Conservatives Hate NPR

"Step one: act like gun-toting racists. Step two: catch NPR exec on tape acknowledging reality of step one. Step three: scandal!" — Tom Tomorrow on Twitter.

This NPR "scandal" keeps popping up in my Google news headlines, so I guess this means the MSM hasn't yet learned to ignore the lying, video splicing, misogynistic accused felon also known as James O'Keefe.

O'Keefe is behind this latest ruse where Ron Schiller, NPR's senior vice president for fundraising, was secretly videotaped conversing with actors posing as members of the fictitious Muslim Action Education Center.

Here is one of Schiller's "scandalous" comments about teabaggers: "Xenophobic, I mean basically they are; they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

Funny because that's what I've been saying all along. Wow, he's an elitist liberal just like me, but I didn't know that being caught in the act could cause such a stir.

Let's be clear that nothing illegal happened in this setup. This fact gets buried at the bottom of all these stories, but when the pair of actors wanted to give $5 million to NPR, Schiller refused to take it.

However, he did make some dumb moves. Number one was going to lunch with two unknown men from an unknown activist group. Dumb.

And then Schiller made a comment that will haunt NPR for years. He said NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding." This is counter to what the organization believes.

But who would take this off-comment during a shitty prank seriously anyway? The GOP of course. They've destroyed ACORN already and now, with purely political motivation, they're out to get Planned Parenthood, PBS and NPR -- the last two because, you know, real journalism is warfare and they don't want any of that.

Ron Schiller resigned from NPR today. He can be thankful for one thing though. At least O'Keefe didn't invite him onto his dildo boat.

The Final Countdown

I don't want this to sound like a eulogy, because obviously Keith Olbermann is alive and kicking, but he has now parted ways with MSNBC. I remember there was a time when I had totally given up on the wasteland of cable news -- maybe even all mainstream news -- and then I found a sane, progressive, articulate and unapologetic voice in Keith Olbermann.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I'm going to miss him. I hope he finds a new home on another forum... though I'm really hoping it's not a sports network. I know he loves sports, but I think such a move might be a waste of his talents.

Keith, don't let this be the end! I'm counting on you!

The Splice Job

This is why I read blogs. They relentlessly set the record straight when mainstream news outlets will not.

A few months ago, the MSM and the blogosphere alike were frenzied over the story of the undercover pimp and whore team seemingly getting ill-conceived advice from ACORN on how to setup a brothel. The pimp was played by James O'Keefe, and the whore was played by Hannah Giles, and their infamous tapes were mostly horseshit -- highly doctored and overdubbed horseshit. In fact, O'Keefe had a history of out-of-context edits in his horseshit "documentaries."

But what made the story so sensational was the absurd 70's-era pimp costume. How could low-level ACORN employees be so gullible? Well, The Brad Blog has been uncovering the truth for the last few weeks: O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp in the offices of ACORN. He wore a dress shirt and khaki pants.

Everybody was duped including Congress which temporarily cut funding for ACORN.

Giles wants to call the pimp costume footage b-roll, but the pure fiction was promulgated over and over again for months by the mainstream news outlets and O'Keefe himself.

The result of these lies and video edits was a successful piece of propaganda to discredit and vilify a community organization that helps poor people by advocating for affordable housing, affordable healthcare, higher minimum wages, and better schools.

The New York Times has been particularly bull-headed in their refusal to retract their multiple erroneous reports on the subject. In a letter to a Brad Blog reader, Times' Sr. Editor Greg Brock wrote, "If there is a correction to be made, it seems it would start with Mr. O'Keefe himself. We believe him. Therefore there is nothing for us to correct."

Which leaves me pondering, who should get my coveted Porkpuller Prize for weakest effort in journalism? The New York Times? Or James O'Keefe for his blatant and unethical splice job?

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Fact Check This One

Saturday Night Live hasn't made me laugh since the last time Tina Fey impersonated Sarah Palin. But last night's SNL intro was funny in the same way -- a perfect imitation of a conservative (or a bunch of conservatives) is itself a good joke:

(Vodpod video)

That pretty much sums up the media's "off year" election coverage. It was so totally absurd it left me speechless for the last five days.

And I'm waiting on the edge of my seat for CNN to deliver a thorough fact check -- not of the election -- but the comedy sketch, of course.

Time Out

It must be hoax week.

I was feeling a sort of primal rage as I read this mother's blog post titled TSA agents took my son. The post recounts a terrifying incident where a mother carried her infant son through a metal detector at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport and the baby's pacifier clip set off an alarm which then set off a series of shocking events. TSA agents did what nobody should ever attempt with any human or animal -- they took her child. They carried him away out of her sight, and as she screamed, all other security agents ignored her.

Separating a parent from his or her child is explicitly against TSA rules, but I have such a low opinion of airport security that I would not doubt the incompetence. I started to wonder if maybe there was a farm where TSA employees are bred and emerge from their pods looking exactly like humans but devoid of emotions.

But then TSA did something sensible and responded to the story with their own blog post which includes an 11 minute CCTV video of the incident. And it's not at all likes the mother's story!

We see her carry the child through the detector. She's still clutching the child as she waits inside some kind of dehumanizing acrylic holding cell (really, what the hell are those things?). Once security agents are ready to deal with her, she takes a seat still holding her child. Then it appears that an agent pats down the child while he is still on the mother's lap. Then the mother herself places the infant in his stroller and sits back down no more than two feet away from him. The agents take their sweet time patting down the mother, but finally both mother and son are free to go.

We have heard how eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, but this unreliable? Really? Somebody can't accurately remember their own personal experience 24 hours after the event?

I know that recent news stories (balloon boy, I'm looking at you now) don't merit hundreds of hours of MSM coverage, but they do serve as a real world MacGuffin -- something that catches our attention but is not the pertinent part of the story.

The issue here is that in the current era of reality television, some parents will lie, scheme, and shamelessly exploit their own children and the sympathy of others for a fleeting taste of fame and fortune.

Leave it There!

I think Jon Stewart is at his best when he eviscerates cable news. Also see Go Fox Yourself.

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Sacrificing an Acorn

The attacks on ACORN began last year when Republicans accused the organization of voter fraud. This month, however, the opposition has turned into a full assault after a few low-level ACORN employees were caught on tape giving some really stupid advice to a guy in a badass pimp costume.

Well, tally another win for Fox's Glenn Beck. Apparently he can set the agenda for the entire country and swiftly take down a community organization whose mission is to advocate for affordable housing, affordable healthcare, higher minimum wages, and better schools. ACORN was also against predatory lending before it was cool.

In other words, ACORN's mission was staunchly against the interests of big business, and that's why nobody wants to be friends with them now. The media hates them and Congress hates them too.

So last week, while Congress was busy defunding ACORN for their transgressions, I stewed over all the other corrupt government contractors who have defrauded tax payers and are accused of rape and murder. Why can't we defund them?

Oh wait... We are?!

When our government shoots fish in a barrel, they like to use a bazooka:

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Hysterical! I don't mind sacrificing an ACORN if it means we also defund the likes of Blackwater and KBR.

In a sane country, the Defund ACORN ACT would be declared unconstitutional as it is clearly a bill of attainder. But these days, the insanity doesn't end at Fox.

They Don't Make Them Like They Used To

So Jon Stewart was rated America's Most Trusted Newscaster in a recent unscientific poll. I'm reflecting on this ten days after the death of Walter Cronkite, the man they used to call "the most trusted man in America," the man who narrated the golden age of television.

Of course, Cronkite retired more than 25 years ago, and to tell you the truth, I hardly remember him. I was born just 11 days before the historic moon landing, and I didn't really get into watching the news until my second decade of life.

However, I love Jon Stewart. Just because he's funny doesn't mean he's joking. But what about the other serious newscasters? We sure have a lot of them with all these 24-hour news channels. And all these cable stars share one quality -- they are pretty to look at. Or, make that two qualities -- they are really just commentators reacting to events. Or, make it three things they share -- they all publicly lamented the passing of Walter Cronkite as if he was their personal friend and mentor.

Really though, I'm skeptical. This outpouring of admiration for Cronkite seems insincere. If these guys admire him so much, they should emulate him. Instead they function as talking heads who lazily amplify every talking point from corporations and politicians. The most pompous cable news pundits may speak of Cronkite as legendary yet look back at the era as quaint. News is a big business now. No time for ethics or research.

It's a cliche to say it's all about the money, but I'm a bit worried that the current generation won't have their own moon landing moment to look back on. Instead they'll look back and reminisce about the quality reporting of To Catch a Predator. Yikes.

Brawl Street

"You say the name of a stock, and Mad Money's Jim Cramer tells you whether to buy or sell." — Lightning Round OT.

"I understand you want to make finance entertaining but it's not a fucking game." — John Stewart, March 12, 2009.

I'll try to go easy on the wrestling metaphors, because what I saw last night on The Daily Show was actually real journalism. Jon Stewart's interview with Mad Money's Jim Cramer was adversarial but civilized... barely. Here is part 1:

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But the real inquisition begins in part 2. I cheered when Stewart rolled out this 2006 video from TheStreet.com TV. The 2006 Cramer boasts that short selling (and crushing the average investor) is very "satisfying." Then the 2009 Cramer squirms. Watch:

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Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 2

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Stewart makes it clear that he is holding all financial news shows to the same standard. They should all illuminate what's really going on in the market. They should all strive for journalistic integrity. But Cramer and his show are the face of this financial crisis. The man obviously has some fine market acumen, but the seriousness of guarding people's wealth is incongruous with the hyper theatrics of a show called "Mad Money."

Finally, in part 3, Cramer tries to defend his show saying, "the market was going up for a long time, and our real sin, I think, was to believe it would continue to go up a lot in the face of what you describe..."

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 3

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The final handshake and Cramer's promise to be a better person were nice touches. Of course, it's not the end. Today I see Cramer's long defense from his pay-to-read blog shared on Hullabaloo. He's trying to do a bit of damage control, but in the end, the blogosphere will just dig harder.

But let's not forget there is nothing unique about Jim Cramer. The larger issue is about media cowards who never investigate claims made by CEOs or government officials. Too many stars of cable news lazily amplify lies and mislead the public leaving the real reporting to comedians.

Politics First

Or is it cosmetics first? Maybe it's politics, cosmetics, then country? I know it's not country first -- that's for sure.

Today the Republican party is feigning outrage over Barack Obama's use of a tired old folksy saying: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Here is the complete unadulterated quote from Obama:

OBAMA: Let's just list this for a second. John McCain says he's about change, too. Except --- and so I guess his whole angle is, "Watch out, George Bush, except for economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics. We're really gonna shake things up in Washington." That's not change. That's just calling some --- the same thing, something different. But you know, you can --- you know, you can put lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig.

What's wrong with that? Well, John McCain's new campaign video (which has since been pulled from YouTube due to a copyright claim by CBS) takes the comment out of context and makes it look like Obama is calling Palin a pig. Never mind the fact that Obama is obviously not referring to Sarah Palin! That doesn't stop the mainstream media from taking the bait.

The irony, of course, is that Obama was making a point about exactly these tactics. Instead of talking about economic policy, health-care policy, tax policy, education policy, or foreign policy, the conversation has been reduced to this frivolous bullshit.

Any media outlet that runs this story, should also, if they have any credibility at all, show this video of McCain using the exact same phrase regarding Hillary Clinton's health-care policy:



Funny, I don't think McCain ever offered an apology to Hillary Clinton, and I don't think she ever asked for one either.

Anyway, now that the sad and desperate McCain campaign has gone from "straight talk" to "trash talk," let's get back to something substantive.

McCain and Palin recently wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled We'll Protect Taxpayers From More Bailouts. Here is the punchline of their piece:

Fannie and Freddie's lobbyists succeeded and Congress failed. Under our administration this will not happen again.

Why do I find this so tragically funny? McCain's campaign is full of lobbyists! Including a few -- Rick Davis, Aquiles Suarez, and Carlos Bonilla -- who have lobbied for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac!

I'll believe that McCain is the "maverick" when lipstick-wearing pigs can fly.

What's Wrong With Paper Ballots Anyway?

Fifty-eight days remain until the presidential election. If you're like me, then your mind is made up already, but you have a lingering anxiety about the many problems of our voting system.

A few weeks ago Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems, Inc.) admitted to major security flaws in their electronic voting machines (if video doesn't show, click here):



Let me just make this perfectly clear: Premier Election Solutions has admitted that their software used in at least 34 states does not count votes correctly. I will never trust electronic voting. I've written about the threat of electronic voting before, but it can't be repeated often enough. Casting your vote on a computer is like walking up to a window where a little man opens a curtain and asks "who do you want to vote for?" You answer him, he closes the curtain, and you never know what that little man does with your reply. It's a black box.

And these boxes can be easily hacked as proven in the HBO documentary Hacking Democracy. And these boxes are also proprietary meaning Premier made the inner workings secret so that citizens have no way to scrutinize the hardware or software. There is also no way to authenticate election results which can of course be done if paper ballots were used.

So what was wrong with paper ballots anyway? After all, they've been used since 139 B.C.

Well, the same company, Premier, makes optical-scan machines which tabulate paper ballots, and these machines can also be hacked!

But the biggest complaint with paper ballots has been poor design. For example, the infamous butterfly ballot used in Florida for the 2000 presidential election was blamed for many mis-marked ballots.

Punch card systems have also lost favor due to the high rate of inaccuracy related to the incomplete removal of the perforated chad and the inaccessibility to voters with disabilities.

Sometimes it seems that the MSM is trying to perpetuate the idea of paper ballot "voter fraud" like in the case of Dixville Notch, NH where 17 ballots were cast even though there were only 16 registered voters. Well, those reports were irresponsible and inaccurate as exposed on the Brad Blog.

The simple fact remains that any system that leaves a paper trail can at least be recounted by hand in a location where the process can be viewed by the public. You can't get that transparency with any electronic voting machine!

Therefore I have to conclude that paper ballots aren't perfect, but they are by far the best system available.

Finally, if you're wondering which candidates votes will go missing this year, remember in 2003 Walden O'Dell -- then the chief executive of Diebold Inc. -- told Republicans in a fund-raising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." I don't for one second believe that their machine "glitches" are accidental.

Some other links of interest:

• Standing For Voters
• Black Box Voting
• Velvet Revolution

Dick Moves

“Politics is just show business for ugly people” -- Jay Leno

The theme this week, courtesy of the McCain campaign, is that Barack Obama is a celebrity. Of course, before starting this new narrative, they scrubbed the McCain web site! Yes, McCain and his people are slowly learning about the Internet. However, they desperately need to learn what a Google cache is:

March 1, 2007

Article Excerpt

NEW YORK (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain said he will officially enter the presidential race ... with a formal announcement in early April after a trip to Iraq.

The Arizona senator discussed the timing of the long-expected announcement with reporters at an awards reception Wednesday evening a few hours after taping an appearance on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman."

On the talk show, McCain told Letterman: "I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States," then added that he would give a formal speech to that effect in early April.

He later told reporters that he would visit Iraq first and that his campaign would be about "whether I have the vision, experience and knowledge to lead the nation."

Former New York Gov. George Pataki introduced McCain to reporters before the Irish-American 10th Annual Awards reception Wednesday night. Asked about polls showing him trailing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, McCain said: "We keep doing the best we can. We're very happy with the way things are going."

There had been no doubt that McCain would eventually become a full-fledged White House candidate, and he had been expected to make his candidacy official in the spring.

The 2006 midterm campaign had just ended when McCain took the first formal step toward a presidential run in November. He formed an exploratory committee and gave a speech casting himself as a "common-sense conservative" in the vein of Ronald Reagan who could lead the party back to dominance after a dreadful election season by returning to the GOP's core principles.

A political celebrity, McCain is considered a top contender for the nomination.

McCain's own press release last year referred to him as a celebrity. But the humor doesn't end there. In a nationally televised ad, McCain attempts to equate Obama's fame with that of the annoying, narcissistic socialite Paris Hilton. I wonder how Paris Hilton's parents feel considering they donated $4600 to the McCain campaign. Jon Stewart describes this dick move:



So why does the GOP air these ads? They know that simply by raising a question like "is Obama arrogant," it will be debated over and over again in the media. Media Matters explains how these narratives emerge:

But attacks don't just stick and narratives don't just emerge. The only reason that the topic of the week was whether Obama is presumptuous instead of whether McCain is a liar who will do anything to get elected is that the news media decided to make Obama's purported flaws the topic of the week -- even after debunking the charges upon which the characterization is based. It's as though the news media -- so concerned about lies (that weren't really lies) in 2000 -- have suddenly decided that it doesn't matter that the McCain campaign is launching false attack after false attack. That it's the kind of thing you note once, then adopt the premise of the attack.

So even after an attack has been debunked, the MSM devotes an extraordinary amount of time to the lie repeating it like some kind of he-said-she-said lover's quarrel.

When a claim is proven to be false, don't call it "misleading." Call it a lie! And then move on to some other ugly business. There's plenty out there.

Fighting With Pigs

Media Matters reports that "during a segment in which Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe "attack dogs," Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered -- the journalists' teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe's hair moved further back on his head."

Fox News did not tell their viewers that the photos had been altered, nor have they offered any kind of comment on the incident so far.

The New York Times will not respond to the childish antics. Times Culture Editor Sam Sifton commented "It is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it."

I thought Fox News couldn't be any more juvenile, but the funny thing about this is that critics have been saying for years that Fox distorts the news. Well, now here is literal proof. Their reporting is as accurate as these photos.

Bush? A Liar?

Earlier this week, A long-delayed Senate committee report concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda. You can read the report here (PDF), and public statements here (PDF). (Unfortunately, these files contain scanned images of the report, and are therefore not searchable.)

This Senate report is important because the committee analyzed major policy speeches that were central to the decision to go to war. The speeches examined included:

• Vice President Richard Cheney, Speech in Tennessee to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, August 26, 2002.
• President George W. Bush, Statement before the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002.
• President George W. Bush, Speech in Cincinnati, October 7, 2002.
• President George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28, 2003.
• Secretary of State Colin Powell, Speech to the United Nations Security Council, February 5, 2003.

Then the committee examined whether these public statements were substantiated by intelligence information. For example, Bush said this:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." - President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2003.

But not all intelligence sources agreed. The Department of Energy (DOE) disagreed with the CIA's conclusions regarding the aluminum tubes, and assessed that it was more likely that the tubes were intended for a different use, such as a conventional rocket program. The Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research also disagreed with the CIA.

Bush, Cheney, and Powell made similar deceiving statements regarding biological and chemical weapons programs. They lead the public and the international community to believe that intelligence was conclusive when it was not. The mainstream media can describe Bush's prewar claims as exaggerated, overstated, inflated, unsupported, or oversimplified, but I say he lied.

I'm not alone in my assessment: [video below or click here if it doesn't show.]


I agree with Richard Clarke's sentiments regarding Bush, Cheney and company: "I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives."

This article marks my 101st blog post this year. I've decided to republish my news blog from 2001 - 2002. Many of the links are no longer available, but some of the titles demonstrate the prewar hysteria as well as some early signs of sanity.

Battle of Bumper Stickers

For the last several months I've been watching Bill Moyers Journal every Friday on PBS. In the world of journalism, he is a veteran. I watch his show and feel like I've turned the dial back 40 or 50 years to a calmer, more reasonable and more respectable news media. He's definitely not a hot-head like Bill O'Reilly. He's not obnoxiously argumentative like Sean Hannity. He's not even a funny man like Jon Stewart. Bill Moyers is simply a real journalist.

Last night Keith Olbermann interviewed Bill Moyers and the main topic was the mainstream media. Moyers talked about the dangers of the corporate media simplifying the deep and profound problems we face in the US. He called it a "battle of bumper stickers." However, he felt encouraged when the voters saw through the whole gas tax holiday issue, and he feels that the internet might be the antidote to the herd of the mainstream media:



His most recent book, Moyers on Democracy, is a collection of his speeches on what is happening with our country -- the assault on our Constitution, the undermining of our electoral process, the class war inherent in the growth of economic inequality, the dangers of an imperial executive branch, and the attack on the independence of the press. "The gravediggers of democracy will not have the last word.”