via Tapped ...Nothing quite captures the storied revolving-door problem in American political punditry like seeing old Watergate players themselves (or, in the case of Pat Buchanan, not a Watergate participant but certainly a loyal Richard Nixon soldier) playing disinterested pundit-analysts on one talking-head show after another discussing Mark Felt. At this point maybe it shouldn’t seem so bizarre to me to see Chris Matthews chatting with G. Gordon Liddy about this story as if they were David Brinkley and Chet Huntley chewing over the day’s headlines.
That these characters have carte blanche on the cable chat shows to serve as credible Felt naysayers is just one more illustration of the wonderful cloak of immunity enjoyed by all right-wingers in the clubby, insular D.C. punditry world. Lying, stealing, prison time -- literally nothing can discredit a conservative gabber enough to cancel their membership card to the commentariat. And today we have Peggy Noonan to thank for granting some establishment pundit legitimacy to Ben Stein’s thoughtful Deep Throat-as-genocidaire thesis. Can’t wait to hear Liddy’s thoughts on it tonight on Hardball.
Why? Maybe they have "fallen half in love with death," as Noonan suggests? Or maybe they are just frustrated by losing elections, seeing the tide turn in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East (must Terri die for Bush's "sins"?), etc. Whatever the case, it makes for a sad and sorry spectacle.
A Christian conservative judge (with a price on his head) backed by the Conservative lead Supreme Court is ruling on this case, yet it's Bush hating liberals that are some how calling the shots. They should take a look in the mirror to find where the real hate is coming from.
Woodruff: As we reported a little while ago in our blog segment, the Internet is abuzz with reaction to comments by New York Democratic Congressman Maurice Hinchey. The congressman over the weekend shared his views about the now disputed CBS News report about President Bush's Air National Guard service. Representative Maurice Hinchey is with me now, he joins us from Albany, New York.
REP. MAURICE HINCHEY (D), NEW YORK: And then the issue of the CBS Dan Rather event came up, and I said that there were false documents or documents which were falsified and presented as being accurate and there was a question as to where those documents came from. And in the context of the discussion I suggested that -- my theory was that I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the White House political operation, headed up by Karl Rove.
Was Mr. Clinton being blackmailed? The Starr report tells us of what the president said to Monica Lewinsky about their telephone sex: that there was reason to believe that they were monitored by a foreign intelligence service. Naturally the service would have taped the calls, to use in the blackmail of the president. Maybe it was Mr. Castro’s intelligence service, or that of a Castro friend.
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
I was watching MSNBC the other day and I saw Chuck Todd looking a bit annoyed when he talked about this new poll that said Americans didn't believe the Beltway elite media after they repeatedly slammed the president for going on TV too much. So I looked for the poll and here it is. Sorry, I don't have the video of Todd.
There's a new NBC/WSJ poll out and it has some interesting information. For weeks now the Beltway gasbags have been singing in concert that President Obama is doing way too much media: he's overexposed, he's on TV too damn much, blah blah blah. Well, they are yet wrong again.
Here's the question:
When it comes to doing his job as president, do you feel that you see and hear President Obama too much, about the right amount, or too little?
Too much..........................................34
About the right amount .....................54
Too little ............................................9
Not sure ..........................................3
After all the hubbub made by the pundit class, Americans feel that the President is doing the right amount of media exposure. What a shock.
Noonan: This is his way. Because everybody will say yes. I don't think it's about the media environment but I do think the media environment allows a modern leader to be something subtly damaging and that is boorish. They get their face in your face every day all the time. It's boorish and it makes people not lean towards you, but lean away from you, no matter what the merits of the issue and the merits of this issue are not such great merits.
I raised the question a few months back whether Obama was diluting his impact by constantly popping up on the tube. He'd already done ESPN, Leno, the network anchors, "60 Minutes" and a slew of other programs. Then there was NBC's day in the life, ABC's town hall forum, the four prime-time news conferences, the comedy bits for Conan and Colbert, and on and on.
--
"Is this a good idea? Should he just but a 24-hour webcam in the White House and be done with it?
"I kid, but I am on record as saying that those who knock the President for 'overexposure' miss an important fact about the media today. Overexposure is the point. The audience is fragmented. The way to get through is to reach this audience here and that one there, and that one there...read on
In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.
... If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.
Of course, there’s a difference between a lack of polish and a lack of coherence. Some of Palin’s interview responses can’t even be critiqued on their merits because they’re so nonsensical. “Let Sarah be Sarah” has become the latest rallying cry among my colleagues on the right. She’ll be fine if we just leave her alone, they say. Between prayers, I might add.
I think Sarah Palin was a huge mistake...Americans can be pretty jokey about their government when times are good, but when times are bad, they want to know do -- can you do the job? And when you have a candidate who so obviously has never thought about any of the issues that are going to be important to the next administration and whose knowledge is so shallow, it makes people -- it doesn't just make people offended, it makes them afraid.
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
You don't have to be a liberal to conclude that Sarah Palin is not what they call "the sharpest tool in the shed" back in Alaska. You just have to be someone not consuming the Republican Clap Louder Kool Aid.
Enter now Sarah Palin with very encouraging comments that lead one to believe that she is indeed planning to do what she must: build an independent conservative movement and take this nation back from the liberals which now control both parties.Thanks liberals, for provoking Sarah into the national scene while vetting that family at the same time.
One thing I will say, the Washington Times with their headline for this exclusive interview reveal an anti-Palin stance. She is, don’t doubt, a threat to every existing political status quo.
Oh holy FSM, there is so much funny to be had with this perfect example of Republican syllogism, I don't know where to begin.
Palin is planning to do what she must???? Apparently, she mustn't finish the job she was elected to do. Nor must she actually read up and learn about the issues as many mainstreamRepublicanshavebegged her to do.
And when did we become controlled by liberals in both parties? What in the hell is Bruce on about? Does she really suggest that Boehner, Cantor, Coburn, Kyl, Inhofe, etc are liberals???? When you start with that ridiculous a premise, then you're just asking to be laughed out of the room.
And then, after blaming liberals for vetting Palin's family (erm...huh?), she then launches into an attack against the Washington Times--hardly a bastion of liberal thought--for being anti-Palin and then holds it as a banner of pride of somehow being proof of her bona fides.
Liberal Values: Top "no sh*t" story: Cheney lied about torture saving lives
The Agonist: Pakistani Ambassador Haqqani is telling the BBC that The Pakistani government is going all in against the Taliban
rubber hose: That Obama isn't backing down on the Israeli settlement issue is surprising, but what's really surprising is that key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team's message to Netanyahu.
Heh. Sam Donaldson really smacks down the ever-unctuous (and historically inaccurate) George Will on This Week's roundtable discussion about the teabaggers:
WILL: What this was about, as was the original Boston Tea Party - which was barely about taxes but about Parliament's role in their lives, was a view that we're now in something called the "third wave" of government. You had the expansion of the New Deal, you had the expansion of the Great Society to complete the New Deal, what those people who rallied there were saying this is something different, this third wave is to erase the distinction between the public and private sectors, and that frightens them.
DONALDSON: Oh, they weren't saying that, George. What they were saying is, we don't like Obama. And this is a proxy way to say that. Because it's true, he's going to lower taxes on 95% of the American public, and the rest are going to have higher taxes. You were quite correct, it's not about the level of taxes. Those rallies were mainly, it seems to me, organized to say, "We don't like Obama" across the board.
Peggy Noonan, believe it or not, is the one who more accurately nails the mood as anti-ruling class. Unfortunately, Fox News- and talk-radio voters are invariably under-informed as to the root causes of our economic woes.
Notice that when it comes to conservatives, they always consistently attack the legitimacy of any Democrat who wins the White House. So no Democrat is ever really the President, and should be challenged at every turn! There, wasn't that easy?
The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan argues today that her top characteristic when evaluating presidential candidates is “reasonableness.” The former Reagan speechwriter insists: "We are grown-ups.... We’d like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it."
At face value, there’s nothing especially troubling about this standard. Noonan is setting the bar fairly low, but she’s sketched out a relatively practical model. That is, until Noonan starts applying her standards to specific candidates. Here’s her take on the former senator from North Carolina:
John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards’s populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can’t have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can’t.
Noonan had just finished arguing that American voters “are grown-ups,” and then she turns around and takes on John Edwards’ hair? What’s more, Glenn Greenwald notes that “poofing” isn’t actually a word, “but rather, a British epithet for a male homosexual — ‘Slang: Disparaging and Offensive’ — a synonym for ‘faggot.’”
Noonan’s looking for a candidate with a “prudent understanding of the world.” I’m looking for a columnist with the same attribute.
