Do you think Steve Benen might be a tad biased?

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Seriously:

HALF-TERM GOVERNOR BREAKS HER SILENCE…. As tempted as I am to simply ignore former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) latest statement, I suppose there’s no point in pretending it’s not of some interest to the political world this morning.

Palin has been unusually quiet since Saturday’s massacre in Tucson, and as interest in the toxicity of political rhetoric has grown more intense, her role in cheapening and dragging down our discourse has generated a fair amount of attention.

Today, Palin broke her silence issuing a video, which is nearly eight minutes long. It’s a standard tactic — the right-wing media personality can’t subject herself to questions or muster the confidence to deal with cross-examinations, so to communicate, Palin’s forced to hide behind statements others write for her, and then upload them. It’s not exactly the stuff Profiles in Courage are made of.

In any case, the statement/video is about what one might expect. Palin, speaking from Alaska with an American flag over her right shoulder, has no regrets and no apologies to offer. Instead, she’s concerned about “blood libel.”

“If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

I don’t imagine Palin actually knows what “blood libel” means, but historically, it’s referred to the ridiculous notion of Jews engaging in ritual killings of Christian children. More commonly, it’s a phrase intended to convey the suffering of an oppressed minority.

In other words, Palin is apparently feeling sorry for herself, again, using a needlessly provocative metaphor that casts her as something of a martyr.

Benen uses the phrase “half-term governor” at least three times in his post. That right there indicates that maybe he’s not being entirely neutral and objective.

I like the “breaks her silence” jab too. On Saturday, soon after the news of the shootings broke, Sarah Palin posted this statement on Facebook:

My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona.

On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.

She then went about her business. Various people have been criticizing her for not saying more, specifically for not admitting it was all her fault, apologizing and promising to never show her face in public again.

Of course if she had been giving interviews she would have been criticized for trying to steal the spotlight for herself.

Apparently Benen hasn’t got the memo that Sarah was dogwhistling to her fundiegelical supporters when she used the words “blood-libel.” He thinks she’s just a stupid girl who was using words she didn’t understand.

As for the flag reference, I wonder what Benen thought when candidate Obama gave his Greatestest Speech on Race EVAH with about 10 American flags behind him?

That’s it for another episode of “Look over there! It’s Sarah Palin!”

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2007 letter from Giffords found in Loughner’s safe

Jared Lee Loughner

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From NBC affiliate KPNX-12 in Arizona:

Letter from Giffords found in safe of murder suspect

A letter from Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords found in the safe of the home of accused gunman Jared Loughner thanks him for attending a 2007 “Congress on your Corner” event.

Handwriting on an envelope said, “I planned ahead” and “My assassination.”

It contained Giffords’ name, along with what appeared to be Loughner’s signature.

Those facts were contained as part of a federal complaint filed in U.S. District Court that charges Loughner with two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder at Giffords’ “Congress on your Corner” event on Saturday.

This matches up with information we heard yesterday:

Caitie Parker, a former classmate, said Loughner had met Gabrielle Giffords at an event in 2007. He “asked her a question and he told me she was ‘stupid and unintelligent’,” she said. Clarence Dupnik, the Pima County Sheriff, said that Loughner had been in contact with Miss Giffords’s office about the event.

From what I have read about paranoid schizophrenia it is not uncommon for them to fixate on someone. It sounds like Loughner may have been fixated on Giffords a year before Sarah Palin ever came on the national scene.

Here is a copy of the criminal complaint filed against Loughner. From the complaint:

Some of the evidence seized from that located included a letter in a safe, addressed to “Mr. Jared Loughney” at 7741 N. Soledad Avenue, from Congresswoman Giffords, on Congressional stationary, dated August 30, 2007, thanking him for attending a “Congress on your Corner” event at the Foothills Mall in Tuscon. Also recovered in the safe was an envelope with handwriting on the envelope stating “I planned ahead,” and “My assassination,” and the name “Giffords,” along with what appears to be Loughner’s signature.

Sadly, I expect that this information will make no difference to the people determined to “prove” that yesterday’s tragedy was Sarah Palin’s fault.

(h/t 1539days)

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The truth is biased

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Big Tent Democrat:

There is a new celebratory quality to journalism that manifests itself in different ways. In the Beltway, it’s being in with the government In crowd. That means sacrificing objectivity and the truth.

Davies seems to have allowed, indeed he appears to be celebrating, his belief that Assange is a loathsome figure (not about the sex he makes clear) interfere with his duties as a journalist.

Can Nick Davies be considered an objective reporter on Wikileaks or Assange in the face of that admission? Similarly Wired magazine appears to have made similar moral judgments about Assange. In an e-mail he sent to Glenn Greenwald, the entirety of which he published himself, Wired’s Ryan Singel wrote of Assange and Wikileaks:

Suffice it to say I’m disappointed by your article, which I find to be warped by your allegiance to Wikileaks, which gets nothing but glowing accolades from you, despite ample evidence that Assange and Wikileaks aren’t acting in good faith.

Now whether Assange or Wikileaks are acting in good faith is an important part of the Wikileaks story, but it strains credulity to believe that a reporter who has concluded that Assange and Wikileaks “aren’t acting in good faith” can present itself as, in the words of Newsweek, “objective and nonpartisan.”

First of all, let me remind you that BTD thought media bias was a good thing when it came to selecting the Democratic nominee:

As most of you know by now, the difference maker for me in supporting Barack Obama in the primaries was the fact the he is the Media Darling of the election.

Secondly, while the media should be somewhat objective and neutral at the beginning of researching/investigating a story, by the end they should have formed an opinion. They can’t put aside their own knowledge and experience and that will affect their perceptions.

More importantly, we rely on reporters (and cops) to evaluate what they see and hear and give us an accurate picture of what they think really happened. But, just like cops, they need to present us with ALL the information they have gathered so we can double-check their conclusions.

How many times in recent years have we seen the media present both sides of as story as equally credible when they’re not? How often have they given us a completely one-sided presentation?

Both approaches are equally wrong.

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Caveat: I’m talking about what’s called “investigative journalism.” When reporting on something like a political debate the media should try to present both sides as accurately as possible so the voters can form their own opinions. But even then they should fact-check misstatements and incorrect information.

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Keith Olbermann suspended for donating to Democrats

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Politico:

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay after POLITICO reported that he made three campaign contributions to Democratic candidates.

MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement Friday: “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of Congress and failed Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Olbermann, who acknowledged the contributions in a statement to POLITICO, made the maximum legal donations of $2,400 apiece to Conway and to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. He donated to the Arizona pair on Oct. 28 — the same day that Grijalva appeared as a guest on Olbermann’s “Countdown” show.

NBC has a rule against employees contributing to political campaigns, and a wide range of news organizations prohibit political contributions — considering it a breach of journalistic independence to contribute to the candidates they cover.

I find myself in the strange position of defending Olby.

He is a citizen and has the right to support candidates just like everyone else. It’s not like his political leanings were a secret.

There are plenty of other reasons that MSNBC could cite for suspending or firing Olbermann, like the many sexist statements he has made on the air.

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More discussion at Memeorandum

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Learning the wrong lessons

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Violet Socks:

There’s a remarkable piece in the Times this morning: Young Voters Say They Feel Abandoned. It’s about the enthusiasm gap heading into the mid-terms, which will likely see the formerly pro-Obama college crowd staying away from the polls in droves. The remarkable thing about the article is that the reporters cannot figure out why this might be happening. There is not a single reference to the Obama Administration’s stunning failure to deliver on its campaign promises (both implicit and explicit). Instead, the reporters chalk up the youngsters’ malaise to their feeling “left out” in some vague way. Probably just typical immaturity. Maybe if Obama had gone on The Daily Show more often, the kids would still be with him.

Oh, yeah, that’s it. If only he’d gone on The Daily Show more often.

The article is the soul-twin of another article that appeared in the Times 10 days ago: Democrats Try to Revive Female Voters’ Enthusiasm. The reporters (a different set, though obviously working from the same playbook) note that women seem to have lost their mojo for Obama and the Democratic Party. But the reason for this phenomenon is bafflingly mysterious. What could it be? Perhaps, the reporters say, it has something to do with the economy. Women seem depressed about the economy—yeah, that’s it!—and so they don’t feel like voting.

Next we have a CDS infected double-dip from Michael Medved:

No wonder news reports suggest that Bill Clinton, not Barack Obama, is the most popular campaigner for Democrats in this election cycle. Embattled candidates who want the current president to stay away because they fear close association with his unpopular record welcome President Clinton with enthusiasm and gratitude.

But those candidates fail to acknowledge that the turning point that saved Clinton’s presidency came in November 1994, with the Republican sweep of the midterm elections.

Newt Gingrich and the “Contract with America” GOP captured 53 Democratic House seats and eight Democratic seats in the Senate.

Almost immediately, Clinton reoriented his presidency toward a strategy of “triangulation”: positioning himself as the sensible centrist who stood midway between the aggressive conservatives who controlled Congress and his own stridently liberal Democratic allies on Capitol Hill. Abandoning the activism and sweeping goals that characterized the first two years of his presidency, Clinton rediscovered his identity as a New Democrat and governed successfully for the next six years as a pragmatic centrist.

I’ve said repeatedly that the mainstream media is a tool of corporatist propaganda. An oligarchy of big corporations and wealthy individuals own almost all of the newspapers, magazines and radio stations in this country. They own ALL the major television networks.

When the media isn’t busy trying to distract you with tabloid gossip they are running a scam designed to convince you that you are hearing both sides of the story.

On one side there is FOX News and all the other parts of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire presenting you with the conservative/Republican version of events. On the other side there is MSNBC and the New York Times presenting what is allegedly the progressive/Democrat version.

Both sides are lying to you.

The media will never “get it” because they don’t want to get it. They will say what their corporate masters tell them to say. The will do that because they want to keep their jobs.

Tomorrow and in the days that follow the right-wing media will solemnly declare that the Democrats lost because they were too liberal. Meanwhile the left-wing media will blame the Tea Partiers, the Chamber of Commerce, stupid voters and just about anything and everything except the failure of Obama and the Democrats to keep their promises to the voters.

The problem isn’t that Obama and the Democrats were too liberal. The problem is they weren’t liberal enough. And don’t buy that horseshit about “timid and weak” Democrats. They aren’t cowards and weaklings, they are corrupt crooks.

Failure was the plan.

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Dishonest Intellectuals

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I was so busy ranting and raving yesterday that I missed a good one. Glenzilla wrote a good piece on the pervasiveness of Democratic dissatisfaction, and linked to this post by Michael Kinsley at Politico on the topic of intellectual dishonesty:

The blight of intellectual dishonesty is everybody’s problem. What is intellectual honesty? Yglesias seems to think it’s the same thing as accuracy or honesty, plain and simple. But it’s not. Accuracy means getting your facts straight. Honesty means not telling conscious or purposeful lies on questions of hard fact. Intellectual honesty is more demanding: It means being truthful about what’s going on inside your own head.

To start, you shouldn’t say anything that you don’t believe is true. But that’s just to start. Intellectual honesty means that you have a basis for your belief, that you have tested your belief against other beliefs on the same subject, that you have no blinding bias or, at least, have put bias aside as best you can. “Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”: Your views on, say, the constitutional limits of presidential war powers should not turn on which party controls the presidency. Your views on one subject should be consistent with your views on all other subjects. And if you’re going to base your reelection campaign on your opponent’s 20-year-old arrest for drunken driving, or on how his visits to Washington as a teenager (you visited once; he visited three times and even sent his mom a postcard saying he was having fun) make him too “inside the Beltway,” you need to have handy an explanation of why you believe that this is one of the most pressing issues facing voters.

Glenn had this to say:

It’s fine if someone wants to be a cheerleader, clapping loudly in order to rally the troops. Every Party has and needs those types of people (though it’s strange (though not unusual) that a person who wants to do that would call himself a “journalist”; generally one finds that trait in political operatives and spokespeople).

[…]

The claim that dissatisfaction among Democrats is confined to a “couple of blogs” might advance Schmitt’s political objectives. Given the human craving to make perceptions correspond with desires, it likely makes him feel good to believe that it’s true. But it’s so plainly false that it’s hard to believe that anyone could say it with a straight face, let alone believe that it will help anything — their Party or themselves — to claim it. As a general proposition, papering over serious problems — pretending they do not exist — is never constructive, and that’s certainly true when it comes to a Party’s political failures. Worst of all, making this claim obscures a very important truth that ought to be promoted and amplified, one which the establishment media (“move to the Right!”) will do its best to deny after November: Democrats do themselves no favors when they ignore the wishes, values and agenda of their “base”: i.e., those who are most responsible for their being in power. Quite the opposite is true.

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You may have noticed that my most spittle-flecked rants are the ones directed at the A-list progressive bloggers rather than Republicans or right-wing bloggers. The reason for that is best encapsulated by this comment from WMCB:

I do not get freaked out and angry when my elderly dog with a bladder problem keeps peeing on the corner of my couch. I don’t LIKE it, but I sort of expect it.

I do, however, get pissed off as hell if my husband is doing it.

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Once upon a time Left Blogistan was a meritocracy. This was back in the days when the Mainly Stupid Media was discussing the distinguishing characteristics of the Clenis and swooning over Commander Codpiece. More and more people started using the internet and some of them started web logs which were basically diaries or journals where people posted their thoughts and ideas.

Some of these “blogs” focused on news and politics. The authors usually didn’t have special sources of information, they just did analysis that was very different from that being done by the chattering classes. A few of these bloggers gained fame not because somebody handed them a megaphone but because of the quality of their writing.

Other writers linked to them, blogrolls were started, and an online community formed. These bloggers eschewed groupthink, were irreverent and took pride in being members of the “reality based community.” Oh, and they said “fuck” a lot and used lots of other profanity too.

Those were heady days, heady days indeed.

I’m not talking about latecomers like Ezra and Matty Y. who went straight from potty-training to professional (paid) blogging. I’m talking about people like Digby, who built her reputation without ever revealing her true identity. In fact, many people were surprised to learn that Digby was a “she,” not a “he.”

Then came the wunderkind (almost all male) who looked at blogging as a financial opportunity and talked about business models. These were guys like Markos and Josh. They were followed by Arianna and other well-funded entrepreneurs who simply bought their way in. Last of all came the Gen X’ers like Matt and Ezra who were just hired and given the online equivalent of megaphones.

Somewhere during the time the blogosphere was becoming”professional” it also became corrupted. Most of us didn’t realize it until about 2008 when we were shocked and dismayed to learn the true natures of many people we had come to respect.

I don’t know if they changed or it was bullshit from day one. Some of both I’d guess.

For years they told us about the moral and ethical failings of the Republicans and Movement Conservatives. We were told we should aspire to more than just winning elections. We were supposed reform our political system by replacing the faux-morality of the right with a true morality based on truth, respect for the law and principles of democracy.

We opposed the war, racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry. We despised the “Village” and government secrecy. We tried to use the internet to organize grassroots activism and counter the influence of the malefactors of great wealth.

So what happened? Obamanation happened.

VastLeft:

This year’s running of the quadrennial horse race exposed — to those who would notice — many flaws in the progressive blogosphere, some as surprising as they were disappointing: bullying groupthink, classism, misogyny, and disturbing appetites for stale rightwing baloney and newly minted Drudgian smears.

Overarching the whole experience was a cloud of truthiness, believing whatever it felt good to believe, facts-be-damned.

The Obama skeptic found her/himself in the Ron Suskind role, the nose-against-the-glass reality-based wonk who “just didn’t get it,” being read the latest edition of the Arthur Jensen speech.

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Eric Boehlert:

One of the most interesting things bloggers have told me (often off the record) about the primary season was how clear it became that their readers really did dictate what the bloggers wrote. For years, bloggers and their readers had been in heated agreement about Bush, about Iraq, about the MSM. But in lots of cases they were not in agreement about who should be the Democratic nominee and bloggers mentioned to me how strange and uncomfortable that schism was, and how in the end many of them did just punt. Meaning, they got tired of fighting with their readers and simply didn’t write certain things because they knew it would create a pie fight within the site. They’re not especially proud of it, but they have conceded that they did alter what they wrote. And that for them it was a real eye-opener because they had spent years educating their readers about politics and the press and creating certain narratives together. And then during the primary season, some bloggers felt like their readers just completely ignored those shared lessons (and of course, the readers would say it was the blogger who ignored those shared lessons) that left the bloggers with the uncomfortable choice of essentially rejecting their readers or editing what they wrote. Today, some will admit they opted for the second choice.

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How about Digby?:

“I thought it was character assassination,” Digby told me a couple weeks after the RFK controversy had passed. She was exhausted by the toll the campaign had already taken on the blogosphere. She was also aware of the kind of pie fights that would erupt on her site if she posted a condemnation of those who unfairly attacked Clinton for her RFK comments. So Digby, who never endorsed either candidate, simply passed on the story. “I’m a chicken shit,” she said with a shake of her head.

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Whether corrupt or chickenshit, the things we saw were more than just disappointing, they were an infuriating betrayal of everything we believe in. Worst of all, things haven’t changed.

These “leaders” of Left Blogistan sold us out on health care reform. They traded away any discussion of single payer in exchange for Obama’s promises on the ambiguous “public option.” Corrente has done a good job of documenting the way all the big blogs acted in unison in squishing any mention of single payer.

So instead of being advocates for us they became cheerleaders for ObamaCare. But Obama fucked ’em, and we got fucked too.

Maybe they thought they were really doing the right thing, but what they did violated basic principles of democracy. We’re supposed to be all about openness and grassroots “bottom-up” action.

What the A-list bloggers did was to conspire in secret (through the Journolist, other listservs, private emails and/or White House conference calls) to suppress open discussion and impose a “top-down” outcome. If wasn’t the first time or the last.

Now they’re trying to use the Jedi mind-trick on us and convince us we’re living in a progressive paradise. Sorry guys, but that only works on weak minds so don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

Of course they don’t care what we think because we were prematurely correct and carry the PUMA taint.

Well they can all kiss my taint.

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Just say No!

Is this WTF week?

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Sombody said I seem angry lately. You think so? I wonder what gave them that impression.

Greg Sargent is buns up and kneeling:

What if the Dem base’s lack of enthusiasm is rooted in the fact that Dems aren’t even aware of how much Congress has accomplished in the last two years?

A new poll from Pew and National Journal contains a really striking finding: Only one third of Democrats think this Congress has achieved more than other recent Congresses. Meanwhile, 60 percent of Dems think it has accomplished the same or less.

[…]

Yet despite passing an enormous stimulus that many credit with rescuing us from disaster, passing health reform after a half century of failure, rescuing the auto industry, and successfully completing the biggest overhaul of Wall Street regulations since the Great Depresssion, only one third of Democrats think this Congress has achieved more than other recent ones.

Maybe this speaks to an enormous Dem failure to communicate their successes. Or maybe it’s another sign of how bloated expectations were amid the euphoria of Obama’s win. Or perhaps the sense of just how monumental our problems are — and the fact that Dems secured such large Congressional majorities — led rank and file Dems to expect truly historic, paradigm shifting levels of leadership.

Or maybe it’s because 60 percent of rank and file Democrats DON’T DRINK KOOL-AID!

(But that’s probably because they’re bitter, clingy racists, right Greg?)

Steve Benen assumes the position:

I don’t expect the public to have an extensive knowledge of federal policymaking history, but I at least hoped Americans would realize the scope of recent accomplishments. We are, after all, talking about a two-year span in which Congress passed and the president signed the Affordable Care Act, the Recovery Act, Wall Street reform, student loan reform, Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, new regulation of the credit card industry, new regulation of the tobacco industry, a national service bill, expanded stem-cell research, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the most sweeping land-protection act in 15 years, etc. Policymakers might yet add to this list in the lame-duck session.

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Uh, Steve? Didja ever consider that maybe we DO KNOW what Obama and the DINOcrats have been up to, but WE’RE NOT FUCKING HAPPY about it?

Here’s Glenzilla with an example of what I’m talking about:

As I’ve noted before, the column of mine which produced the greatest level of hate mail and anger in the last year — both in terms of intensity and quantity — was this one from August, 2009, when I compiled the evidence strongly suggesting that the White House, despite Obama’s multiple statements to the contrary, had secretly bargained away the public option with corporate interests early in the negotiation process and therefore did not intend to push for its inclusion in the final bill. That produced so much anger because it contradicted the central Democratic orthodoxy at the time that Obama — as he claimed in public — was trying as hard as he could to have a public option in the health care bill, but . . . gosh darn it, he was unfortunately stymied by his inability to get 60 votes for it, despite his best efforts (the fact that the health care bill ultimately passed via reconciliation, whereby the public option would have needed only 50 votes, was a separate issue).

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Gee, What’s not to love about that, Steve?

But wait, there’s more! Jonathon Chait at the New Republic:

Depressed Democrats Losing Touch With Reality

Every time a Democratic leader tells the base to stop whining and wake up to the fact that this is the most successful period of liberal governance in more than four decades, liberals just get more petulant.

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Jeebus! Whose side are these fuckwads on, anyway?

Serenity now! SERENITY NOW!

Senorita! Mas cerveza y tequila aqui, por favor!

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The Republicans are worse®?

SERENITY NOW!

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Kevin Drum at MoJo:

That final quote is priceless. “The health reform law did not deliver the uninsured in the way that insurers wanted.” Apparently they wanted the uninsured trussed up and delivered to their doorsteps wallet first, but without any actual obligation on their part to provide decent service in return. And they know just how to get their wish: “The industry would love to have a Republican Congress,” says Wendell Potter, a former Cigna insurance executive. “They were very, very successful during the years of Republican domination in Washington.”

But this is creating a wee problem for everyone. You see, Republicans are loudly proclaiming right now that they want to eliminate the part of the law that forces everyone to buy insurance. But that’s exactly the part of the law that insurance companies like. In fact, they want to see it strengthened. At the same time, they want to get rid of the popular parts of the law that keep insurance companies from figuring out ways to screw patients. But those are the provisions that Republicans say they’ll keep if we turn over Congress to them.

And yet, the insurance companies are massively funding Republicans this cycle anyway. Why would that be? It’s almost as if they’re sure that Republicans are just blowing campaign smoke and will support their agenda once they’re safely in office. They’re so sure, in fact, that they’re willing to put their money where their mouths are to the tune of millions of dollars.

So which do you believe? Republican mouths or insurance industry money? Decisions, decisions…..

Lets see Kevin, the Democrats passed a bill requiring every American with two nickles to rub together to give one of them to a health insurance company and the Republicans say they want to repeal it so you think we should . . . trust the Democrats?

WTF?

I mean seriously, WHAT THE FUCK???

Seems to me I recall that the health insurance companies donated to Obama early and often, along with the Wall Street bankers, BP, and the rest of the malefactors of great wealth. And wasn’t it just yesterday that the DNC was bragging about how much money they were raking in?

Let’s not forget Stupak-Pitts and Executive Order 13535 either.

You want to know the worst part? Kevin Drum GETS PAID TO WRITE THAT DRIVEL!

I remember when Mother Jones was a liberal publication, not another propaganda outlet shilling for the DINOcrats.

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Put down the Kool-aid and step away from the punchbowl

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Eleanor Clift at Newsweak:

Obama’s background as a community organizer may be hampering him as president. While his supporters still like him, they’re not so sure he has what it takes to bring about the hope and change he promised and excited the base. A community organizer empowers people to do things for themselves, and in government, you have to lead and order and direct, and that’s not Obama’s style, even though Republicans call him autocratic and Rush Limbaugh calls him “Ayatollah Obama.” Obama has had a lot of success in politics and academia, and on the mean streets of Chicago, by reaching consensus, and he expected to apply that life lesson now that he’s at the pinnacle of power, and it didn’t work.

Name one instance where Obama had success by reaching consensus. One. (Getting himself elected doesn’t count)

{{crickets}}

Barack Obama’s job as a community organizer was to get African Americans in Chicago’s South Side registered to vote and to the polls to help Mayor Harold Washington in his battle with the Daley Machine. Now that’s not a bad thing, but it was just a political hack job, not some higher calling.

When Washington died, Obama packed up and left for law school. When he came back he immediately started getting cozy with the Daley Machine.

BTW – Does this mean that being a community organizer is NOT a qualification to be POTUS?

Same planet, different worlds

F**@#$^%%!!

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Rebecca Traister comes clean two years too late:

In 50 years it could be a magnificent miniseries or something. What are some examples of big stories that people either don’t remember or weren’t even aware of at the time?

Here’s a thing that I didn’t know at the time. When Hillary won New Hampshire, she became the first woman in American history to win a primary. I mean, I sort of knew that, of course, what she was doing was historic. But this was a massive thing, a change in 220 years of presidential history. I didn’t know, and it was my job to know.

And I went back and looked at the New York Times article that sort of summed up the events the next day: Hillary Clinton and McCain win New Hampshire. The article goes into great detail about her crying and all that. But it doesn’t mention that this was the first time in American history that a woman had won a presidential primary.

There were lots of smaller things, too. When I tell people about the NPR producer who compared Hillary to Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” people would say “What?! Somebody said that?!”

[…]

A lot of the misogyny, as well as the racism. A lot of that stuff on television, because there were so many channels going at the same time, and we were all struggling to keep up, we missed so many of the things that were being said.

[…]

I actually assumed that anti-Hillary misogyny would take the form that it did in the beginning, the Hillary nutcrackers and the “two fat thighs and a left wing” jokes. This loutish, mostly right wing anti-Hillary spew that we have gotten for decades.

The thing that had a radicalizing impact on me began after [Hillary lost in] Iowa. Because there was this pile-on, and to me it was mind-bending. It was coming often from people on the left. It was like something they had been keeping inside as they bit their tongues and covered this woman who had the gall to be the front-runner and the “inevitable” candidate, which was the word that they threw out there. And finally she had shown weakness, and they were just going nuts.

I wrote a piece for Salon about how, despite the fact that I was not a Hillary supporter, had I lived in New Hampshire I would have voted for her that week, because I was so pissed off. I didn’t know it at the time, but Rachel Maddow said something very similar about feeling like she wanted to defend her on air. There was a video made by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post, just laughing, sneering at Hillary for giving a rally where she answered all the voters’ questions and it went on for a long time. Showing these voters yawning and saying, “Whoa, she’s such a snooze.” I began to see in this very active, palpable way how she was being talked about as Tracy Flick, or Margaret from Dennis the Menace, or Hermione Granger — you know, the know it all girl. And that’s when I began to switch.

[…]

Well I was no fan of Hillary going in. For a long time, prior to her campaign, my feelings were negligible. In fact, I felt a kind of embarrassment that women were expected to have such strong feelings about Hillary. I admired her from a distance, but politically I had less and less in common with her as she moved to the center.

I was one of those few, proud, now deeply embarrassed John Edwards supporters. So when it came to super Tuesday I had to choose between her and Obama, about whom I felt roughly equivalent. I wound up almost flipping a coin and voting for Hillary, but I was still completely ambivalent about her.

Eventually I became a lot more aware of the ways in which not only Hillary but also her supporters were being talked about. I became increasingly sensitive to the scorn directed at her, and it built and built as she continued to fight, and it drove me nuts. Because I thought her continuing to fight was awesome and hilarious. I thought it was completely redefining how we view women and our expectations for them in public and political life. She would not comply. She would not give in. She would not do what the pundits wanted her to do, what her opponents wanted her to do, what reporters were insisting that she do, what everyone was telling her was the smart thing to do or, in one case, the classy thing to do. She just kept going.

But the more she did that, the more anger — biting anger — I began to see, both in the media and amongst the people I knew, and amongst Obama supporters, and that was what began to radicalize me in my support for Clinton, so that by the end I was an ardent Hillary supporter. That does not mean that I did not still find fault with her. I did, and I do. And there were a lot of terrible missteps she made during that campaign. But I was a devoted Hillary supporter by the end, so much so that I, with much humiliation, actually wound up crying after she conceded. I was in the [National Building Museum covering the story for Salon], and I had to run out of the press area, and I was trying to find a place behind a column, and I’m, like, choking out sobs, and I realize I’m standing next to Matt Drudge.

Except for the “terrible missteps” that’s pretty much how I saw it at the time, and still do. If you think everyone saw it the same way as us, think again. From the comments at Salon:

Ugh, seriously?

Hillary’s supporters spent the entire campaign season after Iowa complaining that anyone and everyone who won’t vote for her is actually not voting for her because she’s a woman. Don’t say “That didn’t happen”, because I, as an Obama supporter who thought Hillary was ok and would be a good president, got that thrown in my face continuously from January to June. Meanwhile, the Obama camp got a ton of racism thrown their way (often from the Hillary camp itself!) and let most of it go unless it was some serious shit. Guess which one won? The one whose campaign slogan wasn’t “You’re getting in the way of a historical moment, Asshole”.

I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of people who didn’t vote for her for being a woman. I’m not saying there weren’t a LOT of people on the 24 hour news stations making fun of her for being a woman. I’m saying there’s a lot of us Democrats who didn’t vote for her because she wasn’t the best of the two choices given to us. Get over it.
—bffoley

Yeppers, we even started our own blogs so we could host virtual cross-burnings while throwing bogus accusations of sexism into the faces of those poor, mistreated Obama supporters.

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(h/t Susie Madrak)