LA Times labels Rush & his fellow fabricators "shameless":
You have to give Rush Limbaugh a perverse kind of credit. At least when he is demonizing Barack Obama, fabricating Obama policies, blaming Obama for single-handedly causing the recession and the stock market crash, he doesn't pretend to be fair.He just pretends to tell the truth.
I knew CBS screwed Dan Rather royally but I didn't know it was this bad.
Rather is suing CBS for a cool $70 million over the circumstances of his "Rathergate" dismissal. The NY Observer dug through papers Rather's legal team submitted last week. It learned that CBS' shortlist for Rather's "independent review panel" featured a long list of right-wing partisans. Some of them are even journalists:
William Buckley (TNR), Robert Novak, Kate O’Beirne (TNR & then @CNN!), Tucker Carlson (I'm starting to feel dirty here), Pat Buchanan (OK, I'm officially dirty), George Will (What? Pol Pot wasn't available?), Lou Dobbs (WTF? Right wing CNN anchor reviews CBS anchor?), Matt Drudge (Puh-leeze), Robert Kagan (PNAC + Papa do not make one worthy), Fred Barnes (Does anyone even read WS or watch FoxNews?), William Kristol (another Murdoch trust fund baby), John Podhoretz (Mama's Boy is to journalism what cinder blocks are to swimming), David Brooks (Soon-to-be banished to the farthest corner of the realm), William Safire (Wordsmythe, Nixonite & "libertarian conservative" whatever the fuck that is), Bernard Goldberg (FoxNews crank then@CBS News), Ann Coulter (don't even go there -- I said don't), Andrew Sullivan (Why, oh why?), Christopher Hitchens (depends on what he's drinking & for how long), PJ O’Rourke (depends on which PJ shows up & for how long), Christopher Caldwell ("No, my father-in-law did not get me this gig"), Elliot Abrams (like a cockroach, he'll never go away), Charles Krauthammer (a sad, delusional man), William Bennett (nicotine-addict/ex-Drug Czar/ homophobe/degenerate gamber), Rush Limbaugh (not qualified to fucking mowing Rather's lawn) and, written at the bottom, FoxNews' Dark Lord Roger Ailes (**shudder**).
Considering these stalwart wingers for their Rather “independent review panel” is sorta like Frank Perdue announcing plans to have foxes guard his hen house. Had CBS been truly interested in getting to the bottom of how Rather's report was sourced and erred aired, they wouldn't have considered a veritable murder's row of neo-con hacks and competitors! Shortly thereafter the Grand PooBah himself, lifelong Dem Sumner Redstone, conspicuously flipped Republican.
Please note that I chose to break two names out of the above pack as they have been unintentionally and undeservedly tarnished by association. One is NY Observer's own Nicholas Von Hoffman, who CBS fired for saying "Mr. Nixon is the dead mouse on the kitchen floor, and the American family, in slippers and bathrobe, is gathered around him arguing over who will pick him up by his tail and drop him in the trash" is as much a neo-con as you'd expect any friend of Gary Trudeau to be. The other is Robert (no relation to Gnarls or Charles) Barkley has been a tireless education reformer who penned the moving Grandfather's Apology two weeks ago.
-AF
(HT: ThinkProgress)
I really, really, really wish I hadn't seen this. Crooks&Liars has the skinny on all the racist shit that went down at Baptist Baylor University yesterday. I hope you're proud of yourselves.
You can take the Baptist out of Waco, but apparently you can't take the Waco out of these Baptists.
-AF
Hearing the angst, hurt and racial weirdness/bigotry emanating from losing side has really jarred me. I'm not talking about the pundits or the candidates. Nothing they say could ever surprise me. I'm talking about everyday people, McCain voters, like those in my View From The Ground series, Parts 3 & 4. (I can't even begin to wrap my head around the gay marriage bans).
I confess this all left me feeling a lot less hopeful.
Cue RS's Matt Taibbi. Matt is acerbic, sharp as a whip and funny as fuck. He's also a keen observer of human behavior. Amidst the post-election pain, confusion and fear of many voters he sees...um, well...Hope:
There are still a lot of mixed-up, terrified people out there who went to bed last night in a panic about what "those people" will do now that they have one of their own in the White House. When I finally got to watch a replay of Obama's speech in my hotel room late last night, it occurred to me that it's those people who were actually the big winners in this election. Why? Because a lot of them are going to wake up a year from now and realize not a whole lot has changed. And quietly, when no one's looking, they're going to relax a little.That will be a bigger and more beautiful day than last Tuesday. Read it here.
"L." checked in from Raleigh, NC yesterday. Her coworkers were buzzing about the election. The hot topic was how "when Obama becomes President, he will help the blacks enslave the whites."
-AF
ANCHORAGE — Convicted of seven felony counts just nine days ago, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska held a narrow lead on Wednesday in his bid for re-election, though the race remained too close to call.Stay tuned...
Mr. Stevens, 84 and a 40-year incumbent, led his Democratic challenger, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, by fewer than 3,400 votes with more than 55,000 absentee, early and questioned ballots remaining to be counted. If he wins, Mr. Stevens would be the first felon elected to the United States Senate.
The senator’s campaign said that such late-counted votes traditionally break for Republicans and that it was “almost mathematically impossible” for Mr. Begich to win. But Mr. Begich strongly disputed those claims, noting that his campaign had made a concerted effort to win absentee and early voters and that he had won absentee counts in his elections as mayor.
A final vote count may not come until next week or later.
And even if Mr. Stevens wins, he could still be forced from office.
-AF
Race wasn't nearly as big an issue in the election as the media built it up to be. Here's one indication that as far as we've come, we still have a long way to go...
"R." in rural Tennessee tells of an exchange as she left her polling station. A man a few steps ahead was approached for an exit poll. When asked "Who did you vote for?," he replied "I voted for the nigger."
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
"R." also reports being surprised months ago to learn most of her farmer-neighbors were ardent Barack Obama supporters. They put up Obama lawn signs and put Obama bumperstickers on their pickup trucks. These folks attended rallies and canvassed neighborhoods too.
Yet all throughout the campaign they referred to Obama by the same foul racial epithet.
This shit is so fucked up I'm speechless.
-AF
"I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."Barack Obama
Newsweek reveals both camps' inner workings:
People were so worried about Obama being a Muslim and a Socialist that they forgot that he was black.Larry Wilmore paints the White House black.
