Stories to Watch: 12/22/11

The Republicans caved and I made pasties (ABC's Jonathan Karl was right on the money, BTW). It's a wonderful day. Now here's the news...


This Vander Plaats guys is starting to sound like a crook.


Ron Paul does not react well to substantive criticism.


On a related note, Mediaite's Alex Alvarez offers the poorest defense of Ron Paul's racist newsletter possible; this is all old news, the newsletter was years ago, Paul's already answered the questions. Let's see how that reasoning holds up in another context; this is all old news, the newsletter sexual harassment was years ago, Paul's Herman Cain's already answered the question. Didn't work the last time, not gonna work this time.


PolitiFact digs in on their embarrassing "Lie of the Year" flub.


Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner says he's sorry he's such an insufferable prick.


Mittens says his tax returns are a secret that you can't know about.


Hey Republicans, here's some of that election fraud you've been looking for.


Finally, while the White House doesn't exactly run a victory lap, they should.

Related articles

• Ron Paul Touted His Controversial Newsletters In 1995 C-SPAN Interview (huffingtonpost.com)
• Ron Paul Walks Out Of CNN Interview (huffingtonpost.com)
• House GOP caves on 2-month payroll tax cut (abclocal.go.com)
• Fat-Assed Lawmaker Overheard Bitching about Michelle Obama's 'Large Posterior' [Polidicks] (gawker.com)

News Roundup for 12/14/11

Hasn't actually signed any petitions

-Headline of the Day-
"BS Alert: Mickey Mouse And Adolf Hitler Have Not Joined Scott Walker Recall Effort."

The rightwing media is going positively mental over the "fact" that Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler are signing petitions to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Turns out they're losing it over nothing -- which is what they do best.

What's happening is either a poor or selective reading of a Milwaukee TV station's report on the recall effort. In that story, a reporter asked an official with Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board whether -- hypothetically -- a signature with a name like "Mickey Mouse" or "Adolf Hitler" would automatically be disqualified. The official said no. It's up to the other side to challenge signatures on the petition -- because you never know, some guy may actually be named Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler. Some people have idiots for parents and such things aren't unprecedented. Someone shouldn't be barred for life from signing petitions just because his mom was an moron who thought the name "Donald Duck" would be cute. As long as the signature is accompanied by a valid address and date, the GAB will err on the side of caution and assume that Adolf Hitler's parents were jerks until proven otherwise. In short, they're using common sense.

And are Mickey and Adolf signing petitions like crazy? What part of the word "hypothetical" are you having trouble with?

Of course, this is more than just the right finding an excuse for their favorite activity -- a fullblown, pants-wetting freakout over nothing. "The Hitler/Mouse hypotheticals are the go-to clichés in stories that seek to create the false hysteria about voter fraud that fuels the wave of voter ID laws which threaten to disenfranchise millions of voters nationwide, the kind of hysteria that the mainstream media abetted in its treatment of ACORN," writes Mediaite's Tommy Christopher. "It’s the exact kind of hysteria that this story feeds, which makes this potential bit of cable news fluff deadly serious. Voter ID laws are pegged to the false idea that casting fictitious votes is simple and widespread, and by conflating voter fraud with voter registration fraud. This distinction was completely lost in the ACORN story, even though the organization was required by law to submit all registrations they received, and even though they flagged all suspicious registrations."

"So when you see this Mickey Mouse story on your favorite 24 hour news outlet, don’t laugh. Do something," he concludes.

And if you see someone freaking out over this non-story, tell them to change their pants. (Mediaite)


-Word of the day-



Click to embiggen

AKA, the "self-fulfilling prophecy." (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)


-Bonus HotD-
"Rick Santorum Pleads With Voters To Call Him ‘Intelligent’ Just For Once."

Voters answer, "No." (Wonkette)

Stories to Watch: 11/29/11

Is the Apple iPhone 4S anti-choice? "The evidence seems pretty damning," reports Gizmodo. Asking for directions to abortion clinics gets you sent to a anti-choice "pregnancy counseling center" or, if there aren't any in your area, the phone comes up empty. Ditto for searches for birth control. The good news is, you can still find hookers and Viagra. Note to Apple: IT stands for "Information Technology," not "Ignorance Technology."


I keep hearing pundits say that Mitt Romney's using a tortoise-and-the-hare "slow and steady wins the race" strategy that's working well for him. The thing is, there's no evidence of that. Mittens is slowly and steadily losing the race, according to Public Policy Polling.


Also from PPP, Gingrich is still on the rise.


The Tea Party continues to crash and burn.


Following a massive explosion at an Iranian military base, protesters storm the British embassy in Tehran. While the protest itself was over British sanctions, it's hard to believe that the explosion -- and worries that western powers and Israel are responsible -- didn't play a part.


Andrew Sullivan gets all master-racey. People forget that he is, in fact, a conservative.


Mitt Romney becomes the latest beneficiary of the "It's OK when Republicans do it" rule.


Anders Behring Breivik, the racist gunman who went on a killing spree in Norway, is declared legally insane.


Apparently, it's some sort of breach of journalistic ethics for an opinion columnist to have, like, opinions for real.


Finally, I'm genuinely astonished that anyone still gives a fuck what Donald Trump thinks. He's a clown, a game show host, and a publicity hound. He is most definitely not a keen political mind. Quit pumping him up like he's anyone important -- I'm looking at you, Mediaite.

Related articles

• Herman Cain 'reassessment': What will his voters do if he drops out? (csmonitor.com)
• PPP surveys show Herman Cain's collapse is good news for Newt Gingrich (dailykos.com)
• Democrats continues pounding Mitt Romney's flagrant dishonesty (dailykos.com)
• Mitt Romney's Dark History of Occasional Rage [2012] (gawker.com)

News Roundup for 11/1/11

"Ask me about my sex scandal -- please!"

-Headline of the Day-
"Mark Block Won't Talk About the Other Cain Scandal."

Did you know there were not one, but two scandals following the Herman Cain Train around like a black cloud? It's true! First, there's the sexy boom-chaka-wow-wow sexy sexual harassment sexy scandal broken by Politico and then there's some boring old money-laundering scandal broken by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. One's pretty serious and the other's really serious -- like someone could go to jail serious. So all the news networks are following Cain around with microphones, wondering why he won't shut up about the sexy boom-chaka-wow-wow sexy sexual harassment sexy scandal -- because they're smart like that.

Anyway, it turns out that if -- on the off-chance -- someone accidentally asks the Cain Train about the money-laundering scandal, they run into a brick wall. "We've retained independent counsel to look at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story," campaign manager Mark Block told a reporter when asked about it. What's that mean? You guys hire a lawyer or Sherlock Holmes or what? When asked again, Block gave pretty much the same answer.

When asked a third time, he said, "Why don't we talk about the campaign going forward?"

Or, if you don't want to talk about that, he's probably more than happy to talk about the sexy boom-chaka-wow-wow sexy sexual harassment sexy scandal. "Cain's campaign manager was once suspended from election work in Wisconsin because of election law violations," writes Dave Weigel. "He can't or won't talk now about more possible violations. It might be better for the Cain campaign if we all focus on Politico's story."

That's the sexy boom-chaka-wow-wow sexy sexual harassment sexy scandal, BTW. So if you're a journalist, make sure you ask Team Cain all about that one, OK?

I know they'd sure appreciate it. (Weigel)


-Subtle variations make all the difference-


Click to embiggen

(Truthdig)


-Bonus HotD-
"Ann Coulter On Herman Cain: Our Blacks Are Better Than Their Blacks."

For future reference, it's probably a bad idea for white people to refer to black people as a group in possessive terms -- given US history and all.

Try to keep that in mind, Annie. (Mediaite)

Stories to Watch: 5/8/11

Happy Mothers Day. Now here's the news...


The Washington Post tells their readers that there's simply nothing that can possibly be done about unemployment. So Dean Baker points out all the stupid in the WP's editorial, while Brad DeLong does the same. Also in economics news: worried about runaway inflation because the fed "keeps printing money?" Yeah, you can knock that off now.


Rightwing media are shocked to learn that the president shares information with generals (make sure to read the breathlessly panicked comments -- don't worry, the crazy isn't catching). Obama is "caught on video" handing a "secret note" to an Air Force General and... Well, that's it. The fact that he's out in the freakin' daylight, giving a memo to a general is... I don't even know what it's supposed to be. These guys know that the president is supposed to talk to generals, right? "Apparently this is what happens when the media can no longer accuse President Obama of having shady information on his birth certificate," writes Mediaite's Frances Martel.


This is fun; Taegan Goddard goes back to 2008 to find an example of Bill O'Reilly being vehemently wrong. "You're not gonna invade Pakistan, Senator [Obama], if you're president. You're not gonna send ground troops in there. You know it."


Osama bin Laden's death proves that evolution is a buncha hooey. Sometimes, I wonder if creationism isn't just an elaborate prank.


The courageous and oh-so-serious Paul Ryan plan to balance the budget turns out to have yet one more flaw -- there's no way it balances the budget.


Finally, whenever I start thinking I have the worst governor in America, I think about Florida's Rick Scott, who cut unemployment benefits to fund a tax giveaway to the wealthy.

Related articles

• Bill O'Reilly Attacks Alan Colmes To Defend Bush Torture Policies (crooksandliars.com)
• Fox Scrubs O'Reilly Flub On Obama's Social Security Number - 4/15/11 (yourdaddy.net)
• Glenn Beck To O'Reilly: Obama's Ground Zero Visit Was 'Shameless' (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Bill O'Reilly: Conservative Criticism Of Obama's Handling Of Bin Laden Is 'Crazy Unreasonable' (mediaite.com)

News Roundup for 5/6/11

The So-Called "Earth"

-Headline of the day-
"Pawlenty: 'I'm Sorry' I Once Cared About Climate."

Former Republican Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty was forced to apologize at the first GOP presidential debate. His sin? Accepting reality, which is strictly verboten. Republicans are all visionaries and Utopians now, there is no place for reality within the party.

See, not only did T-Paw once sweat this "global warming" mumbo jumbo, he actually endorsed a solution to it -- the horrible, untried communist plot that is known as "cap and trade."

"I've said I was wrong. It was a mistake, and I'm sorry," Pawlenty said of his dalliance with the real world. "You're going to have a few clunkers in your record, and we all do, and that's one of mine. I just admit it. I don't try to duck it, bob it, weave it, try to explain it away. I'm just telling you, I made a mistake."

So how did everyone else do? Not very well. Some big names skipped out on the debate, leaving only the desperate and the overly-insane candidates. They couldn't even get Trump to show -- even after making it lear there'd be cameras. "As we all know, there are numerous other candidates that are looking at [seeking the nomination]," said RNC Chair Reince Priebus, "and thank God." (Mother Jones)


-Public health alert-
A new symptom has been discovered indicating Obama Derangement Syndrome...




...hysterical blindness. (Truthdig)


-Bonus HotD-
"Tim Pawlenty: I'm Not Going To Be The Loudest, Most Extreme Or Craziest Person In Race."

Translation: "I intend to lose." (Mediaite)

News Roundup for 4/29/11

Orrin Hatch

-Headline of the day-
"Hatch scrubs his website?"

The birthers are all riled up over President Obama's long-form birth certificate. It's fake! And they can prove it (but only by completely misunderstanding how PDFs work). So the birthers are even more crazy than they were before.

Well, there's one GOP Senator who's not planning on getting caught without his finger in the wind. According to the report, "Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) -- anxious about a possible conservative primary challenger in 2012 -- has scrubbed evidence on his website of ever having supported repealing the requirement that presidents be natural born."

See, way back when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the GOP flavor-of-the-month, Orrin Hatch got the idea that he'd make the perfect presidential candidate -- with the only problem being that Ahnoldt was born in Kenya Austria. So this was something that needed to be fixed. It didn't go anywhere, but who cares?

Hatch pulled any mention of the sponsorship of a constitutional amendment repealing the "natural born citizen" requirement from his website. He says it's because his website was redesigned. Of course, I've redesigned my blog a couple times and lost absolutely nothing, but that's just me. I'm not a big-money web design firm, so I probably did it wrong.

In any case, Hatch's office assures us that this has nothing to do with the fact that his amendment would've allowed a SECRET MOOSLIM TERR'IST to become president and that the birthers wouldn't like that.

Case closed. (Politico)


-The next "controversy"-
Can the Obama administration survive?


Click for full comic

I never really trusted Hawaii. (Bad Reporter)


-Bonus HotD-
"Tirade Of Profanity: Donald Trump Drops F-Bombs During Speech At Las Vegas Casino."

Or, "How to keep generating headlines after Pres. Obama made a complete fool of you." (Mediaite)

News Roundup for 4/28/11

"Not those two -- the other one!"

-Headline of the day-
"Overnight poll: More than half of Republicans still unpersuaded Obama was born here."

Don't pretend to be surprised, but after President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, a Survey USA poll finds that "More than half of Republicans still aren't buying Obama's story. 18 percent of them told Survey USA that they consider the long-form a forgery, and another 33 percent say they still have doubt. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of Republicans say that they either still consider Obama's birthplace to be open to debate or aren't sure, and 33 percent claim that the president was "definitely" or "probably" born elsewhere. (Among all respondents, 77 percent say that Obama was "definitely" or "probably" born in America.)"

Of course this was a pretty quick poll, so -- according to the report -- "62 percent of Republicans" hadn't "yet seen the long-form themselves." Which of course means that they'd come to their conclusions based on pretty much the same info they'd had before -- which is none. And every conservative knows that, in the face of a lack of all evidence, the wisest course of action is to believe wholeheartedly whatever some wild-eyed lunatic tells you. Think I'm exaggerating? Here's a dinosaur with a saddle, because the no-evidence idea of creationism just makes so much damned sense.

Still not smacking your forehead against your keyboard? Try this: in explaining why some Republicans still think birtherism is the way to go, the report tells us that "since Obama is their 'enemy,' some Republicans may feel compelled to provide negative answers to any and all poll questions about him."

Oops! You got a little bit of the G key stuck to your forehead there... (War Room)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, want to know why all this "birther" is out there? Check out the Power of Crazy and...


Click for Animation

I'm guessing we'll look back at this cartoon as eerily prescient... (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Who Said It’s Over? Fox's Eric Bolling Questions Authenticity Of Birth Certificate."

It. Just. Never. Stops. (Mediaite)

News Roundup for 4/8/11

Strangely, this isn't what gay people are like

-Headline of the day-
"Strategist For Anti-Gay Marriage Group Comes Out In Support Of Marriage Equality."

Doesn't seem like much of a strategy, if you ask me, but it turns out that Louis Marinelli of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is now for same-sex marriage.

According to the report, Marinelli -- who drove the bus during a national tour and "ran NOM’s Twitter account and Facebook page" -- "credits exposure to the NOM tour as the very thing that led to his change of heart." Turns out that he had crazy ideas about gays and lesbians because he'd never actually met any.

"Even though I had been confronted by the counter-protesters throughout the marriage tour, the lesbian and gay people whom I made a profession out of opposing became real people for me almost instantly," he confessed. "For the first time I had empathy for them and remember asking myself what I was doing."

The report goes on to say that "public opinion polling has found a correlation between knowing gay people and being supportive of equal rights for the LGBT community." See when you find out they aren't Nazi child-rapists who want to destroy western civilization and Christianity, they get a lot easier to like.

Weird, huh? (Wonk Room)


-So long, human joke factory-
Jon Stewart says goodbye to the cancelled Glenn Beck in the only fitting way -- by mocking Beck's "Professor Crazypants" shtick one last time.



Now I understand that some people outside the United States may not be able to get that embed to work, because Viacom are pricks. I don't know what to tell you, other than you totally shouldn't resort to torrents, because that would be wrong. (Mediaite)


-Bonus HotD-
"Bob Vander Plaats Tells ThinkProgress Homosexuality Is A 'Public Health Risk' Like Smoking."

Sounds like a certain Iowa anti-gay activist needs to go on a NOM bus tour. (ThinkProgress)

News Roundup for 1/24/11

After retiring, Joe Lieberman plans to celebrate his re-election

-Headline of the day-
"Lieberman to retire in 2012 but 'confident he would have won' a fifth term."

Joementum's quitting the whole governing business because he wants to retire to Sussex Downs to keep bees. Or something like that.

Whatever the reason, it's super-important that you know it isn't because he didn't stand a chance in hell of being re-elected. That's just a horrible lie made up by commies, terrorists, and the 66% of Connecticut voters who say they'd replace him.

Of course, you might be asking what difference it makes. If Lieberman's retiring, why would he even bother to speculate on an election that's never going to happen?

Ego, young grasshopper. Ego. (New Haven Register)


-Because that's just too short-
Rush Limbaugh pegged hypocrisy meters nationwide when he critiqued President Obama's State of the Union speech in advance:



"I know a lot of you don't want to watch this... I'm like you. Who wants to sit there and listen to somebody lie for an hour and fifteen minutes?" Rush asked.

I know what you're thinking and it's not fair. Rush's show is three full hours, so there's a difference. (Mediaite)


-HotD-
"78-year-old woman gets death threats after Beck shouts conspiracy."

But remember, it's completely irresponsible to say that rightwing hate talk inspires violence.(Raw Story)