When The Abnormal Becomes Normal

I have seen a reference to this on several blogs but I want you to read it first and then check out my question below.

Mr. Frum now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans, which is a stock Beltway role. But he's peddling bad revisionist history that would have been even worse politics. The truth is that Democrats never had any intention of working with Republicans, except to pick off two or three Senators and calling it "bipartisanship." This worked for Democrats on the stimulus, and they had hoped to do it again on health care.

In the House, Republicans were frozen out from the start. Three Chairmen—Charlie Rangel, Henry Waxman and George Miller—holed up last spring to write the most liberal bill they could get through the House. Republicans were told that unless they embraced the "public option," there was nothing to discuss.

As for the White House, House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor in May sent a letter to President Obama "respectfully" requesting a meeting to discuss ideas. The White House didn't respond. Mr. Obama's first deadline for House passage was July, and only after public opinion turned against the bill did he begin to engage Republican ideas. Yet in his September address to Congress attempting to revive his bill, he made no concession save pilot projects for tort reform.

In the Senate, a group of Republicans did negotiate with Finance Chairman Max Baucus for months, even as Senators Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy were crafting a bill that mirrored the liberal House product. GOP Senators Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe and Orrin Hatch are hardly strangers to working with Democrats. In 2007, they helped Mr. Baucus expand the children's insurance program over President Bush's opposition.

Senate liberals kept tugging Mr. Baucus to the left, however, and eventually the White House ordered him to call off negotiations. Senator Snowe still voted for the Finance Committee bill, though even she fell away on the floor as Majority Leader Harry Reid insisted on pushing the public option and tried, as Ms. Snowe put it, to "ram it" and "jam it" through the Senate.

In the end, Republicans couldn't as a matter of principle support even 50% of a bill that was such a huge and reckless expansion of government. If they had, they would have rightly lost the support of their own most loyal supporters. In the end, too, the bill was so unpopular—59% opposed in a Sunday CNN survey—that 34 House Democrats voted no and Mr. Reid is resorting to reconciliation to get the "fixes" of more taxes and spending through the Senate.

Without knowing the source where would you say that excerpt came from?

a) A conservative bog

b) FoxNews' website

c) A conservative columnist

d) The editorial board of a major newspaper


If you answered anything but D you would be mistaken.

This is actually taken from The Wall Street Journal and not from a columnist there but from the paper's editors. Thing of it is most of the places I have seen that linked to this column did so without noting at all the partisan ideologically slanted rhetoric throughout the piece. Maybe I'm naive but has there ever been a time when a paper like the Wall Street Journal published something this far to either side of the political spectrum from their editorial page? I can't believe that there has. And if that's the case why is nobody making an issue out of it?

It is scary to think that a major news outlet can be used for the purpose of smearing a political commentator on partisan grounds. And you know if they can do it to one of their own like David Frum, they will have no qualms doing it to a progressive or liberal.

Are we really going to let Rupert Murdock totally destroy even the standards for our print media?

If so we deserve whatever comes next...

Gaining Momentum

I want to preface what I am about to say by reminding everyone that if the Democrats in the Senate decide to use reconciliation to pass health care reform then it will actually require an even stronger public option than the one already proposed in the HELP commmittee bill.

Now, Tom Daschle has joined a growing chorus of voices calling for Senate Democrats to pursue health care reform through reconcilliation if the Republicans continue their obstructionist ways. Now I know a lot of people have questioned his loyalty in this fight because of his ties to the health insurance industry, but his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal of all places should put those fears to rest.

If we lack the ability to successfully address the urgent problems of health care in our country, the American people and the rest of the world will rightly question our ability to tackle other challenges, domestic and global. And needless to say, given the dominance of my party in the White House and in Congress, Democrats will be to blame.

By far the best path to success is to continue to pursue a traditional, bipartisan solution. I have great admiration for former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Howard Baker who, earlier this year, demonstrated remarkable strength and leadership in working with me through the auspices of the Bipartisan Policy Center to propose a compromise on comprehensive health-care reform. That compromise—which included focusing on preventive care, controlling costs, creating health-care exchanges, and other ideas—can be a blueprint for progress on health reform in Congress this fall.

However, should Republican intransigence continue, Democrats cannot simply stop. They cannot ignore the human suffering as well as their fiscal responsibility to act. They must focus on the budgetary implications of health reform and use the Senate rules of budget reconciliation to allow a health-care bill move with majority support. The choice between complete legislative failure and majority rule should not pose a dilemma for any Democratic senator.

Republicans who cry foul have only themselves to blame. First, they walked away from the table even though they had many opportunities to participate in White House meetings and in House and Senate committees over the past eight months—and eight years.

Second, they set an ample number of precedents over the past decade in using their majorities then to pass their agenda using the same reconciliation rules in the Senate.

I will keep saying this and I hope people really listen, our best avenue for substantive change in health care is to have the Senate put it through the reconciliation process We can drop some of the ConservaDem dead weights who are bought and paid for by the health insurance lobby and we can make the bill stronger and more effective. Reformers should be pushing against Governor Deval Patrick naming a place holder for Ted Kennedy's seat and for the reconciliation process. It is the best way forward for us by far.

Nope Not Buying It

Zachary Roth of TPM isn't buying the Wall Street Journal's Al Qaeda assasination ring story either:

But there's reason to believe we still don't have anything like the full story. First of all, according to one of the Journal's sources, both Cheney and President Bush opposed what seems to be a particularly aggressive iteration of the program, involving using "teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks," by carrying out targeted assassinations.

That doesn't appear to line up with the Times' report that Cheney was behind the decision to keep Congress in the dark about the secret program, though strictly speaking it doesn't contradict it.

But there are other reasons to keep asking questions:

Perhaps most importantly, a program, launched immediately after September 11 to capture or kill top al Qaeda operatives just doesn't seem sufficiently radioactive to have provoked the kerfuffle it has. To be sure, Congress outlawed targeted CIA assassinations in the 1970s in response to the excesses of 50s and 60s, and the issue played a key role in the move during the same period to give Congress greater powers to oversee the agency. And if the program allowed CIA to act without the consent or knowledge of liaison services in the countries where the targets were located, that's obviously a big deal.

Still, the US military has openly been trying to get Osama bin Laden and other top Qaeda leaders "dead or alive" since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Would CIA involvement in that effort be so explosive that it would not only need to be kept from Congress in the first place, but would also have been shut down by Panetta as soon as he learned about it?

By the same token, it was Democratic lawmakers who brought the issue into the news last week by complaining that they had for years been kept in the dark on the unidentified program. Would they have chosen to initiate that spat when it seems to allow them to be portrayed as opposing an effort to hunt down al Qaeda terrorists?

Exactly!

I can't wait till the REAL story comes out.

Religious Left

For decades the Republican Party has attempted to position itself as the "Christian" party. A party that stood for "family values" unlike those "dirty heathen" Democrats. For some odd reason for a long time Democrats pretty much accepted this frame. In effect they ceded moral ground that was just sitting their for the taking. It is certainly not true that Republicans have a monopoly on the Christian vote as has been illustrated in many many elections over the years. So its heartening for me to see some left leaning Christian groups coming together to push for the Democratic agenda.

From, of all places, The Wall Street Journal:

Randy Brinson, a conservative political consultant in Alabama, has been fielding anxious calls for weeks from business interests across the South.

Their concern is massive ad blitz on Christian and country-music stations across 10 states. The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions -- by framing the issue as an urgent matter of Biblical morality.

"As our seas rise, crops wither and rivers run dry, God's creation cries out for relief," begins one ad, narrated by an evangelical megachurch pastor. Another opens with a reference to the Gospel of John, slams energy interests for fighting the bill, and concludes: "Please join the faithful in speaking out against the powerful."

Dr. Brinson tells his clients they are right to be worried. Such an aggressive political campaign by the religious left is unexpected, he says, and could prove powerful. "This is the first time I've seen a moderate group of evangelicals come together and do a coordinated campaign," said Dr. Brinson. He is warning clients: "You're going to hear a lot more of this."

Emboldened by what they see as a kindred spirit in the White House, progressive and liberal Christians are stepping up their political activism in a big way.

A religious coalition called the American Values Network spent nearly $200,000 placing the global warming ads. Some political analysts credit the campaign with boosting support for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, which narrowly passed the House last week.

The coalition plans to spend an additional $150,000 in the coming months to enlist pastors in Nevada, Arizona and Colorado to rally support in the pews as climate-change legislation moves through the Senate.

Another left-leaning religious coalition will begin airing scripture-citing radio ads in key congressional districts this weekend, calling for legislation to make health insurance more affordable. The coalition -- which includes Faith in Public Life, Sojourners and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good -- also is distributing an eight-page guide, full of Biblical quotes and health-care statistics, to encourage pastors to raise the issue in sermons.

Democratic lawmakers representing conservative districts say such efforts help them make the case to skeptical constituents that they aren't simply toeing the party line -- or turning into bleeding-heart liberals -- when they support President Barack Obama's calls for health-care and climate-change legislation.

"It's important for people to see that it's not just [Democrats] saying this is important, but people who are coming at it from a moral background," said Rep. Tom Perriello, a freshman Democrat who has come under fire in his rural Virginia district for supporting the climate bill.

I am sure that the timing is just coincidental but you have to admit that with the recent sex scandals involving GOP presidential hopefuls for 2012, these kinds of ads are pretty much right on time.

Smoke And Mirrors

I have been talking about Congressman Paul Ryan today and his promotion of the House GOP "alternative budget". Well what I didn't mention was that he also had an op ed in the WingNut Journal this morning also advocating for his plan. In the op ed he included this chart. Look it over and then see if you can find anything curious about it.









I knew something looked wrong about this picture but I didn't take it seriously anyway. Then I went over to TPM and Josh Marshall points out that the chart goes out 70 years. Now keep in mind that the President's budget only went out 10 years and if you look carefully the numbers during that time of their estimates of the percentage of GDP that their budget would take up isn't far off at all from President Obama's budget projections. Now if you are skeptical like me you have to believe that they fudged even those numbers on their own projections. You don't see an actual big divergence until 20 years from now, at best 12 years AFTER President Obama will be out of office, which nobody has actually game planned out.

This is just another reason why you can NEVER take Republicans seriously these days.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Comes Clean

Greg Sargent reports:

It isn’t every day that folks on the left hail the pro-business Wall Street Journal editorial page for its honesty. But today labor officials are circulating a Journal editorial that could put a crimp in efforts by opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act to claim that the measure kills the “secret ballot” option to join unions.

The key bit: The editorial correctly notes that Employee Free Choice doesn’t do that at all:

The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter. The bill allows a union to automatically organize a worksite if more than 50% of workers simply sign an authorization card…

Now according to Sargent in the comments section the SEIU is thinking about moving on from the conversation now instead of flogging the admission. I hope they change their minds about that. One editorial page admission where they still tried to demonize EFCA legislation to me is not enough to think the "secret ballot" cannard is going away. The problem is that the meme has been pushed so hard for so long and by so many different people especially on the WSJ op-ed pages that it has to be beaten back before people will pay attention to any new information. When you have a gift like this delivered to you then you have to exploit it and use it to win the messaging war. "If the Wall Street Journal has been lying about the secret ballot this long what else are they lying about when it comes to EFCA?" Thats the question you want average citizens to be asking. So if any SEIU members are reading this I suggest that you saturate the media with this story and continue to push back on the "secret ballot" canard.

IOKIYAR

For the uninitiated IOKIYAR is an acronym for "Its Ok If You're A Republican". Basically it denotes the double standard that Democrats are held to as opposed to their Republican counterparts. Glenzilla crushes the Wall Street Wing Nut Journal's editorial page for their criticism of President Obama with respect to him having a pre-selected list of names to call on for his press conference. You see this was just terrible and a travesty, especially since President Bush never did it. Except when he did.

Wall St. Journal Editorial Page, today:

About half-way through President Obama's press conference Monday night, he had an unscripted question of his own. "All, Chuck Todd," the President said, referring to NBC's White House correspondent. "Where's Chuck?" He had the same strange question about Fox News's Major Garrett: "Where's Major?". . . .

The President was running down a list of reporters preselected to ask questions. The White House had decided in advance who would be allowed to question the President and who was left out. . . .

We doubt that President Bush, who was notorious for being parsimonious with follow-ups, would have gotten away with prescreening his interlocutors.

Ari Fleischer, Tuesday night, The Bill O'Reilly Show:

O'REILLY: Look, [Obama] had those guys written down, who he was going to call on. Now, in other press conferences, they'd just look around and go: "this one, that one, this one" - correct?

FLEISCHER: Well, George Bush never did that. . . . Writing it down gives the President more control.

O’REILLY: OK, so George Bush came in with a list of guys he was going to call on?

FLEISCHER: Yes, I used to prepare it for him. I would give him a grid, show him where every reporter is seated. And there are some reporters, you know, in that briefing room, you can imagine, Bill, you get a lot of dot coms and other oddballs who come in there. They’re screened.

O’REILLY: Like the Huffington Post. Now it gets called on.

FLEISCHER: And I used to seat them all in one section. I would call it "Siberia." And I told the President, "Don’t call on Siberia."

Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs:

At one point while making his way through the press questioners, Bush awkwardly referred to a list of reporters whom he was instructed to call on. "This is scripted," he joked. The press laughed. But Bush meant it was scripted, literally. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer later admitted he compiled Bush's cheat sheet, which made sure he did not call on reporters from some prominent outlets like Time, Newsweek, USA Today, or the Washington Post.

Michael Crowley, The New York Observer:

In fact, the [] only moment of candor [of the March 6, 2003 Press Conference] may have come when Mr. Bush admitted during the conference that he was calling on reporters according to his pre-arranged list of names, which his press secretary, Ari Fleischer, later copped to preparing.

"This is scripted," Mr. Bush joked.

Strangely, many reporters laughed at this remarkable joke, which had the additional benefit of being true

.
Deliberate deceit or complete editorial recklessness from The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page? And which is worse? Are there any limits at all to the factually false claims newspapers can spew without correction? We'll see

Now I have been thinking about this for awhile, especially as it pertains to FauxNooz's actual news shows which just like its opinion shows flog Republican talking points and make concerted efforts to spread patently false anti liberal/progressive propaganda. Well I for one am not an advocate for the fairness doctrine but I do believe that shows that promote themselves as news sources SHOULD be held to a higher standard. So I would propose legislation that allows the FCC to fine, suspend or cancel news shows that are found to have reported factually incorrect stories on purpose because of a particular political bent and or financial a financial conflict of interest or because of gross negligence repeatedly. To me that would pressure EVERYONE to raise their game up and it would make them live up to the standards set by the founding fathers when they wrote in the protections for the press in the 1st Amendment of the Constitution. Many of these shows do not at all deserve those protections nor do they deserve to try to pass themselves off as arbiters of the truth and the news. I believe just like you have truth in advertising laws when it comes to consumer goods we should be able to institute truth in advertising laws where it comes to shows promoting themselves as being reporters of the news. If we can punish the makers of a birth control pill for making false claims about its benefits, we should be able to punish a news source for making false claims about ability to uncover and report the truth. What say you?

Unintentionally Revealing The Truth

The Republicans have been harping for weeks now that they have been excluded from the process when it comes to formulating the economic stimulus bill. Today we find a very unlikely source that demonstrably proves those claims false, the Wing Nut Wall Street Journal. In a story framed ostensibly to paint Senate Democrats such as Majority Leader Harry Reid as being bad guys and adding "pork" to the bill (imagine that framing from the WSJ) we find that evidently the Democrats aren't alone in their request for money for their home states. In fact the article clearly implicates Harry Reid's fellow Senator from Nevada, Republican John Ensign in this passage:

Last week, Mr. Reid worked with his Nevada colleague, Republican Sen. John Ensign, to include one version of the debt-buyback provision in the stimulus plan in the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Reid's spokesman said the senator got involved because he "heard from businesses in the state that the current tax treatment for cancellation of debt is hindering their ability to restructure their debt so they can move forward."

This week, Mr. Reid has helped a group of Republican and Democratic senators who are trying to iron out a compromise on the provision. The senators hope to add the compromise to the final bill in the next week.

Now quite honestly I don't know if Reid is guilty or innocent of adding "pork" to the bill, however what I do know is that he was working with Republicans when he did or didn't do so. This gives truth to the lie that there hasn't been bipartisan cooperation or input when it comes to the economic stimulus package. Right about now the wingnuts in Congress are quickly running out of excuses. At some point the American people are going to tell them to cut the shit or show them in a few years just how much we don't appreciate the political games they are playing.

Wall Street Journal Is Now Wing Nut Central

I just so happened to catch this story over at the Wall Street Journal about how supposedly the Chicago Tribune caused the premature arrest of Rod Blagojevich. As the story goes some ever present "unnamed sources" claim that the Tribune had been asked to put a hold on a story that ran December 5th detailing how Blago's phones were being tapped by the Feds. The story is chocked full of all manner of assumptions and aspersions against the Times and it ends thusly.

Had it not been for the Tribune’s Dec. 5 story, the meeting Blagojevich’s brother was arranging might have proceeded. Mr. Blagojevich is quoted as citing the story, in the affidavit, then calling off the meeting. At a minimum, the FBI’s recorders would have been rolling when he reported back. The feds also probably would have tried to bug the session live, or at least to tail the participants and secretly film or photograph them. That’s what feds do. Jurors love video.

Now there was a time not long ago that paragraphs such as the one quoted would have been seen as below the standards of the WSJ. But that day is no more. Ever since Rupert Murdock bought them out, they have moved considerably towards their seeming goal to become the far right mouth piece of print media. Its sad really because once a publication loses the respect of the average reader its rare that they ever get it back. But I am a firm believer that you can tell a lot about the quality and direction of a publication by the stuff you find in the comments section. So let me provide a few excerpts for your voyeuristic pleasure.

Why waste time writing about this. Obama can do whatever he wants. Please, write more stories about his puppies and how he likes to play basketball. Obama is Untouchable. He can buy houses with other peoples money and say it was a “bone headed” thing to do and ‘journalists’ could care less.

Please, this is all just another ‘distraction’. We don’t have to know these details. Can’t you just have Obama be Obama? If this kind of stuff is so important now, why didn’t the MSM look into Mr. Obama’s upbringing in the cauldron of Chicago machine politics, and how a nobody like him rose to State senator, US senator, and President-elect in just a few years with no tangible achievements, and assumed to be pure as the driven snow?

Someone at the Tribune must have tipped off the targets of this investigation (inside the BHO campaign), then , getting their orders to spill the beans, they released the story to force Fitz’s hand and/or warn Blago

This is an intro to a presidential term of Chicago “Daley” mafia politics run by an “untouchable” expert, B.H. Obama, that will infect every corner of USA. Get ready folks!

At least Bush wasn’t a crook.

Why didn’t our messiah, Obama, bring “change” to Ilinois and Chicago before trying to bring it to the USA and the world?

The Chicago Tribune and especially it’s editor are treasonous. They are protecting the empty suit conman, Obama. Barry is an unqualified, ineligible liar, and I doubt he’ll even make it to president, as the American people are about to demand that he show his birth certificate, which he has hired three law firms to avoid.

Not exactly the kind of readership most would normally associate with the WSJ, no?

The irony, of course, is that Sam Zell has been a major financial donor to Republican causes. But hey why let the facts get in the way of wingnut outrage right?

So great job Rupert,you are right on track in your quest to turn the Wall Street Journal into the FoxNews of print media. How about buying PBS next and giving Andy Martin his own show?