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I love navel-gazing on the part of the media, where they decide collectively that they were right to create a meme which takes over the media. On this weekend's The Chris Matthews Show, pundits Howard Fineman, Michael Duffy and Ceci Connolly agree that it was appropriate for them to ask President Obama about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., because "it's an important issue."

MATTHEWS: It’s all about identity politics again, and at the same time these people on the far, far right are talking about whether he’s a citizen or not, this comes up.

DUFFY: And when the White House Press Secretary calls it a ‘distraction’, you know it was a mistake. And his mistake was pretty simple, which was that he didn’t really have all the facts, and was not in a position to talk about it. He was right to take it up, because it is an issue that is important, and it’s one in which he is completely versed, and you can see from the rest of his statement, that he knows exactly what to say. But I also think it came at the end of that press conference, which was about a completely different subject, and I think he was a little punchy by then. He was talking about you know what would happen to him in the White House, and it was a joke and he kind of lost the seriousness of the moment and I think got off track…

MATTHEWS: Yeah, I agree with that, the moment was important. I think he was a little angry, a little fatigued. These guys get up at five in the morning and this was eight at night. Is this going to be around a while?

Get the meme? Obama the angry black man being asked to speak on behalf of the entire African American community--and you know he is versed in this. Howard Fineman sort of treads along the edges of why even asking Obama his opinion of Gates' arrest was racist (because, honestly, can you imagine the media doing this to President McCain, had he won? I don't think so), without fully realizing it:

FINEMAN: ...(T)he progress that he made—the Sotomayor nomination—she did convince people, by her bearing, by her knowledge, by her experience, that she was eminently qualified and in that sense, was beyond this. Both of her race, but beyond it. This is not what Barack Obama’s political advisors wanted him to be doing up there. Because it turns it into a racial conversation, per se, at a time when he’s being president of all the country. And trying to be president of all the country and this feeds into the narrative of what I call the RNC—the Rush Newt Cheney RNC—which is all about fear, accusation and division. Barack Obama as president has to be about national unity.

Apparently to Howard, Barack Obama has been doing a good job up until this point of not making white Americans realize that he's African American and making them feel comfortable with other people of color. But now, Howard's worried that Obama has lost his white constituency:

FINEMAN: He went to great lengths as a candidate, to say that he could be president of all America. He understood all the different cultures and wanted to learn about all the different cultures of America. This kind of thing sets him back with working class whites.

Sigh. Can I remind you bobbleheads that it was YOU collectively that raised this subject? This was a local issue, albeit with a semi-famous person involved. This is not a federal issue, nor did it need to be addressed by the President of the United States, especially since the only justification for it is that Obama and Gates outwardly share a skin color (although both are of mixed-race heritage). Isn't it reasonable to assume that the President of the United States has enough on his plate without being thrust the mantle of spokesman for the entire African American community and trying to make white people more comfortable with the age-old issue of racial profiling?

As far as Gates is concerned, there was no clear cut right or wrong on his arrest; both sides escalated the situation beyond where it should have gone. But in terms of pulling Barack Obama into the debate and letting it take over the news cycles for days and days when very real issues (um Afghanistan, any one? Health care reform? The economy? Any of those ring a bell?) are left undiscussed is simply giving red meat to the right wingers eager to derail any actual progress in this country. And the responsibility for that falls on bobbleheads like these clowns, not Obama.

Transcripts below the fold

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Belfast Times:

German prosecutors have formally charged a suspected Nazi death camp guard with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder.

Eighty-nine-year-old John Demjanjuk was extradited from the US in May.[..]

Demjanjuk says he was a Red Army soldier who spent the war as a Nazi prisoner and never hurt anyone.

Demjanjuk had originally been deported to Israel in 1986, accused by Holocaust survivors of being "Ivan the Terrible", a particularly brutal guard at the Treblinka camp. His conviction was overturned based on evidence that suggested reasonable doubt that he was not that guard. In April of this year, he was deported to Germany to face charges of being an accessory to the murder for being a guard at another death camp.

But there's one American that thinks that Demjanjuk got a raw deal: none other than MSNBC's resident racist (and now alleged Nazi apologist) Patrick J. Buchanan. (link goes to VDare)

John Demanjuk And The True Haters

On Good Friday, John Demjanjuk, 89 and gravely ill, was ordered deported to Germany to stand trial as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jews—at Sobibor camp in Poland.

Sound familiar? It should. It is a re-enactment of the 1986 extradition of John Demjanjuk to Israel to be tried for the murder of 870,000 Jews—at Treblinka camp in Poland.

How many men in the history of this country have been so relentlessly pursued and remorselessly persecuted?

But wait...it gets better. Buchanan actually likens Demjanjuk to Christ in his persecution:

But if Germans wish to prosecute participants in the Holocaust, why not round up some old big-time Nazis, instead of a Ukrainian POW.

Answer: They cannot. Because the Germans voted an amnesty for themselves in 1969. So now they must find a Slav soldier they captured—and Heinrich Himmler's SS conscripted and made a camp guard, if he ever was a camp guard—to punish in expiation for Germany's sins.

The spirit behind this un-American persecution has never been that of justice tempered by mercy. It is the same satanic brew of hate and revenge that drove another innocent Man up Calvary that first Good Friday 2,000 years ago.

All I can say is "Wow".

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Think Progress has more:

Earlier this week, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how “the dignity code” has been “completely obliterated” in Washington, DC. Discussing the concept on MSNBC today, Brooks recalled how he “sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time”:

BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.

This is one of those bizarre moments that pop up on your teevee, and the fact that it's being delivered by a true wanker like David Brooks takes it up a few notches on the creepy scale. I understand a pundit's disdain for some of the people they cover, but Brooks really shows some underlying hostility issues here. Perhaps a little TMI, David...

Is it me or are all these authoritarian conservatives just losing their nuts now? George Will's latest column in Washington Post (*sigh* again? Katherine Graham must be spinning in her grave. The same paper responsible for taking down the Nixon presidency is now serving up fact-free and bizarre rantings of regressive conservatives) jumps all over Russ Feingold for his proposed change to the 17th Amendment, ending gubernatorial appointments to Senate vacancies, and requiring special elections to fill the seats. Will thinks we'd be better off just getting rid of the 17th Amendment:

A simple apology would have sufficed. Instead, Sen. Russ Feingold has decided to follow his McCain-Feingold evisceration of the First Amendment with Feingold-McCain, more vandalism against the Constitution.

The Wisconsin Democrat, who is steeped in his state's progressive tradition, says, as would-be amenders of the Constitution often do, that he is reluctant to tamper with the document but tamper he must because the threat to the public weal is immense: Some governors have recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Feingold's solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor, is to amend the 17th Amendment. It would be better to repeal it.

What? Hold on...are you kidding me? We don't want no stinkin' voters deciding their representatives now? For those unfamiliar with the history, prior to the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, the individual states' legislatures (not the voters) elected Senators to represent the states. It worked reasonably well until the Civil War, and then all hell broke loose:

This process worked without major problems through the mid-1850s, when the American Civil War was in the offing. Because of increasing partisanship and strife, many state legislatures failed to elect Senators for prolonged periods. For example, in Indiana the conflict between Democrats in the southern half of the state and the emerging Republican Party in the northern half prevented a Senate election for two years. The aforementioned partisanship led to contentious battles in the legislatures, as the struggle to elect Senators reflected the increasing regional tensions in the lead up to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the problems multiplied. In one case in the mid-1860s, the election of Senator John P. Stockton from New Jersey was contested on the grounds that he had been elected by a plurality rather than a majority in the state legislature.[1] Stockton defended himself on the grounds that the exact method for elections was murky and varied from state to state. To keep this from happening again, Congress passed a law in 1866 regulating how and when Senators were to be elected from each state. This was the first change in the process of senatorial elections. While the law helped, there were still deadlocks in some legislatures and accusations of bribery, corruption, and suspicious dealings in some elections. Nine bribery cases were brought before the Senate between 1866 and 1906, and 45 deadlocks occurred in 20 states between 1891 and 1905, resulting in numerous delays in seating Senators. Beginning in 1899, Delaware did not send a senator to Washington for four years.

Now given all the games the Republicans have been playing in the two short years that they have not had the majority in Congress, does this seem like a smart thing to regress to? Of course, that could be Will's point/desire:

Although liberals give lip service to "diversity," they often treat federalism as an annoying impediment to their drive for uniformity. Feingold, who is proud that Wisconsin is one of only four states that clearly require special elections of replacement senators in all circumstances, wants to impose Wisconsin's preference on the other 46. Yes, he acknowledges, they could each choose to pass laws like Wisconsin's, but doing this "state by state would be a long and difficult process." Pluralism is so tediously time-consuming.

Irony alert: Feingold's amendment requiring elections to fill Senate vacancies will owe any traction it gains to Senate Democrats' opposition to an election to choose a replacement for Barack Obama. That opposition led to the ongoing Blagojevich-Burris fiasco.

By restricting the financing of political advocacy, the McCain-Feingold speech-rationing law empowers the government to regulate the quantity, timing and content of political speech. Thanks to Feingold, McCain and others, the First Amendment now, in effect, reads: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech unless it really, really wants to in order to guarantee that there will be only as much speech about the government as the government considers appropriate, and at times the government approves."

Now Feingold proposes to traduce federalism and nudge the Senate still further away from the nature and function the Framers favored. He is, as the saying goes, an unapologetic progressive, but one with more and more for which to apologize.

Oy, there's so much disingenuousness and anger there, it's hard to believe this joker passes as A. Very. Serious. Villager.

Open Left dismantles Will far better than I could.

My friend Mike Rogers was simply awesome on Hardball yesterday. Just awesome.

Digby saw it, too. She wrote:

I saw something very interesting today on MSNBC. Barnicle, filling in for Matthews on Hardball, hosted Reverend Eugene Rivers, a well respected, uncontroversial African American preacher, and Mike Rogers, strident gay activist.

Loaded for bear, Rivers came out firing, very aggressively and derisively attacking the gay community for being intolerant and asserting that Warren is a thoroughly acceptable mainstream preacher. ("This is a pseudo-controversy that's been fabricated by the anti-religious left. Fact: Rick Warren is not a divisive figure, there's not one shred of empirical, statistical data to support this unfounded
claim.") That's obviously untrue, but that's not what made me take note of the interview.

The problem was that Rogers took a very unusual tack and said that Rivers coming on the show to defend Warren shows how powerful the gay community is and that he was very happy to see Warren changing his web site just today (to hide his more outrageously homophobic content.) He characterized this as a big victory for gay rights. ("I compliment Rick Warren on seeing the error of his ways and changing his web site.") Rivers was agitated by this and seemed to be frustrated that the dialog wasn't taking the predicted path, rather sarcastically saying things like "well we're all happy now, I guess."

But the really interesting reaction came about when Rogers suggested that if Warren is to be seen as a man who builds bridges between the right and the left that he should quietly and without any kind of fanfare meet with leaders of the gay community and listen to their concerns. Rivers reacted very badly.

Go read the rest.

(From a different angle: on Warren's refusal to meet with several gay and lesbian couples (and kids) for a meal and conversation - after first agreeing to it. What a hypocrite.)

Let me put it this way: I know better than to think I'll win an argument with Michael. It's never happened, and it never will. Every conversation with Michael is dotted with his interjecting, "Can I tell you something?" and my muttering, "Like I could stop you?" He is, hands down, the most talented debater I've ever seen. (Scorpio. Naturally!)

He doesn't just answer the question, he's always ten steps ahead of his opponent. If we could only clone him, we'd never see liberals lose an argument again.

Krugman points out the media complicity in treating these morons as credible:

So Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Karl Rove all claim that the financial crisis was a liberal conspiracy, generated either by evil mastermind Chuck Schumer or by wily journalists.

Why does such stuff flourish? Probably because there is no punishment for it — as long as you’re on the right, and I mean right, side. Let Michael Moore point out, entirely correctly, the close ties between the Saudis and the Bush family, and he’s blasted as a crazy conspiracy theorist. On the other hand, let Donald Luskin suggest, in 2004, that George Soros is planning to engineer a financial crisis to defeat Bush, and he gets to publish front-page articles in the Washington Post Outlook section declaring that there isn’t a recession.

     Joe Klein is calling the McCain campaign's assault on the media "insidious", "bullying" and "not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme."

The story of the day out here in Minneapolis is the McCain campaign's war against the press ... So what's going on here? Two things. McCain is just plain angry at us. By the evidence presented in the utterly revealing Time interview, he's ballistic. This is a politician who needs to see himself as the man on the white horse, boldly traversing a muddy field...any intimations that he's gotten muddied in the process, or has decided to throw mud, are intolerable. The second thing is more insidious: Steve Schmidt has decided, for tactical reasons, to slime the press. He wants the public to believe that there is an unfair--sexist (you gotta love it)--personal assault going on against Palin and her family. This is a smokescreen, intended to divert attention from the fact the very real and responsible vetting that is taking place in the media--about the substance of Palin's record as mayor and governor. ...There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

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Mark Halperin does it again:

Two Republicans close to the situation say McCain has apparently settled on Mitt Romney as his running mate. [..]

Developing...

Nice Drudgian touch at the end, Mark.  Of course, Halperin pulled down the page saying that the Veep was going to be Dick Lugar just a little bit before, which appeared to be based on nothing more Lugar endorsing McCain.  Brilliant.  Obviously, still wishing to not blow his "MSM Maker of Conventional Wisdom" title, Halperin updated with this weasel: 

And/but:

NY Times: "People close to the [McCain] campaign also floated a wild-card choice, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq."

Give me a break.  Either report the news as it happens or start calling yourself Miss Cleo.  This wild guessing is insulting to our intelligence.

Two weeks ago, it seemed Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter had just about had it with John McCain. The columnist said he’s “misread McCain,” who, it turns out, is “a surprisingly immature politician” who may not be “ready to lead.” Alter’s piece concluded that McCain had “mortgaged his precious personal honor.”

But underlying Alter’s argument is that McCain is still a good guy who’s been led astray by irresponsible advisors who’ve led him astray. McCain’s ugly campaign is “out of sync with the real guy,” Alter said.

In his new column, Alter takes McCain to task for “making stuff up about Barack Obama,” and this time, Alter doesn’t make excuses for the Republican nominee.

As usual, news organizations are deeply afraid to say that one side is more negative than the other. Doing so sounds “unfair.” It’s much easier, and less controversial, to say that “both candidates” are being negative. That would be “balanced”, but also untrue. […]

[O]verall, and to his credit, Obama has not engaged in anywhere near the number of falsehoods as McCain.

For about a month, McCain’s campaign has been resorting to charges that are patently false. When Obama traveled abroad in July, to positive reviews, McCain decided he had to make attack ads that went far beyond the norm. In the past, plainly deceptive ads were the province of the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee or independent committees free to fling mud that didn’t bear the fingerprints of candidates. But not this time. These smears come directly from the candidate.

The litany is no doubt familiar to those watching the campaign closely. McCain lied about Obama being responsible for gas prices. Then about Obama’s treatment of wounded U.S. troops in Germany. And then again about Obama’s tax policies.

[W]hen he resorts to these kinds of falsehoods, and casts such aspersions on his opponent’s patriotism, John McCain is no longer putting his country first. If he were, he would recognize that the interests of the nation require a relatively truthful campaign. To fulfill his image of himself, McCain should stop lying about his opponent. For a man with his claims to honor and integrity, that’s not too much to ask.

I think McCain has lost Jonathan Alter.

  It’s not surprising at all that the Washington Post’s David Broder would prefer to see the presidential candidates stick to responsible, substance-driven campaigns. It’s also not surprising that Broder would enjoy a series of town-hall “debates” between the two candidates.

What’s odd, though, is seeing Broder try to connect the two, suggesting the lack of the latter has a causal relationship with the lack of the prior.

The first question I asked John McCain and then Barack Obama was: How do you feel about the tone and direction of the campaign so far?

No surprise. Both men pronounced themselves thoroughly frustrated by the personal bitterness and negativism they have seen in the two months since they learned they would be running against each other.

“I’m very sorry about it,” McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. “I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings” together, as he had suggested, during the summer months.

First, it’s interesting that McCain is “very sorry” about the tone of the campaign now, given that it was just one week ago when McCain told reporters, “I’m proud of the campaign that we have run. I’m proud of the issues that we have been trying to address with the American people.”

Second, the notion that the campaigns “could have avoided … some of this” if there’d been 15 debates instead of three doesn’t make any sense. It’s a classic non sequitur — whether McCain runs a relentlessly negative, substance-free campaign has nothing to do with his proposal for extra debates.

And yet, Broder really seems to think there’s something to this.

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Download | play   Download | play (h/t Heather)

Neocon Bill Kristol made his usual appearance as part of the "Power Panel" on Fox News Sunday this morning and was surprisingly supportive of Hillary Clinton. In a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion, Bill decries the misogyny that he says plagued the Democratic primaries, and that Republicans are much more open to a strong woman:

"...I think Hillary Clinton was gracious. She's put behind her the horrible sexism and misogyny the Democratic primary voters demonstrated, which I'm appalled by personally, never would have happened in the Republican Party. You know, we're - Republicans are much more open to strong women, and that's why John McCain's going to put Sara Palin , the Governor of Alaska on the ticket." 

How sweet of Bill to show such compassion for -- wait, wasn't it Bill who said this last February?

"Look the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women… it would be crazy for the Democratic party to follow the establishment that’s led them to defeat year after year… White Women are a problem - but, you know… we all live with that…"

Yes, it sure was. Because we know there was zero sexism coming from the right during the primary season, right? There was nary a peep on FOXNews about Hillary losing male votes because her voice was shrill, or that her tears were just a political stunt, while male candidates of both parties getting choked up was just a sign of their passion, right?  Save it, Bill. Even in jest, it just makes you look petty.

We've followed David Brooks' hackery for some time now, but this one has to take the cake. It seems that Senator Barack Obama's decision to opt out of the public campaign finance system has awakened this sleeping wanker.

The New York Times:

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

Fast Eddie Obama? Oy. I wish I could tell you that Brooks' frothing, hit-piece got better, but, I can't.

I have to admit, I’m ambivalent watching all this. On the one hand, Obama did sell out the primary cause of his professional life, all for a tiny political advantage. If he’ll sell that out, what won’t he sell out? On the other hand, global affairs ain’t beanbag. If we’re going to have a president who is going to go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, maybe it is better that he should have a ruthlessly opportunist Fast Eddie Obama lurking inside. Read on...

Ahh, the smell of feigned outrage.  And nothing about McCain at all?  Little David seems to be very angry -- and as Matthew Yglesias writes, you wouldn't like David when he's angry. 

   Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, Bush’s former chief speechwriter, has spent most of the year devoting his columns to bashing Barack Obama. Today, he mixes things up a bit by bashing a different Democrat he doesn’t like: Senate candidate Al Franken.

Consider his article in Playboy magazine titled “Porn-O-Rama!” in which he enthuses that it is an “exciting time for pornographers and for us, the consumers of pornography.” The Internet, he explains, is a “terrific learning tool. For example, a couple of years ago, when he was 12, my son used the Internet for a sixth-grade report on bestiality. Joe was able to download some effective visual aids, which the other students in his class just loved.” Franken goes on to relate a soft-core fantasy about women providing him with sex who were trained at the “Minnesota Institute of Titology.”

Orwell would be so proud.

“Porn-O-Rama!” is a modern campaign document every voter should read — the Federalist Papers of lifestyle liberalism. It has the literary sensibilities and moral seriousness of an awkward adolescent nerd publishing an underground newspaper to shock his way into campus popularity. But, in this case, the article was written in 2000 by a 48-year-old man.

Gerson goes on (and on), highlighting various excerpts from Franken’s satirical works, some of which are funny, and some of which aren’t. Gerson’s broader point, it seems, is that Franken has contributed to a coarsening of our culture — in the “cause of relevance and realism” — and it would be another setback to allow this coarsening to affect our “political discourse.”

Gerson insists politics “should not actively push our culture toward vulgarity and viciousness,” which, Gerson argues, “Sen. Franken” would do.

I’m all for a civil discourse, but I find Gerson’s complaining wildly off-base.

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Way back in 1995, the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee explained why he was uncomfortable with journalists getting big bucks on the  lecture circuit: "I wish it would go away. I don’t like it. I think it’s corrupting. If the Insurance Institute of America, if there is such a thing, pays you $10,000 to make a speech, don’t tell me you haven’t been corrupted. You can say you haven’t and you can say you will attack insurance issues in the same way, but you won’t. You can’t."

It's a shame David Broder wasn't paying attention.

[I]t’s surprising to see that Broder, who recently took a buyout but will continue to write his Post column, appears to be a regular presence these days on the business-lecture circuit and has even spoken to major health-care groups. [...]

Perhaps the groups to whom Broder spoke paid only for his expenses. Even if that’s true, he still appears to have—at minimum—been on the receiving end of some sweet junkets. And shouldn’t Broder disclose to the Post’s readers and the general public his moonlighting activities, especially when he writes about topics that overlap with his speaking gigs?

Ken Silverstein has all the details.

Following up on an item John posted over the weekend, the New York Times had quite a front-page scoop when it reported on a Pentagon program that recruited retired military officers, who’ve since become lobbyists or consultants for military contractors, to become propaganda agents of the Bush administration. Throughout the war in Iraq, these retired officers — or “message multipliers,” as they were described by internal Defense Department documents — took on roles as military analysts for all of the major news networks, without noting their puppet-like relationships with the Pentagon.

The controversy has become something of a scandal for the Defense Department (though the controversy would likely have been far more significant were it not for a near-media blackout), prompting officials to scrap the program, at least for now.

The Defense Department has temporarily stopped feeding information to retired military officers pending a review of the issue, said Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs. [...]

Hastings said he is concerned about allegations that the Defense Department’s relationship with the retired military analysts was improper.

“Following the allegations, the story that is printed in the New York Times, I directed my staff to halt, to suspend the activities that may be ongoing with retired military analysts to give me time to review the situation,” Hastings said in an interview with Stripes on Friday.

Hastings, implicitly conceding an error, told reporters of his pending review, “We’ll take the time to do it right.”

As for the political angle of all of this, the estimable Ari Melber noted that the Clinton and Obama campaigns both criticized the administration for starting the program -- while the McCain campaign doesn't want to talk about it.