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Huff TV: Arianna Breaks Down Obama's Afghanistan Speech With Dylan Ratigan (VIDEO)

2009-12-04T22:54:58Z

The morning after President Obama went to West Point to lay out his plans for troop deployment in Afghanistan, Arianna broke down the issue with Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC's Morning Meeting. Wednesday's show went into the "tortured logic" of Obama's approach to the country, when the real danger seems to be next door. With 30,000 additional troops headed into the conflict, reports indicate that Afghanistan's rugged terrain is more fertile for quagmires than al-Qaeda. As few as 100 members of the group are in a country where invading armies have historically failed to get a foothold. Meanwhile, Pakistan is home to more potential terrorists -- and nuclear weapons.

Arianna and Ratigan also discussed the way Vice President Biden has been hedging his bets on Afghanistan, serving as both a dissenting voice internally and a loyal soldier externally. But does anybody want to read another memoir about moral agony? What happened to the concept of an honorable resignation?

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Olbermann Knocks O'Reilly For Obama/Osama Mistake While Doing It Live (VIDEO)

2009-12-03T08:31:32Z

Michele Bachmann was awarded the bronze medal for Countdown's "Worst Persons in the World" for some dubious logic and mangled language when she railed against government intervention in the private economy.

Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs brought home the silver for exclaiming about Obama "who the hell does this President think he is?" during a discussion about President Obama and the climate change conference in Copenhagen. Dobbs seems to think Obama was going to hold the U.S. hostage to some kind of binding international agreement on global warming. That is not the case.

Olbermann favorite Bill O'Reilly won top honors for failing to realize he was 'doing it live' on his show a few nights ago. O'Reilly thought he was taping a promo when he mixed up Osama's name with Obama. It happens to the best of us, but the added mistake of O'Reilly not knowing he was live gave Olbermann an excuse to run the now infamous 'do it live' tape from earlier in the Fox News host's career.

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A Tale Of Two MSNBCs

2009-12-03T07:26:20Z

Increasingly, it's seeming as if there are two cable news networks inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza: a thriving, opinion-oriented evening channel that's solidly in the #2 spot and a struggling straight-news dayside network that regularly places fifth in the demographic.

In November 2009, MSNBC's evening lineup topped CNN's in the Adults 25-54 demographic, the audience segment that advertisers buy, coming in a solid second place behind the dominant Fox News.

At 6PM, MSNBC's "The Ed Show" averaged 155,000 A25-54 viewers, an 8% advantage over CNN's "The Situation Room," which averaged 143,000 A25-54 viewers.

At 7PM, MSNBC's repeat of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" averaged 184,000 A25-54 viewers, an 11% advantage over CNN, which averaged 166,000 A25-54 viewers in the timeslot ("Lou Dobbs Tonight" aired through November 12, after which "CNN Tonight" filled the timeslot).

At 8PM, MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" averaged 298,000 A25-54 viewers, a 66% advantage over CNN's "Campbell Brown," which averaged 179,000 A25-54 viewers.

At 9PM, MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show" averaged 251,000 A25-54 viewers, a 9% advantage over CNN's "Larry King Live," which averaged 231,000 A25-54 viewers.

At 10PM, MSNBC's repeat episode of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" averaged 224,000 A25-54 viewers, a 7% advantage over CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," which averaged 209,000 A25-54 viewers.

During the day, however — when MSNBC is airing its straight news programming — it's an entirely different story.

The network's two new dayside programs, "Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan" and "Dr. Nancy" have struggled in the ratings.

"Morning Meeting" averaged 75,000 A25-54 viewers in the 9AM hour, and just 65,000 A25-54 viewers in the 10AM hour, coming in fifth place behind Fox News, CNN, HLN, and CNBC (in that order). "Dr. Nancy" averaged just 55,000 A25-54 viewers at 12PM, again fifth place behind Fox News, CNN, HLN, and CNBC (in that order).

At 11 AM, "MSNBC Live" averaged 55,000 demo viewers; for comparison, Fox News' "Happening Now," which airs from 11AM-1PM, averaged 262,000 demo viewers, and CNN averaged 129,000 demo viewers at 11AM.

It's not much better in the afternoon, when MSNBC averaged 63,000 A25-54 viewers for "Andrea Mitchell Reports" at 1PM and 64,000 A25-54 viewers at 2PM. Compare that to Fox News' 255,000 A25-54 viewers for "The Live Desk," which airs from 1-3PM, and CNN's 127,000 A25-54 viewers at 1PM and 122,000 A25-54 viewers at 2PM.

At 3PM, MSNBC averaged 79,000 A25-54 viewers compared to 257,000 for Fox News' "Studio B with Shepard Smith" 130,000 for CNN's hour anchored by Rick Sanchez.

It's not until 4PM that MSNBC comes out of fifth place in the A25-54 demo, tying HLN for 3rd with 97,000 A25-54 viewers (compared to Fox News' 301,000 A25-54 viewers for "Your World with Neil Cavuto" and CNN's 140,000 A25-54 viewers).

At 5PM — a sort of transition hour between newsy dayside and opinion-oriented evening — MSNBC's "Hardball" averages 133,000 A25-54 viewers, while Fox News' "Glenn Beck" averages 678,000 A25-54 viewers and CNN's "Situation Room" averages 154,000 A25-55 viewers.

Of course, it must be noted, both MSNBC and CNN were down significantly in both total day and primetime compared to election-heavy November 2008. MSNBC was down 60% in the demographic in primetime and 56% in the demographic in total day ratings, and November's 127,000 A25-54 total day rating was its lowest of 2009. CNN, too, had its lowest A25-54 total day delivery of 2009 in November, averaging just 136,000 A25-54 viewers, down 63% from November 2008. CNN was down 71% in the demo in primetime, averaging 191,000 A25-54 viewers.

Huff TV: Arianna On "Morning Joe": War Is Not A Right-Left Issue (VIDEO)

2009-12-02T09:39:46Z

Arianna was a guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe today to discuss President Obama's speech last night explaining his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

She debated Jane Mayer of the New Yorker about Obama's decision to order a surge of roughly 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Mayer argued that critics of Obama should realize there are no easy options on the table, and that advocates of withdrawal will not be held responsible the way that Obama will be if something goes wrong or there is another attack by al Qaida. Arianna countered that criticism of Obama's war escalation plans is coming from across the political spectrum, from Tom Friedman to Keith Olbermann to George Will, and is about what's in the best interests of the nation.

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Obama has announced plans to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, but Arianna argued that the proposed drawdown means little since it is "contingent on conditions on the ground." Asked by host Joe Scarborough if she thought this was a continuation of George Bush and Dick Cheney's policies, she replied, "Absolutely."

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Josh Silver: Mega-Media Era Begins: GE/Vivendi Deal Clears Way for Comcast/NBC Merger

2009-12-01T10:43:40Z

On Monday night, French media giant Vivendi and NBC parent company General Electric agreed to terms that clear the way for US cable giant Comcast to take a controlling stake in NBC Universal. An announcement from Comcast is expected within days. The proposed merger would create a media behemoth, and clear the way for an unprecedented era of media consolidation across cable, the Internet and broadcast television.

Be afraid. Comcast is both the largest cable company and the largest residential broadband provider in the United States: a $34-billion business with 24 million subscribers, reaching nearly one out of every four homes in the country. NBCU owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal Studios, 27 television stations, and a host of other properties.

President Obama has promised that his administration would finally begin enforcing antitrust laws to prevent unreasonable consolidation of market power. If ever a media deal posed such a threat, this is it. The merged Comcast would be to media what Goldman Sachs is to Wall Street: "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi once described the latter.

It should come as no surprise that Wall Street and Washington are saying this is already a done deal: The media and telecommunications industry is second only to drug companies in how much it spends lobbying Washington. Its army of PR firms, lobbyists and sock-puppet think tanks is already blitzing the press corps and Capitol Hill. It's readying Comcast CEO Brian Roberts for his close-up as a new media mogul and neglecting to mention the impact of this deal on everyday people.

Comcast has raised cable rates for years while raking in record profits nearly every quarter. It is anti-union. It cares nothing for independent, alternative programming. And if you're a startup television channel, you can forget about getting a spot in Comcast's lineup. Comcast will charge you far more for space on its lineup than you could possibly pay. Just ask Al Gore about his failed effort to get his Current TV a reasonable position in the cable lineup.

Let's not forget that Comcast is the company that was caught illegally blocking peer-to-peer Internet downloads and then lying about it - earning a smack-down from the FCC for breaking Net Neutrality rules. And the company is known for blocking TV ads it didn't like. The company's track record of protecting the public's interest isn't exactly stellar.

And now, Comcast is set to control media across all distribution platforms. The company is threatened by the increasing amount of free content on the Net, and a public who is both watching entertainment on the Internet, and creating their own. NBC owns a major stake in Hulu, and Comcast likely wants to put the video service and all NBC content behind a paywall. Comcast and other cable companies are already putting the final touches on "TV Everywhere," a paywall that requires a traditional cable subscription to watch online content owned by these companies. Comcast's very survival depends on remaining the gatekeeper between you and the programs you want to watch, and it wants as little competition as possible.

Worse still, if the Comcast-NBC merger is allowed to go through, it will be the start of a catastrophic storm: a tidal wave of mega-deals by other content giants like News Corp. and Disney merging with distribution behemoths like Time Warner Cable and AT&T. In a nation where 98 percent of Internet users have only one or two choices of Internet service providers, we could witness a future in which a handful of phone and cable companies, merged with a handful of content companies, will put all premium content behind a paywall and make all other content hard or impossible to find.

ISPs' content and applications -- and those of their partner companies -- will move at light-speed, while the rest of the Internet will seem like it's still on dial-up. The result: homogenized corporate content, higher prices and fewer real alternatives so that distributors can prevent the "market fragmentation" that advertisers loathe. Sound familiar? The Internet will become the cable service of the 21st century -- instead of the free and open arena for economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech that it's been.

Some say that companies like Comcast are simply doing what they must to prosper. But we need to ask whether boosting Comcast's bottom line is worth the cost to the rest of us. Such market power could destroy the promise of an open Internet and its unprecedented ability to amplify independent voices, reinvent journalism, and inspire new forms of entertainment.

The deal is expected to take at least six months to finalize, and it will possibly be more than a year for federal regulators to approve or reject the deal. The warped Washington conventional wisdom says that the deal is inevitable, but Free Press and our allies are rallying public opposition. The Obama administration has sharply criticized the previous administration's weak antitrust record and promised vigorous oversight of anti-competitive deals -- particularly those involving vertical mergers (like joining content and distribution companies) and innovation-focused industries like the Internet.

This merger is another major test of whether President Obama plans to deliver on his promises.

Olbermann Special Comment On Afghanistan: 'Declare Victory And Get Out' (VIDEO)

2009-12-01T08:41:33Z

Last night MSNBC's Keith Olbermann offered a "Special Comment" on President Obama's forthcoming decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending tens of thousands of more troops into the country. Olbermann called on Obama to "declare victory and get out."

The Countdown host argued that the nation cannot afford to continue the Afghan war, on financial and ethical grounds, and questioned the judgment of the top Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal due to his central involvement in the cover-up of the true nature of Pat Tillman's death.

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Mr. President, it now falls to you to be both former Republican Senator George Aiken and the man to whom he spoke, Lyndon Johnson. You must declare victory, and get out.

You should survey the dismal array of options in front of you -- even the orders given out last night -- sort them into the unacceptable, the unsuccessful, and the merely un-palatable, and then put your arm down on the table and wipe the entire assortment of them off your desk -- off this nation's desk -- and into the scrap heap of history.

Unless you are utterly convinced -- willing to bet American lives on it -- that the military understands the clock is running, and that the check is not blank, and that the Pentagon will go to sleep when you tell it to, even though the Pentagon is a bunch of perpetually 12-year old boys desperate to stay up as late as possible by any means necessary -- get out now.

We are, at present, fighting, in no particular order, the Taliban; a series of sleazy political-slash-military adventurers, not the least of whom is this mountebank election-fixer Karzai, and what National Security Advisor Jones estimated in October was around eight dozen al-Qaida in the neighborhood.

But poll after poll, and anecdote after anecdote, of the reality of public opinion inside Afghanistan is that its residents believe we are fighting Afghanistan. That we, Sir, have become an occupying force. Yes: if we leave, Afghanistan certainly will have an occupying force, whether it's from Pakistan, or consisting of foreign fighters who will try to ally themselves with the Taliban.

Can you prevent that? Can you convince the Afghans that you can prevent that? Can you convince Americans that it is the only way to un-do Bush and Cheney policy catastrophes dating back to Cheney's days as Secretary of Defense in the '90s? If not, Mr. President, this way lies Vietnam. If you liked Iraq, you'll love Afghanistan with 35,000 more troops, complete with the new wrinkle, straight from the minder-binder lingo of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22."

President Obama will be presenting an exit strategy for Afghanistan. The exit strategy that begins by entering still further. Lose to win, sink to swim, escalate to disengage. And even this disconnect of fundamental logic is predicated on the assumption that once the extra troops go in, when the President says "okay, time for adult swim, Generals, time to get out of the pool and bring the troops with you," that the Pentagon is just going to say "Yeppers."

The Pentagon, often to our eternal relief, but just as often to our eternal regret is in the War business. You were right, Mr. President, to slow the process down, once a series of exit strategies was offered to you by men whose power and in some case livelihoods are predicated on making sure all exit strategies, everywhere, forever, don't really result in any service-man or woman actually exiting.

These men are still in the belly of what President Eisenhower so rightly, so prophetically, christened the military-industrial complex. Now and later as the civilian gray eminences with "retired" next to their names, formally lobbying the House and Senate and informally lobbying the nation through television and the printed word, to "engage" here, or "serve" there, or "invest" everywhere, they are, in many cases, just glorified hardware salesmen.

It was political and operational brilliance, Sir, to retain Mr. Bush's last Secretary of Defense Mr. Gates. It was transitional and bipartisan insight, Sir, to maintain General Stanley McChrystal as a key leader in the field.

And it was a subtle but powerful reminder to the authoritarian minded War-hawks like John McCain, and the blithering idiots like former Governor Palin, of the Civilian authority of the Constitution it was a picture drawn in crayon for ease of digestion by the Right, to tell our employees at the Pentagon, to take their loaded options and go away and come back with some real ones.

You reminded them, Mr. President, that Mr. Gates works for the people of the United States of America, not the other way around. You reminded them, Mr. President, that General McChrystal is our employee, not our dictator. You've reminded them Mr. President. Now, tonight, remind yourself. Stanley McChrystal.

General McChrystal has doubtless served his country bravely and honorably and at great risk, but to date his lasting legacy will be as the great facilitator of the obscenity that was transmuting the greatest symbol of this nation's true patriotism, of its actual willingness to sacrifice, into a distorted circus fun-house mirror version of such selflessness.

Friendly fire killed Pat Tillman. Mr. McChrystal killed the truth about Pat Tillman. And that willingness to stand truth on its head on behalf of "selling" a war or the generic idea of America being at war to turn a dead hero into a meaningless recruiting poster, should ring essentially relevant right now.

From the very center of a part of our nation that could lie to the public, could lie to his mother, about what really happened to Pat Tillman, from the very man who was at the operational center of that plan, comes the entire series of plans to help us supposedly find the way out of Afghanistan? We are supposed to believe General McChrystal isn't lying about Afghanistan?

Didn't he blow his credibility by lying, so obviously and so painfully, about Pat Tillman? Why are we believing the McChrystals? Their reasons might sound better than the ones they helped George Bush and Dick Cheney fabricate for Iraq, but surely they are just as transparently oblivious of the forest.

Half of them insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of not repeating Iraq, while the other half, believing Bush failed in Iraq by having too few troops, insist we must stay in Afghanistan out of fear of repeating Iraq. And they are suddenly sounding frighteningly similar to what the Soviet Generals were telling the Soviet Politicos in the 1980s about Afghanistan.

Sure it's not going well, sure we need to get out, we all see that. But first let's make sure it's stabilized and then we get out. The Afghans will be impressed by our commitment and will then take over the cost of policing themselves, even though the cost would be several times their gross national product. Just send in those extra troops, just for awhile. Just 350,000.

I'm sorry, did I say 350,000? I meant 35,000. Must be a coffee stain on the paper. Mr. President, last fall, you were elected. Not General McChrystal, not Secretary Gates, not another Bushian Drone of a politician. You. On the Change Ticket. On the pitch that all politicians are not created equal.

And upon arrival you were greeted by a Three Mile Island of an economy, so bad that in the most paranoid recesses of the mind one could wonder if the Republicans didn't plan it that way, to leave you in the position of having to prove the ultimate negative, that you staved off worldwide financial collapse, that if you had not done what you so swiftly did, that this "economic cloudy day" would have otherwise been the "biblical flood of finance."

So, much of the change for which you were elected, Sir, has thus far been understandably, if begrudgingly, tabled, delayed, made more open-ended. But patience ebbs, Mr. President. And while the first one thousand key decisions of your presidency were already made about the economy, the first public, easy-to-discern, mouse-or-elephant kind of decision comes tomorrow night at West Point at eight o'clock.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops. Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.

You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our status in the world than for us to re-up as occupiers of Afghanistan and for you to look like you were unable to extricate yourself from a Military Chinese Finger Puzzle left for you by Bush and Cheney and the rest of Halliburton's hench-men.

And most of all, and those of us who have watched these first nine months trust both your judgment and the fact you know this, Mr. President: unless you are exactly right, we cannot afford this war. For if all else is even, and everything from the opinion of the generals to the opinion of the public is even, we cannot afford to send these troops back into that quagmire for second tours, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths.

We cannot afford this ethically, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its moral compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.

You, Sir, called for change, for the better way, for the safety of our citizens including the citizens being wasted in war-for-the-sake-of-war, for a reasserting of our moral force. And we listened. And now you must listen. You must listen to yourself.

9/11 Text Messages Released: Wikileaks Publishes Intercepted Government Pager Texts As They Were Sent

2009-11-25T00:13:59Z

Government employees sent more than 500,000 text pager messages In the hours before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At 3 a.m. (EST) Wednesday, November 25, those intercepted messages will be published online at Wikileaks. The messages will be published at the same times that they were originally sent on 9/11.

Wikileaks, a journalistic endeavor that promotes better government through transparency , says that the messages were intercepted by a organization that has been archiving US telecommunications prior to 9/11. Wikileaks says that the sources of the messages range from Pentagon employees to messages sent by the NYPD, and even automated messages relayed by computers to their operators.

Below are examples of what Wikileaks will publish. Visit their site for more information.

8:36:03 AM
IRAQ SAYS IT SHOOTS DOWN U.S. RECONNAISSANCE PLANE
8:51:31 AM
Andrew.Terzakis@pentagon.af.mil|Please call Pentagon Weather|UNCLASSIFIED Please call Pentagon Weather.......reference 1030 Meeting.....703-695-0406 ANDREW J. TERZAKIS, Lt Col, USAF D
8:53:44 AM
"NYPD Ops Div" <|1 PCT WORLD TRADE CENTER|--- 1 PCT - WORLD TRADE CENTER - POSSIBLE EXPLOSION WORLD TRADE CENTER BUILDING. LEVEL 3 MOBILIZATION TO CHURCH AND VESSY.
9:24:48 AM
DOLLAR TUMBLES VS EURO, YEN AFTER WTC EXPLOSION
9:24:59 AM
NYC WTC'S: WMS TKT 191100495. SWITCHES SEEM TO BE OKAY . OVERLOADS IN SM 9 OF SOUTH TOWER FROM HIGH
9:31:51 AM
N.Y.C. TKT#191100488 - WTC HAS BEEN HIT BY AN AIRPLANE AND A BOMB. CURRENTLY B6 IS BEING EVACUATED. NCC HAS RECEIVED MULTIPLE ALARMS OPTICAL / ENVIORNMENTAL. UPDATES WILL FOLLOW. RYAN P/L NCC 800-824-8049
9:32:52 AM
FANNIE MAE DELAYS BENCHMARK BILL,CALLABLE NOTE ANNOUNCEMENT DUE TO WTC BLASTS
9:50:03 AM
it's reported that a US military helicopter circled the building then crashed into or next to the Pentagon - it's not clear to whether it was the White House or the Pentagon - they are being evacuated
7:05:57 AM
Please don't leave the building. One of the towers just collapsed! PLease, please be careful. Repeat,
11:00:30 AM
BOMB SQUAD PLS REPORT TO EDIC..PER T913..OPS/JL
11:13:04 AM
Lines to Washington & Saudi are blocked or jammed. Couldn't get thru. Jim at the FBI had no info - he suggested we watch Fox or CNN. Chris.
11:20:52 AM
Eddie and Paul are okay. Paul is still trapped in his building which is next to the WTC.
11:29:13 AM
pewells|I'm OK. I saw the whole thing. Was on the roof looking at the first fire when I saw the second plane plow into the second tower. Unbelievable, literally...I was inside when they collapsed. Still in my apt, nowhere to go...This is the end of the world as we know it...
11:39:47 AM
jtamer|You are needed in the WAR room asap.
3:25:54 PM
im not dealing with this shit today....i will call johnston in early......ford shut down there plants and im not answering why we are still working....fuck this. FROM: RYDER LITTLEJOHN (x18914) (3
5:20:30 PM
Honey wanted to tell you how much i love you. I was alittle worried.I Don't want to lose you now that I got you back. You mean everything to me. You have my whole heart and life. Ilove you so much,
6:05:05 PM
We are bombing Afganistan. Pene
6:58:58 PM
1) my nephew's ok, 2) there's a dead body at the main gate, 3) US denies responsibility for bombing in Afghanistan. Over and out.

Microsoft, News Corp Have Talked About De-Indexing From Google

2009-11-22T19:36:55Z

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company's being paid to "de-index" its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

David Vines: If It Were Me, I'd Be Embarrassed

2009-11-21T13:50:00Z

It's nice to see that even after the election, conservatives are still playing the "liberal gotcha media" card every time they expose themselves as being shamefully ignorant regarding the issues they care about most.

Last Wednesday, a media firestorm erupted after a seventeen-year-old girl named Jackie was interviewed by MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell while standing in line during Sarah Palin's Michigan book signing. Jackie, wearing a shirt that read, "The US government handed out $700 billion in Wall Street bailouts and all I got was this lousy t-shirt," was caught off-guard when O'Donnell informed her that Sarah Palin was on record as supporting the bailout.

You can see the exchange below:

It didn't take long for Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck to feature this clip on their respective shows and praise Jackie while condemning O'Donnell for her pesky questions backed up by fact-based research. Then, Jackie was given a platform to tell her side of the story by the blog, Red White & Conservative.

To summarize:

This all started as me, a young 17 year old American going to see a woman I admire and turned into this crazy event hah I'll start at the very beginning.

She had me read my shirt and then proceeded to ask me "Did you know Sarah Palin supported the bailout" to be 100% honest I was like, are you kidding me? She is trying to use my shirt against me. I was so shocked by the craftiness she had that I was truly stumped. I asked her where she got her fact and she read her little note. Then she asked me what I liked about Sarah, and I talked about the Constitution.

In one day I met a role model, and met the liberal media and their crafty schemes. I fell prey to liberal bias, but I'd like to think I did an okay job.

As a fellow high school senior, I feel a strong urge to respond.

This notion that a reporter is being "crafty" and "biased" when they correct factually inaccurate statements is ridiculous. Sure, Jackie might have a point if O'Donnell ran up to her at random and stuck a microphone in her face as she was walking down the street, but that was not the case. This girl was at the book signing of a prominent politician, wore a t-shirt indicating that she had strong political views, agreed to be interviewed, and failed to answer a very simple and straightforward question.

The job of a good reporter is not to ask softball questions or cast everybody they speak to in a positive light. A reporter's job is to collect facts and seek the truth. So, while some may object to O'Donnell's speaking to a seventeen-year-old girl, nobody can accuse her of reporting anything but the facts.

Which brings me to my final point: Jackie is seventeen-years-old, she's not seven.

In her piece for Red White & Conservative, she feels the need to drive home the fact that she's only seventeen four separate times, as if that were some sort of defense.

Now, I understand that much of the electorate is made up of low information voters who don't closely follow politics. That's fine -- it's not ideal, but it's perfectly understandable.

But according to her school profile, Jackie is very politically involved. She is an intern with the Michigan Republican Party and is clearly excited and passionate about what her political "role model," Former-Governor Palin, represents. And yet, when she cannot correctly identify one of Palin's most basic political positions, she plays the victim and blames everybody but herself.

Then, conservative members of the media take the bait and praise her as some sort of Republican hero. They are more than happy to glorify this culture of ignorance and hide behind the veil of "elitism" and "media bias" when anyone approaches them with facts.

All I can say is that if Glenn Beck had heard me express my political views and then assumed that I was a thirteen-year-old, I would not lift the paper bag off my head for quite some time.

*Correction: It has been brought to my attention that Red White & Conservative is Jackie's own blog. It is not, as I had previously written, the blog of someone else who had given her a platform to speak.*

100 Heartbeats: The Mass Extinction of Wildlife (VIDEO)

2009-11-19T08:33:42Z

Just 210 elephants and 190 tigers remain in Indonesia, and within 20 years, all of Sumatra's orangutans could be extinct. This is the extraordinary tale told by MSNBC's Jeff Corwin as he travels the globe in his show, 100 Heartbeats. Corwin stumbles upon inspiring feats of human care for the world's endangered animals and even encounters a black rhino with an entourage of six armed guards. The lengths people are going to fight back against the destruction of the environment makes for a fascinating and inspiring story.

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The show airs Sunday, Nov. 22, at 8:00 p.m. ET on MSNBC.

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Help Rebuild John McDonogh High School in New Orleans

2009-11-18T17:57:37Z

Coming here from joe.msnbc.com? Scroll down to the widget below and click the "Contribute" button to give to City Year. Don't know what we're talking about? Read on...

As we've previously reported on Impact, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" has teamed up with the HandsOn Network and Starbucks for Brewing Together, a new joint initiative aimed at encouraging public service and community involvement.

Their partnership kicked off a few months ago, with the "Morning Joe" crew proudly sipping from Starbucks cups during their morning broadcasts. Just last week, Starbucks announced an updated coffee, named Gold Coast Blend: Morning Joe Edition, which you can read about through Starbucks.

This morning, "Morning Joe" broadcast live from John McDonogh High School in New Orleans, Louisiana. The show discussed the devastation still seen in NOLA four years after Katrina, how this high school has struggled and ultimately excelled despite the setbacks. Joe Scarborough, an advocate for more effective reconstruction in New Orleans, has wanted the media to refocus on the tragedy of Katrina and what individuals can do to contribute to the rebuilding effort. The Brewing Together campaign also wants people to make public service a part of their everyday lives, starting tomorrow with a sponsored Day of Service.

To discuss these issues, "Morning Joe" put together an all-star line-up of writers and advocates for today's show: Newsweek contributing editor Julia Reed, ESPN's Digger Phelps, Starbucks U.S. President Cliff Burrows, Obama Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who joins "Morning Joe" via satellite from Washington, D.C.

They also highlighted City Year, a nonprofit which organizes a full year of public service for dedicated youth. City Year effectively instills a sense of magnanimity in today's young people by putting them in positions to be mentors and tutors to America's underprivileged. They're also facilitating many of the donations to John McDonogh High School, and a contribution to their New Orleans affiliate will go a long way toward many of their reconstruction efforts.

If you watched the show and want to know how you can further get involved, below are some actions that will point you in the right direction:

Look up volunteer opportunities in your area through the HandsOn Network. Though "Morning Joe" was in New Orleans this morning, they want you to take action on whatever cause you're most passionate about. Ours is a country full of people in need, so take the time and look at how you can help in your community.

Upload your videos on volunteering to joe.msnbc.com. They want to see how you're getting involved in public service and could show your video on the air!

Donate to City Year through this link or the widget below. Your donations go directly to providing young people with the tools they need to give back to their community.

As a sign depicted on "Morning Joe" this morning said, "Education Is All A Matter Of Building Bridges." Watch Joe and Mika discuss the obstacles that John McDonogh High School has overcome and how you can get involved with Brewing Together's Day of Service:

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Susan J. Demas: The Confidence Gap Between Democrats And Republicans

2009-11-18T12:30:58Z

"We are the champions, my friends," crooned Michigan Senate President Pro-Tem Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) the day after the Nov. 3 election.

Former state Rep. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek) had won a landslide victory for an open Senate seat, giving Republicans a firm 22-16 majority. It wasn't unexpected, nor was it necessarily a bellwether, but Richardville practically skipped into the Senate chambers and his fellow Republicans couldn't stop beaming. When Nofs appeared for his victory lap, there were handshakes and backslaps all around.

It was a palpable return to normalcy, not just in Michigan, but in New Jersey and Virginia, as well. The GOP was victorious and all was right with the world.

Hard to believe that just a year ago, Barack Obama crushed John McCain and the Democrats piled up punishing majorities in Congress. In Michigan, the Democratic base hit 56 percent and the party picked up nine more state House seats.

It was like a morgue on the Republican side of the aisle on Nov. 4, 2008. Some were sullen, some were angry, but almost all looked unmistakably like something had been usurped from them.

Democrats were giddy, but it there was an aura of the surreal. The hand-wringing started immediately over strategy on the stimulus, health care and cap and trade. Instead of enjoying the ride, the question shifted to: how are we going to blow this? Will we micromanage like Carter? Capitulate like Clinton?

Golly gee, why do we Democrats suck so bad (even when we win)?

And therein lies the powerful psychological difference between the parties. It's the confidence gap.

Republicans may be livid, but they soon bounce back, even when they've been absolutely electorally pummeled. That's just an inexplicable aberration, like the popularity of plaid pants. All we have to do is return to our conservative roots and we shall reclaim what's rightfully ours.

It is almost mathematically and historically impossible for Republicans to take back Congress next year. They are 0 for 5 in the last five special elections, including the takedown of Know Nothing Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in NY-23. But you'd never know that from the nonstop, right-wing bravado that the glorious second coming of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution is at hand (even though Newt is flagellated these days as a card-carrying communist for backing moderates).

Republicans have a well-oiled propaganda machine to facilitate the fantasy of strength and popularity, from Fox News to The Weekly Standard. The message is always the same: Whether the GOP wins or loses, it always wins (and God bless St. Ronald Reagan).

So even though Tea Partiers represent a shockingly low percentage of the electorate (even a minority of the GOP), they're lauded as "real Americans" and net far more coverage and influence than they deserve.

And forget all the problematic reputable polls showing health care reform is popular. We have our own polling that miraculously says the opposite. Besides, House Minority Leader John Boehner, the epically tanned man of the people, says he's never met anyone for the public option, so that's good enough for me.

Meanwhile, check out MSNBC or The Nation. You might find some cheerleading for the president by Keith Olbermann, but most of it is a scowling gripefest. Obama's not a liberal, boo hoo, he's betrayed us.

We should all have single-payer health care by now, peace in the Middle East, zero carbon emissions and a pony. I voted for him and I want my pony, dammit. Woe is me, when will I ever have the progressive superhero president I deserve?

I can see why indecisive independents might gravitate toward Fox News and the Tea Party crowd. At least they seem to be having fun - and they appear to know what they're doing.

Even more than the ailing economy and slightly rising poll numbers, what Republicans have going for them is that good ole Democratic pessimism. It's all doom and gloom for the donkeys (and yes, Michigan Lt. Gov. John Cherry's poll numbers do give them reason) but they'd be kvetching if he were 20 points ahead.

So listen up, Democrats.

Laugh all you want at those misspelled signs at Tea Parties. Titter at Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele's endless buffoonery on the cable circuit. And snigger as the GOP tries to detonate itself over dogmatic primary challenges instead of rebuilding a national party.

That doesn't mean you're going to win next year.

Which is fine by the unions and liberal activists, to be honest. They'd rather be screeching in the minority, reveling in their powerlessness to change anything as long as they keep control of their little fiefdoms. Besides, think of all the awesome blog posts you can write shredding new Michigan Gov. Mike Cox.

This week, a brilliant progressive friend of mine railed with a straight face that state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) is like Hitler. Sorry, but that's as nutty as comparing the Dems' health care bill to Dachau. A moratorium on Nazi analogies in intelligent political debate would suit me just fine, unless we're talking about actual followers of the Third Reich.

The truth is, Democrats are often terrible at governing, as even liberals complain about Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. That takes leadership and organization. And it just feels more natural being in the minority. Just ask the state Senate Democrats, who have dwelled there for a quarter-century and show little hope of digging out after Nofs' win last week.

I'm not convinced that Republicans are naturally better managers, but most of them project the self-confidence to do the job.

Kind of makes you wonder what a difference it would make if Democrats were that decisive.

MSNBC "Pressuring President Obama From The Left": NYT

2009-11-16T09:33:08Z

This is how it looks to have a television network pressuring President Obama from the left.

While much attention has been paid to the feud between the Fox News Channel and the White House, the Obama administration is now facing criticism of a different sort from Ms. Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other progressive hosts on MSNBC, who are using their nightly news-and-views-casts to measure what she calls "the distance between Obama's rhetoric and his actions."

Jim Luce: NBC's Brian Williams: Changing the World for the Better

2009-11-13T16:39:22Z

Several weeks ago Brian
Williams profiled the children of the Afghan Child Education and Care
Organization (AFCECO) and its founder Andeisha Farid in Kabul, Afghanistan for NBC Nightly News’ segment Making a Difference (video).

Brian is anchor and
managing editor of the NBC Nightly News
based in New York. Last week, his show, including
the segment Making a Difference, had
9.5 million viewers. The show spikes up
to 11 million viewers frequently.

I had interviewed the
orphanage’s founder Andeisha of Kabul in New York in September and have followed
her progress carefully. I knew immediately
that Brian’s focus would have an enormous impact on her good work.

As founder of Orphans International Worldwide, I am familiar
with running homes for children around the world – and the difficult task of
raising the fund necessary to do so.

What I did not grasp
about the piece on Making a Difference was
what an enormous difference it would
make – with so many contributions that flooded over the Internet to fund the
kids there from Brian’s generous viewers.
He thanked them the following week (video).

I wanted to speak with
Brian about how good that must make him feel – and how this sense of
responsibility must now shape his life – so I asked him to call me, and he did. Brian told me:

I was
really revved to do a piece on this orphanage in Afghanistan. I wanted it to be seen by as many people as
possible – and luckily it was. I was so
grateful – we raised much more for those children than we had thought possible.

I do
pieces on different topics. We were in
Kabul when there was a huge loss of life at the U.N. and I wanted to do a story
after that which was ‘nice and hopeful.’
We had one day to do this feature piece, and it all just came together.

Sitting
there in our rental house in Kabul, I realized I had a personal enough relationship
with our viewers – who I felt could be very generous – to ask them to help
these kids. And they did!

The
cultural differences and similarities in the orphanage were enormous. Little girls are little girls anywhere in the
world. Thank God I have parented two
children, so it was the most natural of moments.

Switching
glasses with them, seeing them draw stars and hearts… The children were so tactile, kind, loving,
affectionate, and gracious.

I saw a
picture of Paul Stevers there on the wall, the founder of CharityHelp International
in the U.S. that provides a bridge between child sponsors and the children
there.

The kids
had a politeness, and order, a discipline – not like in Annie, but an attitude of accepting real responsibility – the way I
was raised. It was so real.

On his blog, Brian had
posted the following after his viewers had been so generous:

I want to
say thank you -- and to express my ongoing appreciation at the amazing
generosity of our viewers. We did a
follow-up on the orphanage in Afghanistan.

I was only
home from work for a few hours when we learned they had already received 500
e-mails from Nightly News viewers -- many of them offering donations and
pledges to sponsor a child.

It is
immensely gratifying, and I’m beyond words in expressing my thanks and appreciation
on behalf of the lovely children we met over there.

Brian Williams received individualized cards
from each of the children in Kabul.

“Although some are
one-time gifts, our experience tells us that many of the child sponsors will
continue to give for the next few years so the benefits of Brian’s efforts are
very substantial and will enable AFCECO to care for many more children,” Paul
Stevers, founder of CharityHelp
International, told me.

CharityHelp
International is the Internet bridge that connects the children to child
sponsors around the world. Orphans
International Worldwide, the charity I founded, relies on CharityHelp to fund
our kids in Haiti, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.

“Security is an enormous
issue in Kabul,” Brian told me. “In
Kabul, importance is measured by the size of your gate and the number of guns
you have. I hope the orphanage there will
be able to spend more on security,” Brian added.

Clearly, the segment Making a Difference is making a
difference. From one night a week, the
segment now airs up to five times a week.

“It was my wife’s idea,
honestly,” Brian shared. “With the
economy sinking, she said, ‘Someone, somewhere is doing spectacular acts of
kindness – go capture them!’ And we
did,” Brian told me.

Making a Difference features mostly ordinary people, although it
has begun to also focus on celebrities using their visibility to also help
humanity.

Quintessential thought leaders
and global citizen Brian Williams on the streets of Kabul.

Brian replaced Tom
Brokaw, one of his mentors, in 2004. Previously,
Brian was the network’s chief White House correspondent and host of The News with Brian Williams on CNBC and
MSNBC.

After studying at
college, Brian took an internship with the administration of President Jimmy
Carter. He holds an honorary doctor of
humane letters degree from one of my favorite schools, Bates College, and an
honorary Doctor of Journalism degree from Ohio State University.

NBC Night News anchor Brian Williams
frequently reports from Afghanistan.

Brian is the most
honored network evening news anchor. He
has received four Edward R. Murrow awards, his fifth Emmy award, the
DuPont-Columbia University award and the industry's highest honor, the George
Foster Peabody award.

Most were given for his
work in New Orleans while covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and all
were awarded to Brian in only his second year on the job.

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly
News with Afghani children in Kabul.

Brian was the first and
only network evening news anchor to report from New Orleans before Hurricane
Katrina hit and was the only network news anchor to report from the Superdome
during the storm. He remained in New Orleans to report on the aftermath and
destruction of Hurricane Katrina.

In 2006, Brian joined
Bono, traveling to three countries in Africa — Nigeria, Mali, and Ghana — to
report on the major issues facing the continent, including HIV/AIDS, poverty,
disease, and crushing debt.

In 1994, Brian was named
NBC News Chief White House correspondent. Accompanying President Clinton aboard
Air Force One, Brian circled the world several times, covering virtually every
foreign and domestic trip by the President until 1996.

On perhaps one of the
most historic trips of the Clinton presidency, Brian was the only television
news correspondent to accompany three U.S. presidents — Clinton, Bush, and
Carter — to Yitzhak Rabin's funeral in Israel.

Brian is a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and is also a member of the Board of
Directors of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. He has lectured at Columbia University School
of Journalism and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin,
Texas.

In 2007, Brian was
listed among Time Magazine’s 100 Most
Influential People in The World. He
lives in New Canaan, Connecticut, with his wife, Jane Stoddard Williams.

There is a reason “When
breaking news happens, America turns to NBC
Nightly News with Brian Williams."
America trusts Brian the way we once trusted Walter Cronkite.

“Walter Cronkite was the
architect for what this show has become,” Brian told me. “Walter’s level of professionalism is what I
strive for every day.”

“I have been luckier
than most two have had two North Stars to follow – Walter Cronkite and Tom
Brokaw,” Brian admitted.

Like Walter and Tom, Brian
is the quintessential thought leaders and global citizen – and has thousands of
fans on Facebook
from around the world to prove it.

Today Brian Williams has
an enormous power – and a parallel responsibility – to help humanity.

Luckily for all of us, he
knows this well – and is highly focused on doing all that he can in his
position to change our world for the better.

Josh Silver: Too Big to Block? Why Obama Must Stop the Comcast-NBC Merger

2009-11-13T11:04:46Z

Now that Vivendi and General Electric have struck a deal, cable giant Comcast is expected to to buy a controlling stake in NBC-Universal; marking the biggest proposed media merger in recent memory. Comcast, the largest cable company and the No. 1 residential Internet service provider in the nation, would take over the NBC empire: a television network, Universal Studios, MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Telemundo, the Weather Channel, Hulu.com, 27 television stations and a host of other properties.

This train wreck of a deal will hurt all over. It will mean increased costs for cable television service; currently free online NBC content locked behind a pay wall; less opportunity for the distribution of independent media; even fewer choices and less programming diversity. On average, nearly one quarter of all channels offered to cable subscribers will be owned by the bloated Comcast.

News reports about the deal are citing the "conventional wisdom" echoed by industry analysts from Wall Street and Washington: Judicial and agency precedent indicates that the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission will not be able to stop the merger -- even if they know that the cost to the public interest will be grave. This is the same kind of regulatory precedent that permitted the renegade banking industry to run amok, until the system came crashing down. Our lawmakers should have been reining in these out-of-control corporations long ago. But therein lies the problem: Corporate-friendly judges, appointed by corporate-friendly politicians, elected with contributions from their corporate patrons, have created a body of legal precedent that makes even the most common sense antitrust rulings difficult to impossible.

It was just 18 months ago that candidate Barack Obama said, "I strongly favor diversity of ownership of outlets and protection against the excessive concentration of power in the hands of any one corporation, interest or small group." Five months later, Obama was swept into office promising to bring change to Washington.

If President Obama really wants to change the system that green-lighted the bailout of "too big to fail" banks and would allow the looming crisis of too-big-to-block media mergers, he will have to overhaul federal antitrust laws so that they actually protect the greater good.

Until such change is realized, there are several reasons why current antitrust laws -- albeit weak -- can and should block the Comcast-NBC deal during the review process, which will likely take a year or more:

The merger would eliminate the hard bargaining for distribution and content that normally occurs between distributors (like Comcast) and content producers (like NBC). That competitive bargaining will only intensify as more video is distributed over the Internet in the coming years.

The Comcast-NBC behemoth would control several distribution platforms -- a major television network, the largest cable company and the largest Internet service provider. The merged company will have strong incentives and the market power to discriminate in granting access to its wealth of programming. It will have the incentive and market power to enforce anticompetitive "bundling" and price-gouge other cable companies, especially smaller cable companies.

As the largest cable company and Internet service provider, Comcast will have the motive to move NBC's video content behind a pay wall that will mean higher costs for consumers, and it would stunt the growth of the Internet as an alternative medium for video service. Placing video content behind a pay wall that is only available to Comcast cable customers is a classic example of "anticompetitive bundling." That is, consumers who want Internet access to NBC programming will be forced to buy the bundle of cable and Internet.

Perhaps the most dangerous risk of this deal -- and one we have seen many times in years -past - is that it will trigger a "merger wave" throughout the industry as distribution companies and content companies seek to "muscle up" to match the new threat that the vertically integrated Comcast poses. Consumer choice will be restricted and prices will rise. With diminishing competition, the likelihood of similar behavior by other companies grows stronger, as does the threat of collusion among competitors.

The Comcast-NBC deal is black and white: It would create a company with too much market power, and it would further starve Americans of the diversity already missing from our media marketplace. It raises the most basic antitrust issues for an administration that has declared both the importance of media diversity and an intention to be far more vigilant against anticompetitive conduct and abuses of market power.

President Obama, Congress and federal agencies must acknowledge the serious threat that this merger poses and take the necessary measures to prevent harm to competition and consumers. That means putting the American people first and corporate greed second. It means stopping the merger.

Beau Friedlander: Veteran Moulitsas Versus Tom Tancredo as Moral Tale

2009-11-11T06:34:51Z

New media progressives were giddy this weekend after a segment about health care reform aired on The Ed Show this Friday. Air America joined the celebration, too. No new ground was covered. Yet here I am writing about it five days later. Why? Because while the dust-up may have made good theater, it was bad for progressive politics.

David Shuster hosted the discussion between Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas and the former representative from Colorado's 6th District, and sometime presidential candidate, hate-monger extraordinaire, Tom Tancredo. The conversation got hot a few times, and then boiled over when the three discussed veteran health care. It was the political media equivalent of pro-wrestling, Fox News painted blue: unintelligent, argumentative, and pointless.

The trouble started when Shuster asked Tancredo if the Veterans Administration--a single-payer system--is "a threat to our freedom." A loaded question for sure, given that the service members affected by the shooting at Fort Hood (the day before) had all received care there. Tancredo claimed that he had never met a service member who didn't think that the Veterans Administration was "a bureaucratically run program that didn't meet their needs." He went on to say they would all prefer a voucher system.

Okay. It was a laughable statement. So, on cue, Moulitsas laughed in that gleeful, "OMG you're so dumb" way that only he can muster. Fair enough. That stupid, ideological lament, tawdry little nothing of a lie that Tancredo was trying to sell the audience was after all a joke.

Fast-forward. Markos said something that bears saying often in the hothouse of tea-baggers, Astro-Turf activism, and race-baiting populism that emerged after President Obama was sworn in.

People want a more effective VA. That's more money....This is a threat to Republicans. They've built an entire ideology predicated on telling people that government does not work. They are terrified of government programs that work, because then people will realize that government is not the enemy, and they're going to vote Democratic because Democrats are the party who realize that people need help, and government can sometimes offer solutions.

It was a good thing to say, and Markos said it well, between the barks of an unhinged political manqué, but it did not merit FireDogLake's proclamation that, "Markos Moulitsas Destroys Tom Tancredo on MSNBC." We missed something when I fast-forwarded to the above statement. Tom Tancredo did not leave the set because big government works. So, what did Moulitsas say?

He said: "I'm a veteran."

Fair enough. You might expect him next to say that he has been the recipient of fantastic medical care at the Veterans Administration, but he doesn't say this at all. He does not cite a single instance of the VA in action. Instead, he defames with an ugly air of superiority that undoes whatever persuasion might have worked its way into the minds of the conservatives (and independents) who were "out there" eavesdropping on those liberal crazies over at MSNBC.

Tom. I am a veteran. I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight in a war that I supported in Vietnam. I'm a veteran.

Tancredo is best known for being a xenophobic hater of people of color--or at least someone who abhors their presence in the United States of America. (People like Moulitsas, whose family hails from Ecuador.) He was lauded in the past by white power folks for keeping America safe from illegal immigrants even if it cost the nation $200 billion. He even called out Sonia Sotomayor for being a member of the National Council of La Raza, which he dubbed "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses."

Tom Tancredo is not a difficult person to debate. As a matter of fact, you merely need to let him talk to defeat him. So why on earth, in a conversation about health care, would you deride a man for not serving his country because of a debilitating illness that, by the way, affects 8 to 12 percent of the population? Would he also attack people with schizophrenia? Partial blindness?

For a person with as much pull in influential circles as Markos Moulitsas to engage in a pissing match, and a petty one at that, with a man who does not deserve a minute of his time is to belittle the importance of the work that actually needs to be accomplished, or to vastly underestimate his potential influence on debates that matter, such as the one around health care reform.

When Crashing the Gate was published however many years ago, I remember thinking that Jerome Armstrong and Moulitsas were 100% correct in their assessment of what ailed the Democratic Party. There was no cohesion of message and purpose. No unity. No sense of mission and professionalism. Single-payer could get no traction because there wasn't a committee in Washington that could have had a civil conversation about its merits. That's a sign of a sick party.

Getting back to Moulitsas and Tancredo on The Ed Show, they did not have a civil conversation because they were not supposed to have one. That's a media problem as well as a message problem. But the fact remains, there is victory in dignity, and it is time we started lauding instances of the bad guys getting short-circuited not by a public drubbing, but by a sound argument. We can behave like the gold standard for logic has changed, but it hasn't. The slap fight anti-intellectualism of essentially South Park-like discourse is great at a cocktail party--and it has a place in the realm of politics--but it cannot safely replace thoughtful debate, or we will see the completion of Roger Ailes' political vision: the country club edition of The Lord of the Flies. It's a dangerous world where childish memes and raw bullying can change the law.

First things first. An expanded Medicare will do for now. And while the Stupak amendment is a sharp slap in the face for what most of us on the left deem an acceptable outcome, there is the fact that we're seeing legislative movement for the first time in years on the issue of health care reform in America. And Tom Tancredo can say whatever he wants about vouchers. I'm still hearing, "Latino KKK."

When people think about Markos Moulitsas, it would be great if they thought about what he had to say regarding government programs and the GOP, but they won't, because you could barely hear him over Tancredo's cross-talking. What most people will remember is the second quote where he stoops to conquer and winds up sounding just as mean and derisive as a Republican. Maybe that's necessary. Maybe we need a few more Carvilles running around being fast and furious with the truth, but we also need to cut through the noise and hysteria sometimes.

Markos Moulitsas is a million times better than that. We're better than that. The below video isn't the best example of something better, but it's recent and one of many.

First published by Air America

Brad Friedman: Truth in Newsvertising

2009-11-11T00:29:29Z

Apparently it must be stated -- over and again. The Fox "News" Channel is not a news channel; it's a Republican Party propaganda channel. As such, its first amendment right to say whatever it likes ought to be protected, but not its "right" to call itself "news". That's false advertising and it ought to be outlawed by whoever it is that regulates such things.

Perhaps if FNC changed their name to the Republican News Channel (or RNC for short), the argument that they are in fact a news outlet, albeit one that presents "news" as spun by the GOP, could be substantiated. Until they do, however, they need to be called out by the rest of us for exactly what they are: a Republican "News" channel.

To that end, recent statements by the White House calling them out as such are right on the money. FNC/RNC should be treated not like a news organization but as one which does little more than promote a specific political agenda.

That public recognition of the long-obvious is long-overdue from Democrats, many of whom continue, foolishly, to treat FNC as merely a news outlet with a "conservative" bent. These Democrats fall into the false equivalence brier patch when they say FNC is merely a "conservative" counterpart to MSNBC. Sure, several of the GE-owned news outlet's primetime shows cover real news from a progressive perspective, but progressivism does not equal liberalism, whatever that is, nor even Democratic-ism.

For the intellectually honest who bother to pay attention to MSNBC's primetime coverage (distinct from its all-rightwing morning coverage hosted for several hours by former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough) the news outlet's progressive viewpoint is obvious. So is their well-documented penchant for reporting on the scoundrels in, and failings of, the Democratic Party. The truth of such failings are not hidden from viewers.

In contrast, even a few minutes of viewing reveals FNC presenting an alternate reality where Republican hypocrisy, scandals and abuses of power -- are either spun into something they are not, or, as is more frequently the case, simply not mentioned at all. As such, the depths of the historically unprecedented failure that was George W. Bush's eight years in office remain virtually unknown to viewers of FNC/RNC. In the bargain, as the young Obama Administration moves forward, attempting to deal with countless left-over disasters they've inherited, issue after issue now comes as a complete surprise to the majority of Fox viewers.

The resultant spectacle might be amusing were it not so dangerous to our country's future. It's also rather sad to see so many well-meaning Americans pushed into speeding traffic by cynical rightwing powerbrokers using and abusing the good nature of those who have been deceived into following them on a self-destructive fool's errand.

It is with a sense of both shame and bemusement that we now witness good Americans agitated and drafted into protests over the very policies that Republican failure has, itself, created and/or supported uncritically for years:

Record Big Government expansion and deficits;

Massive Big Brother invasion of privacy;

Bureaucratic intrusion between patients and doctors;

Corporate bailouts with tax-payer largesse...

The list goes on and on, but the frothing Fox "News" teabaggers protest as if the last eight years of all of the above never existed. Rather, these poor saps were presented with a phony version of "reality" produced with Hollywood-style special effects and distractions (missing blonds, steroids in baseball, terrorists around every corner, non-existent "voter fraud"). Now these confused souls roam the streets, town halls and email lists as clueless zombies, unaware of who and what they are fighting for (government-supported corporatocracy) or against (their own self-interest).

Its a long-overdue breath of fresh air to see a White House finally willing to offer an official definition of what the Fox "News" Channel actually is and, in turn, to witness the nattering nabobs of nincompoopery waste their time by spinning viewers with tales of yet another imaginary war, this one where Fox and the First Amendment are both imagined to be under attack. At least in trumping up this war, the folks at Fox News are only hurting themselves.

Addendum: If anybody needed more evidence that the White House is absolutely right about Fox not being a news organization, on Wednesday night, prime time anchor Sean Hannity was forced to admit that he'd falsified footage of a recent "Tea Party" protest on Capitol Hill. When the attendance wasn't large enough to give the impression of the angry Republican mobs Hannity might have hoped for, he and fellow Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN) told viewers the crowd was tens of thousands of angry voters larger than it actually was while showing two month old footage -- from a completely different rally -- to underscore their point.

To make matters even more embarrassing, the "incorrect video" that was deceptively spliced in was from a September rally where a Fox "News" producer had been caught on video tape stage managing the crowd, urging them to cheer loudly while on camera.

Hannity's admission to an "inadvertent mistake" -- how "incorrect video" inadvertently edits itself into a new report went unexplained -- came after the doctored video was discovered by The Comedy Channel's The Daily Show, which offers far more accurate, fair and balanced news on a daily basis than Fox "News" could ever dream of.

==

Brad Friedman is an investigative journalist, blogger and broadcaster, creator and publisher of The BRAD BLOG and a Fellow at the Commonweal Institute.

Olbermann: Murdoch "Worst Person" For Using Fox News As Vendetta Machine (VIDEO)

2009-11-06T12:20:23Z

Keith Olbermann named News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch "Worst Person in the World" Thursday night for his admission that Fox News decided to "retaliate" against MSNBC after what Mudoch characterized as "abuse."

Earlier this week, on News Corp's earnings call, Murdoch responded to a question about the broken MSNBC-Fox News truce by saying, "We didn't started this abuse, which we thought went way beyond. Finally, we had to allow people to retaliate. When they stop, we'll stop."

Olbermann argued that, in this response, Murdoch admitted that he uses News Corp media outlets to pursue personal vendettas. From the transcript:

Fairly straight-forward sounding statement, until you analyze it a little bit. Murdoch is claiming that his alleged news people at Fox, like Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly, did not decide to do stories about MSNBC or NBC or GE. He did. And he did not decide to do stories about MSNBC or NBC or GE because it was any news value to them. He decided to do them out of personal pique.

When O'Reilly spent hour after hour reporting fabricating stories about GE parts allegedly, possibly, maybe--well, I read some graffiti about it--in roadside bombs, he was not doing so because the story was true or Americans were in danger or just to fulfill any premise of journalism. He did it because Rupert Murdoch had agreed to, in Murdoch's own words, allow people to retaliate.

When O'Reilly a stalker producer to interrupt a GE business meeting, it wasn't reporting. It was, again to use Murdoch's term, abuse.

And most importantly, all of it, from Fox's petulant, defensive name calling, to O'Reilly's slandering of GE, Murdoch will stop all of it if MSNBC simply stops watch-dogging Fox.

Thus, simply, Rupert Murdoch has revealed his company's news coverage and the people who deliver it are there simply to pursue their own petty vendettas.

Rupert Murdoch, not only doing his carnival fun house version of actual journalism, but stupid enough to admit it, in public, today's worst person in the world.

WATCH:

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Michael Russnow: Windows 7 Not so Great as Advertised and Has Compatibility Issues: Is Microsoft in Collusion With Manufacturers Like HP?

2009-11-06T07:18:20Z

A few weeks ago, I had a horrifying PC moment. For the first time in twelve years of Internet surfing, a terrible virus oddly named Total Security disabled my computer. No programs would open. Total Security left me in a total mess.

The price for excising the virus was $200. Since my XP computer was almost six years old, I thought that seemed excessive because I could get a new unit for about $700.

During my initial panic, Geek Squad Guru Julio Sagastume of West Hollywood's Best Buy kindly devoted lots of telephone time for free as I described my woes. Later he and colleague David McClay painstakingly advised me, and after shopping around I bought a Dell 3055 Inspiron computer. Julio and David also assured me all the files on my virus-laden XP computer would be transferred -- disease free -- for $99.99

Then I brought the new PC home, and suddenly there were problems. Understand, I've had computers for over twenty years, so I know how to set them up. However, Windows 7 didn't accept my HP LaserJet 1012 printer or Creative Cam Live! Pro! webcam drivers, nor my Transparent Language WordAce! German dictionary and True Fonts program, all on CD.

Oddly, it did embrace my Altec headset and Magic Spin DVD burner, both bought at the same time as my webcam in 2006. And the DVD burner CD driver said it was for Windows 98! Windows 7 also admitted my Movie Magic Screenwriter program, my Translation Language German tutorial and -- hold onto your hats -- my Microsoft '97 Office CD. Before I'm disparaged for not upgrading, I found no discernible difference in basic word processing over the so-called improved years, so my program suits me just fine.

More about the need to "upgrade" equipment in a moment.

Re the Windows 7 look itself, I was dismayed all my programs downloaded, including Mozilla, IE 8, AOL 9.5 and Skype suddenly appeared in miniscule font size. As a comparison I turned on my newly cleansed XP computer and everything seemed fine.

However, on Windows 7 if I changed display settings, some pages appeared better, while others' data drifted off the screen. Plus websites had overlapping type or showed words meant to be on one line suddenly hanging orphaned onto another all by themselves. This occurred on my personal website (which looks fine on XP) and also on professionally produced sites such as HuffPost.

So, I called Dell and was pleasantly surprised their offshore employees were mostly helpful. I'm not xenophobic, but I've suffered over several years dealing with folks who don't quite understand our language. Very polite but maddening to deal with. With Dell I got good support even with the 12 hour time difference.

A wonderful supervisor took over my computer by remote control. He saw what I was dealing with and I asked: "Why should I keep this computer? It's one thing to have to switch between the new one and XP for the occasional webcam use or printing, but Internet surfing is constant, and my other programs look horrible."

At first he seemed baffled, but then switched to the troubleshoot area of Windows 7 and found problems in "Add-ons" on Skype, AOL and Internet Explorer. Suddenly the fonts were better on my programs, but the Internet problems persisted. Explorer was far better than Mozilla, but neither pleased me.

He determined in our 3-hour session it might be due to my machine's 64-bit configuration. Haven't a clue what he did, but he did something with Explorer and then affixed the Explorer rendering engine onto Mozilla. In short, I now have a small icon in the lower right of my screen, and if I don't like the way a Mozilla page looks -- 2/3 of the time -- I click on the icon and it changes to the Explorer engine while staying on Mozilla, with its bookmarks and other tabs. Everything now looks great.

Strangely, when I go onto Internet Explorer 8 directly there are still problems, and I have no idea what version of Explorer or what engine he used to fix Mozilla's look. But it's better than it was, and, while not perfect, I'm able to function with more power and speed, while still able to use the XP as a sturdy back-up.

But why does this problem exist? Is there something wrong with Mozilla and Internet Explorer re Windows 7? Why does downloading major programs cause add-on issues that never presented themselves on XP? And if you're not having the same problem, why am I when all I did was turn on the machine only to confront this havoc?

Added to this is my primary beef. I have an HP printer less than six years old, and though I know we live in an age of get the latest thing almost every year -- read that to mean cell phones, cars and other gadgets -- how many of us do that? How many of us -- especially in these economic times -- don't hold onto products that still function well? Okay, if we want an improvement, such as an HDTV with mega-screen, that's one thing. That's something new.

But my printer works fine, prints at 15 pages/minute and is still on its original toner cartridge. I even bought a standby cartridge and have yet to open the box. Yet, despite the Dell technician's masterful attempts, he was not able to install the printer. The Hewlett-Packard website says it doesn't support my printer on Windows 7 and directs me to buy a new one for over a hundred dollars that prints 17 pages/minute -- hardly an upgrade when mine works perfectly.

My webcam is only 3 years old. What's Creative Cam's excuse? Why should I have to buy another one, simply because Microsoft doesn't want to include within its software earlier recognition applications as it used to? On the one hand, it still recognizes old MS Word programs, but not many other programs that did a technological handshake with earlier versions of Windows. Yet in the old days, the first Windows program recognized DOS, and, at least through XP, would not render most hardware and software shamefully obsolete.

My first laser printer (Panasonic 4410), bought in 1993 and used with my DOS computer, transitioned beautifully to Windows 95 and continued to work with my XP computer through today (though I bought the HP in 2004 to gain greater speed and operating RAM). On the one hand, a printer can work for 16 years, but the other functions for less than 6 due to incompatibility, not work performance.

What's the cause? Is it Bill Gates' fault for not incorporating into Windows 7 the driver information his company used to do in successive editions or is he in collusion with software and hardware manufacturers like HP, who also refuse to update drivers so that obsolescence becomes the order of the day and we are forced to buy things we really don't need?

If we get a new state of the art TV, we can still connect our old VCR. If we get a new CD or DVD player we can play our old disks. We can still use a dial telephone on a telephone system that has been transformed with fiber optics and satellite transmission. But a new computer forces you to discard perfectly good machinery.

There ought to be a law preventing the computer hardware and software industry from shortchanging consumers so that we get the full use of our equipment as we do for non-computer related appliances and products. Anderson Cooper should do a "Keeping Them Honest" report on CNN, as should other commentators on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC and Fox News. There should also be an uproar on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

All in all this new computer experience has been disappointing, extremely stressful and a whole lot of needless hassle.

Michael Russnow's website is www.ramproductionsinternational.com.

Dylan Ratigan Outlines The 4 Steps To Fix The Banks (VIDEO)

2009-11-04T15:16:02Z

On Wednesday morning on MSNBC's Morning Meeting, Dylan Ratigan railed against the current debate in the House Financial Services Committee about systemic risk. "Congress is simply fighting over how best to clean up the mess instead of keeping us from ever being robbed like this again," Ratigan said.

Ratigan singled out a proposal to provide insurance to dangerously big companies, using taxpayer funds, as a prime example of lawmakers' reluctance to address the underlying issues that put the financial system at such risk. He proposed a four-pronged approach to reform, starting with the injection of transparency in the financial lending processes. Additionally, politicians in Washington must require all bets to be backed by capital, and the tax code should be rewritten to discourage the pursuit of short-term profits, according to Ratigan. Finally, he emphatically called for the end of the "too big to fail" doctrine. "It is a total betrayal of the most basic principles of fairness and competition, and deprives our country of incredible resources simply to sponsor and government-subsidized gambling parlor," he said.

Watch the entire video below.

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Joseph A. Palermo: The Wrath of Suburbanites and Independents

2009-11-04T09:45:46Z

Suburbanites and independent voters in Virginia and New Jersey broke Republican in yesterday's election. Last night I saw CNN's John King tell his viewers that this phenomenon could only mean that people are sending a signal to President Barack Obama that they're fed up with "all that spending" in Washington. King's assertion is interesting because it sounds a lot like the Republican talking point we'll hear flogged endlessly today and it comes from a network that prides itself on being neither FOX nor MSNBC. But I think the election results show that in today's miserable economic context no incumbent governor (or incumbent party) managing a state or province can escape the wrath of an electorate that continues to bleed and suffer while it watches its tax dollars squandered on foreign wars and Wall Street fat cats.

Any governor facing voters at a time when teachers are being fired, parks closed, and services discontinued, when people are unemployed, losing their homes and without adequate health care, is bound to have a difficult time. Here in California, if Arnold Schwarzenegger were up for re-election, with his abysmal 27 percent approval rating, he'd get clobbered. I heard that Jon Corzine's rating was 39 percent (Arnold would call that number evidence of a mandate). What Virginia and New Jersey show is that the inaction on the economy in real terms coming from Congress and the Obama administration is taking its toll. It's nice to hear all that talk about "economic stimulus" and "public options" for those who need health care, but so far Washington inertia has failed to deliver any concrete gains to ordinary people. And if this trend continues into the midterm election season of 2010 I wouldn't be surprised if more incumbents go down in flames when the voters have an opportunity to vote their rage.

The public's anger arises from the sense that Washington only serves the interests of the rich and powerful while the middle class gets bupkis. When was the last time the federal government did anything for the working middle class? Stagnant wages and salaries, depleted pensions, soaring health care, college, and housing costs, predatory lending, gouging of every kind imaginable from creditors. Consumer "confidence" is a foreign concept. The Great Wall Street Rip-Off of 2007-2008 broke the back of the American middle class. Most people were just treading water before Wall Street ran away with a large chunk of the country's wealth. The only lesson from yesterday's voting is that people want to throw the bums out and this sentiment will only build through 2010.

In 2010 the Democrats will lose House and Senate seats -- the only question is: How many? If the Congress continues on its do-nothing 1994-deja vu course -- whether due to bureaucratic inertia, Blue Dog obstruction, or political miscalculation -- the Democrats will lose their majority in one or both chambers of Congress. And they will deserve to lose their majority just as they deserved to lose it back in 1994.

Foreign wars and occupations of basket-case countries where every additional one thousand soldiers costs the nation an additional $1 billion a year. Trillions of dollars in bailouts, corporate welfare, and loan guarantees forked over to a clique of filthy rich, undeserving, white collar criminals on Wall Street. These are things that do not make good public policy and the American people understand this fact. Ordinary working people deserve to get something in return for their hard-earned tax dollars but so far all they've gotten is foreclosed homes, job losses, shoddy access to medical care, and uncertain futures.

The only "good" news for Democrats was New York's 23rd district. Now at least they have one more seat they can afford to lose in 2010. In Maine, the rollback of gay rights shows that these rights must be won in the courts, not at the ballot box.

During the 2008 presidential campaign Obama tapped into this same anger and won big. After he turned over the economy to Tim Geithner and Larry Summers it just looks like business as usual. Wall Street pays out billions of dollars in bonuses regardless of performance and has already begun securitizing about $18 billion worth of peoples' life insurance policies betting (indeed hoping) people will die earlier than expected, and speculators are once again hedging those bets with credit default swaps. Lukewarm regulations are the talk of Washington but so far nothing has come out of the Democratic Congress with any real teeth. Bob Gates continues Bush's ill-conceived wars unabated and the Treasury Department is full of Alan Greenspan retreads. These are the reasons people are angry and will take it out on incumbents in 2010, not because of "all that spending" in Washington or any fondness for the Republicans.

NBC Viewers Donate Over $50,000 To Afghan Orphanage

2009-11-03T21:48:57Z

NBC Nightly News viewers have raised more than $50,000 for an orphanage in Afghanistan, the program reported Tuesday. Last Friday, Nightly News aired the story of a remarkable orphanage in Kabul that is caring for 150 children who have lost their parents due to decades of war, bombing and the Taliban.

After airing the broadcast, NBC viewers responded in droves to support the nonprofit, to the point that the orphanage administrators were afraid their servers would crash from e-mail donations. In addition to thousands of dollars in one-time donations, viewers promised long-term sponsorships to 130 of the children at the orphanage:

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The orphanage is sponsored by the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, which operates nine orphanages and cares for 350 Afghan refugee children across Pakistan and Afghanistan. Visit their site to learn more about the organization or to sponsor a child at one of their orphanages.

Valerie Jarrett Bungles Fox News Bias Question

2009-10-30T16:09:53Z

One of the things that's getting little discussion from Jon Stewart's penetrating take-down of Fox News yesterday night, is the way in which White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, when asked to compare Fox News to MSNBC, basically fumbled the exchange.

Interviewer: Do you think FOX News is biased?

Valerie Jarrett: Well of course they're biased, of course they are...

Interviewer: Do you also think MSNBC is biased?

Jarrett: Well, you know what, this is, this is the thing, I don't want, actually, I don't want to just generalize all FOX is biased, or another station is biased...

But that's silly! Valerie Jarrett definitely wants to generalize about the biases of Fox. And why not? As Stewart points out, "Just say of course MSNBC is biased, but they agree with us! So we're not fighting with them!"

Of course, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Joe Scarborough is a former GOP Congressman-turned-MSNBC host who frequently objects to the Obama administration. Dylan Ratigan, formerly of CNBC, frequently objects to the Obama administration and Democrats for their failures to ameliorate the ills of the financial markets. Ed Schultz is a liberal firebrand who frequently calls out the Obama administration for abandoning the Democratic party base. Rachel Maddow is a beloved figure in liberal circles, yet here she is, criticizing the Obama administration on detainee policy. Here she is again, criticizing the Obama administration on how they handled the financial crisis.

All of which demonstrates a distinction between MSNBC and Fox that Mickey Kaus got exactly right when this "war on Fox" first bloomed (emphasis from the original):

I guess there are two distinct axes on which you can judge press organizations--actually, there are many more than two (see below), but two are important here: 1) Neutrality--Are they attempting to be "objective," trying to serve the "public interest" in some balanced way, or are they ideologically (or otherwise) driven in a way that inevitably colors their coverage--what topics they pick, what 'experts' they rely on, etc. 2) Independence--Whether they are biased or generally neutral, can somebody--a political party, a Mafia family, a government-- tell them what to do?

I think it's pretty clear MSNBC and the NYT and Breitbart.tv are not neutral. They all have an agenda and they pursue it. But they are independent. The Obama White House can't tell Bill Keller what to do. They can't tell Keith Olbermann what to do. (They can suck up to him, and it will probably work, but that's a different issue.) Breitbart is for sure independent--I can't see anyone telling him what to do.

I think Fox is also not neutral (which, again, doesn't bother me) but it's also not independent (which does). This isn't because it's owned by Rupert Murdoch--moguls are, typically among the more independent sorts. It's because it's run by Roger Ailes. I have zero faith that Ailes is independent of the Republican party or, specifically, those Republicans who have occupied the White House recently--the Bushes. As I said, I think if Karl Rove called Ailes in 2003 and said "We don't want so much coverage of X" it's extremely likely that X would not be covered on Fox. A ... suggestive example of Fox's loyalty is the debate on immigration, in which Ailes' network initially seemed to try valiantly--against the beliefs of most of its audience--to push the Bush White House line in favor of "comprehensive" legalization (while brushing aside its viewers' views).

Now, I have to imagine that Kaus views Stewart's segment from last night as a rather elegant demonstration of his point -- party hack talking points are absorbed by Fox and opined upon. Those opinions become reported news. The reported news is re-advanced by the opinion meisters as confirmation of the validity of their opinions. The reheated opinions attract more newsy attention. Then they throw a Tea Party, and voila, the talking point is out in the world, from the GOP's brain to the lips of protesters, laundered and amplified by Fox's Party-cle accelerator. Now, if they wanted to, MSNBC could make a series of editorial decisions and build a set of mechanisms to mimic this sort of thing, but as it stands right now, nothing of this kind is happening there.

Going forward, whenever Valerie Jarrett is asked what makes Fox different from MSNBC, she can simply say, "What Jon Stewart said." Stewart has basically done her a solid (in a strictly non-neutral but independent way) by pointing out what he pointed out. (And The Daily Show again demonstrates their dizzying capacity to produce razor-sharp, well-researched critiques. REAL TALK: their capability in this regard far exceeds the White House's own.) But let's face it, Jarrett should have had a clear and concise answer at the ready. How could the question, comparing Fox to MSNBC not have been anticipated from Jump Street? All of this basically reiterates to me that the White House decided to do battle with Fox without much of an idea about what they were going to do once they let slip the dogs of war.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Dylan Ratigan Dresses As Thomas Jefferson, Warns Against "Gambling Casinos" (VIDEO)

2009-10-30T12:38:20Z

On MSNBC's Morning Meeting on Friday, host Dylan Ratigan celebrated Halloween by donning a wig and dressing in revolutionary garb like his favorite Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, channeling the former president's trenchant criticism of big banks.

Ratigan pointed out that Jefferson was the first and most vocal opponent of Alexander Hamilton's proposal for a federal bank. Jefferson's greatest fear, Ratigan announced in comparison to our current economic crisis, was a "bank takeover of the government that would leave taxpayers as slaves to bank-run gambling casinos." Quoting Jefferson directly, Ratigan said, "the banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

Around Ratigan's neck hung a large padlock with TBTF written on it, signifying the government's complicity in the "too big to fail" doctrine. The popular (and controversial) finance blog Zero Hedge alleged on Thursday evening that the Obama administration is seeking to turn TBTF into official canonized law and the blog attempted to quantify the TBTF subsidies by the government.

From Zero Hedge:

In essence it guarantees that the massive mega banks like Goldman Sachs, BofA, and JPM will take on so much disproportionate risk the next time around (and with a moral-hazard encouraging Federal Reserve as risk regulator virtually guarantees their implosion) that not only will they blow up spectacularly once again, but that their bailout next time around will surely force America, already strapped with trillions of new upcoming debt courtesy of stimulus after stimulus, into sovereign insolvency.

The article cites an analysis by the Center For Economic and Policy Research as proof that government contributions to big banks amount to nearly 50 percent of bank profits. The article concludes, "as profits are a function almost exclusively of banker [compensation] as the only substantial banking overhead (consisting of base and bonus), the sad conclusion is that the government directly is funding at least half the bonus pool for all the TBTF institutions."

See the video of Ratigan as Jefferson below:

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Matt Osborne: Campbell Brown Smears MSNBC

2009-10-30T06:32:45Z

When CNN's Campbell Brown played the MSNBC card against Valerie Jarrett, she was engaging in the fallacy of false equivalence. Faux Noise is all slant, all the time, while MSNBC is absolutely not a liberal mirror-image. The slant is not equal, nor do the two channels offset like penalties in a football game. Brown's comparison is a smear.

Yesterday morning on Fox and Friends, there were twenty-two mentions of ACORN, even though there hasn't been any actual news about ACORN in weeks. There were only two dismissive mentions of good economic news. That's their standard template for mornings.

Meanwhile on MSNBC, former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough enjoys the spotlight with Mika Brzezinski, who...well, let's just say that apple fell far from the tree. Alongside Bob Cesca's term "barbecue media," we now have "cupcake media."

And that's just the morning show.

For the rest of the day, regular commentators on MSNBC may include Pat Buchanan, who declared "culture war" in America and says Hitler was misunderstood; Mark Halperin, who said "white men need not apply" for Supreme Court vacancies; Maria Bartiromo, who brings the stupid on health care; Todd Harris, a Republican strategist; Michael Medved, who says your children are being indoctrinated by the Obama administration; Mort Zuckerman, apologist for right-wing West Bank settlers; Michelle Bernard, death panels-for-breast cancer propagandist; and Clifford May, neocon warmonger.

Repeating: these are the guests on MSNBC. There are no equivalent left-wing personalities on Faux Noise. The essential difference is that MSNBC courts controversy with right-wing pundits, while Faux Noise manufactures nontroversy with right-wing pundits. Here's just one example of very, very many:

But let us examine the evening lineup. From his doom bunker, Glenn Beck plays to his adoring audience with racist redbaiting, lunatic chalkboard diagrams, and boiled plastic frogs; Sean Hannity smears without correction; and Bill O'Reilly uses a propaganda technique every four seconds to convince us there's a war on faith in America.

I have yet to see Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, or Rachel Maddow manufacture alarmist nontroversies. Yes, Olbermann had a lot to say about Bush's abuses of power -- but those were real, whereas Faux Noise may scream about abuses of power but they invariably turn out to be projections of fertile imaginations.

Indeed, here is another telling difference between Faux Noise and MSNBC: The latter has been falsely accused of "doctoring" video, while Faux Noise doctors video all the time to invent conspiracies out of thin air. And while a gulf yawns between the editorial MSNBC and the daytime-news MSNBC, there is no such gap at Faux Noise, where Chris Wallace regularly echoes Glenn Beck.

Nor does MSNBC promote astroturf movements. Faux Noise has given tea parties prominent coverage; hosts have invariably praised them, and spread across the country to cover the events. Neal Cavuto was captured on camera inflating crowd figures and a Faux Noise assistant was caught coaching the crowd. When Faux Noise lied about other networks' coverage, Brown's colleague Rick Sanchez famously called them out on it. To date, Sanchez has not had to correct MSNBC for reporting lies as if they were facts.

Faux Noise is, and has always been, a GOP propaganda organization. Party research and talking points appear on air every day -- right down to the typos. On-air personalities routinely use the first-person plural when referring to Republican claims, proudly call themselves "the opposition," and declare "victory" in legislative battles.

Last, but certainly not least, no MSNBC personality has demonized an individual and inspired viewers to kill them. The same cannot be said for Faux Noise.

I should like Mrs. Brown to explain, in detail, exactly how the two channels display anything like the same amount of bias, even opposing bias. I would also ask that she examine the cult-like characteristics of Faux Noise viewers, remember a little history, and tell us how this ends well.

Brown should do that because she's an actual, honest-to-God journalist. Otherwise, we'll be forced to conclude she was inspired by CNN's plummeting ratings to smear a rival network. Any honest examination of Faux Noise can have only one conclusion: it is not a news organization, and what they do is not journalism.

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