F*&king FTC Major league A-Hole Richard Cleland. I'm sure most of our readers heard about the "new" rules the FTC just came out with which to me are there just to punish bloggers.

The new guidelines declare that bloggers who fail to disclose "material connections" to companies they write about can be fined … wait for it … up to $11,000 per violation! Wow. I asked Julie O'Neill, a former staff attorney for the FTC in the New York regional office and now an attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of law firm Morrison & Foerster, about these new rules.

My first question was whether these rules are fair, rational and enforceable. Julie responded: "I do think that they are rational in the sense that they apply the rules traditionally applied to advertising to new media, but I don't know whether the FTC has completely considered the practical ramifications. For example, the revised guides say that a company that provides a blogger with a free product to review should both require the blogger to disclose that he received it for free and have procedures in place to monitor his postings for compliance."

As you can see from this short excerpt, the FTC has NO F*&king clue what they are doing.

As you know C&L does write a lot of book reviews. Hell, we even host book chats with the author. I happen to get many books sent to my PO BOX and many of them I just don't have time to review or read in a timely fashion so they go up on one of my shelves and I eventually try to get to them. It gets even more ridiculous than I first thought.

Daily Kos reads an interview with Richard Cleland and the stupid burns :

The more I read this interview of an FTC staffer by book blogger Edward Champion, the more the stupidity burns.
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You can return it. Most book reviewers (political bloggers included) get dozens, if not hundreds of books, per year. The logistics and expense of such a thing makes it impractical. Strict adherence to this edict would essentially kill non tradmed book reviewing. And why?

If, however, you held onto the unit, then Cleland insisted that it could serve as "compensation." You could after all sell the product on the streets.

So stupid. You "could" sell it. If you buy a gun, you "could" shoot someone with it. If you purchase a knife, you "could" stab someone. If you open up a stock trading account, you "could" engage in illegal insider trading. If you buy shoes, you "could" use them to run away from a crime scene. If you get an accounting degree, you "could" use that knowledge to launder drug money. If you take a job at the FTC, you "could" become a blithering idiot.

Read the whole post because my eyes are burning in my head. As Duncan often says:

To be clear, I have no problem with transparency and disclosure, I have a problem with Blogger Ethics rules and laws which don't apply anywhere else in the universe for no rational reason.

WTF, am I supposed to burn a book after C&L reviews it. If I write a TV review on a great, great show called Dexter, will they search my house to see if I got a copy from Showtime? Here it is.

I think Dexter is an excellent show. Go and buy or rent all the seasons because the 4th one just started. Are they f*&king kidding me? The FTC can kiss my Italian ass. And that is that.

UPDATE: I see the FTC is rethinking their position now.

FTC Reassures Bloggers - Big Brother Isn't Watching

In a conference call for reporters today, Engle aimed to set the record straight after a flurry of news stories (not to mention blogs and tweets) about the FTC's new advertising guidelines that were, as she put it, "all wrong."

"We are not going to be patrolling the blogosphere," she said. "We are not planning on investigating individual bloggers."

Continue reading »

My good friend Digby finished 5th in a Villager poll on who influences what we discuss.

NationalJournal.com's panel of top political bloggers was asked to join in the survey of National Journal and The Atlantic Wire about which columnists, bloggers and television or radio commentators most helped to shape their opinion or worldview. No one received votes from both the left and right; of the 63 people named in total, only 23 appeared on more than one of the 22 combined ballots.

Related coverage: See how National Journal's panel of 375 Political and Congressional Insiders responded.

LEFT-LEANING Total points

Paul Krugman 23

Rachel Maddow 16

Frank Rich 13

Bill Moyers 11

Digby 9

RIGHT-LEANING Total points
Charles Krauthammer 27

Rush Limbaugh 24

Mark Steyn 18

Jonah Goldberg 11

Eugene Volokh 9

UPDATE: As a side note, I used to be on the National Journal's voting list, but didn't have time to vote on all their polls so I didn't cast a vote or her total would have been higher. She is the best and the brightest writer we have in the liberal blogosphere and even if you do not agree with all her takes you can be sure that she's always thought provoking. Bravo Digby.

My friends and family of the right wing persuasion have finally figured out to take me off their distribution lists for those viral emails that circulate about the internets. It was a lesson hard taught, because I felt obliged to obsessively research the facts and then reply to those emails, systematically destroying the wingnut talking points. You humiliate those wingnuts enough times, and they take you off their email lists.

Now, not everyone has the OCD to research and debunk these talking points, nor the need to be so...well, frankly, confrontational. So for people like that (you know, the ones much nicer than me), Media Matters has created an action site just for you. In it, they take some of the common viral emails--and then write responses to them, debunking the lies and very politely suggesting that the sender might want to use that gray matter lodged in his noggin for more than regurgitating Hannity. (I paraphrase, of course)

For example:

From: XXXXX@aol.com
To: XXXXXXXX@hotmail.com
Date: Saturday, August 01, 2009 6:18 AM
Subject: Fw: Senior's death warrent

SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS:

The actress Natasha Richardson died after falling skiing in Canada. It took eight hours to drive her to a hospital. If Canada had our healthcare she might be alive today. We now have helicopters that would have gotten her to the hospital in 30 minutes. Obama wants to have our healthcare like Canada's and England's.

In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed.

I got this today and am sending it on. If Obama's plans in other areas don't scare you, this should.

Please do not let Obama sign senior death warrants.

Everybody that is on this mailing list is either a senior citizen, is getting close or knows somebody that is.

Most of you know by now that the Senate version (at least) of the "stimulus" Bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens.

The author of this part of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle was credited today by Bloomberg with the following statement.

Bloomberg: Daschle says "health-care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them."

If this does not sufficiently raise your ire, just remember that Senators and Congressmen have their own healthcare plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the remainder of their lives and are not subject to this new law if it passes.

Please use the power of the Internet to get this message out. Talk it up at the grassroots level.... We have an election coming up in one year and nine months. We have the ability to Address and reverse the dangerous direction the Obama administration and it allies have begun and in the interim, we can make their lives miserable.

Lets do it! If you disagree, don't do anything.

Media Matters' response?

Continue reading »

It's a little weird to be posting a video that features me as a guest on Washington Journal (not the least of which is that it feels really creepy to be writing headlines about myself), but here goes: On the whole, I'm happy with my segment. (Except for the part where I missed it that a caller said he was reading the Drudge Report to find out what was going on. Arggh. I missed a real opportunity to educate him.) You can see Parts 2 and 3 here. (Thanks, Heather!)

My favorite part is when I call Glenn Beck "a nut, we all know he's a nut".

Among the other issues addressed: Netroots "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" Syndrome; healthcare reform; network news "analysts," and much more. Enjoy!

And as I mention in the closing segment, I was interested to note that the Republican and Democratic callers all expressed similar concerns.

This was a really productive discussion, and I'd like your thoughts. I talked to Joe Sestak (PA-7) backstage after the panel, and he told me he would start a netroots caucus in the House - and one in the Senate if he wins!

It might be the answer we're looking for; I believe it could increase our clout. (As someone commented to me today, politicians just don't care about one $20 contributor. But a few thousand $20 contributors can inspire a little respect.)

If Joe makes this happen, it means that caucus members will keep us informed on developments regarding our issues, and it means that caucus members who respond to our issues will be able to use us as attack dogs more effectively. This seems like a win/win.

Rep. Pat Murphy (PA-8), an early netroots favorite who joined the Blue Dogs after his election, approached me in the convention center lobby and quite enthusiastically told me if there was a netroots caucus, he would "absolutely" join. (This was after I first called him a few rude names over his FISA vote. But we kissed and made up, and he told me to call him any time I had a question. The fact is, he is with us on most of the issues. Not all, but most.)

All I know is months ago it was conventional wisdom in D.C. that the Democrats couldn't take the House, that candidates shouldn't talk about the war, and that the best way to try to win 15 seats was to throw all your money into about 18 of them, and hope for the best. In the end, that's not how it played out.

- Duncan Black, better known as Atrios, in November 2006.

Who boosted Howard Dean into the chairman's spot at the DNC, bringing his successful 50-state policy to fruition in last year's presidential race? The netroots did. And in 2006, who showed Rahm Emanuel that yes, we really could take control of Congress? We did.

Whose fundraising pushed the Democrats over the top in the 2008 Senate races? Ours did. Whose activist base drove the publicity, turnout and dollars in last year's presidential primaries and general election?

Duh.

So what have we accomplished? The war goes on and we've even expanded our presence in Afghanistan. The Bush-era encroachments on civil liberties have not only been embraced by a Democratic president, the Democratic Congress gives him their blessing. And with the goal of universal healthcare within tantalizing reach, we have Blue Dog Democrats - Democrats! trying to obstruct it.

Enough of kicking the Blue Dogs. What can we do to be more effective? Where did we go wrong?

Continue reading »

The conservative blog Townhall has a new spokesperson making the rounds these days and well, let's just say she is the perfect example of today's GOP -- and all that is wrong with it.

Jillian Bandes has been quite busy lately, appearing on CSPAN Friday morning, then showing up on MSNBC where she got very nasty with our dear friend Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, who laid waste to her right wing talking points.

Bandes is no stranger to controversy. As Tintin at one of my favorite blogs, Sadly No! reminds us, she made her bones by publishing an anti-Arab screed in her college newspaper:

Hey, whatever happend to Jillian Bandes? You remember her. She was the redneck wingnut who was fired from the UNC student newspaper after writing a column advocating that all Arab guys should be strip-searched at airports and that this wasn’t really a problem because Arab guys would enjoy getting all “sexed up” at the airport. Well, guess what? Jillian is now a contributor to the Clown Hall blog — “Where racism isn’t just a philosophy, it’s a job qualification!”

The other great thing about blogging for Clown Hall is you can recycle some stale wingnut blogger talking points from weeks ago, lard it up with ridiculously hyperbolic language à la Atlas’s Jugs, make up some shit to throw in for good measure to get the half-witted Town Hall commentariat all torn up, offer it up as your own blog posting, and then call it a day, collect your wingnut welfare check, and get to happy hour at Smith Point by mid-afternoon. Which is pretty much what Jillian did with her latest offering: “Michelle Obama’s Veggie Garden Is Poisoned!” Read on...

Here are a few snippets from Bandes' anti-Arab rant:

I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.

I don’t care if they’re being inconvenienced. I don’t care if it seems as though their rights are being violated.

They’re some of the brightest, kindest people I’ve ever met. Tragically, they’re also members of an ethnicity that is responsible for almost every act of terror committed against the West in the recent past....

Stay class...never mind. If you don't have Sadly No! bookmarked, you should. It's a guilty pleasure of mine that never disappoints!

Okay, so it wasn't exactly earth shattering, but it sure was informative. Bill Clinton invited a group of bloggers (including yours truly, in the blue jacket) to meet with him this past Monday at the Clinton Foundation offices in Harlem.

Many of the bloggers who were there already wrote about it in great detail here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, but now you'll get my version.

First of all, he was late. (Since Bill Clinton is always late, this was not exactly a surprise.) So we all sat there in his conference room, plotting to turn the whole thing into an impassioned plea for health care reform. Well, that didn't work out because we didn't have enough time - because he was running late. (Did I mention Bill Clinton is always late?)

When he walked into the room, he went around the table and shook everyone's hand. When he sat down, he mentioned the main reason we were there: to talk about the Clinton Foundation.

He said their large corporate donations had fallen off after the market crash, and he was hoping to reach out to small donors through blogs. He talked about what a difference they'd made with worldwide AIDS: "Almost no one will die from lack of medicine for AIDS." But, as he pointed out, there's simply no formalized health care system in much of the world, and some AIDS victims are still dying because of that. That's one of the things the Foundation is doing: building networks of clinics in remote villages.

They also work on climate change and honest to God, he sounded more passionate than Al Gore (which I didn't expect). He was really enthusiastic about the just-announced energy retrofit of the Empire State building and the projected 40% energy reduction from putting in new windows.

"I know solar and wind energy sounds sexy," he began, but quickly made his case for concentrating on retrofits not just to save energy, but as global economic stimulus.

"For one billion dollars, you can get 870 jobs at a coal plant. For one billion dollars spent on solar, you get 1850-2000 jobs. For one billion on wind energy, 3300 jobs. But for a billion spent on retrofitting, 6000 jobs," he said.

"The low-hanging fruit is in fixing the buildings."

Continue reading »

I posted about the NRO's Ed Whelan outing of a liberal blogger that wanted to remain anonymous because he couldn't take any criticism, but now sees the errors of his ways.

My Apologies to Publius

On reflection, I now realize that, completely apart from any debate over our respective rights and completely apart from our competing views on the merits of pseudonymous blogging, I have been uncharitable in my conduct towards the blogger who has used the pseudonym Publius.

Earlier this evening, I sent him an e-mail setting forth my apology for my uncharitable conduct. As I stated in that e-mail, I realize that, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to undo my ill-considered disclosure of his identity. For that reason, I recognize that Publius may understandably regard my apology as inadequate.

The damage is done, but at least an apology came. I hope this sends a message to others (it seems to be a right-wing thing) who similarly believe it's just fine to dig up personal information and expose it about a blogger (or anyone else) who wishes to remain unknown, just because they have a mean streak and a taste for vengeance. It's not fine. You listening, Michelle?

Because I just don't think you can see Jon Stewart smack down Tucker often enough. Have I properly whetted your appetite for some serious mocking? Because this is just laugh-out-loud funny:

Pundit Tucker Carlson publicly announced Tuesday that a right-leaning news site resembling the Huffington Post he's been planning will go live within weeks.

Carlson will launch TheDailyCaller.com, which he said would focus on reporting on the Obama administration and "adding facts to the conversation."

*snicker* Oh...facts. You know, I've watched Carlson for way more years than it should be healthy to do so and I've come across very few times where Carlson has had even a glancing grasp on facts.

"We are a general-interest newspaper-format style site," Carlson told conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. "There just aren't enough people covering this administration and telling the people what's going on."

Carlson, a former conservative and libertarian pundit (most notably on CNN), touted his site as a home for basic reporting.

"Tell the truth, and be accurate," Carlson said of the venture's goals. "It's very important to live up to the basic standards of journalism."

ROFL....basic standards of journalism? You mean the kind that discloses that your dad's position on the Libby Defense Fund while reporting on the Plame outing? Or denies global warming a week after denying that he'd ever been a global warming denier? Or calls Jon Stewart a partisan hack for daring to show Jim Cramer's own videos? That kind of basic standard of journalism?

Carlson said that the site's reporters would share in the profits based on how much traffic is drawn in by their work. He said the site would seek to "drive" the news, similar to the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and other major news outlets. (The site's motto, Carlson said, is "every seven minutes," and seeks to be "even faster than Drudge.")

One of these things is not like the other...nice to see Tucker aiming so high.

Predictions of success? Yeah, not so much.

Open Left is in need of some donations. "Maintaining a Left-wing Community

Update 2: As of 8:00 p.m. eastern, 34 members of the Open Left community have contributed $3,030. Help us reach $6,000 here. More than half way there! These are always the most humbling times to be a blogger.
Update: As of 6 p.m. eastern, 17 Open Left readers have contributed exactly $1,000. Thank you so much! Help us reach $6,000 here.

I just donated to them.

C&L will also be holding a fundraiser all next week too. The economy is hitting us all and we need you to help maintain our community.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

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Bill O'Reilly had Amanda Carpenter on The O'Reilly Factor yesterday (she's now with the Washington Times) to do one his segments called "Policing the Net," which is supposed to highlight the wackiness on the left and right side of the blogosphere. It's an attempt to minimize us, as usual.

The segment dealt with blogger reactions over Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. O'Reilly singled out Michelle Malkin's Hot Air as a blog that had nutty posts on it regarding the Supreme Court nomination.

What O'Reilly did is typical of what some mainstream media types do to us -- and also is what Michelle Malkin, this proprietor of Hot Air, has a history of doing: He cherry-picked some crazy comments and assigned them to the bloggers as if they wrote it as one of their pieces.

Hot Air rightly has a legitimate gripe, because they didn't write the crazy comments that O'Reilly uses to attack them with, but it was from one of their pre-screened commenters instead:

O'Reilly: Alright, I'm going to read a couple of comments, these are from bloggers. Free Republic is probably the roughest right wing website....
This comes from Hot Air.com, "Unqualified, militant and socialist. NEXT please. The GOP has to block any of Hussein's (That's the president) extremist picks".
You know when you read something like that nobody's going to block the pick. Do you ever think who's writing this? Does that person live in the US, it's just not going to happen. The numbers are overwhelmingly democratic and they're going to vote for her.
And the guy who writes this, I guess isn't living here. Let's got to the liberal side.

Amanda Carpenter, once a loyal rightie, didn't even bother to offer up a defense for them (or for Kos). I guess getting a gig with the Moonies has affected her judgment.

I want to ask Allahpundit a question: How does it feel? Your boss has set this very standard up on her own blog by going into liberal blogger comment sections (she does that to C&L quite often) and then cherry-picking our comments to prove her own silly talking points of the moment. It doesn't feel good, does it?

Yeah, you defended Kos one time, but since Malkin set the standard a long time ago, your defense is hollow. Go read her book "Unhinged," and see where it goes.

In response, I know I've highlighted their commenters repeatedly to try and show the MSM what goes on there too. Of course, it's very difficult to post on most right-wing blogs. On the left, we've always kept it pretty open, but once wingers came here and left lynching pictures on my site back in 2005, so I had to change my policies.

The MSM, which was afraid of the right-wingers, used our comments sections to try and paint liberal bloggers as crazy, anti-American traitors who are mean-spirited and vile people. The media always wanted to never give a face to the liberal blogs, but depicted us as this formless, nasty comment entity blob that oozes around the Internet so that it would scare away readers from our work. That didn't work out very well, because readers understood it was a bogus claim. You see, they read what we write and how we present it to our readers. And now the liberal blogosphere is an industry standard that the traditional media are imitating in their quest to catch up with us.

I do agree with Hot Air that O'Reilly smeared them, but I have no sympathy for them, because Michelle Malkin is the queen of using this tactic. Malkin then went on Fox and complained, and righties are asking for a retraction from BillO. Good luck with that, and too bad. You set this up, and now you get to taste what you cooked.

Everyone knows that comments on blogs do not equal what I or any other blogger means when they post. I never even curse in my posts (who would have guessed, since I'm a dirty f*&king hippie). And if Malkin wants an apology she should start by apologizing to all of us first.

It's a brave new world. More than thirty-five years ago, Timothy Crouse wrote the seminal Boys On The Bus, detailing for the first time how the press--specifically types like Robert Novak and David Broder, among others--operated as a kind of hive mind, which Crouse coined as "pack journalism":

(R)ight at the outset Crouse identifies the "womblike conditions" of the bus and/or plane as giving rise to "the notorious phenomenon called 'pack journalism,' " and goes on: "They all fed off the same pool report, the same daily handout, the same speech by the candidate; the whole pack was isolated in the same mobile village. After a while, they began to believe the same rumors, subscribe to the same theories, and write the same stories."

At a precociously early age, Crouse understood some essential but little-known truths about journalists and journalism: that journalists are deathly afraid of being "wrong" and thus tend to stay within parameters set by the pack; that journalists want "to be on the Winner's Bus" because "a campaign reporter's career is linked to the fortunes of his candidate" and they don't "like to dwell on signs that their Winner [is] losing, any more than a soup manufacturer likes to admit that there is botulism in the vichyssoise"; that "journalism is probably the slowest-moving, most tradition-bound profession in America," refusing "to budge until it is shoved into the future by some irresistible external force."

Well, look out, boys, because as Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert chronicles in his new book, Bloggers on the Bus, there is a whole new group of people on that bus, and they won't be swayed by the hive mind of the old media. In fact, they thrive on being the outsider. And to the horror and consternation of those boys so comfortably entrenched within the Beltway Bubble, these upstarts are actually grabbing their audiences....and doing their job better than the old guard.

The liberal blogosphere was birthed from the outrage of the offenses of the Bush administration and the search for sanity amid the crazy-making and incestuous relationship between the White House and the press corps. Vastly varied backgrounds and unlikely histories coalesced into a formidable force that not only cowered the administration and Congress at times, but helped carry our first African-American president into office. But not without some bumps along the way.

For every triumph like getting a clearly shaken Chris Matthews to apologize for his misogynistic statements about Hillary Clinton, or a nervous John McCain to refuse the endorsement of Rev. Hagee, or empowering Sen. Christopher Dodd to agree to filibuster retroactive immunity in the FISA bill, we've had lows like the intense bifurcation of the blogosphere over the Democratic Primary, and the disappointing arm's-length distance the Obama White House has kept his liberal supporters.

During this time, we've developed a brand new roster of go-to people for information: John Amato, Digby, Susie Madrak, Arianna Huffington, Jane Hamsher, Markos Moulitsas, Josh Marshall, Howie Klein, Marcy Wheeler, all of whom play prominent roles in Bloggers on the Bus (is it at this time that I mention the glaring omission of my work from Bloggers on the Bus? ;-P) We've adapted our approaches and focus, we've spent hours pouring over arcane and wonky reports, we've connected dots between different sources and we've uncovered a narrative that in drips and drops has been proven correct.

In Bloggers on the Bus, Eric Boehlert has talked to these new guards and chronicled the liberal blogosphere's growing pains and victories. As someone who was right in the middle of all this, blogging my little heart out, it's fascinating to read a bird's-eye view accounting of everything that was happening. Eric is here to talk about his book and take your questions.

Please join me in welcoming Eric to C&L.

Susie Madrak is trying to raise enough money to make her Cobra payment. If you can spare a dime for her, that would be cool.

This could affect the blogosphere as we know it, most specifically news aggregators:

A copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit filed last month against The New York Times Co., owner of The Boston Globe and its Boston.com website, is being watched closely by news organizations, Internet researchers, independent bloggers, and companies that aggregate news online by linking to a variety of news sites.

At the heart of the complaint, lodged by GateHouse Media Inc., which publishes 125 community newspapers in Massachusetts, is the question of whether Internet news providers will be able to continue the practice of posting headlines and lead sentences from stories they link to on other sites.The case has been scheduled for trial in US District Court in Boston as early as Monday.

"This is the first case where these intellectual property issues have come to a head," said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society in Cambridge. "If the judge was to rule for GateHouse on every point, it would have far-reaching implications for the news and information ecosystem that underlies the Web as we know it."

Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a school for professional journalists, said the case could result in new guidelines for how much, if any, content from one website can be used by another. "This is standard procedure across the Internet now," she said. "Newsrooms adopted the procedure from other practitioners."