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Dana Milbank appeared on Keith Olbermann last night and pointed out most of the problems that the bloggers have had with Jeff (whatever his name is) Gannon having access to the White House. He gives a hat tip to World O' Crap as a source of information. Listening to Milbank talking about the much more serious issue of Jeff "G" as a shill for the White House after hearing Howard Kurtz completely glaze over the story on Blitzer, shows you the difference in reporting that can go on between "columnists from the same paper.

Milbank: As of Monday I saw whatever-his name-is waiting outside there at the White House, in fact he would probably be allowed to continue doing this as of now if their weren't some website called of all things "World O' Crap" that had gotten into all those personal allegations. It was Jeff's decision or whatever his name's decision to uhh step down. He wasn't kicked out of the White House at all. That's really where all the scandal lies in this whole thing.

The NY Daily News gets into the story and names John Aravosis of AMericaBlog as a source:

"The issue here is whether someone with connections to male prostitution was given unfettered access to the White House and copies of internal CIA documents. For a family values administration, that's pretty creepy," said John Aravosis, one of the bloggers chasing the story."

Howdy, everyone! My name's Brad Reed and I'm comin' over here from Sadly, No! where I spent many a glorious year making fun of jerks. At any rate, I thought I'd introduce myself to y'all by bringing you the novel economic theories of one of my favoritest conservative bloggers ever, Bob "Confederate Yankee" Owens.

Last week, Bob discussed his novel theory on unemployment. Now, there are several reasons why unemployment is so high in America right now. One is that we had a decade of economic growth that was based on an $8 trillion housing bubble that saw the vast amounts of capital invested in houses that no one wants to buy. Another is that the housing bubble left in its wake more than 2 million construction workers who now face long-term structural unemployment since the housing boom is unlikely to return anytime soon. And then there's the problem that there's inadequate aggregate demand needed to boost overall consumption that would lead more businesses to hire and... OK, so you get the picture.

But Owens doesn't have any use for none of that fancy-pants economics talk. When he sees that there's 10% unemployment, his gut tells him what the real problem is:

THEY'S JES' LAZY!

Have a look:

By stopping unemployment benefits, the Senate will force those lazy Americans enjoying "funemployment" to get off their backsides and get back to work.

This is pretty awesome. I mean, you'd expect seasoned political operatives such as Mr. Yankee to do the smart thing and blame unemployment entirely on Obama's $700 billion stimulus check made out to ACORN. But instead of doing the politically savvy thing, he goes Full Metal St00pid and blames the unemployed.

Next he'll deliver a weaselly qualifier to show us that he's not, you know, a little bit empathetic to people who have lost their jobs...

I know that many long-term unemployed people have made a sincere effort to return to work...

...before reverting back to form:

...but I know for a fact that many haven't.

Given the weight of the charges that Mr. Yankee has leveled here -- i.e., that everyone who has lost their job over the past two years is nothing more than a shameless drifter living off government largess -- you'd think he'd provide some solid evidence to back it up. And indeed, he comes to the table with some of the strongest type of evidence known to man: namely, the anecdotal kind:

As everyone like anecdotes, I can mention the stories of one of my brother and my two brothers-in-law. My brother was in construction management, one of my brothers-in-law is in auto body shop management, and the other brother-in-law is a mid-level manager.

All three lost jobs within the past two years due to their companies facing economic woes. My brother immediately sent out resumes and spoke with industry contacts in his area, and was re-employed—working longer hours at less pay—within a month. With his work ethic, I suspect he be promoted once an opportunity becomes available.

My brother-in-law the body shop manager has gone through a string of layoffs in south Florida, but never was out of work for long because he was willing to compromise and take less than he thought he was worth to support his family. He even moved from Florida to North Carolina in pursuit of work opportunities, and seems to be making a good impression at his new shop.

My brother-in-law the middle-manager has been under-employed over a year. He works a part-time job and collects unemployment.

When he does get interviews, he torpedoes them. He recently told a perspective employer that what they were offering salary-wise wasn't good enough.

These anecdotes run true almost everywhere.

Similarly, I have a brother-in-law who was spent his whole life working as a first-class surgeon and when he was laid off from his hospital after it was taken over by Obamacare he could only get a job offer as a Wal-Mart greeter. And do you know how he repaid Wal-Mart for offering them this fine, prestigious position? Why he pulled down his pants and done peed right on that thar floor!

This goes to prove that all highly-paid surgeons enjoy spraying their bodily fluids in public places, or something like that. Much like Confederate Yankee, I've forgotten what this useless anecdote was supposed to prove.

Alicublog: Right-wing bloggers versus gay pride.

Distributorcap NY: Packing them in at the Supreme Court.

Poor Man Institute: Toilet trained and dumb.

His Vorpal Sword: North to Alaska – Moose of Darkness.

The Reaction: Thoughts on the G20 summit in Toronto.

The Existential Cowboy: The oil industry lobbied against blow-out preventers.

Also, Music of the World Cup.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

Don't Dismiss Downing Street

via Molly Ivins from Alternet

I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated.

I hope this is not too insider baseball, but I am genuinely astonished by what the bloggers call "mainstream media." (In my youth, it was quaintly called "the Establishment press.")

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have all gone way out of their way to deny that the Downing Street Memos (it's now plural) are news. Like many of you, during the entire lead-up to the war with Iraq, I thought the whole thing was a set-up.

I raise this point not to prove how smart we are, but to emphasize that I followed the debate closely and probably unconsciously searched for evidence that reinforced what I already thought. Most people do that. I read some of the European press and most of the liberal publications in this country. I read the Times, the Post, the Wall Street Journal and several Texas papers every day. It's my job...read on

As progressives, bloggers and experts like Paul Krugman said at the time, cutting the stimulus package the first time around to make Republicans happy only weakened the stimulus effect to the point where it was enough to deter the worst effects of the financial crisis, but not enough to fix it. (Kind of like having a bacterial infection and taking half a dose of antibiotics.)

Krugman said then that he doubted the political climate would permit a later stimulus package, and he was right - which is probably why David Axlerod is tying himself in knots to avoid calling it that:

President Obama wants Congress to spend more money to help states and localities struggling with huge deficits. But he does not want to call it a stimulus package, apparently.

Mr. Obama has intimated in the past that the federal government’s job of propping up the economy was not yet done. Last week, he sent a letter to Congress supporting efforts to pass two separate measures totaling as much as $50 billion in aid for states and cities.

With states still facing large budget shortfalls, Obama wants to minimize the potential loss of teachers, law-enforcement officers, and firefighters. He estimates that as many as 300,000 teachers could be laid off. In this way, the money would largely pick up where the $787 billion federal stimulus bill left off.

Yet on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Obama adviser David Axelrod plumbed the depths of the English language in order to try to avoid calling the money a stimulus.

In the end, he conceded: “We should not be too careless about pulling out of our stimulative efforts too quickly.”

Mr. Axelrod’s discomfort is an acknowledgment that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did not deliver in precisely the way it was promised. Touted as the only way of keeping unemployment below 10 percent, the unemployment rate tipped 10 percent anyway.

Obama’s push for more stimulus, however, suggests that the administration believes that the stimulus package blunted the worst of the recession – as the White House has repeatedly argued. The state and city stimulus is a bid to repeat the process this year for states and localities that cannot run deficits by law.

Critics argue that this tactic has created only the veneer of a recovery. Jobs numbers released June 4 showed that the vast majority of new jobs were Census jobs paid for by the government. The private sector created only 41,000 jobs – its worst performance since January.

UPDATED: John Amato:

Paul Krugman has been attacking the lurch towards 'Fiscal Austerity' for a few days becoming very shrill in the process. That's always a good move. He uses Ireland and Spain for his example.

But I suddenly realized this morning that there’s yet another question for the deficit hawks: what evidence do you have that fiscal austerity of the kind you’re demanding would reassure markets, even if they did lose confidence? Consider, if you will, the comparative cases of Ireland and Spain.

The countries responded differently, however. Ireland quickly embraced harsh austerity; Spain has had to be dragged into austerity, and still faces major political unrest.

--

So, I’m glad to hear that Ireland’s stoic acceptance of austerity is reassuring markets; it must be true, because that’s what everyone says. Because if I didn’t know that, I might look at the data and conclude that markets actually have less confidence in Ireland than they do in Spain, and that austerity in the face of a deeply depressed economy doesn’t actually reassure markets at all. But hey, what are you going to believe: what everyone knows, or your own lying eyes?

And as Digby says:

I feel as if we are watching a slow motion train wreck, mouths agape, powerless to do anything to stop it --- the Very Serious People are all on board, assured in their own minds, for different reasons, that history has ended and nothing that came before can possibly be of any consequence.

In fact, I feel exactly the same way I felt in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Citizens' journalism loses the Apple case... big time

via Buzzmachine

So the judge decided that Apple can go ahead and subpoena the the sites that reported on its business to find out their sources. Which is to say that bloggers are not protected by California's shield law. Which is to say that this judge just said that bloggers aren't journalists. Which is to say that we just started a program of certifying official journalists in this country. Which is to say that we lose. Big time. read on

We at C&L enjoy reading right wing blogs as well as left. I find some of the arguments and stories interesting and informed as are blogs on the left. Some of it is nonsense, but that is inherent in the blogosphere.. There's a debate on "littlegreenfootballs"(that I enjoy reading) about Exit Polls: Direct Reports from Dem Operatives that describes a report form American Spector. To sum it up, the left wing bloggers are at fault for the exit polls. There are many good posts about oversampling of women, and the like. Here is an interesting post to counter some of the charges:

I watch FOX during the night as I read these posts.

FOX admitted later in the evening that they had been trusting the exit polls that they and all the networks had gotten from the COMPANY THEY HIRED TO DO THEM. They admitted they had been reluctant to call states going Bush earlier because of the exit poll results they had received earlier. They were not basing this on blogs but the exit polls they paid for.

All the networks had gotten together and chosen ONE COMPANY to do the exit polls.

Brit Hume on FOX even joked about asking for their money back.

According to a Washington lobbyist with knowledge of the numbers, the numbers were packaged together so as to appear to be exit poll results. They were then scrubbed through several sources to land in the lap of sympathetic bloggers who these operatives believed would put the numbers up with little question.
So how does the link with the above? Company insider working with the Kerry camp?

Not everything is a Rather-Gate incident!

Although I really don't care to read these right-wing milbogs, I find it very encouraging that they are not just clear-headed about the issue of allowing homosexuals in the military to serve openly, but they're willing to put it in a formal statement.

JOINT STATEMENT FROM MILITARY BLOGGERS 12 MAY 2010

We consider the US military the greatest institution for good that has ever existed. No other organization has freed more people from oppression, done more humanitarian work or rescued more from natural disasters. We want that to continue.

Today, it appears inevitable to us that the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and law restricting those displaying open homosexual behavior from serving will be changed. And yet, very little will actually change. Homosexuals have always served in the US Military, and there have been no real problems caused by that.

The service chiefs are currently studying the impact and consequences of changing the DADT policy, and how to implement it without compromising the morale, order and discipline necessary for the military to function. The study is due to be completed on Dec. 1st. We ask Congress to withhold action until this is finished, but no longer. We urge Congress to listen to the service chiefs and act in accordance with the recommendations of that study.

The US Military is professional and ready to adapt to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell without compromising its mission. Echoing Sec. Def. Gates and ADM Mullen, we welcome open and honorable service, regardless of sexual orientation.

Matt Burden - Warrior Legacy Foundation & BLACKFIVE
Jim Hanson - Warrior Legacy Foundation & BLACKFIVE
Blake Powers - BLACKFIVE
Fred Schoenman - BLACKFIVE
David Bellavia - House to House
Bruce McQuain - Q&O
JD Johannes - Outside the Wire
Diane Frances McInnis Miller - Boston Maggie
Mark Seavey - This Ain't Hell
Michael St. Jacques - The Sniper
Mary Ripley - US Naval Institute Blog
John Donovan - Castle Argghhh!
Andrew J. Lubin- The Military Observer
Marc Danziger - Winds of Change
Greta Perry - Hooah Wife

So good on you. Much respect, except, as you guys ought to recognize, if you ask DOD to wait until December, there is the very real chance that a Republican-dominated House could block any action to repeal DADT. Next time, call your left-wing milbloggers into the effort. Or is our position perhaps a little less nebulous?

Our own David Neiwert flew to DC to participate in the huge march on DC for immigration reform. He'll be filing in some reports as soon as he can.

America's Voice:

Today's the day. Tens of thousands of people are registered to come to the National Mall for today's immigration reform rally, called the March For America. Hundreds of buses are still pouring in from across the country, and several major progressive and pro-migrant bloggers will be reporting directly from the rally, which starts at 2pm. Expect coverage from Vivir Latino and Crooks and Liars, among others, as well as pictures and video from the National Mall. Look for a performance by Grammy award-winning talent, Los Lonely Boys! Live-streamed video should pop up at C-SPAN, Telemundo or Univision. On twitter, check out the #m4a hashtag. Follow @AmericasVoice and @RI4A.

I'm hearing that there are well over 200K people protesting at the March, but I expect the media to not care all that much about it.