit. The President's approval rating below 30. He's in Jimmy Carter territory. Right Track/Wrong Track-81% of Americans think we're on the wrong track. There is...so when we say it's not about John McCain, we're saying you could put a Pet Rock, you know, in the position John McCain is, if it were a Republican Pet Rock, it would have all of these problems. It is about Obama, because like Jimmy Carter in '76, a Democrat should win.

First of all, Halperin, bite me with the dismissive Cheetos snark.  I'll match not only my diet but my bona fides against yours any day and we'll see just who has the Cheetos stains. You get attacked because you literally can not recognize your posterior from your elbow.   You really want us to believe this ridiculous "librul media" bias meme you've been pushing for years?  Um, hello...reality to Halperin.   Maybe if you weren't so busy eating the doughnuts and BBQ with which McCain is only too happy to keep you supplicated, you'd see that.

As much as I'd hate to agree with the Scar -- and believe me, it's killing me -- the Democrats winning this election should be a foregone conclusion considering just how badly the GOP has screwed up in their 25 years of either Legislative or Executive control.  The fact that Obama doesn't have a 25-30 point margin has more to do with hacks like Halperin who will never report honestly on McCain's dizzying number of flip flops, his bad temper, his constant factual errors but will focus endlessly on hard hitting items like unproven, unchallenged and fact-free slurs.

This election is not a referendum on Barack Obama, you hack.  It's to the detriment of the entire country that we can't have an referendum on the damage done to democracy by the likes of Mark Halperin.  Put that on a Cheetos and eat it.

UPDATE:  MoveOn has sent out a political action to its members asking them to contact Halperin and ask him to stop repeating right wing talking points.  You may email him at mark_halperin@timemagazine.com and then let MoveOn know your response.

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You gotta love the predictability of the framing from McCain's Media.  John McCain challenges Barack Obama to go to Iraq, and so he goes.  Then he makes the exact same courtesy calls with other heads of state with whom he would be in close contact should he win the presidency that John McCain made just a couple of months ago, but according to Suzanne Malveaux on CNN's Late Edition, "some people" are worried that Obama is just a little audacious for making this trip.  Riiiiigggghhhhttt.  Just who would be these people, Malveaux?  Would they be those same GOP/RNC types that have been whispering these ridiculous slurs because Obama's trip was so successful and made their candidate look like an intemperate, ill-prepared and out of touch amateur?

Senator, I want to use a word that you love to use, "audacity." A lot of people looked at the trip and they saw the palaces, the world leaders, the 200,000 that were gathered in Berlin, and they said, "The audacity of this trip, it looks like he is running for president of the world."

Are we quoting Krauthammer and Brooks again on another media outlet?  It appears so.  The question goes out to McCain's Media yet again: by what standard have these two chuckleheads--who have yet to be right on anything, mind you--earned the privilege of framing the debate of this race?

Kudos to Obama for responding the only way you should to these intelligence-insulting media narratives.

OBAMA: Well, let me make a couple points. First of all, I basically met with the same folks that John McCain met with after he won the nomination. He met with all these leaders. He also added a trip to Mexico, a trip to Canada, a trip to Colombia, and nobody suggested that that was "audacious."

I think people assumed that what he was doing was to talk to world leaders who we may have deal with should we become president. That's part of the job that I'm applying for.

And so -- so I was puzzled by this notion that somehow what we were doing was in any way different from what Senator McCain or a lot of presidential candidates have done in the past.

Transcripts below the fold

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Heather created this mash up of the respective coverage of Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! and Richard Engel of MSNBC of the news that Iraqi's oil fields would be opened up to foreign countries, under the guidance of US advisors: 

The New York Times reports a group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest oil fields in Iraq. The disclosure marks the first confirmation of direct involvement by the Bush administration in deals to open Iraq’s oil to commercial development. The Times recently reported the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company—Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP— as well as Chevron, are on the verge of getting no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest oil fields. In their role as advisers to the Iraqi Oil Ministry, American government lawyers and private-sector consultants provided template contracts and detailed suggestions on drafting the contracts.

Makes clear the motive for going into Iraq, doesn't it?  And the idiots on the MSNBC report still insist that the oil will pay for the war and that it will lower gas prices someday.  Yeah, right.  With companies like Exxon Mobil posting the record quarterly profits, if you buy that, I have a bridge to sell you--cheap. 

I don't think there's a more clear example of the influence of the corporate media to disinform the general public. In fact, I would hazard a guess that if the major news outlets actually informed the public the way that Democracy Now! does consistently, we would have an approval rating for the Bush administration in the single digits.

The way FOX handled the hostage crisis Friday at the Clinton campaign office was a travesty. Thanks to the The Huff Post, watch these two clips and be horrified.

Watch and listen as Carl Cameron repeatedly screams "The SWAT truck is moving!" back to Megyn Kelly in the newsroom. Don't miss Carl peering out of the vehicle, hand to forehead, trying to make out what's happening at the scene, and Megyn's statement, "This is incredible to watch!"

BraveNewFilms has a great article also:

As if being busted for being an entertainment channel masquerading as a news organization isn't humiliating enough. Now FOX has embarrassed itself once again by breaking nearly every journalistic standard imaginable in covering the hostage situation at the Hillary Clinton campaign office in Rochester, NH. And in doing so, they may just have put the public safety and law enforcement lives in jeopardy.

Cameron reported the release of the female hostage this way.

She fit's the description of your typical Clinton campaign volunteer.

What's that mean Carl?

At 5:50PM NBC and CNN reported that the suspects name which they responsibly said "they cannot confirm" was not Troy Stanely at all but one Leeland Eisenberg. At 6:16PM Leeland Eisenberg surrendered peacefully. FOX News had mistakenly identified an innocent man as a hostage taker and a paranoid schizophrenic. I wonder if Troy Stanley knows a good lawyer; does anyone remember Richard Jewell and the Atlanta Olympics?

An addendum to this story. CNN revealed afterwards that the suspect Leeland Eisenberg and a hostage had called CNN hours before, in the middle of the crisis. As responsible journalists they made the decision not to air anything. It's too bad that FOX didn't adhere to the same professional standards and decided to put lives in jeopardy by racing to be first on the air with information that turned out to be wrong.

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Dan Abrams--most recently GM of MSNBC--looks at the laughably petulant and childish insinuations being made at FOXNews about Chris Matthews, moderator of last night's GOP debate. Apparently, the team over at FOXNews is incensed that Tweety would dare to say anything about the White House trying to control the flow and framing of the news and thereby taint George Bush as being anything less than the masterful Commander in Chief they say he is.

So what is the propaganda arm of the White House to do? Suggest that Chris Matthews is too liberal to be an unbiased moderator for the Republican debate, unlike their fair and balanced Sean Hannity and Brit Hume. Be still my gag reflex.

While I have many issues with Hillary Clinton, both as a political figure and as a candidate, I really hate it when the media is suckered into furthering Republican memes, especially ones as misogynistic as this.

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In an Iowa appearance over the weekend, Hillary Clinton fielded a question on her support for the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment (and let's be honest, she needs to answer for that vote considering how recklessly the Bush administration treated the Senate vote over Iraq).  Unlike those who are "professional journalists", the questioner, Randall Rolph, followed up and got more insistent with Hillary.  The exchange has been described as testy or harsh, though it just sounds like she got annoyed and accused Rolph of being a plant.  Kudos to Rolph for asking a question the traditional media hasn't and kudos to Hillary for not relying on pre-approved audiences and questions like our current president.

But ever eager to show how unlikable Hillary is (a common theme among Republicans, both politico and layperson alike), MSNBC covered the same non-issue no less than 3 times in the course of an hour, with such charming descriptions as "shrill" and "fishwife-y".

Cheri Jacobus, Republican strategist (naturally) and former RNC spokesperson:

 You know, I think this is a real problem for Hillary Clinton and her campaign. If she could have been as calm and rational as say, our good friend here was, maybe she would have gotten away with it. But this is a real problem. She came off as shrill and fishwife-y and thin-skinned. And when we're looking to a Commander in Chief, to elect someone as Commander in Chief, I don't think that's a persona that you want to emit. It's been a problem that they've had with her since her days in Arkansas as First Lady in Arkansas and I think that this highly controlled persona that she's had up until now really is starting to look like it's just barely under the surface, that's she's going to come out with these fishwife-y comments and it is a problem they're going to have to resolve.

I'm curious, we've all seen testy exchanges with McCain, Giuliani and even George Bush...have they ever been described in the media as being "shrill"?