1. There is no media "silence" on Benghazi.

2. On the contrary, the media has extensively covered and aired analysis of Benghazi, along with every right-wing attack about the Obama administration's actions. But this hasn't swung the election for Romney, which is driving wingnuts like Jonah crazy.

3. The idea that the media shouldn't have covered George W. Bush's DUI in 2000 is pretty nutty.

Have a nice day, Pantload.

Even though Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds had a hugely stupid "both sides do it" post as well, Jonah takes home the gold today. Because to people who can breathe through their nose, there's a glaring, obvious difference between a politician who engages in hyperbole (Biden), and a politician who clumsily but very accurately describes their actual beliefs and policy preferences (Akin).

Biden, as far as I can tell, has never introduced any anti-slavery bills -- but Akin has co-sponsored "legitimate rape" laws. And as David Frum pointed out, this view about rape and abortion that Akin articulated is quite common in Republican ranks. This was hardly just a "gaffe."

And let's be clear about something else.

The idea that Republicans are responsible about policing their own when one of them says something offensive and crazy is itself, offensive and crazy (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here -- ah, screw it -- just go to Media Matters).

The only reason the GOP is stepping in this time is because they know Akin has single-handedly put control of the Senate in jeopardy. If he were in a safe seat, they'd yawn. But when even Michelle Malkin admits you've stepped in it, you've screwed the pooch good.

This little piece of nonsense comes to us via Tucker Carlson and Foster Freiss' Daily Caller by way of Raw Story. It features Jonah Goldberg, arrogant insider and Editor-at-Large of the National Review Online, a conservative repository for neocon ideas.

Mr. Goldberg admits in this interview that Mitt Romney just isn't going to play with the younger set, so instead of thinking through reasons for that failure, he spends some time trashing younger people. He might have made some arguments for why young people feel so alienated from the Republican party right now -- student loans, health care, and corporate elitism -- but instead he suggests that their ignorance should be beaten out of them. That beating, by the way, should be physical if necessary:

GOLDBERG: Personally, I think the voting age should be much, higher, not lower. I think it was a mistake to lower it to 18, to be brutally honest….[I]t is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people. [...]

The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism. That’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity and their ignorance. And that’s something that conservatives have to beat out of them. Either literally or figuratively as far as I’m concerned.

Isn't this the guy who devoted an entire (albeit fraudulent) book to the supposed fascist tendencies of liberals?

Mr. Goldberg also thinks young people should not have the right to vote at age 18 but doesn't have a peep to say about sending them off to die in a country thousands of miles away for the oligarchs' pleasure.

Goldberg specifically takes issue with young people's contention that socialism is better than capitalism. This is where he contends they most need their beating, because there is "no other system that creates wealth better than democratic capitalism." Repeat after me: Conservatives believe bullying is the answer.

What if we were to rethink that statement? What if we were to say that democratic capitalism thrives in a culture where the constraints of health care, education, and an aging workforce were the platform to launch capitalistic ventures? I can't help thinking that true wealth creation, the kind that involves tangible benefits like job security, a better quality of life, a healthy population and community priorities, would thrive in an environment where it wasn't constantly bogged down under the constraints of unbridled, greedy capitalism.

Let's be honest here. We do not live in a country with democratic capitalism anyway. We live in a country where consumption and growth are the holy grails of financialism, which is an entirely different way to accumulate wealth than democratic capitalism. Anymore, it more resembles a classic oligopoly.

Mitt Romney isn't wealthy because he went out into the world and made things that made the world a better place. He's wealthy because he had money that he used to make more money. In Romney's case, his wealth wasn't the product of him being particularly smart or particularly creative. It was the product of money equating to power, and that power being used to strip others of their wealth and power, which had a handsome payoff for him at the expense of others.

Young people are clear-headed enough to recognize that their constraints are the result of greed and an unrelenting need to feed the financialist beast. It's hard to imagine any of them being particularly excited about that.

Though I must say, I'm enjoying the spectacle of conservatives alienating the next generation of voters. So un-Reaganlike. To Jonah Goldberg, I offer this indictment written by one of those 18-year olds you'd like to slap around. She's my daughter. Get near her with your open hand and I'll call the dogs out on you.

America is running in circles, and pushing solutions that will never work. It’s not a race with China or Korea or Japan that we’re running, but a race to understand that the world view we currently hold is warped. We will continue to fight ourselves and drive our sheeplike children to this school and that school in a desperate hunt for that ever elusive “excellence”, yet forever stand away from it as long as we fail to recognize the importance of the integration of our education, that we are not machines but instead organisms functioning in unison. That we are not simply a sack of organs, skin over bone, but instead transcend pieces of ourselves into a bigger painting, united in our journey of life, understanding and progress.

When did the goal of our lives become "democratic capitalism" and a constant quest for wealth? What happened to living contentedly in our communities, raising children, painting, making music, dancing, working together for a greater good? When did we decide young people were ignorant idiots?

We didn't. Jonah Goldberg is the ignorant bullying idiot here, and his financialist greed is showing.

Jonah Goldberg is promoting his latest "nanny-boo-boo liberals!" coloring book, and Steve Inskeep of NPR basically got him to admit that's exactly what it is. After Inskeep smartly got Goldberg to agree that his book was railing against "politically poll-tested phrases that are designed to shut down debate rather than open it up"—Inskeep fired three fastballs by him.

INSKEEP: Although I'm sure that there are people who can say, well, if you guys can call President Obama a socialist, he's certainly able to call you a social Darwinist. There's probably more evidence for the latter than the former.

GOLDBERG: Well, to a certain extent, sure.

Strike one.

INSKEEP: Well, let's be fair. There are plenty of conservative labels that are applied on the rivals of conservatives. We could go back to the past administration: You're with us or against us. Are you with America, or are you with the other guys? There are plenty of rhetorical devices that are used to shut down debate on the other side, to make it - to not just appeal for unity, but to make it seem unpatriotic if you don't agree.

GOLDBERG: Yeah, no. And some of these things - I absolutely agree.

"Yeah, no"? Strike two.

INSKEEP: So you're opposed to these catchphrases that substitute for arguments. You're opposing making too many assumptions. I want to ask about one that is commonly set on the right, though: Government is the problem - said again and again. In fact, you imagined, I think, in September of last year, a speech that you wished that President Obama would give, and the last sentence was: Government is the problem. Is that an oversimplification? I mean, you're not against having a government.

GOLDBERG: No, I'm not against having a government. Yeah, and it's - I don't know, actually, if that qualifies as the kind of cliche that I'm talking about...

Yer out, Jonah.

Very nice work by Inskeep exposing Jonah for the hack he is—all with a breezy smile.

Jonah Goldberg went on Piers Morgan Monday night to promote his latest "nanny-boo-boo liberals!" book, and belched up a favorite right-wing canard.

MORGAN: I'm curious what you're thinking what (inaudible).

GOLDBERG: I would put it [the Bin Laden raid] at -- I don't know, $50 million, $40 million.

MORGAN: Wow. That's cheap in the Republican world?

GOLDBERG: That's cheap in comparison to what the cost of the war on terror is.

MORGAN: No wonder the country got into the mess it did.

GOLDBERG: I suppose that that's supposed to be a really telling point. I'm not quite sure how it is.

MORGAN: I'm just saying the Republican administration obviously led to a huge financial collapse. You wouldn't dispute that.

GOLDBERG: I would and I would also say Barack Obama has spent much, much, much, much more money than the Republicans.

MORGAN: Would you dispute that after eight years of Republican administration the country went into a huge economic collapse?

GOLDBERG: No, but that's a timeline question.

Don't you just love that last bit where Jonah shrugs off Bush/Cheney's presiding over the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression as "a timeline question"? The party of personal responsibility blaming everyone else strikes again!

But Jonah is, of course, totally, hilariously, absolutely wrong about this supposed spending binge under Obama.

First, as of 2011, Bush's policies had cost the country over $5T, compared to Obama's $1T.

You want to look at growth in government spending? Obama's lower than George W. Bush and Reagan.

What about government purchases of goods and services? Yep, they've collapsed under Obama.

Government employees? A record decline under Obama.

"Obama's record spending spree is bankrupting the nation" is yet another Big Lie right-wingers like Goldberg -- who incidentally was a cheerleader for Bush/Cheney while they were turning record surpluses into record deficits -- are telling about Obama. It's a lie Mitt Romney will tell during the campaign.

And it's a lie that the media will probably them get away with.

Professional wingnut revisionist historian Jonah Goldberg was very upset that President Obama called the GOP budget -- which pays for tax cuts for rich people by cutting services for poor people -- "Social Darwinism". In a nearly fact-free piece, which he wrote for the Weekly Standard (undoubtedly in crayon), he argues that...

...it’s worth noting that the so-called red-in-tooth-and-claw Gilded Age was a time of massive, historic economic growth. It was when America overtook Britain as the economic powerhouse of the globe. That’s one reason the left has always hated it. When Europe was boldly embracing socialism, America was proving that capitalism was better at generating wealth and lifting people out of poverty.

What a mess.

First, the Gilded Age is generally regarded as the era after the Civil War (ca. 1870s) until the Progressive Era (ca. 1900s). Which European countries were "boldly embracing socialism" before 1900?

Second, anyone who thinks the Gilded Age was an era in which the masses were "lifted people out of poverty" is pathetically, horribly misinformed.

While the rich wore diamonds, many wore rags. In 1890, 11 million of the nation's 12 million families earned less than $1200 per year; of this group, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line.

And here's the best part. Jonah argues that it's unfair to characterize the extreme laissez-faire economics of the Gilded Age "Social Darwinism," because that term was simply an invention of a "liberal" historian in the '40s.

Continue reading »

Sometimes, the wingnut stupid is so strong, it burns.

Roses are red
Violets are blue,
When I bring up Ann Althouse at the list serv,
They all say "Ann who?"

Honestly.

But congrats to those of you who recognize left to right, Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Palin, Miss USA herself, Pammy Atlas, and Michelle Malkin, we did leave Ann Coulter (Miss Congeniality!) out on purpose.

Open thread below....

Methinks Levin has been reading Jonah Goldberg. How else can you explain his attempt the other day to claim that "liberal historians" have it all wrong, and that the Ku Klux Klan was never a right-wing organization.

Levin: You see, the left tries to write the history for this nation. And the left does that because it wants to encourage people, incentivize people, to move left. To support some kind of a statist agenda. Not the Klan's agenda, but the radical left's agenda -- which, in the end, are pretty similar, frankly. In the end it's all one big circle that meets at a point. Tyranny is tyranny, however it's dressed up. You have tyrants who wear suit and ties, and you have tyrants who wear goofy white uniforms.

Well, as we explained to Jonah, the 1920s Klan was the very epitome of right-wing politics in America, and it has remained so ever since:

The Klan was about much more than mere racism, which was more an expression of its larger mission -- enforcing, through violence, threats, and intimidation, "traditional values" and what it called "100 percent Americanism." It was essentially populist, certainly, but there was no mistaking it for anything "progressive." The latter, in fact, was its sworn enemy.

... And it is not as if the Klan has gone away since. In the ensuing years, it has remained the implacable enemy not merely of civil rights for blacks, but for any minority, including gays and lesbians. Its activities have remained associated with violence of various kinds, including a broad gamut of hate crimes committed against every kind of non-white, or non-Christian, or for that matter non-conservative.

In the recent past, it has revived its nativist roots by becoming vociferously active in the immigration debate, openly sponsoring anti-immigrant rallies at which the Klan robes have come out ...

Indeed, you can look around the Web at various Klan websites, if you care to give them the traffic, and see that this is still the case. For example at Thom Robb's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan site, a page is dedicated to their agenda.

Here it is. See if this looks like a "radical left" agenda to you:

The recognition that America was founded as a Christian nation.

The recognition that America was founded as a White nation.

["America was born as an extension of White European heritage. Those who formed the very ideals that we cherish such as freedom of speech, trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty, free enterprise, etc. were of White European heritage. All of the early laws of the United States from its very inception restricted citizenship to White people and all of the early charters, laws, compacts, etc were signed into effect by White people."]

Repeal the NAFTA and GATT treaties.

Put America FIRST in all foreign matters

Stop all Foreign Aid Immediately

Abolish ALL discriminatory affirmative action programs

Put American troops on our border to STOP the flood of illegal aliens

Abolish all anti-gun laws and encourage every adult to own a weapon

Actively promote love and appreciation of our unique European (White) culture

Outlaw the purchase of American property and industry by foreign corporations and investors.

Drug testing for welfare recipients

Repeal the Federal Reserve Act.

Balance the budget

Rehabilitate our public school system.

A flat income tax should be introduced to allow for the funding of community, state and federal projects.

Abortion should be outlawed except to save the mother's life or in case of rape or incest.

We support the death penalty for those convicted of molestation and rape

We support a national law against the practice of homosexuality

["This is a Christian nation and the Bible condemns homosexual activity and the perversion of our society which it encourages."]

Continue reading »

No Comment: The Justice Department and the torture of Maher Arar.

Reverend Billy: Oil spills and real change.

The Daily Texan: A closer look at those Texas State Board of Education standards.

Instaputz: The lonely trials and sacrifices of homophobes.

Whiskey Fire: Jonah Goldberg and Poe's Law.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.