From California:

(07-18) 17:59 PDT Oakland — A 45-year-old parolee, described by his mother as angry at left-wing politicians, opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers on an Oakland freeway early Sunday and was hit by return fire while wearing body armor, authorities said. …

[Janice Williams , the man's mother] said her son, who had been a carpenter and a cabinetmaker before his imprisonment, was angry about his unemployment and about “what’s happening to our country.”

Williams watched the news on television and was upset by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,” his mother said. …

Janice Williams said she kept the guns because “eventually, I think we’re going to be caught up in a revolution.” But she said she had told her son many times that “he didn’t have to be on the front lines.”

Gee whiz, I wonder what “news” network he has been watching.

How many times do we have to see police officers shot at by right-wing loonies spurred into violence by the hysteric, crazed, wildly exaggerated extremism spouted by Fox before someone holds them responsible?

Free speech is free speech, but there is also a little thing called “incitement to violence.”

Someone remind me, during the worst days of the Bush administration, when we liberals were at our strongest fervor pitch, how many liberals snapped like this, armed to the teeth, and headed off to kill large number of people and went shooting at police officers? Because right-wingers are starting to build up the score pretty respectably on their side. Is it that liberals aren’t as predisposed to violence, or was it that the loonies on our side weren’t pushed over the edge by the “Liberal Media” as much as right wingers are today by Fox and others like them?

And, by the way, because the guy was a felon, not to mention because they won’t like the emergence of another right-wing crazed police shooter, countdown before right-wing bloggers start claiming he was really a liberal in three, two, one…

Update: According to recent news reports, Byron Williams was winding up 3 years’ probation following being released after a 6-year term for bank robbery, and has a history of violence. But the irony:

His mother, Janice Williams, said that her son, who had previously worked as a carpenter and a cabinetmaker, was angry at left-wing politicians and upset that no one would hire him because he was a parolee.

The irony, of course, is the the left-wing politicians are the sort who would pass laws making it easier for him to find a job. It’s the right wingers who tend to be more of the “throw away the key” types, and balk at anything which rings of reform or rehabilitation.

On November 17th, someone with an IP address apparently located in Turkey hacked the servers used by the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. 160 MB of data was stolen before the breach was noticed and the server shut down. Within a few days, the stolen data was sent, via Russia (which is highly dependent upon oil and gas revenues), to groups opposed to climate change. Groups with vested interests in fossil fuels and heavily biased against the very concept of global climate change scoured the stolen emails and documents, cherry picked “random” information which, out of context, made it seem that climate change was fraudulent and the scientists who studied it were dishonest hacks, and then executed a “highly orchestrated, manufactured scandal” which the “liberal” media immediately lapped up and made a world-wide sensation.

The damage to the reputation of climate change studies is done; despite the fact that the accusations are now completely discredited and the scientists in the “scandal” cleared of any fraud or misdoing, people around the world now have the impression that climate change science is tainted by fraud. Those who disbelieved before now feel they are vindicated, many who doubted now are swayed away from the side with real evidence on its side. And everywhere there will be the stigma of mistrust, however undeserved.

And the liberal media whose agenda is supposedly to front claims like climate change? Are they covering the story of how “Climategate” itself was a fraud and a crime with anywhere near the same fervor and hype that they covered the fraudulent claims in the first place? Of course not. A few retracted, but none cleared the scientists with a fraction of the volume or intensity in which they smeared the researchers.

It is the sad fact of the nature of the media, and how it is so easily manipulated by those who have no scruples: scandals run on page one; stories about how the scandals were not scandals at all run buried in the back. Not only are they not as sexy, but the media don’t much like admitting very loudly how easily they were scammed. And so the scammers get what they wanted.

The conservative majority on the Texas state school board is pushing through a set of changes to History and Social Studies textbooks which present a view of these subjects more in line with politicized, right-wing thinking. The school board, made up of ten Republicans and five Democrats, is dominated by a conservative Christian bloc. None on the school board are experts in the field of History or Social Sciences, and have rejected the opinions given by those who are experts in those fields. The board is not interested in making changes across the board, but instead only in fields which have a political bearing. The changes reflect a definite bias toward conservative Christian biases. Therefore, it is blindingly clear that this is not a debate over balanced education, but rather the desire to dominate the education of children with political views rather than objective information.

Should you think this is exaggeration, then consider this board member as an example:

Board member Cynthia Dunbar, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School and author of a book declaring that America’s founders created a theocratic government, opened the final board session with a prayer for “a Christian land governed by Christian principles.” She explained the ideology driving curriculum changes: “[N]o one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia, or the charter of New England … the same objective is present — a Christian land governed by Christian principles.”

Well, I’m glad the board members have no preconceived notions.

This will affect more than Texas: since so many textbooks are made for Texas’ large population, textbook publishers often apply these changes nationwide. This fact is not lost on the school board, the conservative members of which have obviously taken the cue from national conservative leaders and gone whole-hog with the now-popular out-and-out divisive wingnut strategy. That strategy is to claim a liberal bias which, if it exists, is mild, and “counter” it with such an outrageously one-sided bag of rabid right-wing polemics as to make one gag.

Among the proposed changes:

• increased emphasis on the ideas of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis;
• increased attention to Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich;
• new entries on the NRA and Phyllis Schlafly, replacing removed entries on Kennedy and César Chávez;
• requirements to study right-wing personalities such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but no requirements to study left-wing commentators;
• critical analyses of “unintended consequences” of Title IX, affirmative action, and the Great Society;
• change in terms used–e.g., “capitalism” changed to “free enterprise,” “imperialism” where applied to the U.S. will be called “expansionism,” and references to a “democratic” society are replaced with references to a “republic”–not because of the meaning of the words, but instead because of their connections to political parties;
• slavery de-emphasized as a factor in the causes of the Civil War;
• “slave trade” now referred to as the “triangle trade”;
• insertion of critical analyses of Social Security and Medicare in the context of conservative critiques;
• increased scrutiny of the idea of separation of church and state;
• Thomas Jefferson’s role in U.S. history to be de-emphasized, while the roles of Christian personages such as John Calvin to be more prominent;
• lessons framing the United Nations as detrimental to U.S. sovereignty;
• watered-down coverage of the Civil Rights movement;
• insertion of lessons regarding causes and key organizations of the conservative movement, including the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority;
• major political ideas examined under the paradigm of “Laws of nature and nature’s God”;
• the image of Joe McCarthy will be cleaned up; and
• where President Obama will be mentioned, he will be referred to, unlike all other modern presidents, by his full name–Barack Hussein Obama.

Well, these are hardly political at all, wouldn’t you agree?

All of this, of course, is supposedly to “remove the liberal bias” from existing education standards. In short, to counter what is claimed to be a perceived liberal bias, make the whole shebang blindingly conservative, knowing that the nation will tilt toward you.

Welcome to Fox Education.

During the 2008 election, Obama used an iPhone app to help spread his message, raise money, and generally help win him the election, as part of a much broader Internet campaign strategy. Since then, many politicians and parties have published their own apps on the App Store, left- and right-wing alike.

Ari David, the Republican challenger to Henry Waxman in California’s 30th District (Malibu, Beverly Hills, & Santa Monica), is trying to win himself some free publicity by violating Apple’s App Store policy and then crying over how he’s being denied “free speech.”

Apple’s policy on this is:

3.3.12 Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.

One may presume that Apple would rather avoid being held culpable in libel suits, or perhaps, in the same vein as keeping porn off its mobile devices, just wants as nice and calm a playground as they can manage. There is nothing at all keeping David or anyone else from publishing positive statements about their own records, but when you start smearing an opponent, Apple steps in and tells you to take it elsewhere.

Waxman claims that Apple singled out specific statements as being defamatory, and lists them. Included in the listing are allegations that Waxman “would have brought us $7 a gallon gas and … would make electricity rates ‘necessarily sky rocket.’” … “would severely hurt seniors” … “jeopardized the US and Israel” … and “TRIED TO STRANGLE family farms with insane Soviet-Style regulation.”

Yeah, that’s not defamatory.

Now, we can debate whether Apple can and/or should have such a policy, but one thing here is pretty clear: David is just using this as political fuel. Sure, maybe he was just clueless and figured that a vehement attack app would get approved. But I think it is much more likely that the entire app idea itself is a ploy to get free publicity, and make David out to be that favorite of favorites for right-wingers: the victim.

Here’s how I see it happening. At a session among his staff to see how they can get some good, free press, someone brings up the App Store policy. Political cartoonist Mark Fiore had his political cartoon app initially denied under the same policy, but after a good deal of controversy, Apple reversed itself and let it go through. Apple has a history of relenting when put under pressure. So somebody on David’s strategy team gets the idea of making an iPhone app intentionally designed to trigger the policy–enough so that it gets stopped, but not enough to look completely outrageous. When Apple inevitably rejects the app, David’s campaign goes all over the media shouting about how Apple is censoring their speech and denying them their First Amendment rights.

Right there, they have a winner: they (1) get free publicity, (2) get to play the victim, and (3) get their attacks printed free. There is zero chance that no one will listen to a story like that–at the very least, Fox will cover it, and likely other networks will follow. It’s sure to get on the local news. David’s campaign can’t lose.

They add another dimension, though: they insinuate that Apple is secretly a liberal bastion which allows Democrats to bash Republicans, but not the other way around. They try to build up an image of Apple as being populated with liberal elitists working for Democrats:

… Apple is now making an in-kind contribution to Henry Waxman by denying his competitor a modern tool for political communication. They are stifling my right to free political speech and they are carrying water for the Obama administration … Apple pulled all of their advertising from the Fox News channel … Clearly people who work at Apple are likely to be the kind of creative people who may tend to vote Democrat and hold liberal views, but this goes far beyond that. This experience with Apple clearly shows that there is a political agenda going on within the culture of the company, and business decisions are subject to Apple’s political views. … it would be interesting to see what iPhone apps Apple has approved for Democrats in which negative statements about Republicans are made, and what standard Apple has held those statements to before approval.

Never mind that Apple would reject any app with attacks like this integrated into it, Democratic or Republican. Never mind that Apple pulled its ads from Fox because Glenn Beck told people not to go to church if they heard certain words spoken there–as did dozens of other advertisers. (I guess that Geico, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Bank of America, General Mills, Mercedes Benz, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagon, UPS, and Radio Shack are also in on the conspiracy.) No, forget that the claims are specious and self-serving.

This goes hand-in-hand with playing the victim card–you get double the juice if you can show that you are being crushed under the heel of liberals, with Apple being transmogrified into a Silicon Valley version of the Liberal Media™.

Beyond the hopes that this story catches fire, David’s campaign undoubtedly hopes to get Apple to eventually succumb to pressure. The MSM usually caves in almost immediately when charged with being liberal, and since Apple is known to not act on such rejections until a lot of pressure is applied, the David campaign is probably hoping for the story to be out there long enough to be milked–and then the icing on the cake would be for Apple to cave and allow the app. David is trying to compound that win for himself by asserting that all of his statements are “factual” and therefore not defamatory, presumably so that if Apple succumbs to pressure and allows his app, it will appear like Apple is admitting that his statements are factual.

As for David’s final swipe that Apple probably lets Dems bash GOPers while denying right-wingers the same freedom, just do a search for “GOP,” “liberal”, “conservative,” etc. on the iPhone App Store and you’ll see that this is a baseless charge. There are a lot more right-wing apps than left-wing ones, and a lot of the right-wing ones tend to get pretty nasty–though they do not defame specific individuals within the integrated app data, the act which runs afoul of Apple’s policy.

Interestingly, try to search for “Republican” and you get a hundred apps (the limit for a search), most of them being pro-right and/or anti-left; search for “Democratic” and you get 14 apps, only a few left-wing; a search for “Democrat” scores more–88 apps–but not many are left-wing apps.

I found a few Democratic congressional campaign apps, but they were completely inoffensive. Mike Oliverio’s (D-WV) app is just a poster showing a debt clock and a link to his site. Alan Mollohan’s (also D-WV) app includes a calendar of events and a bio, but is just as inoffensive. Felton Newell has a much more sophisticated app helping him run for CA-33, a Democratic safe seat, and that app also is positive only.

Republican Chris Cox, trying out for New York’s 1st District, is a Republican; his app allows you to read a short bio, donate to his campaign, and has a little game where you catch money “leaking out of the White House”–not really hardball, but it is a negative swipe at Obama rather than a positive statement about himself. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-FL) has an app with news and pages for volunteering and contributing (though she recently announced that she’s retiring). And Bob Latta (R-OH) has an app with mostly just links and contacts–but also a News section, in which he–guess what–attacks Democrats, accusing them of various evil-sounding misdeeds.

Those were the first three Democratic and Republican politicians I found with iPhone apps–all Dems were only positive, two of the Republicans were critical of Democrats. So much for Apple as a liberal wing of the Democratic party stifling Republicans while allow Democrats to savage right-wingers without restraint. (In fact, Al Ramirez, a Republican running for Senate in California, has his own app–and he set up residency in Ari David’s district to run for office.)

But here’s the real tell concerning Ari David: you can get political attacks into your iPhone app. Just either make the attacks general (against a party, for example), or include a News section which you can later fill with feeds of political attacks. Either that, or build a web app for the iPhone, which is not subject to Apple’s approval.

In short, David’s insinuations about Apple are patently false, right-wingers seem to be more numerous and negative in their political apps, and David could have easily have made an app which allowed him to smear Democrats and probably even Waxman–but he was either stupid, or more likely, geared his app with the intention of getting it rejected.

Again, we can debate whether Apple should have this policy at all–but whatever the outcome of that argument, Ari David is probably just another whining, conniving smear artist hoping to get his fifteen minutes.

The Washington Post has an interesting article on the alarming nature of Glenn Beck–something the Post claims is even dividing those within Fox. The article, however, like most mainstream reports on Fox News, is far too timid:

By calling President Obama a racist and branding progressivism a “cancer,” Beck has achieved a lightning-rod status that is unusual even for the network owned by Rupert Murdoch. And that, in turn, has complicated the channel’s efforts to neutralize White House criticism that Fox is not really a news organization.

Really? Is the idea of Fox News being an actual “news” organization even really a question anymore? I think it’s pretty damned clear that Fox jumped the shark quite some time ago. That anyone still makes this a question is rather indicative of how weak-kneed analysts tend to be about challenging Fox’s status. A good example of this from the article:

Television analyst Andrew Tyndall calls Beck an “activist” and “comedian” whose incendiary style has created “a real crossroads for Fox News.”

“They’re right on the cusp of losing their image as a news organization,” he declares. “Do they want to be the go-to place for conservative populist ideas on television, or do they want to be a news organization? Ailes has done a good job of doing both.”

“A good job of being a news organization”? “Right on the cusp”? Please. Well, maybe if you look at it from the perspective of a right-winger who agrees with so much of the commentary that he sees “Obama is a communist” as news rather than opinion, perhaps. Maybe that’s what they’re referring to–that even the politically biased cheerleaders of Fox are beginning to think the network is going too far. And when the cheerleaders stop the chant and start saying, “hey, too far, man,” you know that’s too far. It’s as if Fox is convinced of its own invincibility and has just left a brick on the accelerator pedal while they climbed atop the media car with a bottle of Tequila in their hand, shouting like a banshee without any pants.

The thing that really spurred the questioning was Beck’s call for listeners to start leaving any church that advocated “social justice,” which he called “code words” for communism and Nazism. Even right-wingers started to blanch at that one. It may have been Beck’s “I’m more popular than Jesus” moment, and certainly allowed for a more mainstream boycott of Beck and his show. Already more than 200 advertisers have joined the boycott, including Apple, which, I am proud to say, has abandoned the Fox News network altogether–not an uncontroversial move considering Fox’s market share. But then, Apple is more popular than Fox.

In the fallout from the failed crotch-bomb plot over Detroit, many have pointed out the fact that right-wingers have been particularly dishonest and hypocritical. Conservatives have been putting outright blame on Obama for the failure to catch this beforehand, whereas they blamed Clinton for the 9/11 attacks, not Bush; where Obama is to blame for an intelligence agency ignoring the father’s warning, Bush was somehow not to blame for ignoring a plethora of warning signs, several of which were delivered directly to him. Where Bush was hailed as “keeping us safe” even while the Shoe Bomber, in almost identical a fashion to the Crotch Bomber, attempted to blow up a plane to the U.S., Obama is criticized for not keeping us safe. And while Republicans excoriate the Obama administration for the lack of security, they brazenly ignore the fact that they themselves voted down more funding for airport security. Not to mention the fact that criticizing Bush on terror or security was seen as near-treasonous, while criticizing the president today is apparently not at all a problem.

I look at these criticisms and reflect on why I don’t blog on politics quite as much now: it’s all trite. Of course they’re acting like that. Of course the facts don’t matter one bit. Of course Republicans are being hypocritical, lying bags of scum; hasn’t that been all too well established? Just like it’s been established that Democratic politicians are generally weak-kneed sissies afraid of their own shadows.

The pattern is pretty simple: anything a conservative does: good; anything a liberal does: bad–even if the two acts are identical. Just claim they’re different somehow, ignore logic and consistency, blame any evidence to the contrary as an artifact of the “Liberal Media,” and there you have it. The neoconservative narrative. Throw in some social religion for further control, a few more tax cuts for the rich, disregard a few more civil liberties (while always steering clear of the control-irrelevant gun ownership), deepen the dependence on corporations, and you’re getting close to seeing the overall sheep-herding architecture of the New Conservative Society. Within that twisted framework, even Sarah Palin makes perfect sense.

One of the other reasons why I’m less enthusiastic about reporting on politics:

In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?
Party Affiliation	definitely/probably	not likely/not
Republican Voters	81	14
Independent Voters	65	23
Democratic Voters	56	40

This is what a looming national train wreck looks like, and seems to confirm that the Republican strategy of “screw the American people, we want to take control of this train so we can drive it off a cliff” is working beautifully. Obama and the Democrats are not helping by (a) beginning all negotiations with a compromise, (b) making it an imperative to look “bipartisan” when the Republicans both define what that means and make no effort to be bipartisan themselves, (c) not taking the Republican-style hardball stance of doing whatever it takes to get legislation through, and (d) generally wringing their hands and caving at the first sign of something going wrong. They are quite literally snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and even with a 60-vote supermajority (more or less), are having more trouble than any majority party I’ve ever heard of in getting anything passed. Democrats did not threaten the nuclear option when Republicans used the filibuster to obstruct, even though the Republicans did so–effectively–when the Democrats used it relatively sparingly; Democrats did not use reconciliation to get their major legislation past a potential filibuster, though Republicans did so–again, effectively–when they were in power.

On the media front, the conservative news media (let’s not play the game of “is the media librul?” when it is so blindingly obvious that it leans so notably right-wing) strategy is also working. Fox has dominated the national discourse and effectively created the neoconservative imperative: the self-serving narrative that everyone buys into.

I often wondered, “What could possibly happen which could blind the people to the egregiously vicious and idiotic insanity of the right wing and allow them to elect conservatives next year, when it is so clear that doing so will wreck any hope of recovery or future worth for the United States?”

And here we have the answer: a galvanized right wing whipped into a frenzy by the insane Becks, Bachmanns, Limbaughs, and Palins; a disheartened left wing driven to apathy by weak-kneed, ineffective Democrats; and independents robbed of a rational national discourse, pulled to the vitriol of the right or the lethargy of the left, or else left hanging in the middle with nowhere to go.

I keep hoping that Obama’s got a rabbit or two left in his hat, that the liberals and independents will rail against the vile madness of the conservatives, that the right will shrink into a tiny ball of fury unable to move elections, or that something will happen to restore sanity and allow the nation’s business to get back on track again.

Instead, we seem to be driven by the right wing’s incessant, obstructionist drive to destroy the nation in the name of regaining power, driven to charge off that cliff, waving flags and screaming “America’s Number ONE!!” at the top of our lungs as we go.

The most frightening thing is, when the right wing finds a strategy that works, it employs it even more strongly the next time. I thought we’d seen the worst the right wing could do under Reagan, when the neocons started taking over and saddled the economy with massive debt; then I thought I’d seen the worst with the relentless, eight-year smear campaign against the Clintons and the campaign to create a fictional narrative with the likes of Limbaugh and the birth of Fox News; then I thought I’d seen the worst with Bush & Cheney after 9/11, when the real national self-destruction got under full steam; but now we have a right-wing which is doing crap which frankly leaves me speechless. This is not a once-only thing, this is a trend. And it scares the living shit out of me to consider what’s next.

Remember when faking a news story meant that a journalist was forever shamed, stripped of any credibility, and banned from the business? Photographers who staged or otherwise faked images were fired. And such fakers still are held accountable, in some media establishments.

But not Fox.

I blogged on part of this story earlier, but there’s much more now.

Last week, Sean Hannity aired a segment on a rally held by Michelle Bachmann, one which drew only a few thousand people. Right-wingers have been trying to exaggerate those figures for a while so they can claim a larger following. Their lowball estimates start at 20,000, going up to 45,000. The fact is, however, photos taken of the event (see right) show no more than a few thousand people–4,000, at most.

Hannity showed footage of the actual event, but then spliced in footage from a different, much bigger rally held earlier this year–the “9/12” rally, which had maybe one or two hundred thousand people in attendance. This gave the impression of a much larger rally. Fake journalism, intended to create a false impression that a political cause was much more popular than it actually was.

It took Jon Stewart and The Daily Show to find it, and three days ago, he aired this:

A big question is, why did it take Jon Stewart to find it? Does the media at large blithely accepts Fox’s standard of faking or generating stories? Or are they simply scared into not reporting on Fox, knowing that Fox will label them as “liberal media” and accuse them of trying to “silence journalists”? Or, perhaps, they’re just lazy and believe what they see and hear.

Having been caught so blatantly distorting the news, Hannity “apologized”:

As you can see, Hannity didn’t take it seriously. One could kindly term that delivery as “tongue in cheek,” but certainly not “sincere,” “apologetic,” or “grave.” For Hannity, it was nothing more than a “gotcha.”

A couple of points, however. First of all, this was not a “gotcha.” Well, it was for Stewart, from a comedic standpoint. But this is not something that an actual news channel would let by with a smarmy, self-serving apology like that. It’s not a “whoopsie!” and just forget-about-it kind of event. This is faking news. Actual news channels would mete out severe punishments for something like this.

Second, Hannity was clearly lying when he said it was an “inadvertent mistake.” “Inadvertent” means “unknowing,” or “unintentional,” and that’s obviously not what happened. Now, if Hannity was also airing a piece on the 9/12 march, with that footage lined up, and when it came to Bachmann’s rally, a technician accidentally aired that footage instead of the Bachmann footage, well, that would be “inadvertent.”

However, that’s not what happened. The 9/12 footage was interspliced with the new footage–meaning that it was not a slip-up. You cannot “accidentally” send someone to the video archives, “unknowingly” take specific footage and “unintentionally” splice it into footage of another story which just “by chance” happens to segue so smoothly that most people will take it to be the same story.

It was no accident, and Hannity lied outright when he made that claim. [Update: a letter from a television professional to Andrew Sullivan explains in much better detail.]

And finally, as Stewart himself later noted, Hannity should not be apologizing to Stewart. A real news network would take this all very seriously, and apologize to its viewers for having let them down.

But, of course, that would be in the context of an actual news organization. And Fox has different standards–which is why Hannity’s statement was so snarky in nature. Fox never intends to air straight news, their intent is to color it, to create an altered reality to be sold to its willing viewers as a preconceived narrative (see Stewart’s truth-in-advertising motto at right). The people who watch Fox and believe what they see want to be lied to. Which is why Hannity did not apologize to his watchers–because there was no standard of journalistic integrity to be violated, no trust that was betrayed. Instead, it was all a joke–“Okay, ya’ got me! Ha ha!” And then on to the next lie.

---

But there is one more irony to note. In order to inflate the crowd number estimates for the Bachmann rally, Hannity slipped in clips from the much larger 9/12 rally.

But when the 9/12 rally was being exaggerated by right-wingers, a photo from an older rally still (a Promise Keepers’ rally from 1997) was slipped in to make that rally seem bigger.

So to make Bachmann’s rally seem larger than it was, Hannity showed fake footage from an older rally which itself depended upon fake images from another rally to inflate its size. A fake piled on top of a fake.

That’s what passes for “news” in right-wing America these days.

Conservatives are insisting that Obama is crushing the First Amendment by treating Fox News for what it is, namely, a partisan, right-wing propaganda machine. They’re hypocritical idiots, of course.

Back in the real world, things are a bit different. In fact, with a new journalistic shield law, Obama is moving to protect First Amendment rights far more assiduously than Bush ever did–more, in fact, than conservatives would like. But this was never about actual First Amendment rights; it was about abusing journalism and twisting it into a political tool, they trying to hide behind the First Amendment.

Just to get it straight: the First Amendment protects the individual’s right to speak freely, and protects the press from government interference or intimidation. It does not, as Carrie Prejean seems to think, shield you from being criticized when you say something stupid. And it does not mean, as most conservatives seem to think, that you can pretend a propaganda machine is an objective news outfit and be “protected” from others telling the truth. Nor does it mean that you can bully the White House into giving that propaganda machine the same access as actual journalists.

Jon Stewart tweaks both Fox and a less-than-articulate Obama official. As always, he uses archive footage to show how the conservative side is lying their asses off, and uses nothing but his scathing wit to admonish the Dems for being so lame. Enjoy.

The common meme that is being pushed by much of the media today is that MSNBC is as liberal as Fox is conservative. This is being pushed especially by Fox News in its fight to counter the obvious fact that they are a Republican Party offshoot, as contended by the White House. The idea is that if another network can be shown to have a liberal tilt, then that somehow justifies everything that Fox does.

If you have been paying attention, this is not the first time that the argument has come up–but in the last few years, MSNBC has served nicely as the false counterweight. If you’ll recall, before Olbermann came to prominence, it was not MSNBC, but CBS that was supposed to be the equivalent.

There are striking similarities in Fox using the two networks as a false equivalent, the main one being that the equivalencies are entirely false. CBS was more striking, however. Why was CBS supposed to be liberal? Well, it was because of Dan Rather, of course! That flaming liberal!

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people say, “Yes, Fox is right-wing, but look at Dan Rather and CBS.” I have heard individuals say it a lot, and before Olbermann’s ratings took off, you could hear right-wingers say it all the time. Hell, even on one episode of Boston Legal, an otherwise very liberal show, the character of Alan Shore used the equivalency. It became so common and unchallenged an idea that liberals even accepted and repeated the idea.

But was it true? Of course not. Not only was Rather not the entirety of CBS programming, there were only a small handful of incidences over the span of his 24 years as news anchor which could call his objectivity into question–and a few even suggested he leaned to the right. What was called liberal bias was usually little more than a willingness to challenge political leaders when the opportunity arose, mixed with a few cases of poor judgment. Rather became the CBS News anchor in 1981 and left in 2005, meaning that for the majority of his time as anchor, there were Republicans in office. But when Clinton was president, Rather did not hold back from reporting on Clinton’s scandals any more than he did with either Bush or Reagan; even though Rather admitted to hating the Lewinsky story, he nonetheless reported on it just as much as anyone else. When the Iraq War began, Rather was particularly uncritical and in fact was an ardent supporter–something he admitted regretting later on.

The primary example of his ‘bias’ was the Bush National Guard story. The irony is, there is a list as long as your arm of strong, verifiable evidence proving that the Guard story was 100% true–Dan Rather, in what was a gift to Bush, simply went after the one piece of faked evidence because it was so alluring. While there is no evidence that Rather wouldn’t have done the same were the target a Democrat, let’s assume for the moment that this one story showed liberal bias. Does this make Dan Rather the equivalent of Fox News? When Fox has spent pretty much every hour of every day for the past 13 years on a non-stop tirade of unprecedented proportions?

Holding MSNBC up as an equivalent to Fox is just as faulty, although it is a lot easier to do. With a talk-show lineup mostly ranging from former Democrats to outright liberal firebrands, MSNBC would certainly seem to fit the bill. However, there are substantive differences. The first comes in foundations and primary motivators: while Fox News was wholly contrived as a means of advancing a conservative political agenda, MSNBC was not created to supply a left-wing agenda.

While Fox News has always been stridently right-wing, MSNBC has not always been left-leaning–in fact, a decade ago, MSNBC was noticeably right-wing in its lineup. When launched in 1996, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham hosted an MSNBC show called “The Contributors”; from 1999, Oliver North co-hosted one of their shows; Pat Buchanan had a show on the network in 2002-2003; and Joe Scarborough has been an MSNBC regular since 2003. While the network hired Matthews and Olbermann in 2003, it did not really begin to go more left-wing than right-wing until Olbermann proved a ratings success, after which they acquired Maddow and Schultz. In short, the reason why MSNBC tilts left is not because that’s its mission, it’s because that’s where its ratings have led it.

And finally, the bias at Fox is all-encompassing, and bleeds into everything it does, from the text in the “ticker” bar at the bottom of the screen to the reporting of the main news anchors. The former “straight news” anchor Brit Hume constantly exhibited bias. One good case in point was his cheerleading for Bush’s failed initiative to privatize Social Security. In one broadcast, Hume went so far as to make the claim that FDR never meant for Social Security to be permanent, but instead intended it to be privatized. As evidence, he “quoted” FDR–completely out of context. Not only that, but he did so in a way that was impossible as an error; Hume could not have chosen the out-of-context quotes unless he specifically intended to twist the meaning. Even if you believe that this was handed to him and excuse his ‘overlooking’ the error, it is hard to excuse bias when one considers that he left his news post to become Bush’s press secretary. On MSNBC, on the other hand, the bias of some of its talk-show hosts does not bleed in to its straight reporting, as to be expected from a news network which is not driven by an ideology.

The fact is, if MSNBC didn’t exist, the right-wingers would simply invent it. If not MSNBC, then CNN would be called “liberal.” And if not CNN, then CBS. And if not CBS, then anyone else who was handy. Not because there is a liberal tilt, but simply because they want to point to someone or something as a counterweight, a false equivalency so they can say, “See? There’s a liberal network out there, so our right-wing bias is excusable or even justified.” Or, more commonly, to make the outrageous claim that Fox is actually “fair and balanced,” and the liberal-scapegoat-of-the-day is evidence that the rest of the media is left-wing.

This NYT article lead-in is horribly written:

Conservatives See Need for Serious Health Debate

By JIM RUTENBERG and GARDINER HARRIS
Published: September 2, 2009

WASHINGTON — The roiling debate over health care this summer has included a host of accusations from opponents of the plan that have been so specious that many in the mainstream news media have flatly labeled them false.

First of all, the headline: “Conservatives See Need for Serious Health Debate”? Are you freaking kidding me? That’s the last thing that most conservatives “see” or want. It’s what high-level conservatives claim, which would be a more honest way of expressing it, but it’s is most decidedly not even close to what they actually want. More to the point, the article is not actually talking about conservatives in general, but instead a small minority of health care experts on the right–which shows up the headline as starkly misleading.

The next problem: the first paragraph, shown above. It seems reasonable until you catch on to the fact that it is a subtle understatement as to how reluctant the media is to speak the truth about conservative dishonesty. It plainly implies that the media will not report that Republicans are lying unless the lies are so egregious that they cannot help but call them for what they are. And even then, stark lies are, at worst, sometimes timidly referred to as “false,” as if they are too fearful of pointing out any of the blazingly obvious intent to deceive.

While the article in general leads into a serious discussion on health care reform, the thesis that conservatives are somehow the responsible party when it comes to talking about health care is so outrageously misrepresented that it isn’t even funny. Sure, I don’t doubt for a moment that there are some prominent conservative health care experts who would prefer to have an honest debate. But that’s not what the article’s introduction suggests, nor does it obviate the fact that you have to go pretty damn far down the conservative line before you get to these relative voices of reason.

Every last Republican politician should be asked the following questions:

Question: Do you oppose socialized medicine?

Probable Answer: Yes.

Question: Then you favor shutting down Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration.

Probable Answer: No!

Question: You can’t have it both ways. Medicare, Medicaid, and the VHA are all socialized medicine. If you oppose socialized medicine, then you oppose those three programs. So, you either support government-run health care–in which you should support the “Public Option”–or you oppose it–in which case you must state your opposition to Medicare, Medicaid, and the VHA.

Probable Answer: [any number of variations on bald-faced lies, squirming out of answering, changing the subject, etc.]

Any self-respecting journalist would have to ask this question. Too bad we have a Liberal Media™ in which Republican politicians are allowed this flagrant, hypocritical inconsistency, while Democrats are grilled on “euthanizing grandma.”

Damn Liberal Media™!

A lot of the controversy over the Gates arrest is now focused on racism. And the other day, when asked about the situation, Obama–clearly admitting that he was biased and did not have all the facts–suggested that the arrest was “stupid.” The problem is, conservatives–as well as a good chunk of the mainstream media–have now made this about Obama attacking the police for racism, when that is not even close to what was the case.

Here is Obama’s original statement:

My understanding is, at that point, Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in. I’m sure there’s some exchange of words. But my understanding is — is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house, and at that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct, charges which are later dropped.

Now, I’ve — I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.

And number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportionately. That’s just a fact.

Note that while race is mentioned here, Obama (1) does not refer to the arrest as stupid in any way related to race, and (2) makes no claim that actual racism was involved–he actually says “separate and apart from this incident” there is a history of racism, referring to either why Gates reacted as he did, or that sensitivity must be practiced by all parties when race even might be an issue, or both.

The result? The narrative now is that Obama’s remark was somehow an accusation of racism, and an attack on an honest, hard-working cop. One example of how the story is being reported:

Crowley’s account came on a day of dizzying debate over his actions, a furor that was touched off by President Barack Obama’s remarks at a news conference Wednesday night, when he said the police had “acted stupidly” and linked Gates’ arrest to the nation’s long history of racial profiling.

“Linked” being the key word. In a very loose sense, it’s true, but the use of that word implies that Obama accused the officer in some sense of racism–when Obama went to great lengths to avoid saying exactly that. Can you honestly say that Obama “linked Gates’ arrest to … racial profiling” when Obama said “separate and apart from this incident” there is a history of racial profiling? And he was right in that there is a history of racial profiling.

It’s a shame, because the real issue of importance here is not Obama, and not even racial profiling, but rather “contempt of cop” arrests–the “stupid” act that Obama referred to. And Obama was 100% right–it was a stupid arrest, almost certainly a case of a cop getting annoyed at someone and abusing his power to slap that person down.

But what about racism? Was is in fact involved?

While I strongly disagree with the arrest, I don’t think that the facts much support the idea that Crowley himself was racist. It’s possible that he made racially biased assumptions, but far from certain, and Crowley deserves the benefit of the doubt on this.

The initial situation that Crowley was put into was unavoidable: he received a call reporting a break-in, so naturally he had to investigate. He could not just say to himself, “Hmm, there’s an older gentleman inside, he’s probably the owner, I’ll just go away.” He had to check and find out who Gates was. Nothing wrong there.

What Gates identifies as racism is less of a clear-cut situation: that Crowley asked Gates to step out onto the front porch. Apparently, it is much more difficult for an officer to make an arrest if the individual is indoors rather than out; a policeman asking someone to step outside could be a prelude to an arrest. And if Crowley was intending to arrest Gates with no questions asked, then that would have been far more likely a case of racism–it is perhaps not as likely that a police officer would arrest a 58-year-old white person using a cane, in that situation, in such a fashion.

But this is where benefit of the doubt comes in: perhaps Crowley was simply asking Gates to step outside just to be on the safe side, allowing himself more options should the situation take a bad turn. We can’t know what Crowley’s actual intent there was, and so cannot make the assumption that Crowley was being racist–especially since it appears that he did not do anything after that which appeared significantly out of order–until the actual arrest, that is.

Gates, however, made that assumption right off the bat, but there was a contributing factor: that the call had been made at all. This was not Crowley’s fault, of course; the neighbor may have over-reacted. She saw a man forcing open a door–but she also noticed two men. This is critical. To see two men, she had to either see Gates before he entered the house, in which case she would have seen him go around and enter the house easily before the forced front-door entry occurred, or she had to see Gates inside the house when the door was forced open. Neither make sense in the context of an unlawful break-in.

The fact that the neighbor reported men with “backpacks” casts further suspicion: neither man was wearing a backpack–instead, they were dressed in suits, carrying luggage. Where did she get backpacks from, and how did she miss the suitcases? Seeing two men dressed in suits with luggage is a far cry from two men with backpacks; one suggests a returning resident, the other suggests young thugs. It is easy to question whether the neighbor would have reported things differently had she seen two white men in suits, one with greying hair and a cane, in the same situation.

So Gates had returned home in a context that did not match any reasonable expectation of a break-in, and yet moments later police come and act like he may be an intruder. The real turning point was Crowley’s request that Gates step outside, which Gates recognized as a possible prelude to an arrest. With these two facts–an accusation of a black man in an upscale white neighborhood breaking into his own home, and the likelihood that the police officer would simply arrest him right off the bat–Gates forms a new context, and from that point on, everything he sees is colored by it.

Race may very well have played a part in setting up the situation–but it is less than perfectly clear. The neighbor could have just seen things wrong and maybe race had nothing to do with it; the officer could have just been following procedure and might not have treated Gates differently than anyone else. But in the overall context, Gates did have reason to believe that race was involved–though he certainly over-reacted, even if you don’t take the officer’s account at full face value.

What is likely the case is that the neighbor saw the forced entry, and as witnesses are wont to do, painted in details that weren’t there–not an act of overt racism, but more than likely unconscious bias, giving us backpacks instead of suits and luggage, and ignoring the overall context where Gates was already indoors. The policeman came and made what he considered a by-the-book encounter; though he may have intended to act inappropriately and would have arrested Gates right off, we have to assume that he just wanted Gates outside to make the situation easier to deal with. But by that point, Gates had received one too many signals that he was being treated in a racist manner, did not give benefit of the doubt, and started making accusations–accusations that Crowley probably was strongly offended by. The main business of identifying the owner done, Crowley then makes the next big mistake: by wildly overreacting to an angry man who believed he had good reason to be upset, and arresting Gates on trumped-up charges.

That’s the main issue in the end. While actual racism may have played a small, contributory role in setting this up, it was the early taking of offense by both gates and Crowley which escalated things, and eventually Crowley was most at fault, using his authority to satisfy his personal grievance.

And that was the only part of this which was way over the line: the contempt-of-cop arrest.

Obama’s comment did not accuse the cop of racism, but because the media is playing it that way, it’s now about the stuck-up Harvard elitist and his reverse-racist pal in the Oval Office dumping on an honest, hard working cop by labeling him as a racist. Right-wing sites are already ginning up conspiracy theories, like the Boston Globe removing the police report from their web site because it was too embarrassing for Gates, or because it contradicted the paper’s liberal-media agenda to make Gates look like a victim–as if the police report is gospel or something.

So much for any attention on the abusive practice of “contempt of cop” arrests.

By the way, a comment just filed in the previous post sheds new light on why Crowley worded his police report so oddly. From Massachusetts state law, two of the four identifying qualities of what constitutes “disorderly conduct”:

“with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm”

“engages in fighting or threatening, violent or tumultuous behavior”

Then, from Crowley’s report:

Due to the tumultuous manner Gates had exhibited in his residence as well as his continued tumultuous behavior outside the residence, in view of the public, I warned Gates that he was becoming disorderly. Gates ignored my warning and continued to yell, which drew the attention of both the police officers and citizens, who appeared surprised and alarmed by Gates’s outburst.

It seems pretty clear that Gates was very intentionally cribbing language from the state code so as to justify the arrest. These terms raised flags–note that my post pays special attention to these terms, as they stood out as rather unusual and unlikely. Now we know why: Crowley had to justify the arrest. Whether this is regular practice or not, it seems to cast doubt on the accuracy of what he claimed, as if it were tailor-made to fit the law, as opposed to being a true and objective account of what actually happened.

Walter Cronkite died today. He was one of the greats, and perhaps one of the last greats. The “most trusted man in America,” known for his signature sign-out, “And that’s the way it is.” But he also was an excellent example of what was right about avoiding bias in reporting, and a contrast to what has become so wrong with reporting today.

It was no secret that Cronkite was a liberal, proud and unreserved. He famously chided Kerry for shying away from his liberalism, and castigated Bush for Iraq. The staunchly conservative “Media Research Center” has a page documenting Cronkite’s liberal bias, but that page attacking Cronkite and holding him up as a prime example of the “Liberal Media” is notable in that (a) Cronkite (unsurprisingly) comes across as rationally and thoughtfully biased–this is the worst they can find?–and (b) it’s all stuff from after he retired–not one shred of evidence for any liberal bias in his actual reporting. In fact, they quote him in explaining why liberal journalists don’t allow it to taint their reporting:

I believe that most of us reporters are liberal, but not because we consciously have chosen that particular color in the political spectrum. More likely it is because most of us served our journalistic apprenticeships as reporters covering the seamier side of our cities – the crimes, the tenement fires, the homeless and the hungry, the underclothed and undereducated.

We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals, so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism – that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased.

At least, that’s the way it was–I doubt that most “journalists” today do the same kind of early-career reporting by and large.

What Cronkite notes can be said of many similar professions, and is quite significant: educators, scientists, artists, serious journalists–in other words, people who make their livings looking hard at the world in an intelligent way–tend to be liberal. That’s no coincidence, as it is no coincidence that most people in the field of making money–looking at the world through a lens of greed–tend to be conservative.

But what is most important in his statement is that the personal politics of journalists do not bleed through into the reporting. This is key–the key–to the whole “liberal media” canard: it matters not one bit what the personal politics of journalists is, it matters only what bias comes through in reporting. That’s where the whole myth fall apart. If 90% of journalists are liberal but none let it color their reporting, and 10% are conservatives but they do let it color their reporting, then you have a conservative bias overall.

Conservatives see it a different way. They tend toward their general response toward almost everything: projection. They assume that everyone else acts the way they do. Conservatives do not rein in their personal politics in journalism, they let it bleed all over what they report–and so they simply assume that this is what the liberals do. I could spend all day detailing hundreds of cases of conservative “journalists”–anchors or reporters, not commentators–doing just that. In contrast, ask yourself when you’ve seen the same coming from a liberal journalist, and only one example will come up–Dan Rather and the National Guard story, and mostly because it’s just about the only example out there. And for it to be from a reporter who jumped on Clinton like all the others in the Lewinsky scandal, and who jumped onto the Bush Patriotic War bandwagon like all the others, is a poor example of excessive liberal bias.

Cronkite was the most trusted man in America not because he was a liberal, but because he gave it to the people straight. It used to be that’s what reporters did. But then Fox came along and made tons of money spewing political propaganda, and now it’s the norm.

It’s a damn shame that a principled, honest journalist like Cronkite, the man who along with Murrow defined excellence in broadcasting, had to watch while petty, small-minded political whores claimed the mantle of journalism and vilely desecrated the sacred temple of objective reporting. There should be no O’Reilly, no Olbermann, no Hannity, no Maddow. There should be people like Aaron Brown, a fantastic journalist whose broadcast came closest among the contemporaries in doing the kind of reporting that Cronkite did, the kind of reporter who should have inherited the anchor’s chair–and so naturally, CNN fired him. (Worse, they forced him completely out of the business for two years.)

There should be hourlong news shows that report the news, like Jim Lehrer became well-known for. There should be focus on issues–not celebrities and little blonde white girls who are kidnapped. There should be deep background, in-depth reporting, continuing coverage, measured delivery, tough questions, relevant points. Instead we get soft porn set to rock music, the new standard pioneered by Fox “News.”

To think that it was a big deal when Cronkite led the charge to expanding the evening news to half an hour from the previous fifteen minutes they were allotted, to think of Cronkite’s humanity during the Kennedy assassination and the moon launch, to think of the legacy the man left–and then to realize that today, Glenn Beck gets a whole hour to himself, makes you cry for the death of journalism.

Sheesh…

Not that I expect Fox to be any better than the morons posting to Free Republic who automatically label any and every criminal/terrorist as “registered Democrat,” but still. All I can say is, we better not be hearing lame excuses about “accidents” in the Fox graphics department. Better to simply fess up to what is obviously intentional.

Here’s an exchange from the right-wing echo chamber, between Greta van Susteren and Karl Rove, as an example of what sheer levels of hypocritical revisionism and, yes, pettiness they stoop to naturally:

VAN SUSTEREN: All right, Karl, I have to confess that from time to time, I hold a grudge. I got to confess to that. Now let me ask you about President Obama. I don’t know if you’ve been following this, but he will not come to FOX News Channel, and he took a little swipe at us the other day, and we’ve sort of teased him back. But this whole idea that — that, you know, the largest audience is on cable — of all the cable news is on FOX News Channel — what do you make of this little spat he has with us?

ROVE: I think it’s petty stubbornness. I mean, here’s a man who seems to be willing to go sit down with Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il, but he won’t sit down with Greta or O’Reilly or Sean Hannity. I mean, it strikes that this guy might be a little fearful of — of having tough questions asked of him.

You know what? Hillary Clinton had the same attitude until the primary, when she came on FOX, found she was treated fairly. And I can’t tell you how after that, how many people came up to me with my travels around the country and said, I’m a Hillary Clinton fan, and I appreciate what FOX did in giving her a fair shot and a fair venue on television.

The President of United States should not be afraid of coming on FOX News, nor should the President of the United States diminish his office by seeming to engage in a petty fight with the — with the — with a network himself.

I know that they have to maintain the ridiculous fiction that Fox is not the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, and as such, Obama would be opening himself to brazen attack every time he let Fox get a shot at him. But the sheer gall of hypocrisy and revisionism they exhibit here is pretty over-the-edge here.

First, we have Susteren claiming that “Obama” has a “little spat” with Fox. Hoo boy. Let’s see, Fox, for the past year or more, has savaged Obama like no one else, calling him such vile names as one could not previously imagine a news network calling a president before, making accusation after bald, unfounded, hysterical accusation. Communist, Socialist, Nazi, attacking America, destroying America… the drumbeat of smear, attack, and rage-filled hysterical rant has been constant for quite some time now. But Obama takes a little jab at Fox at a correspondent’s dinner where jabs are the main course, and suddenly he’s “petty”?

Next, Rove claims he “won’t sit down” with people like Sean Hannity. Aside from the fact that Hannity is one of the most rabid anti-Obama nutballs out there, Obama has sat down with Fox News and with people like Hannity–he went on Fox News and allowed Bill O’Reilly to have a clear shot at him. And O’Reilly did, treating Obama like a hostile witness in a trial, shouting at him with such antagonism and disrespect as to make it impossible to believe that a president would ever subject himself to that again. When did anybody treat Bush like this?

So, Obama has the stones to come on O’Reilly and hold his own–tell me, did Rove ever send Bush to be a guest on Olbermann?–and then whines that Obama never sits down with Fox News personalities because he’s “afraid” and “fearful” of “tough questions.” What utter stupidity and lies.

Then Rove claims that Obama will, of course be treated “fairly.” Like this, I suppose:

I know that I’m hardly revealing anything new or surprising here–Fox is, always has been, and always will be a festering cesspool of wingnut blathering and smears. But it never hurts to speak truth about these people a bit more often in the hopes that more people will realize the toxic effect these bottom-feeders have on the American political scene.

It’s amazing how the right-wing establishment can still control and steer the “Liberal Media™” so adroitly. Despite more and more alarming revelations coming out about Cheney, Bush, and illegal torture, the media still seems more interested on whether or not waterboarding was mentioned in a CIA briefing to Nancy Pelosi years back–as if that somehow is just as compelling as the executive branch violating U.S. law and principle in a horrific manner.

In 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell asked his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, to look into the Abu Ghraib scandal. After years of digging, Wilkerson, a retired Army Colonel and a Republican, has uncovered some alarming facts, the most jarring of which is that Cheney ordered torture not to protect the country, but rather to further a political cause. Cheney ordered the torture of an al Qaeda operative in order to manufacture some kind of link between al Qaeda and Iraq.

The usual justification of torture is to save lives and protect the country. The favorite scenario is the “ticking time bomb” where a terror suspect has information which could be used to stop an imminent attack, and torture is the only way to get that information. But the torture of al-Libi was not done for any purpose even resembling that. According to Wilkerson:

…what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just “committed suicide” in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)

What we have here is a compelling case that the vice president of the United States illegally ordered torture to fabricate evidence that would help promote a costly, disastrous, and just-as-illegal war that has led to the deaths of thousands of Americans and has devastated our economy and our standing in the world.

And yet the media seems intent on focusing instead on the charge that Nancy Pelosi was briefed by the CIA in September of 2002 on the waterboarding of suspects when she claimed that she had not been. This news is insignificant for many reasons. First of all, it changes nothing in terms of the fact that officials in the Bush administration ordered the torture illegally for political purposes. Second, even if she had been so briefed, it would have meant little as Pelosi was not authorized to say or really do anything regarding what she was briefed on. And third, the claims appear to be wrong–inaccurate at best, politically-motivated lies at worst.

And yet, a Google News search on “Cheney Wilkerson torture” brings up only 66 hits, while “Pelosi briefed CIA torture” produces 3,752 hits–more than 50 times the coverage.

How, exactly, can that be justified by any reasonable standard?

It has been pointed out in local commentary as well as many of the lefty blogs that Norm Coleman is getting a rather notoriously inexplicable free pass in the press, along with Republicans backing him up. True, this is not exactly the same stakes as Bush v. Gore, but it is not just an ordinary Senate election, either–this seat is the tipping point for a significant amount of vital legislation that is being blocked by the GOP with their continued extravagant abuse of the filibuster.

While Al Gore was commonly called out in the national media for being a “sore loser” because he challenged the highly questionable outcome in Florida, Norm Coleman and his GOP backers are being left alone despite rather blatant evidence that they are doing this for no other reason than to block Franken from being seated–not because the election was unfair or the vote count was wrong, but simply because they have political reasons for keeping the Democrats from getting a 59th seat in the Senate.

Even in the Minnesota press, we see signs of the false equivalency caused by a weak-kneed press fearful of being labeled as “liberal,” so it looks for fault on both sides even when it clearly belongs only on the conservative side:

To be sure, the danger of seeming to be a sore loser has dogged both candidates in the topsy-turvy race: first Franken, when he pressed for a recount of Coleman’s narrow election-night lead; and then Coleman, when he challenged the recount that left him 225 votes behind.

Franken didn’t “press” for anything–the recount was legally mandated, and Franken couldn’t have stopped it even if he had wanted to. Saying that Franken had a “sore loser” stigma because he somehow pushed for a recount is a clear indication of either a right-wing tinge or the mindless acceptance of right-wing talking points. The snippet above not only creates a false fault in Franken, it ignores the greater fault from Coleman–not that he challenged the outcome, but that he clearly intends to challenge it to the most absurd levels possible.

The media has been, to put it lightly, a tad reluctant to call out the GOP for lots of stuff which it would have a filed day with had it come from the left–like the GOP openly rallying for unprecedented partisan rancor while the media still gives them equal credit for “bipartisanship.”

But that’s just what we get for having such a Liberal Media™. We can only blame ourselves.

Sheesh. There’s now a big deal going on because a brilliant 34-year-old computer guy Obama hired to be Chief Information Officer was arrested for lifting 4 t-shirts… when he was a 21-year-old kid. He paid his dues, and is now regarded an outstanding person. But the media is wondering how this filthy criminal could have been considered for a government job.

Need I remind you that at that age, George W. Bush was arrested for stealing a Christmas wreath from a hotel. I think he occupied a slightly higher office later. The media didn’t seem to give a damn about that, despite it being well-known. They even gave him a break for his drunk driving arrest at the age of 30, accepting his “Democrat Dirty Trick” excuse.

Perhaps a wee bit of a double standard? Not surprising–after all, this is still a Liberal Media, right?