Congressperson Ann Marie Buerkle (NY-25) with a surprise win against Dan Maffei, rode into Congress in 2010 with the rest of her tea party compatriots. Buerkle promised fiscal responsibility and a new way to do business in Washington DC. I'm not sure that she could claim to be entirely successful in that endeavor, but she has managed some choice committeeships (Oversight and Government Reform, Foreign Affairs and Veteran Affairs) and a sparkly 80 percent score from Heritage Foundation, the highest of any New York representative.

Congresswoman Buerkle also displays the same amount of sparkly intelligence and grasp of how things really work as the rest of her tea party buddies:

A fun nugget buried in this story about Rep. Ann Buerkle's (R-NY) first town hall meeting as an elected member of Congress. Constituents repeatedly asked a puzzled Buerkle about her health benefits. She couldn't figure out why. But her staff sure could.

Buerkle, who voted to repeal the health care reform act, was twice asked about the health insurance she receives as a government employee. At first she said she couldn't understand why people were so interested in her health insurance, and that taxpayers didn't pay anything for it. She later corrected herself after being handed a note from a staffer. Like most employees, she pays for a portion of her insurance and her employer, the government, pays the rest, she said.

Well, no, technically her employer is NOT the government. It's the people (a government for, by and of the people, remember?), and more specifically, it's being paid for by taxpayers. But that's not something any other American (for, by and of the people, remember?) should be able to have, right?

What. In. The. Hell. Have. We. Come. To?

One woman thinks she can predict the future of the economy based on Ben Bernanke’s moon sign. (On a related note: What the heck is a moon sign?) She predicts that Bernanke will have great success sometime in the late summer/early fall, though this might not necessarily have anything to do with the economy. Maybe he wins a free ocean cruise vacation or something. And by October Bernanke is “really, really happy.” Well, that settles it, then. Show’s over, folks, you can all go home! The Fed Chairman is scheduled to be really, really happy in about four months’ time, so you have absolutely nothing to worry about!

What’s particularly hilarious about this segment is how seriously Taylor seems to take this subject and how she tries to talk about serious economic subjects with individuals who make a living making up random crap about people’s lives. Her attempts to discuss unemployment figures and the debt ceiling with psychics are about as useful as discussions of foreign policy with Call of Duty players.

Bang. Head. On. Desk.

I get the fun aspect of psychics, horoscopes, etc. I check my and my husband's horoscope in the paper. A psychic once told my husband that he would marry late in life and have two kids, which turned out to be true. But asking psychics to predict the state of the economy based on Bernanke's moon sign? OMG.

If I can get meta for a moment, I really think this is more insidious than stupid. The pundits that we see everyday on the 24 hour cable channels are no more qualified to predict the future of the economy than these psychics. Really, what special knowledge does Bill Kristol or Pat Buchanan have that qualify them?

But there's a subtle message by relegating discussion of the economy to psychics that economic recovery is something that is up to chance, or the stars, or Providence. That it's something that takes a special sense to understand and that is just frankly b.s. of the highest order. Economics is not that mystical, nor is it that difficult to understand. But as long as the media keeps it something beyond explanation, you foster a sense of hopelessness and helplessness among the viewers, which makes them far more dependent upon experts.

h/t to my friends at The Political Carnival with their cartoon of the day. So what do you think about Sister Sarah ever attempting to take a serious run for the presidency? I think the chance is somewhere between slim and none that she even lasts until the first debate. If she does throw her hat in there she'll quit just before that debate is scheduled and blame the media for demonizing her after she's raked in as many campaign contributions as possible from the suckers who don't know any better. Then she'll go back to ClusterFox and tell everyone how the "lamestream media" never gave her a chance so she just had to quit and John Ziegler can make another revisionist history excuse for a "documentary" and pretend he's relevant.

If not Palin, who might be the next GOP candidate for the presidency that would actually have a chance to win their nomination? I'm thinking someone who is on almost no one's radar screen right now, and that's David Petraeus. Your thoughts on that or anything else that has caught your attention today welcomed.

Open thread below...

CNN didn't get your memo, Governor. [h/t Heather for the screen grab]

Open Thread below...

I swear, I thought this was an Onion piece when I first saw it.

TechCrunch:

Here is another great moment in A.P. history. In its quest to become the RIAA of the newspaper industry, the A.P.’s executives and lawyers are beginning to match their counterparts in the music industry for cluelessness. A country radio station in Tennessee, WTNQ-FM, received a cease-and-desist letter from an A.P. vice president of affiliate relations for posting videos from the A.P.’s official Youtube channel on its Website.

You cannot make this stuff up. Forget for a moment that WTNQ is itself an A.P. affiliate and that the A.P. shouldn’t be harassing its own members. Apparently, nobody told the A.P. executive that the august news organization even has a YouTube channel which the A.P. itself controls, and that someone at the A.P. decided that it is probably a good idea to turn on the video embedding function on so that its videos can spread virally across the Web, along with the ads in the videos.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot wrap my brain around the logic of going after one of your own affiliates, even if you were unaware that they were embedding videos from your YouTube page. Isn't this why companies decide to become affiliates?

Way to go, AP.

Just about all the Village teevee bobbleheads -- especially the Foxheads -- have been trying to find ways to shuffle the blame for the economic disaster now upon us onto the man Americans hired to fix the problem: Barack Obama.

It seemed like everywhere you turned a couple of weeks ago, we were hearing about the "Obama Bear Market." Mind you, they were positively gleeful about it; after all, they know their own future success hinges on Barack Obama's failure. And it worked for a little while: the mau-mauing over Obama's recovery plan certainly didn't help the market.

But now that we're at over 8,000 again? Crickets. That's all we hear.

So now they're crying "socialism" -- or is it "fascism"? -- and hysterically warning against One World Government. I think we can all see the direction this is heading, and it's not a healthy one.

The public sees it too: A Washington Post poll reveals some unpleasant truths for the right-wing pundits who pat themselves on the backs for keeping the flock of True Believers who plump up their ratings, these masters of the media who wield the power to alter public opinion.

Because it ain't working anymore. The rest of the world is gradually abandoning them:

Media Matters has more:

The Washington Post/ABC News poll, released on March 31, asked respondents who they thought "deserve[d]" the most "blame" for "the country's economic situation." Results for who deserved a "great deal" or "good amount" of blame are as follows:

* 80 percent said banks and other financial institutions

* 80 percent said large business corporations

* 72 percent said consumers

* 70 percent said the Bush administration

* 26 percent said the Obama administration

Continue reading »

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...Or reason #7,589 why the Media is hurting America.

This clip is so unfocused that I think it perfectly exemplifies how the media dumbs down the populace so that the average American hasn't a clue what's going on.

Chris Matthews starts the segment by bemoaning that the Obama administration has no really strong spokespeople out there to sell their economic plan. So far, no argument there. The Republicans have been much better in throwing sand in our eyes and giving these easily digestible soundbytes that sound good on the surface. Of course, that's when Matthews goes off the rails a bit and says that the Obama needs someone as clear as Limbaugh to speak for the administration, but as Clarence Page suggests, that's only if you want to convince a very small portion of the citizenry:

MATTHEWS: You know who can talk? You know who can talk? Limbaugh. You don’t have to like the big guy, but you know what he does? He defends capitalism. What he says is, “You, Mr. President, are out there raising taxes and getting rid of deductability and itemization and putting more injury on those of us who are already injured. You’re hurting the people who are driving the truck.”

PAGE: Right, and nobody believes that but dittoheads. The fact is, Bush has already done the same darn thing. That argument isn’t working right now. People know that government is in a spend mode, and by the way, you know we’ve been in….

MATTHEWS: Limbaugh’s numbers are doubled. Barack Obama’s numbers are not doubled.

PAGE: That’s his job, though, look at the numbers. About 18% of the public agrees with Limbaugh. You don’t win elections that way, you get radio ratings. But ever since Reagan, we’ve been on a trend of taxing lower income people and giving breaks to the upper income. Obama has slightly reversed that now, and I don’t see a revolution in the streets.

Nice of Matthews to go ahead and echo the ratings/audience share exaggeration for Limbaugh. Who needs facts?

The panel then admits that Wall Street are looking for immediate solutions with no pain to them. Gosh, that's not an unrealistic outlook at all, is it? The continued focus on the tax increases on the wealthiest 2% of the population is simply intended to scare the rest of us schmoes not making that kind of cash...and as CNBC's Trish Regan admits, won't even come into play until 2011. Rick Stengel has the money quote (literally):

STENGEL: Look, I confess that some of my best friends are investment bankers. You know, I won’t…you shouldn’t hold it against me. But they are… to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. They are just looking at the things that help them. They are not looking for the wider economy, the relationship between Wall St. and actual value of companies has never been wider. And by the way, I’d say to Rush Limbaugh, and as he says to his folks, how is capitalism working for you these days? Not very good, right? I mean, these people are hurting and people want to have the government do something.

That's it in a nutshell, isn't it? These "economic experts" like Limbaugh are big WATBs complaining because THEY are hurt. They couldn't care less about the country as a whole. But to further obfuscate the issue, Matthews' Meter Question asks if we should blame the Obama administration for some of the economic doom and gloom:

Um, excuse me? Didn't we just agree that all this hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over the stimulus plan is due to economists looking for an unrealistic quick fix that offers no pain to them, even if it's not in the best interest for the country? How's that the Obama administration's fault. Even reliable GOP mouthpiece Kathleen Parker (who voted yes) admits that the stock market performed worse under Bush.

Once again, the Fourth Estate abdicates their responsibility to inform the public.

Digby directs us to a perfectly dreadful portrait of George W. Bush by the AP's Ben Feller. As Digby sez, it actually mostly confirms some very basic suspicions about Bush -- namely, that he's an spoiled, authoritarian frat-boy jerk. And this was supposed to be a flattering piece.

But the piece actually tells us even more about our dysfunctional press corps. It's really a regurgitation of the basic theme of Bush coverage we got back in 2000: He's a swell fella you wouldn't mind having a beer with. A guy who will always "do the right thing" regardless of consequences.

Even if it means running the economy off a cliff, getting us into a costly and needless war on false pretenses, and tearing up the Geneva Conventions. Because, you know, "the right thing" is in the eye of the wealthy beholder.

Not that any of this is mentioned in Feller's piece. We do get told that Bush has deep emotional feelings for "the families that died" -- though his policy record shows little evidence of this. Indeed, what his record shows is a self-absorbed recklessness with those lives.

The entire portrait is pure fluff. We learn nothing of consequence about the man, nor do we get any insight into how his thoughtless policies have bounced back. In a man worthy of the presidency, his deeds and the countless lives lost under his carelessness would at some point provoke some deeper reflection; but we clearly need not concern ourselves that such thoughts will ever disturb George W. Bush's pretty little mind.

Nor do they ever seem to cross the reporter's mind. It's emblematic, really, of the obsequious coverage of the Bush presidency throughout from the White House press corps particularly and the Village generally -- obsessed with nonsequiturs and trivia, incapable of examining serious issues or dealing with the real-world effects of his policies.

I guess that's why we have a blogosphere.

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Check out David Shuster's MSNBC reportage on the story dug up by Murray Waas yesterday regarding Dick Cheney's rewriting of White House talking points about Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson.

Notice anything missing?

Yeah, we noticed it too: There's not a single mention of Murray or his reportage. Shuster briefly alludes to Joe Gandelman's Moderate Voice blog -- which was one of many who picked up and linked to the piece. And who does he have on to talk about it? A reporter from the Washington Post -- which so far has not even mentioned the story either in its pages or on its website. (And then he and the NBC reporter talk about it as if Cheney were admitting this as part of his media legacy tour -- when in fact it was dug up out of an FBI interview conducted several years ago.)

I mean: WTF?

I know that reporters in the mainstream media like to think of themselves as the real journalists in the evolving post-Internet world, while we dirty hippie bloggers are mere parasites who help distribute the information they create -- add-ons, as it were.

But the reality is that not only are bloggers doing a lot of real journalistic work these days, there are real journalists who have turned to blogging as the chief means to publishing their work. I happen to be one of these, and so does Murray.

If this had been carried in one of those mainstream outlets first, MSNBC and Shuster would certainly have credited them with the story -- or they'd have had to face the wrath of their colleagues. Failure to cite reporters who originate breaking and important news is considered a major ethical faux pas in the journalistic business.

Well, the same holds true for we dirty hippie bloggers, including those of us who happen to be actual journalists.

These people owe Murray Waas an apology. And they need to update their ethical standards to reflect the reality of the business they're in today.

UPDATE: Commenters have noted that Shuster took pains to credit Waas in later broadcasts. If so, it should be duly noted (we didn't catch those broadcasts); but the failure to do so in this case was also quite real.

UPDATE II: Editorial note: Shuster has in the past done excellent work and often credited Waas on previous stories, so we are working on the assumption that this was an anomaly and probably not a mistake created by Shuster, but rather the show's producers. We're not trying to single out Shuster here, but rather raising an issue that happens all too often to independent journalists working in the blogosphere.

Sondre Lerche - "Say It All"

I read the most extraordinarily un-self-examined op-ed piece by WaPo's Leonard Downie yesterday: Could We Uncover Watergate Today? and I had to laugh at the cluelessness of it all. For the last eight years, we have had an administration that is WORST than any Watergate atrocity (from a man who knows firsthand). How well has WaPo (or any of the remaining corporate media) done in uncovering atrocities that we in the blogosphere have been regularly finding? And they wonder why newspapers are going bankrupt. I'm just sayin'...

And this weekend is another perfect example that Deep Throat and the Watergate scandal is a distant memory in journalism, supplanted by the uncritical regurgitation of talking points. Don't believe me? Catch the Revisionist History Tour with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on "Meet the Press" and Darth Cheney himself on Fox News Sunday (a network on which he could eat babies and STILL be defended). The man has already admitted to approving torture. Think any other war crimes will come to light?

ABC's "This Week" - Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Kerry Kennedy, cousin of Caroline Kennedy; Reps. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y.; Peter King, R-N.Y., and Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y.; Joel Klein, chancellor, New York City Department of Education.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

CNN's "Late Edition" - Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Eric Cantor, R-Va.; Laura Tyson, former Clinton economic adviser; Carly Fiorina,

"Fox News Sunday" - Vice President Dick Cheney.

"The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Joe Klein, Katty Kay, John Heileman, Helene Cooper. Topics: How big is Obama's mandate for change? Is Caroline Kennedy a smart choice to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate?

So what's catching your eye this morning?