There's nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to the frothing at the mouth right-wing rage over health care reform. But thanks to the 24/7 media's transformation of politics into just another form of entertainment, delusional Birthers, deceitful Deathers, raging Teabaggers and town hall intimidators are dominating press coverage of the debate. And it's all a recurring symptom, Rick Perlstein argues in the Washington Post, of a nation in which "crazy is a preexisting condition."

In his instant classic Nixonland, Perlstein documented how Richard Nixon, "a serial collector of resentments," fanned the flames of racism, anti-communism and the budding culture war not only to take power in his time but to help produce a bitterly divided America in ours. Now in his Washington Post op-ed, Perlstein makes clear that we've been here before.

The repeated outbreaks of "black helicopters" in the 1990's, the National Indignation Convention in 1961, cries that the Civil Rights Act would "enslave" whites and countless other episodes of seeming conservative madness, Perlstein reminds us, result from the combustible combination of authentic fear and manufactured outrage:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

But Perlstein's cautionary tale is not merely one of the more things change, the more they stay the same. In its pursuit of entertainment over objective truth and conflict over common sense, he suggests, today's media environment rewards extremist claims and behaviors it once shunned:

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David Broder in the Washington (Republican Propaganda) Post:

The saga of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and his Argentine romance has been such ripe fodder for the gossip mills that the essential governmental question has almost been forgotten.

Whether Sanford can resolve the mess he has made of his personal life is of little concern to anyone but the people involved.

But when he disappeared for five days, telling no one in his administration or even his security detail where he had gone, he did something totally irresponsible. Had any kind of emergency occurred, South Carolina would have been leaderless.

At the moment Sanford abandoned his duties in secret pursuit of private pleasure, he in effect tendered his resignation.

The Legislature should insist he follow through on it.

Now while I agree with the sentiment that Sanford abandoned his job to follow his little brain, er...heart to Argentina, I'm struck by the difference in Broder's tone from his coverage of Bill Clinton's infidelities:

One of the most revealing statements Broder -- or, perhaps, any political journalist -- has ever made came in 1998. In November 1998, after nearly a year of public opinion polls showing, basically, that people liked Bill Clinton and wanted the Lewinsky investigation to just go away, and of the Washington journalist/pundit crowd vehemently disagreeing, the Post published an article by Sally Quinn attempting to explain the disconnect (which lives on to this day).

Quinn famously quoted Broder explaining why the "Washington Establishment" -- which under anybody's definition includes both Broder and Quinn -- was so angry at Clinton: "He came in here and he trashed the place ... and it's not his place."

Broder's implication -- that Washington was his place, not the president's -- is arrogant enough. But Broder's other comment speaks volumes: "The judgment is harsher in Washington. We don't like being lied to."

What a difference ten years can make. Of course, it has nothing to do with Sanford being a Republican, does it, Dean Broder?

Apparently the Very Serious People™ in the Village have a very different idea of journalism than they led us to believe. After their own columnist Dana Milbank lost his marbles and dignity over a DFH blogger asking a question, the Washington Post hits an all new low:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

And it's a turn of the times that a lobbyist is scolding The Washington Post for its ethical practices.

So they're decided that the new business model for newspapers is to effectively pimp their access and reputation to the highest bidder. No wonder they got so pissy about Nico's question. They figured they could hit up some Iranian for some serious scratch to ask their question.

Apparently red-faced at being caught with their metaphoric pants down, WaPo announced this morning that they were canceling these pay-for-access salons.

UPDATED: Howie Kurtz puts out the typical CYA article: We're horrified to find pimping going on around here!

The Washington Post is dead to me:

(T)he Washington Post has terminated its relationship with liberal columnist/blogger Dan Froomkin. Froomkin authored the "White House Watch" blog and was told today that the blog had essentially run its course.

Washington Post Media Communications Director Kris Coratti tells POLITICO that "our editors and research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other content to make sure we're giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com."

"Run its course"???? WTF? But David Broder, who has been at WaPo since God was a little boy and whose never been in a coffeeshop he couldn't find some colorful local to confirm his preconceived (and generally wrong) notions, is still relevant? Bill Kristol, for whom the Washington Post had to issue not one or two, but THREE retractions for direct misinformation he tried to squeeze into his typical hack op-ed, is still worth holding on to. Charles farkin' Krauthammer, who has no business opining anywhere he has gotten so much wrong, is still collecting a WaPo paycheck.

But Dan Froomkin, whom Andrew Sullivan calls the "best blogger" at the paper and who is the author of 3 of the 10 most linked to articles at WaPo, is not someone worth keeping on staff?

Glenn Greenwald suspects that Froomkin was on the losing end of some internal power struggles:

Notably, Froomkin just recently had a somewhat acrimonious exchange with the oh-so-oppressed Krauthammer over torture, after Froomkin criticized Krauthammer's explicit endorsement of torture and Krauthammer responded by calling Froomkin's criticisms "stupid." And now -- weeks later -- Froomkin is fired by the Post while the persecuted Krauthammer, comparing himself to endangered journalists in Venezuela, remains at the Post, along with countless others there who think and write just like he does: i.e., standard neoconservative pablum. Froomkin was previously criticized for being "highly opinionated and liberal" by Post ombudsman Deborah Howell (even as she refused to criticize blatant right-wing journalists).

Seriously? Does the Washington Post not realize that all these neo-cons they give endless column inches to are what's ruining this country? Steven Benen:

If Froomkin is leaving the Post, it’s a real loss. Froomkin has been a great writer with keen instincts, often picking up on a burgeoning story before it’s gained traction elsewhere. Froomkin was one of the media’s most important critics of the Bush White House, and conservative bashing notwithstanding, was poised to be just as valuable holding the Obama White House accountable for its decisions.

If you like to share your opinion of the Washington Post's hiring choices, you can contact Ombudsman Andrew Alexander at ombudsman@washpost.com. Me, personally? I'm just deleting the bookmark. If I wanted neo-con and fact free tripe from Will, Kagan, Kristol and Broder, I'll just watch Fox News.

Dick Cheney is still making the rounds and last night he was on FOX with Greta only he was accompanied by his outspoken daughter Liz. I wonder if he's been feeding her classified data since she is an expert now on all things secret within the intelligence community? In this short video mash-up, I have video of Cheney repeatedly pushing the notion that Saddam and al-Qaeda were linked up and Iraq had a hand in the 9/11 attacks when he was a frequent guest on Meet The Press during the push for war. It's followed up by his Greta bit where he now says that there was no connection between Saddam---al-Qaeda and 9/11. he also pushed that Saddam had WMD's lest we forget that too.I know he feels that Americans are too stupid to remember his act, but some of us aren't. He's also now blaming ex-CIA leader George Tenet for the mistake.

Raw Story:

On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9-11, there was never any evidence to prove that,” he told the Fox host. “There was “some reporting early on … but that was never borne out… [Former CIA Director] George [Tenet] … did say and did testify that there was an ongoing relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq, but no proof that Iraq was involved in 9-11.”

Cheney didn't need proof to whip up the American people that has cost the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqis and American troops. In the new Dick Armey book, Armey says that Cheney lied to him about Saddam and al-Qaeda.

The threat Cheney described went far beyond public statements that have been criticized for relying on "cherry-picked" intelligence of unknown reliability. There was no intelligence to support the vice president's private assertions, Gellman reports, and they "crossed so far beyond the known universe of fact that they were simply without foundation."
"Did Dick Cheney . . . purposely tell me things he knew to be untrue?" Armey said. "I seriously feel that may be the case. . . . Had I known or believed then what I believe now, I would have publicly opposed [the war] resolution right to the bitter end, and I believe I might have stopped it from happening."

Then of course there was this 2003 Washington Post article that says Cheney was constantly pressuring the CIA to link al-Qaeda to Saddam:

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As former Vice President Dick Cheney continues his feckless crusade to save his legacy and once again mislead the world about the war crimes he was party to, new revelations about those crimes are beginning to surface.

Denying that White House policy was directly responsible for the vile abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib has been the central goal of a five-year disinformation campaign by Bush officials. 'Torture Team' author Philippe Sands argues that newly-disclosed records show how blatantly Bush officials were willing to lie in order to lead reporters away from the truth. Eighth in a series of articles calling attention to the things we still need to know about torture and other abuses committed by the Bush administration after 9/11.

Soon after the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib went public, Bush administration officials contrived a high-stakes disinformation campaign to prevent the American people from linking the White House to the vile, sadistic treatment of detainees in that Iraqi prison. They repeatedly insisted that the abuses were just the work of a few “bad apples.” They scoffed at the notion that their orders circumventing historic limits on interrogation were remotely responsible.

Five years later, they’re still at it, with former vice president Dick Cheney waging a clever campaign that would have the debate over government-sanctioned torture turn on what techniques were employed at the CIA’s secret prison -- and whether they “worked.”...

But “Torture Team” author Philippe Sands points out that a vivid illustration of the disinformation campaign – showing just how far officials were willing to mislead and lie in their desperate attempt to avoid culpability for Abu Ghraib – can now be found by comparing one of the newly-released Justice Department memos with statements made by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in June 2004. Read on...

(Sorry for the missing link!)

Lucky Andy Alexander. Even before he introduced himself as the new Washington Post Ombudsman, replacing the embattled Deborah Howell, he has already stepped into a rather steaming pile of dung. Sadly, instead of discerning the truth for the readers of Washington Post, Alexander opted to compound the error:

As numerous progressive and science bloggers have pointed out, Washington Post columnist George Will misused data and distorted statements made by climate experts in order to suggest that human-caused global warming is not occurring. Moreover, in his reported response to criticism of Will's column, Post ombudsman Andy Alexander falsely suggested that a statement by the Arctic Climate Research Center (ACRC) supports Will's claims about sea ice levels when, in fact, the ACRC statement rebuts the very argument Will was making. Indeed, contrary to Will's suggestion that ACRC data on global sea ice levels undermine the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming, the ACRC document Alexander cites actually states that the sea ice data are consistent with the outcomes projected by climate-change models and studies.

In his February 15 column, Will suggested that ACRC data undermine the case for the existence of "man-made global warming":

As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

In response, the ACRC reportedly stated:

We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.

Responding to criticism of Will's column and of the Post's refusal thus far to correct it, Alexander reportedly suggested in an email to The Wonk Room's Brad Johnson that Will's "conclusion" is supported by a January ACRC document.

Not a very auspicious start for Alexander. Wonder if he'll start referring to readers with as much snide disdain as Howell did.

Get Energy Smart Now!

The Washington Post editors are, in essence, going silent when it comes to George Will’s use of their pages for disinformation on global warming issues. And, from that silence, the Post’s Ombudsman emerged to embrace the Will-ful deceit. And, for whatever reason, unlike the myriad other times that Washington Post opinion pages have been handed over to truthiness from global warming deniers, skeptics, and delayers, this occasion is seeing a bit of a blogosphere wide expression of outrage.

GESN! has an impressive list of fact finders who debunk all of Will's truthiness. But it's more than just Will's truthiness. WaPo has a long history of fact-light reporting when it comes to the environment, as A Siegel documents:

• WashPost complicit in disinformation of explicit collaboration?, 15 Feb 09
• Washington Post global warming reporting fair and balanced, 27 Jun 08
• Fair and Balance strikes WashPost global warming reporting again , 26 June 08
• Will-fully ignorant, 3 June 06
• Truthi-Samuelson strikes again, 30 Apr 08
• Truthiness strikes the Post again, revisited, 15 Oct 07
• Truthiness strikes the Post again, 14 Oct 07
• J’accuse! Robert J Samuelson. J’accuse!, 15 Aug 07
• Krauthammer’s fact-free foray into energy issues, 1 July 07
• Washington Post’s schizophrenic approach to global warming, 4 Feb 07
• J’accuse! Distorting reality in global warmings’ real inconvenient truth, 5 July 06

In short, the problem is not just the Post’s relationship with George Will, but the Post’s utter failure to hold their columnists to any reasonable standard in terms of evidence when it comes to climate change and energy pieces.

  In a disturbing expose Sunday, the McClatchy papers joined the growing list of press, pundits and politicians raising a red flag about John McCain's out-of-control temper. Following on the heels of the devastating revelations from the Washington Post in April, McClatchy documents many of the tantrums, outbursts and eruptions that continue to call McCain's presidential temperament into question. And as Mitt Romney's campaign revealed in January, those McCain tirades are directed at friend and foe alike.

Starting with an f-bomb hurled at GOP colleague John Cornyn, McClatchy details McCain's long history of explosions, a record which led Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran to conclude "the thought of (McCain) being president sends a cold chill down my spine":

There's a lengthy list of similar outbursts through the years: McCain pushing a woman in a wheelchair, trying to get an Arizona Republican aide fired from three different jobs, berating a young GOP activist on the night of his own 1986 Senate election and many more.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to John McCain's white hot temper.

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

The Washington Post yet again manages to produce an op-ed only fit to wrap fish in, as neocon Michael Rubin - ex of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, the Office of the Secretary of Defense as an advisor to Rummie, political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and unpaid hack for propaganda articles produced by the Pentagon's PR firm, the Lincoln Group - blames Joe Biden for eight years of Bush administration foreign policy failure in a desperate attempt to label Biden as "Iran's favorite Senator".

Here's how Rubin's logic works, as explained by Ilan Goldenberg of Democracy Arsenal:

Rubin makes a convoluted and nonsensical argument that A.  Joe Biden supported engagement with the reformist Khatami government of Iran during the late 1990s and first half of this decade.  That B.  During that time trade between Iran and the EU increased.  That C.  A National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003.  From this he deduces that it's Biden's fault that Iran has moved ahead on its nuclear weapons program because it used increased trade with Europe to fund a nuclear weapons program.  What???

... Rubin basically takes a bunch of unrelated facts and uses them to conclude that Iran must have spent 2000 to 2003 working furiously on its nuclear weapons program and that it did it with money from Europe that somehow Joe Biden was responsible for.  Yup, putting those rigorous analytical skills that he learned that the Office of Special Plans to work.

Rubin also forgets to mention little details.  Like the fact that under this Administration trade with Iran has actually increased ten-fold and is at its highest levels since before the Iranian revolution.  Or the fact that the 2007 NIE concluded that Iran did in fact stop working on its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and was still years away from building a bomb.

Rubin then claims that Biden's vote against Kyl-Lieberman was partisan politics because Biden said that he didn't trust this Administration.  Ummm.... Trying to prevent war with Iran is not exactly a partisan activity.  It's not partisan to fear that an administration that has a track record of escalating conflict and misleading the American public might do it again.  That is in fact the exact opposite of partisan if you believe that war with Iran is against America's interests.

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Matthew Engel at the UK's Financial Times thinks so:

The protest by the US team that cost Churandy Martina of the Netherlands Antilles his silver medal in the 200 metres was seen by some, perhaps unfairly, as bullying of a small nation. There was also the bizarre election scandalette in the poll among competitors for athlete-representatives to the International Olympic Committee. The US tried to ensure victory for its candidate, Julie Foudy, by offering team members a $50 (€34, £27) shopping voucher if they voted.

The consolation for Americans is that they believe they are triumphant. The medals table is unofficial and, indeed, frowned on by the Olympic Charter, which insists the games are “between athletes . . . and not between countries”. Nonetheless, its format is well established: the number of golds decides the placings, with minor medals used to settle ties. At least, it is well established outside the US.

The American media add up the golds, silvers and bronzes, giving them equal weighting, which is ludicrous. By an amazing coincidence, this puts the Americans on top, well ahead of China. The normal method has the US far behind. But guess which way plays better in Peoria?

Engels thinks that the problem, other than the effect of George W. Bush’s presidency on America’s global standing, is because America doesn't play team sports the same way as the rest of the world - for the joy of taking part rather than the joy of winning.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, might agree with him. At least, so suggests Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post as she satirizes him for condemning Usain Bolt for his celebrations while ignoring alleged underage competitors and helping supress political protests at the Games.

Sour grapes from losers, or a sign that just maybe Ugly Americanism should try to keep its head down in public so as not to furnish convenient distractions?

[image from the MoveOn ad] A memo to the media: did you look at McCain's record and his actions pertaining to the Georgia/Russian conflict... Didn't he act like he was the President? Wow, The Washington Post noticed that too:

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: "If I may be so bold, there was another president . . ."

He caught himself and started again: "At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America's advocacy for democracy and freedom."

With his Democratic opponent on vacation in Hawaii, the senator from Arizona has been doing all he can in recent days to look like President McCain, particularly when it comes to the ongoing international crisis in Georgia.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says he talks to McCain, a personal friend, several times a day. McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until recently a paid lobbyist for Georgia's government. McCain also announced this week that two of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), would travel to Georgia's capital of Tbilisi on his behalf, after a similar journey by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The extent of McCain's involvement in the military conflict in Georgia appears remarkable among presidential candidates, who traditionally have kept some distance from unfolding crises out of deference to whoever is occupying the White House. The episode also follows months of sustained GOP criticism of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who was accused of acting too presidential for, among other things, briefly adopting a campaign seal and taking a trip abroad that included a huge rally in Berlin.

  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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  This week, Americans were introduced to Wrong-Way McCain. To be sure, it's the same John McCain ("McSame") who would continue the policies of George W. Bush that 80% of Americans believe have put the country on the wrong track. It's also the same "Jukebox John" who has changed his tune 61 times on issues foreign and domestic, including a dizzying 10 times in two weeks back in June. But as he showed repeatedly over the past several days, Wrong-Way McCain is also the Republican presidential nominee who simply can't keep his stories straight.

Whether the result of crass political opportunism, transparent deceit or just plain confusion, on at least 7 occasions this week alone, Wrong Way McCain couldn't remember what he stood for, if anything at all.

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   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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