Despite protective parents who worked hard to keep her out of the public spotlight, we still remember watching Chelsea Clinton grow up. Maybe that's why some of us still feel a little protective of her, too. When Rush Limbaugh held up a picture of her at 13 and called her "the White House dog," we were furious at his cruelty.
When Bill and Hillary's marriage was on the rocks, I think all of us felt for the young girl in the middle:
By all accounts a smart, well-mannered girl, she seems to have grown up into a wonderful young woman. I don't know about you, but I was impressed at how easily she moved into the public eye for her mother's presidential campaign -- and then moved right back into her private life.
It can't be easy, being the only child of two such powerful personalities. But Chelsea has pulled it off with considerable grace, and I hope you'll join me in wishing her only the best on her wedding day.
(P.S. Because this is C&L, and some commenters are always negative, I'll point out that the rumors about this being a $3 million wedding are untrue. Feel better now?)
On the left hand side of the chart is a list of ten Republican aligned institutions, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Family Research Council. Next to it is a column listing the amount of money each group has pledged to spend by Election Day. A third column on the right details what those groups actually spent in 2008 on federal elections.
The number at the bottom delivers the key message. If their pledges are fulfilled, these ten groups will unleash more than $200 million in election-focused spending -- roughly $37 million more than every single independent group spent on the 2008 presidential campaign combined. This time around, almost every single penny will be going to Republican candidates or causes.
So, how did this happen?
First, Democrats didn't make an all out effort to torpedo either Roberts, or more reasonably, Alito. With both on the Supreme Court, decisions like Citizens United were inevitable.
Second, when given a historic opportunity to break the power of the rich and corporations by not bailing them out, Democrats bailed them out. They did not make shareholders get wiped out (as they deserved, they took the profits from housing bubble fraud, after all) and they did not let the bondholders take their losses. Be very clear, this was never about saving the economy, the trillions of dollars used to bail out these corporations could have been loaned directly to consumers and businesses which needed loans. In fact, at this point, it is entirely likely that bailouts made things worse, not better.
One journalistic question to emerge from Rolling Stone's takedown of Stanley McChrystal is whether a military beat reporter could have -- or would have -- done it. Michael Hastings was on a one-time assignment; he didn't need to deal with the general and his people again. This, by the way, is no different than the tension faced by every city hall and statehouse reporter versus someone coming in for a one-shot piece.
Hastings himself addressed the question in a 2008 GQ piece, talking about being embedded as a presidential campaign reporter:
"The dance with staffers is a perilous one. You're probably not going to get much, if any, one-on-one time with the candidate, which means your sources of information are the people who work for him. So you pretend to be friendly and nonthreatening, and over time you 'build trust,' which everybody involved knows is an illusion. If the time comes, if your editor calls for it, you're supposed to [expletive] them over."
Pretend? Not a pretty picture.
NYU journalism professor and blogger Jay Rosen pivots toward Politico's coverage of the McChrystal affair:
"In one of the many articles The Politico ran about the episode, the following observation was made by reporters Gordon Lubold and Carol E. Lee:
"McChrystal, an expert on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, has long been thought to be uniquely qualified to lead in Afghanistan. But he is not known for being media savvy. Hastings, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years, according to the magazine, is not well-known within the Defense Department. And as a freelance reporter, Hastings would be considered a bigger risk to be given unfettered access, compared with a beat reporter, who would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal's remarks.
"Now this seemed to several observers -- and I was one -- a reveal. Think about what the Politico is saying: an experienced beat reporter is less of a risk for a powerful figure like McChrystal because an experienced beat reporter would probably not want to 'burn bridges' with key sources by telling the world what happens when those sources let their guard down. . .
"And then, the next day... the reveal disappears. The Politico erased it, as if the thing had never happened. Down the memory hole, like in Orwell's 1984."
This is frustratingly true; I saw it all the time when I was a reporter, and yes, the temptation to soften stories is real. After all, most public figures are interesting, charismatic people and mostly, they're fun to be around.
But your loyalty has to be to your readers. I'm sorry to say, I was in a distinct minority. That's why politicians were always shocked when I had the audacity to actually report what they said. I was supposed to know what to censor.
"I thought we were friends!" one local official said to me.
I looked at him. "I stood there and asked you a question. You responded, and you watched me write down your answer. What did you think was going to happen?" I said.
That's why I'm a big believer in rotating beats. You just don't want reporters getting too familiar with their sources - and it doesn't serve the public interest. If that still exists, I mean.
There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with all the theories and counter-theories, plus the spin and propaganda being thrown out in the hopes of deflecting attention from the actions of the Rove/Novak diabolic duo. One thing worth keeping in mind is the quality of the people they are seeking to smear. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were both life-long public servants. Wilson, whom the right is seeking to smear as a partisan-minded Democrat—not that he wouldn’t have the right to be if he chose—contributed to the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, and took many hazardous and unpleasant duties on behalf of his country. When the CIA sent him to Niger, he knew that the politically smart—and self-promotional course to take would be to hew to the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Perle line without gumming up the system. Instead he told the truth and they came after him.
Valerie Plame, meanwhile, lived her entire life under cover—no small or easy thing—in the service of her country. (How many journalists and Republican pols or consultants can say the same?) And for her trouble, she has seen her cover revealed and both herself and her husband smeared across the land. Her former colleague, Larry Johnson, writing in TPM Café, tells you what kind of person and patriot she was, here.
Can you spell “desperate?” They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that. Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical. Boy are these guys grasping at straws. Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.” Read the whole thing.
Since Donald Rumsfeld has never been able to come up with a way to measure whether or not we are winning the global war on terror (GWOT), one of my fellow army veteran's is willing to suggest one:Can you spell “desperate?” They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that. Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical. Boy are these guys grasping at straws. Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.” Read the whole thing.
Just when you think Halliburton couldn't be any more blatant, and Congress members couldn't be any more corruptible, it gets worse. No, we don't need publicly funded campaigns! Nope:
As Congress investigated its role in the doomed Deep Horizon oil rig, Halliburton donated $17,000 to candidates running for federal office, giving money to several lawmakers on committees that have launched inquiries into the massive spill.
Gee, I wonder why. Do you suppose they simply want them to let them know there'll be no hard feelings if they should find Halliburton at fault in some way? I'm sure it's something like that.
The Texas-based oil giant’s political action committee made 14 contributions during the month of May, according to a federal campaign report filed Wednesday — 13 to Republicans and one to a Democrat. It was the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008.
Of the 10 current members of Congress who got money from Halliburton in May, seven are on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath.
They just want them to know they're behind them 100% as they do their jobs!
Halliburton’s political contributions in May are the highest they’ve been since September 2009, when the PAC also gave $17,000 in donations. In fact, the last time the company gave more than $17,000 in one month was when it donated $25,000 during the heat of the presidential campaign in September 2008.
I've often told people that instead of the netroots funding candidates, I'd rather see all that money go to hiring our own lobbying firm. Because then we could pay them off, too: to be honest.
When Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist announced in late October that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, we took the news sadly.
Now that the election has taken place and the dust has settled, we think the clever veteran of the Court and Beltway politics may have timed his announcement to give George Bush a small boost before Election Day.
Rehnquist could have waited a few days, until after the election was over -- as John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, did to announce her breast cancer.
As NewsMax reader Miguel Tuas first pointed out to us, Rehnquist's timing was impeccable.
Though Rehnquist did not say he planned to step down, many media commentators said the ailing chief justice, now 80 years old, may have to leave the court to attend to his health.
And that suddenly injected the judiciary -- and the number of Supreme Court appointments the next president may have to make -- into the presidential campaign.
Can you imagine Kerry's potential court picks: Dershowitz? Tribe? Estrich?
Feist isn't exactly wrong about this. Goldman Sachs employees did contribute nearly a million dollars to Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. But Robert Yoon's article linked in his post is wrong, and I can't figure out if it was just an editing error or intended to be inflammatory. Whatever it is, it's probably worth putting a stake through the heart of the ever-recycled rumor of Goldman Sach's PAC donations.
What Yoon says:
According to Federal Election Commission figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, Goldman Sachs' political action committee and individual contributors who listed the company as their employer donated $994,795 during 2007 and 2008 to Obama's presidential campaign, the second highest contribution from a company PAC and company employees. Only the PAC and employees of the University of California, which donated more than $1.5 million, topped Goldman Sachs. Federal law prohibits a company from directly giving money to a campaign committee.
This is important. There is a refund of one effort by a PAC to donate, and an issue-related donation of $300. That is the only PAC money applicable to the Obama 2008 campaign. I can understand how Yoon concluded that such a large total must have included PAC funds. There's a summary at the top of the Open Secrets page which cautions viewers to understand what PACs are and what role they play, since companies can't be direct donors. However, if Yoon had clicked on the donor stats tab on the page he viewed, he would have gotten a little more perspective on the whole Goldman Sachs campaign donation thing, and why he's wrong to make a big deal out of it.
While it is true that Goldman-Sachs employees gave nearly a million dollars to the Obama campaign, it's equally true that no one donor gave any more than any other individual from any other profession, and when taken as a percentage of the total given to his campaign, it was less than 1% of the total given by everyone.
It is also true that the Obama campaign received more from small contributors ($200 or less) than any other campaign in history -- over $25 million. That number represents more than 125,000 individuals.
319,706 people donated $200 or more to the Obama campaign in 2008. 60.5% of them donated $1,000 or less. Those donors represent 21% of total donations, or $73.5 million. In contrast, if every single Goldman Sachs employee gave $2300, it would represent 433 donors. If we added up every Wall Street firm on the Open Secrets list and assumed each employee gave the maximum, it would represent 1,576 donors out of the nearly 59,000 who gave more than $2300 to his campaign.
Now that we have donor information from the Center for Responsive Politics in perspective, what exactly is CNN's point, anyway? Lots of people donated. Who gets more weight? The ones who gave $25 million in increments of $5 each, or the ones who gave $1 million capped at $2,300 each?
In a Friday surprise, MSNBC political analyst Craig Crawford announced on his CQ Politics blog Trail Mix today that he is leaving the network.
"Three months short of my current contract," he wrote, "I sent the following to the boss, [MSNBC President] Phil Griffin: 'Phil, Just wanted to give you the heads up that my situation with MSNBC has become so unrewarding for me that I've decided to move on. — Craig'"
In an email, Crawford tells TVNewser, "This was a long time coming. I haven't felt like a good fit for MSNBC since the presidential campaign, and their hard turn toward point-of-view programming.
"So many of my booking calls lately have been for segments bashing Sarah Palin, for instance. I was boring myself, and surely the viewers.
"But no particular event brought this on, just my desire to try other outlets and have more fun. I have a fine and rewarding home with the great folks at CQ-Roll Call. I enjoy blogging for them and doing our web videos.
"Perhaps I'm not cut out to be a cable cowboy anymore, dunno. Prefer remaining independent and do my own thing for any channel, including MSNBC, that books me. After a dozen years with one channel, I'd rather play the field for a while."
In the interest of disclosure, I have spoken with Craig in the past--as we set up his book chat last year--and I've communicated with him via Facebook on this as well. I like Craig as a person, and I can certainly understand a level of frustration if the only subject for which he's invited is Palin. However, I don't know if that's the whole truth. In the comment section of his blog, he revealed some more:
i simply could not any longer endure being a cartoon player for lefty games, just gotta move on to higher ground even if there's no oxygen
Lefty games? Oh dear. I asked Craig to explain what that meant, but he refused. In fairness to Craig, since his appearances were basically with Countdown, I don't think that anyone will argue there isn't a lefty slant, but games? It's a troubling characterization. Craig commented again:
i have never and never will forgive Chris [Matthews] for calling me a racist after the West Virginia primary (the last time I will ever go on air with him). Probably should have resigned then and there, but better late than never.
I haven’t felt like a good fit for MSNBC since the presidential campaign, and the hard turn toward point-of-view programming. No particular event brought this on, just my desire to try other outlets and have more fun. As far as Chris is concerned, on Morning Joe after the West Virginia primary he accused me of always defending Clinton and what he claimed to be her racially motivated campaigning. That’s the problem. Trying to be fair became seen as bias in the new thinking over there. But I do wish my many pals at MSNBC nothing but good things.
The truth is, there were times that the anti-Hillary coverage got to me, and I wasn't a Hillary-supporter. But that was over a year ago, and claims of loyalty aside, leaving with bad blood three months shy of your contract ending seems to be a strong statement to make for transgressions more than a year old. Now, I'd like to think that Craig was taking a principled stand against "point of view" programming, but as Mediaite points out, Crawford announced he was going from the frying pan into the fire:
Crawford says on his blog he will be on Fox & Friends as a guest on Monday, although FNC says he won’t be. He also writes in the comments that he is a “free agent.”
Update: Crawford took down the F&F booking info shortly after publication.
Oy. F&F isn't point of view programming, Craig? C'mon now. Clearly the free agent thing had Crawford thinking, because later on Facebook and Twitter he asked what people thought of CNN's Rick Sanchez as a possible new "anchor buddy". I admit, I wasn't too complimentary.
I do think that collectively we're reaching a form of critical mass on being tired of opinion media masquerading as journalism. There will always be a certain percentage of the population that needs their pre-conceived notions reinforced, but by and large, Americans don't trust "journalists" any more, with reason. And this stand of Crawford's--as contradictory as it appears on its face--may be another crack in the dam.
DES MOINES -- John Sasso, a senior adviser to John F. Kerry's presidential campaign, threatened to ban Fox News staff from the candidate's plane Friday night when Fox initially refused to apologize for a talk show host's comment that a new videotape showed Osama bin Laden with a Kerry button.
Kerry advisers quickly backtracked, however, concluding that an escalating conflict with a major cable channel just days before the election would do nothing to help the Democratic nominee. Kerry senior adviser Mike McCurry spoke to Fox executives Friday and yesterday and was told that the Fox News host, Neil Cavuto, may address the remark on Monday's show, officials from Fox and the Kerry campaign said.
The furor was a rare moment of visible frustration inside the Kerry camp: Kicking a major cable outlet off of the candidate's plane would almost certainly spark a run of negative stories in the media about Kerry lieutenants lashing out and their preelection confidence vanishing.
Rudy Giuliani went on ABC's Good Morning America and had the balls to say that America never had a domestic terrorist attack under George Bush. 9/11 was the most heinous attack on US soil since pearl Harbor and to think that Giuliani was the mayor of the city that was attacked only illustrates how despicable the conservative movement is. New Yorkers should be outraged by his behavior on ABC. Almost as lame: George Stephanopoulos didn't even correct him on the air.
I spoke to the former mayor of New York City this morning on GMA, who assailed the Obama administration’s decisions on national security.
“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.” Giuliani seems to have forgotten about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and shoe bomber Richard Reid.
We also had the anthrax attacks as well. Watching the video you can see Stephanapoulos either was asleep at the wheel or didn't want to confront Rudy on his outrageous lie. What good is writing a post correcting him when he was right in front of his face. Bloggers are fact checking him as usual.
The Mayor’s spokesman says that the remark “didn't come across as it was intended” and that Giuliani was “clearly talking post-9/11 with regards to Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil.”
No, the shoe bomber, which took place three months after September 11, was Al Qaeda. So if you count that attempted Al Qaeda plane bombing, then you also count the one attempted Al Qaeda plane bombing under Obama. So it's one to one, not zero to one. Of course, the underwear bomber attack did not occur on our soil, so even that's wrong. Stephanopoulos, who reported Giuliani's correction, apologized for not catching Giuliani on this this morning. But he shouldn't just repeat the spokesman's new lie, unchallenged.
