President Obama Can't Rebuke Janet Napolitano When He Is Busy Agreeing With Her

Yesterday afternoon Chris Good had a post over at Marc Ambinder's spot entitled
"Systemic Failure": A Full Rebuke Of "The System Worked" in which he used the right wing out of context framing of Janet Napolitano's words on CNN over the weekend to profer that President Obama was rebuking what she had said.

It was also a complete 180 from what Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union" two days after the attempted attack was foiled--that "the system worked"--a direct and total rebuke of that initial assertion.

Except, that is not what Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union" AND he evidently missed the part of President Obama's speech where in fact he agreed with and endorsed what she actually DID say, in context, on Sunday as is evidenced in this Rachel Maddow clip from last night.

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See when her whole quote is allowed in context and you can see that she was speaking of the RESPONSE to the attempted terrorist attack and not the events leading up to it that allowed the attempt to take place at all she sounds perfectly reasonable and in this case perfectly right. But that never stopped wingnuts from shrieking of course and so they took it out of context and ran with it for the last few days. And unsurprisingly they found someone in the quasi mainstream media realm to validate their shrieking in Chris Good who obviously didn't hear the part in the speech where President Obama agreed with her lest his whole post lose its relevance. Thankfully a commenter pointed this out to him and today he posted a retraction. But notice how he is still unwilling or unable to fully call bullshit.

Obama, as I failed to mention in that post, cast Napolitano's analysis as correct, saying that "once the suspect attempted to take down Flight 253, after his attempt, it's clear that passengers and crew, our homeland security systems and our aviation security took all appropriate actions."

Obama's "systemic failure" spoke to a different part of the security process than what Napolitano had originally addressed. When Napolitano said that the "system worked," she was talking about the response to the incident, not the cause.

"Everybody played an important role here," Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union." "The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action, within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the Northwest Airlines flight."

snip

I still feel that Obama's remarks in Hawaii were a response to criticism of Napolitano--to the notion that the system didn't, in fact, work to prevent the attack from almost occurring--which is something Napolitano had already said. After the protestations against Napolitano's comment, whether or not they were merited, it became somewhat necessary for the president to come out and say that the system had failed.

But to call this a "rebuke" of Napolitano was misguided.

Whether or not they were merited? Its pretty fucking simple, THEY WEREN'T MERITED. And the proof is in the fact that he had to post a retraction in the first place. But you just can't call wingnuts liars in this day and age I guess. You have to give them "the benefit of the doubt". Funny, but it didn't seem like Good gave Napolitano the same benefit of the doubt though, did he? If anything was rebuked it was the right wing framing of what she had said, but you won't get that post title anytime soon I am sure.

I guess I should just be glad he posted a retraction, because you can best believe if this was the Washinton Post no such retraction would be forthcoming. But you still have to marvel and despair at how the right wing can frame any story even in the face of evidence easily accessed to the contrary.

Wired for Republicans, Washington still is...

More ACORN Bullshit

Just keep banging that drum wingnuts. Evidently they never learned the lesson of the boy who cried wolf.

Wah Wah Wah Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Remember the newest faux outrage over a school having kids sing songs that indoctrinated praised recognized President Obama's contributions so far? Yeah, turns out that it seems to have been a victimless crime and that the parents of the kids were given prior notice and nobody has objected before or since.



I guess when it comes to right wing faux outrage as Jay Z would say its "on to the next one".

*Apologies for posting a video featuring Greta Van Susteren

Secretary Sebelius Swats Joe Scarborough

At some point Joe Scarborough will stop trying to present wingnut media's wild accusations as facts on his show. That is unless he likes continuing to get embarrased like this.

FOR SALE

I can't wait to see how the wingnut blogs try to spin this one...

But that wouldn't last. The ACU asked FedEx to pony up a couple million dollars for conservative lobbying expenses. FedEx balked, so two weeks later, the American Conservative Union switched sides, and now backs UPS.

In return for the $2 million, ACU offered a range of services that included: "Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU's Chairman David Keene and / or other members of the ACU's board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)"

The conservative group's remarkable demand -- black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as "pay for play" -- was contained in a private letter to FedEx that was provided to POLITICO.

The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.

It's an interesting look at how this process, usually played out behind closed doors, really works. For a price, a company can buy the loyalty of a conservative organization, its lobbying operation, and perhaps even some media attention. In this case, the ACU's Keene didn't necessarily offer to use his print column for paid advocacy, but the fact that it was mentioned as part of the pitch to FedEx suggests a certain, shall we say, ethical flexibility.

How do you love that from the ACU?! LOL Oh and Dave Weigel reminds us of another key point in all this...

The ACU, of course, heads up the massive yearly Conservative Political Action Conference. Its ratings for members of Congress are repeated by conservative Republicans all the time — “I have a 99 percent lifetime rating from the ACU,” for example.

Of course all in all I am sure the mainstream media will examine this story and determine that the REAL winner here.......is John McCain!

Where Is Your Outrage Bill O?!

For years Bill O'Reilly has claimed that he was some kind of culture warrior. An arbiter of right and wrong instead of right and left. Now even the casual observer recognizes that he has always been full of shit. But he has been particularly hypocritical when it comes to targeting people he claims are spreading hate. One of his favorite targets is dailykos and he continually misleadingly takes comments out of context to claim that the whole site is about hating conservatives. Even if that were true which it isn't there is a right wing site that is NOTORIOUS for not only spreading hate but also inciting violence which he never seems to get around to talking about. That site is of course Free Republic.

So how is it that a Canadian media source can find the time to call out an American blog full of hate and vitriol, but the self professed "culture warrior" has dropped the ball? That is a rhetorical question of course.

And what did the Vancouver Sun find when it looked into Free Republic? Asshole racists attacking President Obama's children.

"A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."


These are a small selection of some of the racially-charged comments posted to the conservative 'Free Republic' blog Thursday, aimed at U.S. President Barack Obama's 11-year-old daughter Malia after she was photographed wearing a t-shirt with a peace sign on the front.


The thread was accompanied by a photo of Michelle Obama speaking to Malia that featured the caption, "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds."


Though this may sound like the sort of thing one might read on an Aryan Nation or white power website, they actually appeared on what is commonly considered one of the prime online locations for U.S. Conservative grassroots political discussion and organizing - and for a short time, the comments seemed to have the okay of site administrators.


Moderators of the blog left the comments - and commenters - in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later.


"Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?" wrote one commenter.


"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps," wrote another.


Such was the onslaught of derision on the site that the person who originally complained about the slurs, a Kristin N., claims only one comment in the first hundred posted actually criticized the remarks as inappropriate.


A note on the front of the blog reads, "Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government," but one comment on the thread read, "This disgusting display makes me more and more eager for the revolution," while another read, "I never actually wnated [sic] to be a pistol before but..."

Yeah Sarah Palin had it SOOOOOOOOOO bad. Setting aside the fact that I WISH I could meet one of these bitch assed cretins in a dark alley someday to teach them some fucking manners, why in the hell does our MSM continue to act like this kind of shit doesn't exist when its happening on one of he most prominent conservative blogs in the nation. While I call out Bill O for his hypocrisy of only trying to smear left wing blogs and never looking at right wing sites, the truth is the MSM is also abdicating their responsibility here. This kind of vitriol shouldn't be acceptable anywhere at anytime let alone on a "mainstream" conservative blog. When will we be hearing about this in our own media though?

Probably never.