Looking at the World Through a Pinhole Attached to a Straw

Just to make sure my ulcer stays inflamed, I took a look at the Post’s Fact Checker column to see if Glenn Kessler and his army of interns had made any corrections to address the contradiction between their claim on Wednesday that the Obama campaign is misleading us when they call Romney an outsourcer, and the Post’s Friday story on Bain’s history of outsourcing when Romney ran the place.  Spoiler alert—Pinnochio must have reverted back to being a puppet because the Fact Checker is silent.

Both the Post  and FactCheck.org have been handing out tsk-tsks to the Obama campaign over outsourcing, and if you read each of their columns, the internal justifications are consistent, if you want to ignore everything else Romney’s ever done on outsourcing. So both of them agree that the Obama campaign is making too much of Romney’s veto of an outsourcing bill  when he was Governor.  But the Post’s piece come’s with a heaping helping of attitude:

Since the vice president brought it up, let’s delve into some ancient Massachusetts history again.

Mitt Romney’s held one political office in 2002-2006. If that’s “ancient history” then there’s no way his Bain experience is even relevant. This is a completely arbitrary, not to mention stupid and damaging, view of accountability.

Then there’s the Pinnochio Patrol’s piece that directly addresses Bain’s outsourcing. The reporting behind that story, such as it is, is lazy.  Unlike Tom Hamburger, who wrote Friday’s Bain report in the Post, the Fact Checkers didn’t bother to actually check into Bain’s activity in the 90’s, so they can accuse the Obama campaign of making accusations about companies Bain bought after Romney was in charge.  But even the Fact Checkers had to acknowledge that some of the outsourcing the Obama campaign was complaining about happened during Romney’s watch. Throwing their usual skepticism to the wind, they disgorge this little piece of journalistic malpractice to justify their love:

We discovered that Romney’s name appeared on Bain SEC filings between 1999 and 2002. But a 2002 statement the former executive filed with the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission said he was a “passive, limited partner [with] no management capacity” in the Bain entities in which he held ownership.

Just as with the “ancient history” criteria, if you think that a co-founder of a firm, someone who returned to re-organize it when it was about to go belly up, and who took a “leave of absence” in 1999, shouldn’t have any accountability for the actions of the same firm in the same year, then you’re definitely narrowing your focus to fit the conclusion you want to reach.

I don’t say this lightly because I really want the fact checkers to be effective, but if Kessler can’t even be bothered to respond to a story in his own paper, then he might as well close up shop.

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Bold Sirs VandeHei/Harris Ran Away…

This is how Mr. Charles P. Pierce explained it:

Here’s your disclaimer: Joe Williams is a friend of mine. He is also one of the best political reporters I know and, when he landed at Politico, I thought, well, at least there will be one person there who isn’t completely dedicated to the notion that American politics should be covered the way it would be in The Daily Racing Form, if The Daily Racing Form were a slam book kept by a not-very-bright seventh grader.

Turns out that said seventh-grader also is, in words that the Supreme Court just on Thursday gave me permission to use “fleetingly” on television, a chickenshit motherfucker.

Joe said some unkind things about Willard Romney and white people. Joe retweeted a joke about Ann Romney’s maladroit quote about “unzipping” her husband. A ludicrous Tinker Toy news outlet stamped its tiny feet, and then the assembled mourners over at Andrew Breitbart’s Mausoleum Of Unemployables got themselves outraged, and Politico folded like a cheap suit. This should be a caution to any real reporters who work there now, or who may be thinking about working there in the future. Your bosses can be frightened away by a preposterous political grocery flyer, and by a website run by a cargo cult that worships a deceased angry drunk. They do not have your back.

Mr. Pierce has had his own experience with chickenshit motherfuckers, and that’s even apart from his career as a sportswriter. Jim Romenesko reports that the right-wing poo-flingers are feeling empowered:

“This is our MSM,” Breitbart.com’s John Nolte wrote on his post about Williams. “This is Politico. This is why God created Andrew Breitbart.”

Politico reported early this morning that Williams has been suspended for “suggesting Mitt Romney was only comfortable around white people.”... The editor’s memo added that “Politico journalists have a clear and inflexible responsibility to cover politics fairly and free of partisan bias.”

One conservative site’s reaction to the news: “The suspension is a revelation. I mean, who knew there were standards at Politico of all places?

Josh Fruhlinger at Wonkette points out (since this is Wonkette’s niche in the journalistic ecosystem) that the emperor is actually stark naked:

Joe Williams is Politico’s White House correspondent, and this is the thing he said on one of the MSNBC panel shows where people scream at each other:

Romney is very, very comfortable it seems with people who are like him. That’s one of the reasons why he seems so stiff and awkward in some town hall settings, why he can’t relate to people other than that. But when he comes on Fox and Friends, they’re like him, they’re white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company.

So, uh, yeah, saying that Mitt Romney is more comfortable with people exactly like him, with one of those “like him” qualities being race, is not exactly the same as calling him a Klansman, we don’t think? See, one of the things about being white in America — about being part of a privileged majority generally — is that you can be in a racially homogeneous group and it seems totally natural! You’re the default! You don’t see the race of the people you hang out with! It’s cozy! But believe it or not, America does not entirely consist of white people (or even white people like the kind on Fox and Friends), which means that this comfort level could actually be something of a campaign liability.

And maybe this is something that an African-American reporter like Joe Williams (oh, did we mention he was black? Didn’t think we needed to, people that conservatives yell at for being racists are always black) would notice?...

Mr. Williams was actually too generous towards Willard “Mitt” Romney, who in point of fact is only comfortable around rich white people, preferably those he can enjoy firing. As for Politico, they’ve arranged for their own worst punishment—now that it’s been demonstrated they’ll pay danegeld to even the lowliest rabble-rousers, they’ll never get the stains out of the carpet in the reception area.

Brave, brave Sir Robin!...

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Open Thread

Pretty much this:

Anyone else remember when Bob Geldof was just the lead singer for the Boomtown Rats?

Did learn two things today, btw. Watched Bill Maher, and the way that the Fonzi of Freedom treated Rachel Maddow, with his never-ending assumptions, made me actually thing less of him. I did not think that was possible. I also loved the Hulk beating down on th Fonz’s fracking bullshit. HULK SMASH.

Also too, I learned today that there are people who not only have never experienced the miracle of cabbage rolls, but they have never even heard of them. The mind boggles.

Off to spoon he girls.

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Open Thread- Sandusky Edition

Am I the only one who finds the cheering crowds at the Sandusky post-trial event to be unnerving? The whole spectacle reminds me of this:

There’s nothing to celebrate here. Nothing. Go the fuck home, you degenerates. It just makes me realize we aren’t so far removed from public executions where people would hope the hanging would be botched and the convicted would either do the jig because there would not be a clean cervical break or hoping the condemned would do be accidentally decapitated to sate the crowd’s bloodlust. The death penalty and capital punishment is obscene on so many levels, but most of all because of the way it promotes this kind of sense of bloodlust and retribution.

It’s just really harder and harder for me to find any redeeming qualities in the human race these days. There is fucking nothing here to celebrate. Period. And anyone standing on the stairs there cheering should really spend some time evaluating their own existence, and whether or not they have gone tragically wrong in their own emotional development. Sick, sick, people. Who spends their nights on the stairs of the courthouse cheering a verdict that confirms dozens of kids were abused and the accused will be brought to justice? Why aren’t you at home reading, playing with your dogs or cats, children, or watching tv?

Such a sick, disgusting culture. The majority of our nation is mentally ill.

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Pedophile Convicted of Multiple Counts of Pedophilia

Perhaps the least shocking verdict in the history of jurisprudence, but Sandusky was convicted of 45 of 48 counts and will spend the rest of his miserable life in jail. Aside from the horror those kids (many now adults) went through, the most upsetting portion of this case to me is that Paterno is dead and will never have to answer for his complicity and the fact that this is not happening every day to Catholic priests, many of whom did the same or worse than Sandusky.

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Just add Franzia

Not sure if you’re following the comments in John’s post on some principled, Burkean winger law prof’s cri de coeur about the liberal bias of the American Bar Association. I’ll summarize: the guy whines that the ABA says more Obama nominees should be confirmed but it never said more Bush nominees should be confirmed

Since both sides do it, nominate unqualified people or obstruct qualified people, or whatever bad thing “it” is in this case, voilà, the ABA’s statement is proof of teh librul bias.

Some other principled Burkean winger law prof showed up to make this argument:

I’m surprised at the sloppiness in a post accusing someone else of being sloppy. President Obama has made judicial nominations at a far slower rate than his predecessors. Nonetheless, the rate of confirmation of his nominees is comparable (slightly slower for district courts, slightly quicker for appellate nominees).

I’m not sure what “nonetheless” is supposed to mean here. It sounds like it means the noble Republican Senate has confirmed the same percentage of nominees even though there were fewer nominees but that clearly makes no sense (though I think it is what he means, nonetheless) since, given that there is genuine work to be done in each confirmation, one would expect a larger number of nominees to cause a larger backlog—and thus, a lower percentage of confirmations.

Also too, if Obama had nominated a lot of judges, those two would undoubtedly argue “well, you can’t expect them to confirm too quickly, because he flooded the system blah blah blah overreach blah blah blah fiat nominations.”

I realize there’s a temptation to see Volokh Conspiracy as decent and honest because they oppose torture and executing innocent people (I’m guessing here as to why people like it, I don’t read the blog though I used to troll it quite successfully) and the front-pagers are the Daniel Plainview Chairs of Legal Ethics at their respective universities. But don’t give in. For one thing, you may think that legal scholarship is an intellectually above-board enterprise but in fact the law reviews are edited by students (I’ll let that sink in for you researchers in the sciences). For another, heh indeedy.

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Open Thread

Had some delicious cabbage rolls for dinner, although I must admit I am starting to feel like the kids in the Toyota commercials who talk about how few friends their parents have on facebook and how they are worried their parents have no lives, when at the same time the commercial is crosscutting to the parents at a bonfire. I told mom and dad I wanted cabbage rolls, and at around 3 o’clock, dad called and said “Hey- the cabbage rolls are in the oven. Take ‘em out around five and can you let the dogs out, because mom and I are going out.” I guess I naively assumed my 70 year old parents would want to have a sit down dinner, but apparently I was wrong.

It was a really nice day here today. I pruned all my tomatoes a little bit, set up the bean poles, and for about a half hour just lay in the grass in the shade with Lily and Rosie. Now I’m having some wine and watching yet another Law and Order marathon on USA.

What are you all up to?

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Forrest Booker

I guess we can add helping auto accident victims to Cory Booker’s vita:

He’s at it again.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker pulled up on Elizabeth Avenue after a pedestrian was struck by a car and helped the individual into an ambulance, city officials said.

When the deed was done, Booker began tweeting.

“God bless my residents. Pulled up on pedestrian/vehicle accident,” Booker tweeted around 12:30 p.m. today. “We got man stabilized & into ambulance. He’ll b OK. Thanx 2 all who helped”

I know many of you are thinking “Wow, this guy is unbelievable. Rescuing people from fires, helping accident victims, ewtc.”

My takeaway is a little bit different. Folks, if you see Cory Booker in the wild- RUN. Someone is about to be seriously injured.

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Song of the week

Here’s some ‘60s garage from the Netherlands. What’s sounding good to you all this week?

Cuby & the Blizzards, “Your Body Not Your Soul” (1966)

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Cat Rescue Bleg: Fort Collins CO Area

From commentor Carol V:

These are Mandalay, a beautiful all-black princess, and Flash, a talkative yellow and white tabby. They’re in northern Colorado and in need of new homes.

Here’s their story.

My 80-year-old father, who lives in northern Alabama, has Alzheimer’s and a host of other medical problems, and all us kids finally convinced him to move into assisted living. Earlier, he’d moved from his large house to a 900-square-foot apartment in a retirement community, to which he brought 4 cats. Then, probably because of his disease, he adopted 2 more cats, both of whom the paperwork identified as “spayed females, 9 mos.” Well, they may have had the age right, but as to the spaying, not so much. One of them got out, had a debauched evening of joy, and subsequently, a litter of 6 kittens. Crowded cats aren’t happy cats, and soon began expressing their displeasure by ignoring the cat boxes, to the point of eye-watering stench the moment you walked in the door. This was all complicated by the fact that my father’s new “girlfriend” fired the cleaning service some months before so she could pocket the $200/week for herself (a whole ‘nother story for another day). Because of the girlfriend, we had to go to court to get a guardianship and control of his finances, and I got elected for the duty because I’m the oldest. Oh lucky me. The first thing we did is find new homes for the two younger cats and all the kittens. Not easy in northern Alabama, where the pet shelters are so overwhelmed that surrendered cats are usually euthanized within 2 weeks to make way for incoming.

In assisted living, my father is only allowed to have one cat. Since none of the kids believed the remaining cats should suffer because of our father’s illness, we decided to fly them to California and Colorado, where the pet welfare resources are better. Mandalay and Flash are the last two. They are currently living in my vet’s hospital because I already have 6 cats and at least one would be scarred for life if we took in more.

Mandalay is about 4 years old. She likes attention and petting, and will purr until she drools, but she’s shy, so it takes her awhile to warm up to new situations. She’s gotten much better at the hospital, with people coming and going all the time. She hisses like a leaky tire when startled, but she’s all sound and no fury, and quite tractable if you hold her so she feels safe. She was rescued in Alabama from the edge of a rain-swollen ditch when she was about 6 months old. She doesn’t like to venture outside for long. She’d very likely prefer to be a totally indoor kitty, where the unexpected doesn’t jump out and try to eat her. She likes to be up high, such as kitchen counters and tops of refrigerators, and may need gentle training that momentarily unwatched food is not fair game. As you can see, she poses beautifully for photos.

Flash is a confident 12-year-old neutered male with miles of personality and will tell you all about it. The pitch and timber of his voice hint at Siamese ancestry. He’s a bit on the festively plump side, so he should probably be kept on a high-protein, calorie-controlled diet. He loves attention and petting, and will follow you around to see what you’re doing and giving you a running commentary all the while. He’ll occupy your lap like a 99-percenter until your legs fall asleep. He used to be really skilled at dashing outside when he wasn’t supposed to, but he’s slowed down a bit in middle-age. He also steals sox and winter scarves and drags them around when given the opportunity. We think he’d accommodate well-behaved dogs quite nicely.

The cats could go together or be separated—they’re comfortable with each other, but aren’t a bonded pair. They’re currently living in Fort Collins (which is not on fire, by the way, just the foothills 15 miles to the west) and would very much like to have their own people and real homes, not just a cage. My family would be willing to help pay the costs for one or both cats to travel to the right home(s). They are sweet, wonderful cats who deserve a second chance.

If you’re interested in either of these two, or have any leads for potential new families, and you don’t want to put your contact information in the comments here, you can contact me at AnneLaurie @ verizon dot net (or click on my name to the right).

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A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids

This is pretty awesome: Cindy Lake, the Acting Chair of the Clark County Republican Party (Clark County encompasses 3/4 of Nevada’s population), is a an anti-fluoride nut.

(via)

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Pareene On K-Lo

This Alex Pareene Hack List installment on the pathetic K-Lo might be the best birthday present I will get this year. Or any year, for that matter:

But Lopez’s niche has always been that she’s the world’s most tragic Catholic. She’s basically a hack liberal’s savage parody of a miserable, prematurely old religious conservative woman — a Jean Teasdale of the right. It’s not just her many, many writings on the evils of the pill and how contraception “[denies] the reality” that “motherhood is at the heart of what it means to be a woman.” ”I know enough to thank God for the job creators, the natural economic stimulators, capitalism,” she said, when mean Mike Huckabee had the temerity to criticize the economy back when President Bush was America’s dad.

Two more of my favorite Kathryn Jean Lopez posts: This one, in which K-Lo decides that Barack Obama calls terrorists “folks” because he loves terrorists, until presumably a reader points out that Bush also used the word “folks” all the time. And this one, in which she is happy that Google’s logo is sufficiently patriotic but then some readers say maybe it isn’t patriotic enough but then it is decided that it is.

Beautimous!

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The First of Hopefully Many Convictions

Good news:

In the first criminal conviction of a Roman Catholic Church official in the United States for covering up sexual abuses, Msgr. William J. Lynn was found guilty Friday of endangering children by allowing a known pedophile priest to continue ministering to youths, resulting in an assault on a 10-year-old boy.

The 12-member jury deadlocked on two other counts against Monsignor Lynn after a three-month trial that was widely considered a milestone in the sexual abuse scandals that have shaken the Catholic church.

Still, the trial has already sent a sobering message to church officials and others overseeing children around the country.

“I think that bishops and chancery officials understand that they will no longer get a pass on these types of crimes,” said Nicholas P. Cafardi, a professor of law at Duquesne University, a canon lawyer and frequent church adviser. “Priests who sexually abuse youngsters and the chancery officials who enabled it by allowing a known sexual abuser to remain in ministry can expect criminal prosecution.” The mixed verdict was seen as a victory for the district attorney’s office in Philadelphia, which has been investigating the archdiocese aggressively since 2002. Monsignor Lynn could face a prison term of three-and-a-half to seven years.

Seven years seems reasonable.

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The Worst “Both Sides” Argument Ever

This is the sloppiest thing I’ve ever seen written by Orin Kerr:

A decade ago, the Bush Administration caused some controversy when it excluded the ABA from having a formal role in evaluating judicial nominees. To the Bush Administration, the ABA was just a liberal advocacy group pretending to represent the legal profession as a whole. There was no reason to give such a group a special formal role in the nomination process.

On Wednesday, the President of the ABA helped confirm this perception by by wading into the quintessentially political question of scheduling confirmation of judicial nominees in the months before a Presidential election. With President Obama’s Term coming to an end soon — and an election that might bring a Republican to the President just a few months away — the ABA “exhort[ed]” the Senate to act quickly to confirm Obama’s nominees. Specifically, the ABA urged the Senate to schedule floor votes on three specific circuit nominees in the remaining 10 days of June, and then to schedule floor votes on district court nominees “on a weekly basis” thereafter.

This isn’t the first time an ABA President has urged the Senate to confirm Obama’s judicial nominees. Indeed, it seems to have happened for the last three years in a row. In 2011, ABA President Stephen Zack urged the Senate to quickly confirm 20 specific Obama nominees. In 2010, ABA President Carolyn Lamm made a very similar pitch.

Did the ABA ever urge the Senate to confirm nominees during the Bush Administration? Not as far as I can tell. I looked around for similar letters before the Obama Presidency, but I couldn’t find any.

Why would the ABA urge the Senate to confirm nominees during the Obama admin and not during the Bush years. Is there a possible answer other than that the ABA is a “liberal advocacy group?” Why yes, I think there is a reason why:

Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Judges Jacqueline Nguyen, Kristine Gerhard Baker, and John Lee to the Ninth Circuit and to federal trial courts in Arkansas and Illinois — bringing to a close a 14 judge deal Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) forced Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to strike when Reid threatened to force 17 votes to break Senate Republican filibusters of 17 different nominees. As we explained two months ago when this deal was struck, the deal represents a significant uptick in the rate of confirmations under President Obama, but it is far from enough to undo the three year campaign of obstructionism McConnell led the minute President Obama took office.

According to the Federal Judicial Center, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both had very similar judicial confirmation rates — 201 lower court judges were confirmed during Clinton’s first term, and 204 judges were confirmed under Bush. President Obama, by contrast, has seen only 142 judges confirmed so far according to the FJC’s data — or less than four judges for each month of his presidency. In order to catch up to his two predecessors, Obama will need to double that rate to about 7.5 judges a month for the rest of his current term.

Imagine that. Republicans grind the confirmation process to a halt, a non-partisan legal group notices this and urges the Senate to stop the obstruction and put judges on the bench, and this very reasonable reaction to Republican perfidy “confirms the perception” for Republicans that the ABA is a liberal advocacy group (and, as always, this “perception” goes back to the certifiably insane Robert Bork).

There is literally nothing out there that the right-wing won’t use to convince themselves they are the underdog and the victim, including, as we’ve seen here, THEIR OWN OBSTRUCTIONIST BEHAVIOR.

*** Update ***

Remember this:

Earlier this week, seven Republican-appointed federal judges co-signed a letter warning of the consequences of the GOP’s systematic obstruction of President Obama’s judges. The letter from the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit, which includes Republican appointees Alex Kozinski, Ralph Beistline, Vaughn Walker, Irma Gonzales, Frances Marie Tydingco-Gatewood, Richard Frank Cebull, Lonny Ray Suko, explains…

I’m sure there will be a convenient way to smear and dismiss them. They’re RINO’s. No, wait- They have a book to sell! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

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Take him at his word

Romney promised the wingers all kinds of crazy stuff during the primary, and as president he would be beholden to a largely winger Congress. So I think we have to conclude that he will do many of the things that he promised the wingers a few months ago. Here’s president Obama making that point on the DREAM act:

Here’s a bunch of ads with Romney trashing immigrants, made for winger consumption, during the 2008 primaries when he was even farther right on the issue. The way he slimed McCain for Kennedy-McCain immigration reform—a good bill that McCain deservers credit for—was shameful.

There’s no way around it: Romney has said he will govern from the far right, he’s slimed many a a primary opponent for not being sufficiently far right, and he’ll have to answer to Cantor and DeMint if he’s president.

This whole “Romney will govern from the center” stuff is total bullshit. Certainly, there’s no evidence for it.

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