One of the Republican right's most successful inventions has been liberal media bias. Even as the "mainstream" press has trended rightward, the liberal-bias trope has had two big advantages in keeping the party faithful, well, faithful. First, it allowed devotees to reject any and all information at odds with GOP dogma. Second, it preserved the sense of victimization essential to the right-wing world view. In reality, the Washington political media have been functionally pro-Republican for years. The so-called Gang of 500 long ago abandoned journalistic ethics for those of the entertainment industry. They're celebrities, and as such would-be insiders and front-runners. Liberal media ? During the Clinton administration, this cohort flogged the make-believe Whitewater scandal for years. They went hysterical over Bill Clinton's sexual sins and sustained false derogatory stories about Al Gore during the 2000 election (invented the Internet, "Love Story," etc. ). After that, the nation's premier newspapers, specifically The New York Times and The Washington Post, got suckered into running single-source, frontpage propaganda about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. The embedded mainstream media treated the subsequent invasion of Iraq as the world's biggest Boy Scout jamboree until chaos in Baghdad became impossible to ignore.
So was it shocking after Barack Obama's election to find pundits on TV with warnings such as that America remains a conservative country and he must "discipline" the "ardent activists" who elected him by engaging "interests that usually ally with Republicans" ? That was the estimable Ron Brownstein's advice on MSNBC.
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham cautioned that despite Obama's win, "we're still a center-right nation." On CNN, the network that conservatives view with horror, correspondent John King allowed that "the electorate voted for Barack Obama, but still perceives him to be a liberal." Having made "inroads in communities that not too long ago voted Republican," King said, "the last thing you want to do if you want to keep them four years from now is to alienate them with a liberal agenda." Did Obama get largely favorable press coverage during the campaign ? He did. Largely, I think, because he was so clearly winning. Undying Clinton hatred also played a part during the primaries. My friend Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler Web site is only half-joking when he says the Gang of 500 finally found something they cared about: their own shrinking 401 (k ) s.
So should Obama heed them now ? Not if he wants to be a successful president.
Among the local ballot measures to be decided on Election Day, California's Proposition 8 is perhaps the most fiercely contested. Backers of the proposition to ban same-sex marriage in the state cast their campaign in apocalyptic terms. "This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon," born-again Watergate felon and Prison Fellowship Ministries founder Chuck Colson told the New York Times. Tony Perkins, the president of the Christian right's most powerful Beltway lobbying outfit, Family Research Council, echoed Colson's language. "It's more important than the presidential election," Perkins said of Prop 8. "We will not survive [as a nation] if we lose the institution of marriage."
The campaign for Prop 8 has reaped massive funding from conservative backers across the country. Much of it comes from prominent donors like the Utah-based Church of Latter Day Saints and the Catholic conservative group, Knights of Columbus. Prop 8 has also received a boost from Elsa Broekhuizen, the widow of Michigan-based Christian backer Edgard Prince and the mother of Erik Prince, founder of the controversial mercenary firm, Blackwater.
While the Church of Latter Day Saints' public role in Prop 8 has engendered a growing backlash from its more liberal members, and Broekhuizen's involvement attracted some media attention, the extreme politics of Prop 8's third largest private donor, Howard F. Ahmanson, reclusive heir to a banking fortune, have passed almost completely below the media's radar. Ahmanson has donated $900,000 to the passage of Prop 8 so far.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/democracy/106102/the_man_behind_proposition_8/
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More post-election reaction this week from the faux-blogosphere. Sarah Palin started a rumor of her own and Obama started making some plans. And then there was Paula Abdul, who figured out that the dead woman found outside her home was herself from the future.  Some more things I regret saying by George W. Bush Like a mysterious dead woman has never showed up outside your home by American Idol Judges Let's face it: chicks can't handle money by Barack Obama Here's a rumor: Everyone in McCain's campaign staff is gay by Sarah Palin Barney blog! by Laura Bush MSNBC you are a disgrace to people with eyesight by Bill O'ReillyRegards, The News Groper Editors | |
Own this historic Onion front-page from the day America came together, eradicated racism forever, and saved the future of mankind. Featuring award-winning coverage of the most important election in the last 232 years, this special edition captures the indomitable and cloyingly optimistic national consciousness as it was on Nov. 5th, 2008.
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http://store.theonion.com/black-man-given-nations-worst-job-p-372.html?utm_source=Obamacover
By Sen. Russ Feingold
The power of the pardon is close to absolute. Short of interfering with their own impeachment, presidents can pardon whomever they choose. At the end of his term, however, this president should think twice before issuing pardons that call his judgment, and the integrity of the rule of law, into question.
If President Bush were to pardon key individuals involved in the misdeeds of his administration, from warrantless wiretapping to torture to the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the courts would be unable to address criminality, or pass judgment on the legality of some of the president's worst abuses. Issuing such pardons now would be particularly egregious, since voters just issued such a strong condemnation of the Bush administration at the ballot box. There is nothing to prevent President Bush from using the pardon in such a short-sighted and self-serving manner -- except, perhaps, public pressure that may itself be a window on the judgment of history. Everyone who can exert that pressure, from members of Congress to the press and the public, should express their views on whether it would be appropriate for President Bush to use his pardon power in this way.
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| That is a rhetorical question because the overall effect of what Henry Paulson has done so far benefits the financial market and makes it pretty clear that he is not stupid. What it makes just as clear is that Paulson is not concerned with the common good of the people of America. If he is concerned, as he claims, about the taxpayers:
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