Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

On Morning Joe this morning John Meacham talked about the Newsweek reporter who has been held in Iran for several months.

He is of course correct to be upset about this and lambasting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the irony of him coming to the UN to freely speak when a reporter can’t freely report a presidential election.

During the discussion it was pointed out that Iran is developing Nukes and as I watch I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t the senior editor of Newsweek Michael Hirsh say that lumping Iran into the axis of evil was “devastatingly stupid?

Amazing the perception difference when George Bush is not in the White House.

I really like Gateway pundit but they are being unfair …

Posted: September 9, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: ,

…to Chuck Todd in this post:

Chuck Todd explained on Hardball why Americans oppose Obamacare.
It’s not because the legislation stinks.
It’s because they’re racists.

That sounds really bad and I’d be really upset with Todd if I didn’t ya know watch the embedded clip:

Barnicle asks if there is any sense in the White House that race has a part to play in the opposition to the president.

Todd states that the White House is staying away from that argument with a ten foot pole but the advisers who are “outside” the White House are jumping all over it first. He gives their argument but doesn’t endorse it.

Now watching it you might conclude that Barnicle is endorsing that opinion obliquely but you can’t, in my opinion fairly state that Todd is.

This morning on Morning Joe they are covering editorials. They mentioned briefly that Sarah Palin wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today, but “we aren’t reading that one” said Mika.

Instead the covered Bill Clinton’s advice for democrats and Maureen Dowd.

After all why would you be interested in what the single most popular figure in the opposition party, the one who single handedly caused the “dare I say it death panel” language to be pulled from the Senate version of the bill.

Morning Joe has can’t get over the idea the Mrs. Palin stands behind her use of the phrase “death panel” even backing it up in written testimony to the New York State Aging committee.

When Mrs. Palin talks it is news, whether the Morning Joe crew in particular or MSNBC like it or not.

Update: But the opinion of very far left Kathleen Vanden Heuvel of the Nation is not only worth covering but worth having on to discuss things. Makes sense she is MUCH more relevant than what Sarah Palin thinks right?

Update 2: Maybe in deference to Marc Ambinder et/al we should refer to her as “She who must not be reported.”

You know I been thinking and thinking and I can’t think of a think I feel like saying about anything else right now, but some other people have interesting things to say today.

VDH has some great comparisons between past the present concerning President Obama:

Once upon a time, Candidate Obama also assured skeptical voters that he would show us how to transcend race. He was no Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, who used skin color and white guilt for careerist purposes. The Reverend Wright, “typical white person,” Michelle Obama’s “downright mean country,” and the Pennsylvania “clingers” remark were mere aberrations of the exhausting campaign, hyped by the shameless right wing.

But soon the people got the attorney general of the United States calling them racial cowards and dismissing voter-intimidation suits against club-wielding Black Panthers who had swarmed voting booths. Cambridge police were relegated to Neanderthal profilers who stereotyped the innocent, such as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Environment czar Van Jones warned of white conspiracies to pollute the ghetto and bragged that blacks, unlike whites, did not go on public-school shooting sprees. The nation’s most powerful politicians, like House Ways and Means chairman Charlie Rangel and New York governor David Paterson, for some strange reason, were suddenly victims of racial bias, which alone explained their travails. All this was not supposed to happen in the age of Obama.

Jay Nordlinger expands:

They say that “hate” is rearing its head, and that President Obama and the Democrats are the victims of it. Let me make a couple of predictions: I predict that the chairman of the Republican National Committee will never say, “I hate the Democrats and everything they stand for. This [politics, basically] is a struggle of good and evil. And we’re the good.”

Howard Dean said that about the GOP: “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. . . .”

I predict that an editor of a conservative magazine will never write a piece called “The Case for Obama Hatred,” beginning, “I hate President Barack Obama.”

A New Republic editor did this, about Bush.

Byron York continues to show why his loss is painful for National Review:

The first words of the Times’ story on Jones’ resignation were, “In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration’s conservative critics. …” One news anchor suggested Jones was “the Republican right’s first scalp.” Other coverage called the Jones affair a victory for Glenn Beck, Fox News, right-wing blogs, and even Sarah Palin, who played no role in the matter.

If you throw in Rush Limbaugh, you have all the bogey-people of the conservative world. To some on the left, including some journalists, denying them a victory was a top priority, no matter what Van Jones had said and done.

There was a day, not too long ago, when the Times and other influential news organizations could kill a story — could deny the bad guys a win — simply by ignoring it. Sometimes they still try. But it just won’t work anymore.

Just one Minute highlighted a Firedog post that rolled my eyes:

Now he’s been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 — that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11. Well, that and calling Republicans “assholes.” I’m pretty sure that if you search through the histories of every single liberal leader at the CAF dinner that night, they have publicly said that and worse.

Jane in case you haven’t figured it out those facts are BAD things.

Speaking of Bad things:

And since the blogosphere is ranting and raving about Truthers right now, and how horrible and evil they are (a position with which I agree), let’s take a little look at who’s behind the Cincinnati Tea Party, shall we?

One of the main organizers, and a featured speaker, is Jason Rink…

…Lovely! A highly placed Ron Paulian, and an associate of racist paleocon Lew Rockwell!

And Rink is also … you guessed it … a Truther.

I’ve attended a tea party and agree with their goals but this type of thing is very bad and has to be nailed at once. If they become Ron Paul rallies this is a very bad thing and overrides the legit message.

and finally via Glenn an Ann Althouse commentator has the best take on it all:

“Ha, this will play out exactly as I thought it might. My son adores Obama – entirely from things he’s heard at school. By the end of this, he’s going to think of the dude as just one more boring windbag.”

Those guys are doing better than me.

Oh and there will be larger police presence at my kids school today due to the murders in town.