This campaign season can be summed up by one interview on conservative talk radio last August. It was with Iowa Straw Poll-sweeper Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, in which she proclaimed: “What people recognize is that there’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline. They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward.”

Yes, Bachmann warned us of a foreign boogieman rising … one that’s been dead for over 20 years.

Boo!

But warning of a zombie nation feasting on the metaphorical brains of the U.S. is consistent with a party now completely untethered from basic American history, science or any other evidence-based practice: The GOP is now a party standing proudly on a pro-fiction platform.

Yes, in their party, as an aide to Senator Jon Kyl put it last year, whatever they say is “not intended to be a factual statement” but to illustrate a point.

For example, this week Mitt Romney brought a Michigan tea party audience to tears recalling the 50th anniversary of the American automobile event he attended as a child … even though it took place months before he was born.

Former Senator Rick Santorum asserts public schools are an “anachronism” of the industrialized era as the reason they should be privatized. He said at the CNN debate last week: “Not only do I believe the federal government should get out of the education business, I think the state government should start to get out of the education business and put it back to the local and into the community.” Just when millions of Americans have lost their homes comes a candidate in favor of home schooling.

Public schools are arguably what made us a country. The colonies had one of the highest literacy rates in the world at the time. In James D. Hart’s “The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste” published in 1950, he notes that in 1650 New England there were laws requiring “reading and writing schools.” Education was thought to thwart Satan at that time (note to Santorum there). Hart goes on to include a popular ditty of the era: “From public schools shall general knowledge flow, For ‘tis the people’s sacred right to know.”

Also, the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was (gasp) publically educated.

Santorum, as a pro-fiction candidate, also dismisses colleges as “indoctrination mills.” One man’s indoctrination is another man’s accreditation to work in the sciences.

The four candidates still vying for the nomination are pro-fiction to the core: Somehow the President who okayed the assassination of Osama bin Laden, sent drone attacks into Libya and kept Gitmo open is an apologetic pansy – soft on our enemies. Obama has deported more illegal immigrants and spent more money protecting the border than any of his predecessors – but he’s ignoring the issue of illegal immigration. Romney keeps on promising if elected he’ll make the military so powerful no other country would dare attack us even though we have the biggest military in the world. Gingrich who says if given any power he’ll send U.S. Marshalls to compel radical judges to explain their rulings, deems “the pill” to be the epitome of radical government overreach. Taxes? Too high even though they’re historically low (especially during war time). Tax cuts? A pay-for-themselves panacea even though the Bush Tax Cuts didn’t pan out.

Challenge their narrative and brace for the ad hominem attacks. You only believe this because you’re at least one of the following: liberal, socialist, unemployed, commie sympathizer, elite, dupe, European, journalist, gun hater, Muslim, Obama-bot, or (my favorite from my inbox) silly little girl.

Because in fiction you must create an enemy or there’s no story.

The pro-fiction party will tell you their ideas will lower gas prices, cut the deficit, end poverty, cut the size of government and make everybody super free by allowing the states to decide which rights to take away.

No matter how completely impossible – no matter how divorced from evidence or precedence – the GOP will continue to make claims not to be factual – but just to illustrate a point. Possibly that you should vote for them.

The Soviet Union must be watching this race right now and just laughing their heads off.

Susie Cagle is a colleague of mine. Full disclosure: I'm syndicated through Cagle Cartoons, her father's gig.

Susie a dedicated journalist who's been diligently covering Occupy Oakland for weeks now. Before the nation was paying attention - Susie was there. Last week she was tear gassed on the job - this week she was arrested.

I'm going to talk with her later today about her arrest. I wanted to put this up here now. Our Nicolle Belle has been down in Oakland. I've personally been to five Occupations in two countries. Susie Madrak has been at Occupy Philadelphia and Occupy St. Pete. We've been going there to tell the story of the people down there. Arresting a journalist is unacceptable. It's intimidation and it's wrong.

function vid_placeholder(placeholder_target, vid_link) { placeholder_target.innerHTML = ''; Hunter Thompson has died }

click here for WMP

via Talk Left

Journalist Hunter Thompson fatally shot himself tonight. Aspen Sheriff Bob Braudis, a close friend of Hunter's, has confirmed the sad news. He was found by his son, Juan Thompson. We will update as more information becomes available. Here is Hunter's latest Hey Rube column, dated February 15, 2005.

It ends with this line: So long and Mahalo.

(Code corruption messed up this post)

As reported today on the nationally broadcast Ed Shultz Show part of the Jones Radio Network, former U.S. Weapons Inspector, Scott Ritter declared that the Bush administration helped subvert and manipulate the recent heralded election in Iraq. According to Ritter, who made the original charges in a joint appearance with journalist Dahr Jamil in Washington state, the Bush administration was determined to control the outcome of the Iraq vote at all costs. "The U.S.cooked the election in Iraq," claimed Ritter. Ritter went on to explain how the victory of the Shia was a forgone conclusion to Administration members.What wasn't a foregone conclusion was the percentage of victory. A majority victory of the Shia would give them control of the Parliament and under current Iraqi law allow the Iranian-influenced Mullahs to draw up the new Constitution. read on

The Raw Story interviewed Ritter and has more.

Andrea Mitchell steps in it again: (+ defends Bob Woodward)

Imus got wind of her flopping around about her previous statements regarding Joseph and Valerie Wilson on his show 11/12, so he had her back on to clarify. She was fumbling and stumbling throughout the segment. It's "hard work" to carry water for the administration. Whether you like him or not, Don has one of the only shows that is able to get politicians and journalists on and he will ask them some tough questions that other outlets will not. Do you think Chris Matthews would hold her up to any kind of scrutiny?

Download | play -WMP low res-(it's really about the audio) Download | play -QT later

Her answers were ridiculous and she almost steps in it again as Imus asks her about this exchange.

Murray: Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?

Mitchell: It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.

(Rough transcript. Anyone want to write a transcript?)

Imus: It seems unclear what you said and perhaps you can clear it up about what you said back in Oct. of 2003---

Mitchell: I have been trying to figure out "what-the-heck" I was talking about, frankly. There is confusion because I am confused.

Imus: So when you told Alan Murray of CNBC, that it was widely known that his wife worked for the CIA-(interruption)--what were you drunk?

Mitchell: I don't even remember the deal...

(later)

Imus: His question seems plain...Imus: What this suggests to me is that you knew she worked at the CIA, but you didn't know what she did there. Isn't that fair-did you know that?

Mitchell-(garbled)

Imus: Why did you say that Andrea?

Mitchell: I messed up...(later)

Imus: Russert was a little short with me---almost like he was trying to hide something....

Imus laughing: I realized-well this is an unfair thing to say, I was gonna say- all you folks in Washington are all in bed with one another, but that would be an awful thing to say....

I can't agree with you more on that point. Listen to Andrea discuss Booby. She says Bob Woodward is a great journalist who made one "teenie-weenie" mistake. Notice she spews the beltway company line that they told him casually about Valerie and says that it wasn't "something important until it became important." I agree with Imus, she is drunk.

Andrea: Bob Woodward is a terrific reporter, there is no one like Bob Woodward. He has done extraordinary work---(later) If people make one mistake in the course of a thirty five year career when they have been bullet proof---

Then she says that we don't know if Libby is lying. I'm too tired to go on.....

Wired Science: Help BP learn how to use photoshop

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No More Mister Nice Blog: Iran The Long Game

Unqualified Offerings: Media spokesmodels

TalkLeft; What Jeralyn was reading a few hours ago...

Whiskey Fire: BREAKING: NPR Journalist Naked Lesbian Sex Scandal Proves Obama Secret Commie!

If you haven't been watching Rachel Maddow's stellar reporting on Afghanistan, get thee to The Maddow Blog and watch the clips there. Her remarkable reports are worth every second of the time you spend to watch.

This is the first time I've seen a journalist really try to get beyond the basics of the Afghan war and into the details of what our military is actually doing, what they hope to accomplish, and how they're going about accomplishing it. Rachel Maddow is hardly a hawk, so part of the remarkable quality of her reporting is seeing her come to an understanding that much of what's being done involves helping people, not killing them.

This clearly doesn't fit the story they want to tell on The Today Show. Watch the video as Rachel is questioned about the July deadline and the supposed "delayed Kandahar strategy."

Maddow's answers are clear: You're not going to see a war movie in Kandahar, and the deadline is an absolute necessity to keep pressure on the Afghan government to get in line and work to get the people they govern on board. But watch Ann Curry try to get her to get all rah-rah about combat and the deadline.

Continue reading »

I don't normally get involved in media inside baseball, because 1) it's even more boring to readers than it is to me and 2) "old" media is so last season's Prada shoes, you know?

But since we're on a roll here today, what with Amato wondering why the media never bothered to cover Gen. McChrystal's cover-up of Pat Tillman's death and me writing about the self-censoring media, this fits right in.

Far too often, Beltway journalism resembles nothing so much as a high-school lunchroom. That's why, when Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel turned in his resignation yesterday, the Post eagerly accepted. (Morons.)

Weigel is a really good journalist who, although he's a libertarian, doesn't let ideology get in the way of his work. (Sorry, Dave. You have to know you're unusual, right?)

The Post brought him on to cover the Tea Party movement, and he's done an excellent job. So why is he being shown the door? Did he regurgitate false information and start a war? Plagarize? Make racist or anti-Semitic comments? Heck, no. Those things get you your own cable show!

He did the worst thing of all: He made the conservatives cry.

Remember what I said about high school? Like, omigod!

"Okay, like, there's this email list? Called Journolist? And like, this one girl named Betsy Rothstein, who is like, slaving away in a basement and probably really a little J-E-L of Dave Weigel, pumped up her hit count by posting a bunch of emails where Dave trashed some famous conservatives, including that perv Rush Limbaugh. Which got her a link from that icky Matt Drudge, and got Dave a bunch of hate mail from the right-wing whatevers.

"Okay, so Dave's ticked off and tweets something about how Matt Drudge should handle his personal issues by being more responsible, like maybe by publicly setting himself on fire. I mean, a joke, right? Funny! But okay, Dave apologizes to Drudge and Drudge responds by sending the flying monkeys after him again!

"Tucker Carlson, that smarmy little frat boy who used to wear the bowties? Yeah, I know, right? Short! Anyway, he got mad because that guy Ezra wouldn't let him on JournoList and so he decided to publish Dave's emails on his site. You'd think a grown man would have something better to do. I mean, he reproduced and all, maybe he should be home nurturing his clones, or something.

"Okay, okay, okay. Anyway! So Dave turns in his letter of resignation, and that Poindexter over at the Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg - I think he's that guy who picks his nose and eats it, or was that the kid from The Simpsons? Anyway, he, like, totally disses him.

"How could we destroy our standards by hiring a guy stupid enough to write about people that way in a public forum?" one of my friends at the Post asked me when we spoke earlier today. "I'm not suggesting that many people on the paper don't lean left, but there's leaning left, and then there's behaving like an idiot."

I gave my friend the answer he already knew: The sad truth is that the Washington Post, in its general desperation for page views, now hires people who came up in journalism without much adult supervision, and without the proper amount of toilet-training. This little episode today is proof of this. But it is also proof that some people at the Post (where I worked, briefly, 20 years ago) still know the difference between acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior, and that maybe this episode will lead to the reimposition of some level of standards.

"And like, clearly what the Carlton Banks-wannabe means is, oh, Mr. Washington Post, sir, I would never disrespect my elders or color outside the lines. Why would you hire him instead of rehiring MEEEEE???

"Um, everyone knows Jeff's, like, a total tool? Who's more of a stenographer than a journalist, and like, a lot of Iraqi civilians are dead because of his total d-baggery. Like, dead babies and stuff.

"Which you might think would bother him, but apparently not.

"But omigod, they keep wondering why we don't want to read them! Duh!

"Oh hey, what are you wearing to the party tonight?"

What a fool. When the first question most people ask is why isn't he in a jail cell, I think his credibility is pretty shot. I thought he wasn't going to comment on the story again. Here's his latest column. "What he did say was, as I reported in a previous column, "she probably never again would be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties.'

Larry Johnson replies in No Quarter: ... He admits that he was told revealing Plame's identity would cause "difficulties". CIA spokesmen where in the position of having to protect a sensitive, covert asset and this joke of a journalist did not appreciate that creating difficulties for an intelligence agency in a time of war is a bad thing?...read on

AmericaBlog says" He outs an undercover agent....once again doing the dirty work for Karl Rove and Bush, and somehow he's the victim".

The Booman Trubune has a lenghty diary on Novie and Johnson. No-Yak Novak Yammers; Larry Johnson Replies

Talk Left writes: Novak Breaks His Silence : Note that he says Plame's identity "could be" found in Who's Who. He doesn't say that's where he got it. He acknowledges asking Harlow about her. But from whom did he hear it in the first place? Will Novak's vanity in writing this piece come back to bite him? ...read on

As Karl Burkart at Mother Nature Network says, if Anderson Cooper is ticked off, something must really be wrong.

COOPER: There is this yellow line up there. And they literally will not get you within 20 to 30 feet, where you can actually get a picture of an oiled bird being brought in.

Why? They say they don't want to upset the birds, and they don't want to interfere with workers. But, I mean, I can assure you, one cameraman is a trained professional at CNN, and they're not going to interfere with workers.

As -- as for BP, they have promised transparency on a number of occasions. Most recently was a letter that we just obtained yesterday. It was actually sent out a couple days ago. And, in the letter -- it is from BP Doug -- COO Doug Suttles -- they say -- quote -- "BP has not and will not prevent anyone working in the cleanup operation from sharing his or her own experiences or opinions with the media."

That's from, as I said, BP's Doug Suttles to company employees and contractors. Now, the "has not" part, that they haven't done this, is patently false. I mean, that's a rewriting of history. Many reporters from many news organizations over many weeks have been blocked and stiff-armed and given the silent treatment or told flat- out, BP said we would lose our jobs if we talked.

And this isn't just one news organization. This has been going on for weeks. As for the "will" not part, that they're not going to prevent anyone from cooperating with the media, well, maybe not everyone has gotten the memo. We put it to the test today.

Karl's post suggests this goes beyond the possibility of simply covering for BP, though. While he's not revealing specifics, he refers to a text message he received from a friend in the cleanup zone:

At first I thought it was because the government was somehow backing for BP, supporting them in their attempt to keep the story from getting out of hand. Now I’m not so sure...

This afternoon I received a text message sent on a borrowed phone from someone who had recently returned form [sic] the cleanup operation. The contents of that message were so mind-numbingly horrific that I cannot publish them here.

I am earnestly attempting to confirm what I was told, and I will be tweeting about my findings on @greendig. If true, it would explain WHY the government won’t let even the New York Times fly over the original site of Deepwater Horizon. And it would also explain why Obama has done a 180 on his policy of government transparency, risking his entire political career by deceiving the American people.

Now Karl is a pretty level-headed blogger. He doesn't routinely don a tinfoil hat and start writing about undisclosed text messages that appear to be harbingers of doom, or worse. So I'm inclined to take him seriously, and am watching to see if he receives confirmation of what he suspects.

All I can say is this: I hope whatever it is that has him so concerned isn't related to that munitions dump due west of the Deepwater Horizon. Because it would explain a lot, if it does.