Download | play Download | play

Contessa Brewer: On the campaign trail in Raleigh North Carolina yesterday Obama made an unfortunate gesture. [...] Some think it looks like a flip off.

There really is no excuse for anything posing as a news network to claim that 'the blogs are buzzing about this one" and promote it so when any cursory search on the internets would have found numerous examples of just how specious a charge it was -- like the video shot from the side here. As John Cole put it: "Notice something problematic? Like a few extra fingers? What a total joke."

As Media Matters notes, this is a story that made the rounds on sites like RedState and FoxNews.com but had already been thoroughly debunked before Contessa gave new life to the ridiculous lie. Speaking of offensive fingers, did I just miss the time any of the major news networks gave any attention at all to the only presidential candidate I can ever recall that actually gave anyone the finger with the video rolling?

Continue reading »

Hannity's laughing at you, George, for making him the only clear winner of last Wednesday's debate.

Download | play Download | play

Hannity: The liberal blogs are losing their minds today in part because I suggested the question to George Stephanopoulos Tues afternoon on my radio show.

While we've had plenty of criticism for MSNBC's and CNN's debate coverage this season, nothing they did came anywhere near to what ABC pulled last Wednesday and Stephanopoulos' on-air dumpster diving for gotcha questions on Hannity's radio show will likely go down as one of the dumbest moves by a debate moderator ever. We've come to expect smear jobs like this from the likes of Hannity, and the Dems have rightly refused to attend any debate on the GOP/Fox News Channel because of it, but now we have ABC News's Chief Washington Correspondent and former Democratic presidential political adviser openly seeking their advice and unapologetically emulating them.

How is it that Stephanopoulos, of all people, thought this was a good move? Josh Marshall offers this depressingly valid observation:

I was mulling over the ABC debate this morning and the moderators' claim that knocking Obama with a more or less uninterrupted stream of Swift Boat gotchas was justified by focusing the debate on 'electability'. And it occurred to me that we have now crossed an important threshold where the Republican operative cadre has sufficiently disciplined and trained the press (and more than a few Democrats) that their own role may simply be redundant. ...

Thankfully, there are still more than a handful of journalists who aren't GOP pawns who together have penned a letter slamming ABC for its debate debacle.

Over the last three years, the group of organized, well-financed liars ironically named the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” have come to be synonymous with vicious smears and mendacity. Most honorable people, who have any decency at all, look back at the group’s bogus attacks with disgust and disappointment. These clowns smeared a war hero to help a couple of draft-dodgers, and the Republican Party cheered them on.

That, of course, was nearly four years ago. Can we leave this malicious moment in the past? Actually, no. Chris Hayes has a tremendous piece in the new issue of The Nation noting that the Swift Boat Liars’ financiers aren’t just lingering, they’re as active as ever.

Research by The Nation into Federal Election Commission records of the group’s top twenty donors reveals that they’ve been remarkably active in this cycle, contributing and bundling nearly $200,000 to presidential candidates. This does not bode well. During the last presidential campaign, the wealthy backers of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — now rebranded as Swift Vets and POWs for Truth — didn’t do their real dirty work until the general election, where as a tax-exempt 527 group they operated outside the restraints of direct campaign contributions. We may wish we were done with the Swift Boaters, but they aren’t done with us.

In 2004 the top twenty donors all gave (with one exception) at least $50,000 to the group. The top three — Houston home builder Bob Perry, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens and billionaire drugstore impresario and investor Harold Simmons — gave a combined $9.5 million ($4.45 million, $3 million and $2 million, respectively). Calculating the influence of these and the slightly less wealthy Swift Boat donors during this cycle is a touch more complicated than simply adding up their contributions. Each one exerts far more influence as a bundler, given the federal restrictions on individual giving, which limit donors to a maximum of $4,600 per cycle. So The Nation looked not only at the contributions of the donors themselves but also at those of their family members and employees.

In 2004, Swifties were closely tied to the Bush administration, particularly Karl Rove. Care to guess who these guys are rallying behind now? John McCain.

Download | play   Download | play  (h/t Heather)

Wednesday’s 'Worst Person In The World' begins with a Bronze to Kellyanne Conway for her overactive racism imagination, then a Silver to FOXNews host co-host John Gibson for leading his guest with "The Democrats have vowed more failure" and the question "Is 'stop the war' a winner?" complete with graphics to match, and the Gold went to T. Boone Pickens for trying to weasel out of his one million dollar bet if anyone can prove 'just one thing' false in the Swift Boat Liars Veterans for Truth ads he helped finance.

Eric Boehlert has an important piece that we can only hope political reporters read.

When a prominent group of New York City firefighters attacked Rudy Giuliani's handling of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and when they posted a video online puncturing what they called the "urban legend of America's Mayor," the political press knew what to do -- it anointed the first responders as this election cycle's Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Newsweek, Time, MSNBC, the New York Daily News, and scores more all agreed that the firefighters were just like the Vietnam veterans who targeted the military service of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) during the 2004 presidential run.

But that's the king of phony comparisons. And by making it, the press, once again, is letting the lying Swift Boat Vets off easy.

As Boehlert explained, "For the Beltway press, Swift Boat has simply become a catch-all phrase to describe coordinated, negative campaign attacks that try to take a candidate's perceived strength and turn it into a weakness." For those who saw what the right-wing lies did to tarnish the record of a war hero, we know the phrase means a lot more.

Bob Geiger:

In a move that should disgust all and surprise nobody, the White House announced today that George W. Bush will recess-appoint Sam Fox, who gave $50,000 to the Swift Boat Liars to help finance their 2004 smear of John Kerry, to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Belgium.

The nomination was withdrawn last week, when it became clear to Bush that Fox, who was instrumental in derailing Kerry's presidential bid, did not have enough votes in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be confirmed.

A recess appointment allows a president to fill vacancies while the Congress is on a break, even if the nominee has already been expressly or implicitly rejected by the Senate.

The announcement on the White House web site was buried in a flurry of other activity and said simply this:

The President intends to recess appoint the following individuals:

Sam Fox, of Missouri, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Belgium

UPDATE: CT Blogger sent me this link to see how the OTHER Senator from Connecticut feels about Sam Fox.

Continue reading »

I'm surprised it took this long. Digby found the new attack ad by the judge hatin' "New Mexicans For Honest Courts."

At his confirmation hearing yesterday for an ambassadorship to Belgium, nominee Sam Fox got grilled by Senator Kerry for the $50,000 contribution he gave to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the same group that spread lies and attacked Kerry's decorated military service during his 2004 Presidential run. Needless to say, Kerry had some business to take care of. It's rather surreal to hear a major swift boat funder tell Kerry that he's a hero for his military service.

Download | play   Download | play  

Bob Geiger weighs in and has a partial transcript. AP covers the story too.

While it's nice to see Senator Kerry finally get some satisfaction, this is what he should have been doing back in 2004. The SBVT lies were transparent and easily debunked -- by official Navy records no less. Although he didn't get much help from the media who refused to call out the blatant lies, inconsistencies and discrepancies, he could have defused this easily. Instead he ignored and, in turn, validated them.

Geez, they are incredible...For the record--my electric bills are pretty high too. Glenn Reynolds seems to know a thing or two about hypocrisy.

It will be quite telling if John Edwards listens to the likes of Donohue and the right wing nutosphere.

The New York Times and Associated Press have both reported criticism by Catholic League president Bill Donohue of two bloggers hired by John Edwards' presidential campaign; Donohue contends that the bloggers are "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots."

But neither the Times article, by reporter John M. Broder, nor the AP article, by writer Nedra Pickler, included any mention of Donohue's own history of vulgar, trash-talking bigotry -- or of Donohue's decision to dismiss anti-Catholic bigotry on the part of a key anti-Kerry operative in 2004....read on

 A blast from the past. Here's William in one of his embarrassing tirades against Hollywood.

  Download | play   Download | play

Donohue: They will do anything for a buck, they wouldn’t care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie they would do so-and they would do it with a smile on their face.

Stewart: In my defense I was young, and I needed the money.

As a statement of fact, and with all respect to his genealogy, Chris Wallace is a little shit.

Wallace focuses the bulk of the interview on a much hyped, and now irrelevant, "botched joke". Shortly before the midterm elections, Republicans attempted to distract voters by deliberately mis-using Kerry's so-called 'botched joke'.

Wallace's 'Clinton sandbag attack' interview script is getting old.

          Video - WMP              Video - QT

Matt Drudge (Mark Halperin's BFF) tries his usual smear job on Jim Webb, but McCain supplies the antidote to the poison that he spreads.

Wolf Blitzer had an interview with Alberto Gonzales a little bit ago, which we won't pain you with. Gonzales beat his drum right along the Whitehouse talking points and kept insisting that Iraq was a major front in the war on terror, as well as downplayed the importance of actually capturing Osama. Following the interview, Max Cleland came on to give his rebuttal:

Video - WMV    Video - QT

Not only did Cleland blast Gonzales, but he also got his digs in against the swiftboaters and what he is doing to help Murtha this fall. Cleland did get some great points across. Now if we could only get the administration to listen to people who actually have been in war.

BLITZER:  Do you agree with the attorney general as far as his assessment of the importance or lack thereof, if you will, of Osama bin Laden overall in terms of the war on terror?

MAX CLELAND (D), FORMER GEORGIA SENATOR:  I don't agree with a damn thing the attorney general said.  It is al Qaeda, stupid.  It is Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cadre that must be killed or captured, period.  If we don't have high government officials in Washington who understand that, we need new high government officials. 

Continue reading »

 I thought the way some right wing bloggers and radio talk show hosts reacted to the Jill Carroll release was simply abominable, but I was surprised to see a very similar reaction to the FOX News journalists. I wonder how these Keyboard Kommandos and Limbaughs would act if they were kidnapped. Here's the video that offends them so.

Allahpundit from Malkin's HotAir starts us off:

"Update: He’s been through hell, so of course he gets a pass. But I don’t mind telling you that these photos of Centanni gazing adoringly at Haniyeh are making me ill."

Some comment reactions from HotAir:

I certainly hope that the U.S. Govt. takes appropriate measures to isolate and cut off all external funding to the Hamas thugs who call themselves the Palestinian government. Those murderers need to learn that bad acts have bad consequences.

As for Centanni, he should be immediately fired from Fox News. I base my view not on the video here, but what he has said since his release, under no duress whatsoever. Let him seek employment with the Islamo-Nazi loving BBC or Al Gaziera.

That's a very nice comment, indeed. There's more:

Continue reading »

The Patriot Project was created to combat the Swift-boaters