John Roberts -- your liberal media at work

CNN's Roberts says Scheuer's "major weapon" comment is "out there."

Beck guest Scheuer: "The only chance we have as a country right now is" for bin Laden to "detonate a major weapon" in U.S.

For seven years we were told to vote for Bush and support his policies on the grounds that "he kept us safe." No more (allegedly) attacks after September 11, 2001 meant his policies were working. To even question the administration, let alone oppose it, was equated with treason.

Now we have a conservative commentator suggesting that NOT being attacked post-Bush is proof that we're NOT safe. Of course, if this idiot gets his way and we ARE attacked again, that will also be considered proof that we're not safe. Either way, Obama gets blamed by conservatives and the mainstream media.

Now, I want you to imagine a liberal, ANY liberal, openly calling for attacks on the United States. If merely disagreeing with the Bush administration was synonymous with treason, do you doubt that a liberal advocating terrorist bombings by America's enemies would get that liberal jailed indefinitely without charges, or worse?

But the best Roberts can do when the calls for attacks against America come from conservatives is passively note that the statement is "out there?" What "liberal" media?

Mark Sanford highlights Republican hypocrisy

From MMFA:

Fox News misidentified Republican Governor Mark Sanford as a Democrat during the press conference he held to discuss his disappearance and extramarital affair.

I want to make three points about Mark Sanford.

First, another family values Republican gets caught, and Fox news identifies him as a Democrat. Fox News can be counted on to do this every time a Republican is caught. Now, when people say Fox is really just an answer to "liberal" CNN and MSNBC, I'm going to ask how many times those networks falsely identified a scandal-plagued Democrat as a Republican.

Second, remember that during Bill Clinton's impeachment, Republicans, including Sanford, who was in the House at the time, claimed they weren't impeaching Clinton over "the sex" but over "the lying."

So, third, as far as we know, his staff lied and said he was on the Appalachian Trail and that they'd been in touch with him. His wife lied and said he was away writing, later changing her story to say he was on the Appalachian Trail. I suspect that these people didn't lie on their own -- it should be clear that they said what HE told them to say. So, can I expect impeachment of Sanford over "the lying"? Can I expect the media to start a resignation clock or condemn him and demand that he be impeached? Somehow I doubt it.

And here's another complaint: Headlines all say "Sanford admits affair." No, he didn't. It's an admission if, after he's done talking, people say "oh my God, I had no idea." If you're merely confirming what people already know because you've been found out, it's not an admission, it's just the first time you haven't lied about what you were doing.

And while I think of it, I haven't forgotten that Sanford joined the Air Force Reserve in order to bolster his resume when he was running for governor, but then attempted mightily to escape performing his duty once the election was over.

Why is John Ensign being let off so easy?

John Ensign admits affair

"John Ensign admits affair." How about "John Ensign admits affair only because of blackmail threat?" How about "John Ensign, who condemned Clinton for affair with staff assistant and voted to impeach, admits affair with staff assistant?" How about "John Ensign, who ignored sexual crimes of fellow Republican Senators, admits affair?" How about "John Ensign, who displays false sanctimony through membership in Promise Keepers, admits affair?"

It's as though the admission in and of itself is the story, and that the story is not really a big deal.

Liberal media, my ass.

Let me tell YOU about dictatorships

From Media Matters:

In her June 16 WorldNetDaily.com column, radio host Janet Porter writes that the Obama "dictatorship must be stopped. And it must be stopped now. If we don't, we'll lose more than our strongest ally in the Middle East and the free market - we'll lose our lives."

Listen you clueless nut job. George W. Bush got fewer votes and yet ended up taking office.

He expanded the use of signing statements to ignore the plain letter of the law.

He asked Americans to spy on each other.

He introduced warrantless wiretaps, sneak and peek searches, and detention without charges, the right to counsel, or habeus corpus.

He used the military to further his individual objectives in a war of choice, not necessity.

He condemned as traitors anyone who merely DISAGREED with him.

He spoke in person only to carefully chosen, supportive partisan audiences.

He used law enforcement, most notably the Secret Service, to suppress dissent.

He used the justice system, including federal prosecutors, to launch partisan prosecutions of his opponents and bury actual evidence of wrongdoing by his supporters.

He used members of his administration to threaten reporters and commentators who didn't agree with him.

He paid members of the media to write fawning praise of himself and his administration.

He created fake journalists (Jeff Gannon), to disseminate his message and attack his opponents.

You know what those actions are? A dictatorship. Oh, but that was OK, because you supported THAT president, right?

So, you're not against dictatorship so much as you're against being out of power.

And while I think of it, don't forget who said THIS:

"I told all four that there were going to be some times where we don't agree with each other. But that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

Thom Hartmann does it too

Jesus Christ!

I was listening between 5 PM and 5:30 today to the rebroadcast of this morning's Thom Hartmann program. Hartmann correctly pointed out that when it comes to message dissemination, the Republicans and conservatives have overlapping networks that stretch from radio and TV to books to think tanks to lobbyists and public figures. As an example, he pointed out a typical conservative tactic -- buying copies of a conservative author's books in bulk as a way to inflate sales (and payments to the author), and then giving them away.

But Hartmann then veered into GOP talking points land when he repeated the stale, false Republican talking point that George Soros (whom conservatives regard as the personification of evil for his large donations to liberal causes) funds Media Matters for America, the progressive web site that provides analysis and criticism of conservative commentators and the pro-Republican mainstream media.

Godammit, that's not true! It's an O'Reilly-Limbaugh falsehood, and Hartmann fell for it!

With "progressive" commentators like this, is it any wonder that the Republicans kick our asses when it comes to talk radio?

Bill Press -- GOP talking points machine

I'm intensely angry with Bill Press.

Today between 7:15 and 7:30 AM on America Left he was talking about how political commentators who say incendiary things bear responsibility for the recent rise in violence. (My paraphrase) "We've seen it from the right with the killing of Dr. Tiller, and we've seen it from the left with the killing of the Army recruiters in Little Rock."

WHAT?! First, I challenge you to show me ANY liberal commentator who has incited violence the way O'Reilly, Beck, Savage, Liddy, etc. do on a daily basis. I'll bet you can't name a single one.

Second, Muslim extremists are NOT "left wing," though conservative commentators would like us to believe that. Religious fundamentalists who want to return women to a more traditional role, impose a dictatorial clerical government and re-establish an islamic caliphate are by definition CONSERVATIVE and right wing -- they're AGAINST liberalism, democracy and progress.

Press did such a masterful job of repeating Republican talking points in the guise of liberal commentary that I'm convinced America Left can't justify keeping him on the air except by ignoring what he said. I'll tell you this -- I'm through trying to listen to him.

Associated Press -- just fucking stop

I'm increasingly bothered by AP Radio News. It comes on at the top of the hour when I'm listening to America Left on XM.

To start with, the "journalism" on these segments is often quite shoddy. It's not unusual to hear incomplete reports -- stories that leave out the subject or some salient detail. I understand the concept of editing for conciseness, but leaving required information and leaving listeners wondering what the hell you're talking about is just slipshod.

In addition, the AP Radio News reports often include "journalists" (maybe the proper term is "news readers") who can't get through a two or three sentence report without losing their place, stuttering, getting the enunciation wrong, and so on. It's often quite obvious to me when hearing these miscues that the news reader is reading the reports for the first time. Come on! How about some rehearsal? If the first time the news reader sees the story is when he or she is actually on the air, that shows a tremendously unprofessional lack of preparation.

But what really bothers me about AP Radio news is its blatantly biased reporting, which is always skewed in favor of conservatives. This fact is especially bothersome because I'm listening to America LEFT! It's bad enough that I have to deal with conservative bias in all other media forms, but it seems to me that if I'm PAYING for a service that enables me to listen to PROGRESSIVE talk radio, what I'm hearing ought to be... what's the word I want... Progressive.

Today I got this during the 3 PM AND 4 PM broadcasts: Judge Sotomayor visited with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee today and explained her previous comments that as a "wise, Latina woman, she'd always rule more effectively than a white man."

Godammit, THAT IS NOT WHAT SHE SAID! THIS is what she said:

"In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society.

Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?

Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering. We, I mean all of us in this room, must continue individually and in voices united in organizations that have supported this conference, to think about these questions and to figure out how we go about creating the opportunity for there to be more women and people of color on the bench so we can finally have statistically significant numbers to measure the differences we will and are making.

I am delighted to have been here tonight and extend once again my deepest gratitude to all of you for listening and letting me share my reflections on being a Latina voice on the bench. Thank you."

Clearly, Judge Sotomayor was talking about the entirety of a judge's training, education, experience and qualifications. She didn't mean only race. She didn't EVER say that she'd always rule more effectively than a white man. The AP surely knows this. But as just another conservative mouthpiece, they're obligated to bury the facts in favor of their right wing spin. Needless to say, I'd be thrilled if America Left dumped AP Radio News.

CNN invents a backlash

From MMFA:

CNN's Ed Henry and David Gergen discussing Barack Obama raising money for Harry Reid:

Henry: The jetsetting could fuel a backlash.

Gergen: I think most Americans feel that he's got his hand full with problems back in Washington, why is he out raising money?

Remember all the fund raisers George W. Bush didn't attend because he had his hands full with problems?

Like this one?

This one?

These ones?

This one?

This one?

This one?

This one?

See the problem with the media is that it's too liberal...