Time for your weekly podcast from two of my favorite "liberal elitists", our own Driftglass and Bluegal.
You can listen to past editions or make a donation to help keep these going at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/. And the links for this week which were mentioned in the podcast are:
Have a great weekend everybody and I know Fran and Driftglass enjoy getting your feedback on the podcasts, so visit their site and drop them a line if you'd like to weigh in.
President Reagan: “We did not, repeat; did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages. Nor will we”.
Famous last words and words that would come back like a bad meal. But during this week of November in 1986 that's what we heard, and a lot of it and it wasn't going to end anytime soon.
But the evidence to the contrary was coming thick and fast and finger pointing with a flurry of denials ensued. And within days the wagons had circled. By the time the week was out Congressional investigations would be underway and an odyssey going on for months, if not years would unfold.
This clip - from the ABC World News This Week broadcast of November 16, 1986 provided some background on the brewing scandal. And many voices who came to be all-too familiar years later are heard.
Even the Congressman from Wyoming Dick Cheney is there.
Apparently Fox New Watch's Jon Scott and Jim Pinkerton assume that none of their viewers know how to use the Internet or watched this clip of some of the off-air comments made about Sarah Palin on their show.
Here's what they said this week.
Scott: Sarah Palin's Alaska debuted on TLC last Sunday with record breaking ratings for that network. The show featuring the former Alaskan governor and her family as they explore our home state scored nearly five million viewers. TLC says it is the largest debut in the channel's history and yet the media critics were ready to pounce on her for putting that show together. Kirsten Powers, you're from Alaska. How about Kirsten Powers Alaska? […]
She is a draw! […]
Scott: Well and all kinds of critics were ready to pounce. In fact we said on this show last week there were some unsubstantiated reports that she was getting a million dollars or had asked for a million dollars an episode to do that show and I guess that turned out not to be the case. […]
Pinkerton: Golfers measure themselves on how much money they make. I think the snobbery in the coverage of her show which is a hit among real people is so thick you can cut it with a knife. I just... it boggles me that critics would turn themselves into such a stereotype that they would do exactly what you're expected to do which is pound away at her for being a Republican.
Television 'Hulk' actor Lou Ferrigno has joined an Arizona sheriff's posse targeting illegal immigrants in the Phoenix valley area, the sheriff's office said on Wednesday.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Ferrigno, 59, a body builder who donned green makeup to star in the popular 1970s television series 'The Incredible Hulk,' was among 56 people sworn in as volunteers for an armed immigration posse.
Arpaio said the posse would work with sheriff's deputies in operations targeting smugglers and businesses suspected of employing illegal immigrants in the county, among other duties.
Also sworn in alongside Ferrigno: Steven Segal, world's biggest wanker action star.
As a protester who showed up at the event said:
"They must have sunk pretty low in their career to stand by Sheriff Joe Arpaio."
This whole scheme gives me the willies. You just know it's going to turn out badly, for everyone involved.
Former Gov. George Pataki apparently thinks that if you repeat yourself enough times and keep regurgitating the same lies over and over again, eventually that makes you right. Pataki along with a lot of others on the right apparently aren't too happy about the outcome of the trial of now convicted terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.
A Federal District Court in Manhattan convicted Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani yesterday on one count of of conspiracy for the 1998 terror bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. While Ghailani — the first former Guantanamo detainee to be tried in civilian court — was acquitted of more than 280 other charges, he faces 20 years to life in prison.
On cue, conservatives are outraged at the result of the trial (even though he’ll spend time in a maximum security prison for least 20 years), claiming he should have been tried in a military tribunal. Liz Cheney’s group Keep America Safe claimed that “bad ideas have dangerous consequences. … We urge the president: End this reckless experiment. Reverse course. Use the military commissions at Guantanamo that Congress has authorized.” (The Center for American Progress’ Ken Gude notes on the Wonk Room that military commissions “deliver shorter sentences than civilian courts” and “the minimum sentence that Ghailani can receive is longer than the combined sentences” of three of the four detainees who have been convicted in military commissions.)
The extremely patient Jonathan Turley wrote about the case at his blog as well and Rep. Peter King's similar reaction to Pataki's here to the verdict.
In a truly disturbing response to the verdict, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) denounced the jury verdict as “a total miscarriage of justice” and insisted “this tragic verdict demonstrates the absolute insanity of the Obama administration’s decision to try Al Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts.” Of course, no one would accuse New Yorkers as being ambivalent on terrorism.
Nevertheless, Rep. King’s solution to a jury of citizens acquitting an accused person is to rig the system to avoid such juries in the future. It is the most raw demonstration that the interest in the tribunal system is the view that it is outcome determinative and pre-set for convictions. Rep. King appears to be joining the Queen of Hearts that we must have a system that guarantees “sentence first, verdict afterwards.”
Matthews sub Michael Smerconish completely lost control of this interview and allowed George Pataki to control it and talk over everyone. I think Pataki's been going to the same media training school as Ron Christie where they teach you to talk over everyone else, never come up for air, filibuster, feign outrage and hope you run the clock out so the other guests never get a chance to get a word in. This was just a shameless display by Pataki defending torture.
WASHINGTON -- Leaders of the effort to reform the filibuster in the Senate are pushing forward despite the election outcome, working to gather support within the Democratic caucus while reaching out to Republicans. Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said that he and a core group of members will canvass their colleagues throughout November and December.
"We'll start the informal discussion in our caucus. Are you for reform? What kind of reform?" Udall told HuffPost.
On the first day of the 112th Congress, Udall said, he will rise and make a motion to establish rules for the session, making the argument that the chamber is entitled by the Constitution to set its own rules. Vice President Joe Biden is then expected to rule -- as vice presidents have done in the past -- that the motion is in order. Senate Republicans will challenge the ruling and Democrats will move to table the objection. Only 50 votes will be needed to table the objection. If Democrats succeed, a debate would then begin over how to reform the rules.
Udall said he and newer Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) have been gradually winning support for their effort to reform the rules.
Abolishing the filibuster is far from the only reform under consideration. "You could clear out a lot of the underbrush," said Norm Ornstein, a constitutional scholar who advised Udall on the effort. Currently, after the majority files a cloture motion to break a filibuster, 30 hours of "debate" must happen before the vote. That vote is followed by another 30 hours until the final vote is held, which means a single effort can take a full week of floor time.
That time could be reduced or eliminated -- or split in two 15-hour sections divided among the parties, Ornstein said. Or separate rules could exist for executive branch nominees, alleviating the crisis of understaffing that has beset both administrations since at least 2007.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Michigan Republican leader Saul Anuzis is the front-runner to replace Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican National Committee.
We're sorry to see Steele go, because he's provided so much amusement over the years. But where Steele never failed to provide us truckloads of Republican dumbassery, Anuzis may more than make up for it in far-right wingnuttery.
But Anuzis' thing about fascists goes much deeper than that, as Heidi Beirich at the SPLC noted earlier this week. Because Anuzis has not only long maintained an association with one of Michigan's leading young white supremacists -- a former campus activist named Kyle Bristow -- he has adamantly defended him:
Bristow led the Michigan State University campus branch of Young Americans For Freedom (MSU-YAF) and was so virulent in his politics that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) began listing it as a hate group in 2006. Bristow also served as a Republican precinct delegate.
Bristow’s MSU-YAF engaged in extensive racist activities. One of its first stunts was presenting a 13-point agenda that would have established a “Caucasian caucus” at MSU and, in turn, eliminated all student government representation for practically every other non-white, non-heterosexual, non-male or non-Christian student group at the university. Bristow was on record saying, “Homosexuality kills people almost to a degree worse than cigarettes. … these [pro-gay rights] groups are complicit with murder.” MSU-YAF sponsored a “Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day” contest, held a “Koran Desecration” competition, jokingly threatened to distribute smallpox-infested blankets to Native American students, and posted “Gays Spread AIDS” fliers across campus. Bristow’s YAF also brought several extremists to speak at the MSU campus, including Holocaust denier Nick Griffin, leader of the whites-only British National Party (for more on YAF, read here).
None of this seemed to bother Anuzis. “This [Bristow] is exactly the type of young kid we want out there,” Anuzis, then already the GOP state chair, said on a radio program in May 2007, the year after MSU-YAF’s more outrageous activities were made public. “I’ve known Kyle for years and I can tell you I have never heard him say a racist or bigoted or sexist thing, ever.” Just this past October, Anuzis’ Michigan GOP issued a press release attacking a Democratic candidate for secretary of state because she once interned at the SPLC, which the release said used “fear and intimidation” in its hate group listings.
Since receiving this outpouring of support from Anuzis, Bristow has graduated to the top ranks of the American radical right. Now a law student at the University of Toledo, Bristow recently self-published a novel, White Apocalypse, whose plot revolves around a series of violent revenge fantasies against Jewish professors, Latino and Native American activists. A major subplot ends in the bloody assassination of a character apparently based on an SPLC staffer. Several notable white supremacists and anti-Semites have endorsed the novel.
Anuzis compounded the creepout factor Monday, when he went on Neil Cavuto's Fox show and said:
Anuzis: And I think we've got to get back to the fundamentals -- find somebody's who's basically going to make sure the trains run on time, raise the money, and then implement the best get-out-the-vote program Republicans possibly have in 2012.
Seem fitting, though, that Anuzis is being heavily backed by the Tea Party as well -- which is why he was so adamant in his support for the Tea Party's influence in the GOP.
The Social Security spot at right was produced by some folks in the Sharron Angle for U.S. Senate campaign but never aired, as some of the "DC handlers" managed to kill it. I can't imagine why.
I also wonder why there is no laugh track....
Or as one person put it at Politico in one of the better lines I've seen lately:
It's like Night of the Living Dead crossed with Sponge Bob.
There are a number of reasons I always have to chortle whenever Fox Republicans -- or for that matter, Jon Stewart -- try to portray MSNBC as a balancing counterpart to Fox News' overt display of propaganda. The first is that, regardless of the rise of liberal talk-show hosts on its broadcasts, MSNBC remains a real news organization that actually strives to be careful with facts and truthfulness, not to mention its ethical responsibilities -- something Fox long ago abandoned.
That was underlined a couple of weeks ago when the network actually suspended Keith Olbermann for having donated to political campaigns -- drawing a sharp contrast with Fox, where its anchors not only openly donate to campaigns, they actually help promote Republican candidates on-air and provide viewers fund-raising info, while News Corp. publicly donates large sums to partisan political campaigns. It's an old-fashioned standard at MSNBC, though a fairly typical one for a traditional news organization, as distinct from a propaganda operation.
The problem was with the network's dumbassery in enforcing the policy, particularly in suspending Olbermann as "punishment" for such a minor infraction. Not only was it an overreaction, it was also absurdly inconsistent, considering that other MSNBC had made similar donations -- notably Joe Scarborough, the Republican host of Morning Joe.
When Olbermann, host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," was suspended Nov. 5 for making donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, Scarborough acknowledged that two political contributions had been made in his name, but he said they had been made by his wife.
Griffin said in a statement that Scarborough informed him Friday that he had in fact made eight contributions from 2004 to 2008 to local candidates in Florida that he did not recall.
"He will be immediately suspended for two days without pay and will return to the air on Wednesday, November 24th," Griffin said. "As Joe recognizes, it is critical that we enforce our standards and policies."
In his own statement Friday, Scarborough he had "recently" been made aware of the contributions and told Griffin about them himself.
This just makes the network look amateurish. This is really all about MSNBC's corporate culture and its longtime aversion to being labeled the "liberal media" -- something it's had since its inception in the 1990s. It has always tried to blunt these accusations by hiring a number of overt right-wing ideologues, and for most of its existence its demographic strategy was geared at being "Fox Lite". Then, when it discovered that its tiny handful of liberal hosts were actually the greatest ratings successes, it shifted gears somewhat to more eagerly promote them.
This is the other reason I chortle at the MSNBC-is-the-opposite-of-Fox analogies: MSNBC has always been and always will be primarily a corporate entity and fundamentally conservative in its basic approach to broadcasting. I know this from having worked at the network for four years at its conception. It has found that liberal hosts bring it some bottom-line success, but that doesn't mean it will ever be a fundamentally -- or unapologetically -- liberal network.
So when Olbermann leaves an opening, these corporate masters will punish him to prove once again that they are NOT the "liberal biased media," as they did a couple of weeks ago. Then when its liberal audience is appropriately angered over the double standard, it tries to cover its tracks by over-punishing the conservatives who did the same.
MSNBC needs to revise its policy to allow its opinion anchors some partisan leeway, but it should maintain its usual standards for its straight-news reporters and editors. And then it needs to make the sanctions for violations reflective of the actual grievance.
But mostly, it needs to decide for itself what kind of news organization it is, set its own standards and live by them, and not get bullied by right-wing blowhards trying to work the refs. Or don't they ever notice how Fox deals with the accusations that it has a right-wing bias? It blows them off. MSNBC could use a little of that spine.
