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Mark Halperin appeared on MSNBC's Alex Wagner show to explain why our Beltway media can be so screwed up -- and he demonstrated why, too:

HALPERIN: When Drudge tees something up, even though he tilts right and even though a lot of people denigrate him, he's got … it gives the Republicans the opportunity to dominate a news cycle. But when they cry wolf with a five-year-old video, I think it undermines something that has been so effective for them, the delivery mechanism over the years.

Halperin describes Matt Drudge as a guy who "tilts right". Say what? He's a conservative hit man. So why is he described as vaguely to the right-of-center? In the same sentence, Halperin states that when Drudge posts something, it dominates the 24-hour news cycle. Now that is true, but my question is: Why?

When Drudge first started he was an Internet pioneer because there were no blogs and not much of any type of online news and opinion websites. He broke a Bob Dole story in 1996 and then scooped a story about Monica Lewinsky in 1998 that turned him into a media sensation.

In March 1995, the Drudge Report had 1,000 e-mail subscribers; By 1997, Drudge had 85,000 subscribers to his e-mail service. Drudge's website gained in popularity in the late 1990s after a number of stories which he reported before the mainstream media. Drudge first received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election. In 1998, Drudge gained popularity when he was the first outlet to break the news that later became the Monica Lewinsky scandal.[5]

Ever since he's been treated as the 'king of news' who rules the world. Many of us scratch our heads over that characterization. In his heyday he did command considerable clout in the media, but after almost two decades he's only solidified his wingnut hatchet man credentials and yet the Villagers still treat him as Jesus walking on water.

Josh Marshall recently talked about the decline of Drudge too:

I heard that Drudge was milking the race war this afternoon so I checked in. First time in forever. And I was just hit by the alternative reality. The skewed polls, the bottom giving out from the HMS Titanic Obama, the fight for human rights to oppressed conservatives.

Just weird.

When will the media finally be held accountable for giving this gaseous propagandist any credibility whatsoever? Since after the 2004 election, he's been virtually a non-entity except for Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and the Beltway Villagers. He does get great traffic, but his scoops are basically Breitbartesque tomfoolery. OK, Breitbart learned his trade from Drudge, since he worked for him ...

As an aside, I've been getting a ton of twitter traffic from a 2005 post I wrote called Drudge: The Eggman article. Read it and laugh or cry...

(h/t Video Cafe for video)

The right-wing smear machine has been unrelenting in their cowardly attacks against FLOTUS. Michele Obama has been a target of Limbaugh's scathing commentary weekly, but Drudge led the way after Culture Map got the lying started.

Michelle Obama Derangement Syndrome continues unabated in the right wing media.
Several sites have picked up a story at the website CultureMap.com that reported on Obama's choice of jewelry at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York. From CultureMap, with emphasis added:

That was no ordinary bling on the wrist of First Lady Michelle Obama at the DNC fundraiser in New York Tuesday night. Those fancy diamond cuffs were the creation of 23-year-old Katie Decker, whose namesake jewelry line has been making a serious splash since her graduation from Texas A&M two years ago.

The native Houstonian is over the moon with the fab pub that photos of the first lady in Katie Decker are already providing. Michelle Obama's stylist picked up the bracelets at Katie's showroom in Fragments in Soho. The bracelets were on loan for the evening; a common practice in the fashion industry. You can see more photos of the Obamas from the evening here by checking out the Gotham Hall event.

If you've been saving your nickels and dimes, the cuffs are available locally at Judith Ann Jewels. The First Lady wore Katie's Lotus cuff priced at $15,000 with 2.9 carats of diamonds, her Gothic cuff at $15,350 with 2.17 carats in diamonds and the Quatrefoil bracelet at $11,800 with 1.73 carats in diamonds.

Or, as Drudge Report wrote it:

Fox Nation also picked up the story and included excerpts -- but not the line about the jewelry being "on loan for the evening"....

--

Right on cue, the story was picked up by Jim Hoft. He headlined his post "Everyone Must Sacrifice... Michelle Obama Wears $42,000 in Bling to DNC Fundraiser":

The economy may have had its first downgrade.

But not the Obamas.

In January 2009, before the president signed his failed $787 billion stimulus bill into law, Barack Obama lectured America saying,

"Everyone must sacrifice for the greater good... Everyone must have some skin in the game."

Everyone but Barack and Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama wore $42,000 in bling to a DNC fundraiser this week.

The accusation that Obama was being extravagant because she wore borrowed jewelry is the latest in a long line of deranged attacks on her.

I remember when America finally woke up to the fact that George Bush was a destructive President, attacks of FLOTUS where still pretty much frowned upon and then kept to a minimum for good reason. Why isn't the media all over Drudge because of the falsehood of his story? I guess because the beltway Villagers still believe he rules the world.

I've been working on an action called "Don't Get Fooled again," which would feature George W. Bush and his cohorts over his presidential reign to remind America that it was his morally corrupt administration that led our country into the abyss. Who could have predicted that the GOP would kick-start it for me? Really, thanks guys and Bachmanns.

Back in January, I wrote a post called The Big Conservative Con Begins in 2010...."Don't Get Fooled Again" to point this out.

Typically con men feed on dishonest people, but in politics they focus on the unsuspecting. What we've learned from the previous decade is that conservatism is a total failure when it comes to governance. Under Bush and Cheney we've had a massive terrorist attack, two wars, torture and a global financial meltdown. We've had Hurricane Katrina expose how conservatives respond to Americans after a natural disaster hits two states. We've had government corruption at the highest order, which resulted in Cheney's chief of staff being convicted of multiple felonies. We had the horrendous Terry Schiavo affair. We had a news network actively become a propaganda arm of the GOP. We had Wall Street inflate a mortgage bubble that almost turned into another Great Depression.

I can go on and on, but because of a timid media, they will be allowed to perpetrate their newest con. "Only conservatism can save America," will be their motto. If the media actually acted like an independent monitor of the news, we might stand a chance against the new scam, but we know better. Drudge rules their world.

The GOP is brilliant at one thing, and that is tearing people down. Because they left this country in such tatters it's an easy scam to pull off, because hard-working Americans are vulnerable pickings. They have to try and survive in a world destroyed by conservative values. The con is easy. Just blame everything on President Barack Obama. All your job woes, all your fears about how your life will recover and the future that it holds for your children. If we had a real media that would expose the Bush regime for the manifest failure it was, it would be a much harder task, but we don't, and instead news programming has turned more into endless right/left opinion discussions.

"Don't Get Fooled Again" should be our national slogan, because even if we disagree as liberals in the way our president has handled the situation he was elected into, we are engaged enough to know what conservatism has done to this country...read on

Bush's conservative ideology, and the right-wing propagandists planted in D.C. who enabled him led us into two wars. We attacked a country named Iraq who posed no threat to us at all after a terrorist attack on our soil. Under his leadership -- with all the tax cuts he could deliver to the rich, and all the deregulation of every financial institution in sight -- he helped create a near-catastrophic economic depression which spread globally. Let's face it, his policies were totally awesome for the uber-wealthy and they milked it for all it was worth. But ironically, it was those same grand poobahs have who have tried to banish Bush into the cellar for the last few years so America wouldn't have to see his face or hear his voice, which frees conservatives up to blame Obama for all the problems we face now, including unemployment.

Because Bush is so reviled by America, I've pitched it a number of times within our Blue America PAC, but we haven't had a chance to fully explore it. And then, a gift comes along: Republicans chose to remind America for me. It was almost as if John Cornyn was caught shopping at Tiffany's and sending me an early Christmas gift.

Here's what Cornyn said:

But look, I think President Bush's stock has gone up a lot since he left office. People appreciate his resolve and commitment in the face of a national security threat like 9/11. He had his challenges, no doubt. We have, I think, learned a lot about things we could have done better as Republicans in terms of fiscal responsibility, but when he left office, the deficit was 3.2% of the gross domestic product, today it's about 10%. We've added $2.3 trillion to the national debt since President Obama got there. I think a lot of the people are looking back with a little, with more fondness on President Bush's administration and I think history will treat him well.

Continue reading »

Naughty, naughty, naughty. Using a faked memo to catapult your propaganda? Smells of desperation:

The memo, first reported by Politico and Big Government and pushed hard by Drudge, allegedly shows the Dem leadership telling rank and file Dems to stay hush-hush about a scheme for a “doc fix” later this year that, in essence, would make the bill’s deficit-reduction meaningless.

After Dems alleged to TPM that the memo is fake, Politico pulled down the story.

The memo, however, was pushed to some reporters by the office of GOP leader John Boehner. A source forwards an email sent at 12:58 PM by Boehner spokesman Michael Steel to The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward and other reporters, with the original memo attached.

“Folks — Please read the attached draft memo addressed to `Democratic Health and Communications Staff,’ Steel wrote. “It makes it clear that Democrats want to avoid discussing issues related to the CBO score of their latest government takeover legislation because their claims don’t pass the straight face test.”

Asked for comment, Steel would only say: “Will the Democrats do the `doc fix’? If they will, they are low-balling the cost of health care by hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The Republicans continued to insist that the memo was never proven to be faked, but Dave Weigel picks up the story here:

(T)wo hours after the story went up, TPM reported that Democrats were calling the memo a “hoax,” and Politico pulled the story. At a 3:30 press conference called “to highlight the concerns over the Democrats’ budget gimmick to temporarily exclude a $371 billion ‘Doc Fix’ from the health reform bill,” Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) quickly dismissed the memo.

“Look,” said Cantor, “the appropriate question there is, ask the reporter who wrote the article. I know nothing beyond what I read in Politico.” The “real hoax,” he said, was on “the American people.”

Ryan was even quicker on the dismissal. “Who cares who wrote the memo?” he asked.

Of course? Who cares if it was faked? A spokesperson for the House Leadership released the following statement:

Opponents of health reform can’t win on the merits of

their arguments so they must stoop to acts of desperation to deny

Americans an honest and truthful debate. The latest examples of this

came today with the maligning of Democratic Members on the House

Floor, and the circulation of an apparently fraudulent memo that was

falsely attributed to Democratic staffers. These two incidents are

exhibits Y and Z in a long line of evidence showing that opponents of

health reform will do anything and say anything to stand in the way.

Republican leaders have said they will do anything to stop this bill,

but no matter what they do, Democrats will continue working to deliver

affordable health care for America's middle class.

Fakery and desperation are no reasons to not try to fundraise off the fear-mongering, right, David Vitter?

And as a breath of fresh air in the stagnant cesspool of lies and deceptions propagated by the GOP, comes Rep. Anthony Wiener.

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Just a helpful hint for you Republicans: I'd make sure that Anthony Weiner isn't in the room before reading a hoax memo as if it were real.

The right has been seizing on the brutal murder of a teen, Derrion Albert, in Chicago by feuding gang members. Reports are that Albert just happened to walk into the fight and became a fatality of it.

This story has been the top story on Drudge for the last day, you know since Obama is from Chicago.

As well as Malkin trying to take a jab at community organizing, and there for Obama:

Community organizing has not stopped Chicago’s teen violence epidemic. The Olympics will not solve this long-festering problem, either.

So if we are going to blame our politicians for murders that happen in their home towns, then can we talk about this?

An 18-year-old man is behind bars and a 17-year-old male is wanted in connection with the deadly stabbing of a teenage girl in West Chester.

Police arrested Khrendon Gray of Springfield Township early Friday morning and charged him with one count of murder. He appeared in court on Friday where a judge set his bond at $1 million.

Gray is accused of fatally stabbing 15-year-old Amber Robinson Thursday evening.

On Friday afternoon, West Chester police issued an arrest warrant for 17-year-old Rashon Martin of Forest Park. The warrant is for complicity to commit murder in connection to the death of Robinson.

This case is very similar to the one in Chicago, an innocent teen being in the wrong place at the wrong time, except for the names and locations.

West Chester is where House Minority Leader John Boehner lives. As matter of fact this happened only a couple of miles from his house. Is the right going to start putting blame on Boehner for it?

Or how about the two charged with the crime. They are from Jean Schmidt’s district. When will Drudge post the headline; ‘Holy Schmidt: Jean Schmidt constituents charged with brutal murder of teenager’

It has been almost three weeks since the murder of Amber Robinson and I haven’t heard a peep out of the right on it. Apparently only the brutal murder of teens in the President’s hometown are worthy of mention. When it occurs close to home for Republicans then they just brush it under the carpet.

You can always count on Michelle Malkin and Drudge to lie about an issue to try and turn the heat off of her racist friends. I just hope some people don't get hurt because of it. She wrote a story and as usual jumped the gun to make her point: A teachable moment: Racial thuggery in St. Louis;Updated.

People like Malkin are scanning the headlines now for something that will turn the racist light off of the teabaggers, but she can't even get this story straight. Where have you seen that before?

Here's what really happened.

A student on a Belleville West High School bus was beaten for his choice of seat, not because he was white, according to a witness and police.

"The incident appears now to be more about a couple of bullies on a bus dictating where people sit," said Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax, who originally said Monday's attack may have been racially motivated.

D'Vante Lott, 16, said he was on the bus and witnessed the attack by the two black students.

The victim walked onto the bus, looking for an open seat, but students kept turning him down, as D'Vante said happened often with this student.

But Monday, the victim apparently tired of asking for a seat, D'Vante said, moved one student's book-bag off a seat, and just sat down.

She finally updated her story hours later because you know she needs those links and trackbacks, but Sullivan was asking her to change it for a while. You'd figure that a story which she promoted as racially sensitive would be one that she would keep an eye on so that she got her facts right, no?

The Daily Dish says the story in St. Louis was updated with the truth before she even promoted her "racial thuggery" charge.

That is Michelle Malkin's categorical claim about the ugly incident on a school bus in Saint Louis this morning. She wrote that post at 12.02 pm, linking to this story which says it was updated at 11.35 am to rebut the notion that this schoolyard fight was racially motivated. The police chief rushed to judgment and later recanted. Maybe Malkin missed it and will soon qualify her claim.

Andrew, you know she knows the truth, but needed the traffic, dude.

And Dan Riehl is a horse's ass. You gotta read it to believe it.

Digby has an enlightening post on this.

Keep in mind that these are the same people who were just carrying signs calling Obama Hitler and saying that Acorn groups and his arrogant wife should be sent back to "their own" country and be stripped of their rights. I'd say those so-called thugs were the polite ones.

More seriously, these people are a perfect example of the modern racists. They don't go around calling black people "boy" (to their faces) and they certainly don't think of themselves as bigots. But in their minds, racial minorities are dangerous barbarians who are threatening to destroy their way of life. Hence, when they find themselves in a group of loud teenagers, they see it as a test of their own manhood to "put them down." (Of course, that's why they need all those guns.)

A black president is threatening to them, even if they don't really understand it, because while he is unquestionably a very accomplished individual in anyone's estimation, the loyalty he inspires among African Americans frightens them --- and his sometime feints to popular culture and black solidarity make them very, very uncomfortable. That's why this obsession with ACORN has such resonance. The black army is forming. We are living in a new world where racism is a minority position. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it doesn't find political expression is some powerful ways. It behooves liberals to be vigilent about this and keep these impulses in check with frequent reminders that it is not acceptable in modern America to be a racist.

It's also obvious that nativism and immigration are the great racial undercurrent of the moment and they have long been the animating feature of toxic right wing populism. We ignore this stuff at our peril.

Racism is a minority position, but it's a lot bigger problem than one would think after all this time. A black president is too much to handle for many of them. We see it every day on our TVs. The racism being exhibited by the teabaggers is astounding to me, and the media are doing their best to not inform America about it, even as they show it. It's like watching an action movie, but the dialogue doesn't match the action. And I will never ignore this hatred. I never have and I never will.

UPDATE: Pam Spaulding finds a possible hate crime: GA: white man beats down black woman in front of her child at Cracker Barrel

Police are investigating a possible hate crime as a white man, Troy Dale West of Poulan, GA, put the beatdown on a black woman, Tasha Hill. He did so in front of her daughter when Hill told West to watch out for her child as the mullet-sporting West swung open a door to leave a Morrow, GA Cracker Barrel...read on

I checked out Drudge to see if he flagged this report and guess what? There's no mention of it. And neither did Malkin.

If you were to look at Drudge's homepage yesterday, it would look like the student wearing the T-shirt that says: "Please don't ruin my graduation. Support '09 Commencement" is opposed to President Obama speaking at Notre Dame today.

Nope:

Students hold signs, wear shirts denouncing protest methods

"I want to put out positive, supportive message instead of these gory images," Baldridge said. "Our graduation shouldn't be a soapbox."

Seniors Matt Degnan and Sawyer Negro stood at Notre Dame Ave. and Angela Blvd. Friday with about 10 other students and faculty members in shirts designed by Degnan that said "Obama? Fine by me" and "Please don't ruin my graduation. Support '09 Commencement."

Drudge is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Well, I guess he always has.

The corporate media and the right wing blogs have followed The Drudge Report for years, looking for talking points and proper GOP framing for their reporting. As you can see from the above picture, and the headline "Obama Congratulates McCain," it appears Matt Drudge, along with the Republican Party is in complete meltdown.

Download | play Download | play

Ah, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations... The McCain campaign is on overdrive to manage the upcoming vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. Over the last week, they have demanded limiting the response time to 90 seconds (perfect for the wordy but meaningless "pageant" answers she's prone to give), set up the framework that tough questions are "gotcha" questions and any of Biden's responses may be sexist and patronizing. Now they are suggesting that moderator Gwen Ifill may not be nonpartisan enough to moderate the debate, since she authored a book on politics and race, even though the McCain camp approved of her selection (you'll remember she moderated the 2004 VP debate between Cheney and Edwards) AFTER her book had been published. Media Matters' Country Fair:

The right wing is in a frenzy about the fact that Gwen Ifill is working on a book about "emerging young African American politicians," which supposedly means she cannot be neutral during the VP debate she is moderating tomorrow night. Since the right wing is in a frenzy, we can be pretty sure the establishment media is about to join in.

Two things to keep in mind:

1) The October 7 presidential debate will be moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw, who currently serves as NBC's liaison to the McCain campaign -- while spreading pro-McCain misinformation on Meet the Press. In fact, the McCain campaign hand-picked Tom Brokaw to moderate the October 7 debate[..]

2) CBS' Bob Schieffer moderated one of the 2004 debates, despite the fact that he is a longtime friend of George W. Bush who had previously acknowledged that his personal relationship with Bush made it difficult to cover him. Schieffer's brother was a business partner of Bush's before Bush became president -- and Bush made him an ambassador.

On Tuesday's Fox & Friends, McCain Sr Policy Advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer throws a subtle shot across the bow at Ifill, warning that there will be serious questions to answer for if there are too many foreign policy questions in the debate:

DOOCY: It sounds like they're stacking the deck against her, because they know...everybody knows that's Joe Biden's...you know, that's his forte. Why wouldn't they ask half and half or...the average person is more concerned with domestic stuff than foreign stuff anyway.

PFOTENHAUER: Exactly, so I think that whoever...you know, I think the moderator will have some...some serious questions to answer themselves if they do do go so heavily foreign policy.

Steve Benen:

I suspect Republicans don't really care about Ifill or her book, but are raising a fuss so that a) they'll have an excuse if Palin fails to meet expectations tomorrow night; and b) they might "work the ref" and pressure Ifill into going easy on Palin.

Regardless of whether the "outrage" is sincere or not, this is likely to be the Republican cause of the day. Joe Scaborough was all over this story earlier on MSNBC, the far-right blogs are livid, Drudge is on the case, and one assumes other outlets will soon follow.

By the way, Jezebel looked at the 2004 Vice Presidential debate and guess what? Heavily focused on foreign policy.

UPDATE: There's still a chance that McCain will do another of his patented Hail Marys to stop the debate. Media Bloodhound offers some suggestions on how he might distract the media from his running partner.

Transcripts below the fold:

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Download | play Download | play (h/t Bill W.)

The conservatives have been waiting for a chance to scream sexism at Obama over Palin and Drudge finds a way to do it. He takes Obama out of context. In the full clip, Obama clearly is talking about John McCain as Wolfson points out, but Drudge and as usual---FOX/Hannity---lie and say he was speaking about Palin. This is Rove Politics 101.

Marc Ambinder gets to the truth: Obama Did Not Call Sarah Palin A Pig

And he also remembers that McCain actually attacked Hillary with the same phrase.

And so is John McCain. Speaking about Hillary Clinton....

McCain criticized Democratic contenders for offering what he called costly universal health-care proposals that require too much government regulation. While he said he had not studied Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's plan, he said it was "eerily reminiscent" of the failed plan she offered as first lady in the 1990s.

"I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," he said of her proposal.

As Duncan says "Just more Zombie lies."