Watch Rachel Maddow dammit!

Our favorite ... Rachel Maddow receives big kudos from David Sirota for following up an interview from the night before with a clarification and apology. Well done!

"Maddow Busts Morgan Stanley Board Member for Lack of Transparency

Thankfully, when I pointed Tyson's conflict of interest out to Maddow and her show's staff, they did the responsible thing and made a big effort to inform viewers about what happened. Indeed, in doing this follow-up piece, the Rachel Maddow Show displayed the kind of integrity and respect for their audience that is almost unheard of in political journalism. In being so honest about this, they really showed what their program is all about, and how they aren't willing to be used or deceived by corporate spokespeople."

Watch it here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Year In Review Pt. I

Plenty of end of the year lists are on the way. Here is a good one from Jason Linkins at HuffPo:

• TEN THINGS THAT MANAGED TO NOT SUCK IN 2008, MEDIA EDITION

UPDATE:

Jason follows up with ...

• TEN THINGS THAT SUCKED OUT LOUD IN 2008, MEDIA EDITION

Is America f**ked?

During this topsy-turvy presidential campaign my emotions have ranged from hope to depression, idealism to cynicism, happiness and joy to fear and loathing. And sometimes I went through all those emotions in just one evening in front of the TV watching the horrible media coverage. But the recurring cynical thought that rises up every so often is that Americans ... are dumb, apathetic sheep. Since you are reading a blog or blogs, the odds are that I am not referring to you! But the polls (if they are even close to being correct) show a population of low information voters who often vote against their own (and perhaps their country's) best interests.

Insulted? Then explain these numbers from Marty Kaplan at HuffingtonPost.com:

Going into the Democratic National Convention, depending on which poll you read, somewhere between 10 percent and 15 percent of American voters thought that Obama is a Muslim. A Newsweek poll found that 26 percent thought he was raised as a Muslim (untrue), and 39 percent thought he grew up going to an Islamic school in Indonesia (also untrue).

Or maybe it isn't ignorance? Kaplan says it could be misdirection:

On the other hand, "But-he's-a-Muslim!" does raise the issue of whether people lie to pollsters when they're embarrassed to say what they really think. This argument -- called "the Bradley effect," after the Election Day disappearance of the lead that Los Angeles' African-American mayor, Tom Bradley, had held until then in the gubernatorial campaign -- says that the percentages that black candidates get in polls should be discounted by the reluctance of no small number of white voters to admit that race is a factor in their choice.

Kaplan, however, isn't surprised by any of this:

I'm not shocked by Americans' ability to think untrue things. After all, under the relentless tutelage of the Bush administration and its media enablers, nearly 70 percent of the country thought that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in planning the Sept. 11 attack. In fact, if you told me that double-digit percentages of voters believe that Jewish workers were warned to stay home on Sept. 11, or that the American landing on the moon was faked, or that every one of the words of the Bible is literally and absolutely true, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

And this is where Kaplan articulates what I've been thinking so much better than I ever could:

It might make me think about the downsides of universal suffrage, the challenges facing public education, the limitations of "fact-checking" as a corrective to Swiftboating, the coarsening of public discourse, the devolution of news into entertainment, the risks to democracy of Rovian demagoguery -- stuff like that -- but it wouldn't make me question the methodology of the polls.

So, while I watch and get inspired by some of the highlights of the Democratic convention in Denver, there are other poll numbers that make me question the intelligence and sanity of a large part of the U.S. population. This is some perspective from "across the pond":

It seems incredible, but as the Democrats gather in Denver to anoint Barack Obama, America could be on course to re-elect a Republican as their President. Not just any Republican either, but a belligerent 71-year-old who can't remember how many houses he owns, would happily nuke Iran and whose answer to global warming is to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas off the coast of America which don't even have much oil. But according to the polls, John McCain is drawing level with Barack Obama, and even pulling ahead.

Really, America is a strange, strange country. After a disastrous and illegal war, in which 4000 American soldiers have died, in the middle of an economic crisis largely caused by the investment houses that finance the Republican party, you would have thought it almost inconceivable that the Republicans could be re-elected. Could any political brand be more toxic? Has any party in history deserved to be thrown out at an election more than the Republicans in 2008?

George W Bush has been recognised even by many neo-conservatives as the worst US President in modern history. Ten million people risk losing their homes over the next two years as a result of the credit crunch. Real wages have been declining in America for the past five years. The country is awash with credit card debt.

America's image in the world, so vibrant after 9/11, has been seriously tarnished by a series of epic foreign policy mistakes under the Republicans, the worst of which is, of course, Iraq. Yet enough American voters believe that John McCain might have the answers for him to become a serious contender. Which is scary. McCain is not an unknown quantity - he is a highly excitable politician with a notoriously short
temper, who would bring his impetuous and confrontational style into American foreign policy. With the world entering a global economic slump, and old enmities raging in Europe, John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory.

I LOVE THAT!!!

"John McCain as President would be like a flamethrower in a fireworks factory."

I feel a little bit better now ...
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Rachel hits the Big Time!

She gets a show of her own on September 8 and from Day 1 it will probably be the smartest news show on television. She ...
is Rachel Maddow, and if you haven't seen her yet on MSNBC make sure you tune in and get to know her.

Here are some testimonials:

• Andrew Golis writes: "She, unlike almost every other political pundit on television, is rigorously fact-based, refreshingly unhackish when it comes to defending or attacking the Democratic Party, and rarely goes with easy vilifying of those with whom she disagrees."
• The Kansas City Star: "Rachel Maddow went to Stanford and won a Rhodes Scholarship. She earned a doctorate in political science at Oxford. So far so good.A couple of years ago I wondered in a column if Olbermann was the future of TV news. I’ve since realized that he’s a singular figure — part sports anchor, part “Bob and Ray Show,” part Murrow seance — and not likely to be cloned. The future of TV news, rather, now looks more like Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd, two clever nerds who don’t believe in information overload and are fluent in irony."
• Huffington Post: "Keith Olbermann had Rachel Maddow on "Countdown" Tuesday night to celebrate and discuss the news. In the clip, Rachel said that the show will discuss politics and weird news — like stories on the Iraqi national soccer team and domestic crimes committed by naked men — and that she will remain on Air America."

Bravo to MSNBC for doing the smart thing and hiring a smart, progressive voice to complement Keith Olbermann. But they are taking some heat from concern trolls.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon writes a terrific post hitting back at the critics:

"Maddow is unquestionably one of the smartest and most incisive commentators anywhere on television -- perhaps the smartest. One would think that the presence of smart commentary in the wasteland known as "cable news" would be cause for celebration ..."

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If a politician falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does he make a sound?

John McCain has fallen, but don't fret, the press is there to get him up.
If you watched or read the news this week you probably know all about Jesse Jackson's crude comments about Barack Obama. But, what does that have to do with you? Will his comments change your life in any way?
But did you hear that John McCain thinks the Social Security system is not just broke but it's very existence is a disgrace. Did you hear that John "I don't really understand economics" McCain's main economics advisor said (as an official representative of the McCain campaign) that we are a nation of whiners, because the economy really isn't that bad? Did you hear that while he was in Pittsburgh he blatantly pandered to the people of Pennsylvania by replacing the Green Bay Packers with the Pittsburgh Steelers in a story he has told many times? Then he said it was just a mistake. Did you hear him "joke" about killing people by getting them hooked on cigarettes? Well, the people he referred to were Iranians, so I guess that's OK ... at least according to the media. Did you hear about Jesse Jackson?
There was more. Some of the dumbest things said so far in the campaign. Significant misrepresentations of McCain's record. And a candidate who couldn't remember where he stood on some issues that would normally be important to a presidential candidate.
But the Beltway Press is so far up his rear end that they let him slide.
Max Bergmann has more at the Huffington Post.

This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain's efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn't know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers. During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.

So, why do the media do it? Everyone has a theory or explanation. But most journalists who cover him on a regular basis just say they like him. Maybe that's why Obama gets 24-hours-a-day press coverage and McCain does not. Maybe that's why they don't report that McCain usually doesn't work weekends. Maybe that explains why some papers send their A-Team after Obama.

"The Post has teams of reporters on each candidate. Stephens, who came from the investigative unit, has been assigned to report on Obama; another reporter, Kimberley Kindy, is doing the same on McCain. "

Joe Stephens is an investigative reporter who has won three Polk Awards, and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. And Kimberly Kindy? She was hired by the Washington Post in May and hasn’t been heard from since writing two articles about McCain at the end of May. We anxiously await the explosive investigative piece Ms. Kindy has apparently been working on for the past six weeks.

UPDATE:

• John McCain's Very Bad Week: A Cheat Sheet
• Another one.

Blogging Royalty

I have the utmost respect for Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler. He is known far and wide in the liberal blogosphere as the expert in documenting and deconstructing the worst-of-the-worst episodes of the mainstream media, such as the trashing of Al Gore prior to the 2000 election. Make sure you read this example to see how these things "just happen":

“I invented the Internet!” That was the way “his enemies” projected it, Blitzer slickly said—failing to note that it was really his own mainstream colleagues who rode this mocking, “distorted” paraphrase for the next two years. And sure enough! Right to this day, more than nine years later, Blitzer and Kurtz refuse to describe the actual history of this monumental event. They forget to say who really drove this history-changing “distortion.”
Within the press corps, everyone knows he can say it now: Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. But Daddy, what did you say in real time? What did you say when it actually mattered? Isn’t it true that you cowered and quaked? That you didn’t say sh*t at the time?"

Tying one hand behind his back.

Barack Obama has an edge over John McCain in almost every reputable poll that has been released lately. Which is bad news on one front for Obama. The Big Money Media want a good race, not a blowout, and they will do what they have to do to get one. That means a lot of "make your head explode" stories that demonstrate the decaying state of modern journalism. Here are some recent examples over at talkingpointsmemo.com and some other blogs:

• Please, Please, Reporters with Brains which was followed by News Orgs Already Getting It Wrong On Obama's Iraq Remarks which was followed by Au Contraire ... which was followed by Paying Attention? and finally AP On McCain: We're Loven It!
• Digby nails Gwen Ifill for her craptastic defense of her profession.
• Paul Krugman looks at the lies that eventually become the conventional wisdom thanks to shoddy journalism.

Welcome to the Hellmouth ...

This is so cool ...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer saved the world and the sanity of NPR's Jamie Tarabay while she was in Baghdad. Tarabay explores why she needed the slayer during her time in Iraq.

ABC debate blows because the moderators suck.

The Democratic debate last night in Pennsylvania was a disaster. Not for the candidates (although both could have done much better), but for ABC and the hosts Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. There's no other way to describe it ... they are tools.

It looks like George got at least one question from Sean Hannity and Gibson has a pattern of looking foolish on money matters affecting average Americans.

Here's a synopsis of several blogs at Americablog.com:

Wow, major loathing of ABC on the Web tonight ...

• TPM: Looking around other sites, I guess I'm not the only one that thought this debate was unmitigated travesty. Maybe the embargo on debate rebroadcast was a pro-human rights stand.
• From FDL: Well, that was really, really horrible. Charlie Gibson and Mr. Snuffalupagus fed Clinton and Obama nothing but gotcha questions. Torture never came up, China never came up, unchecked executive power never came up, and it was 50+ minutes in before they asked any questions that could be considered remotely substantive or issues-based.
• Atrios: Aside from the lack of policy questions, so far this "debate" has been played entirely on wingnut ground. If BillO and Sean Hannity hosted it the questions would've been the same. In a general election debate it would make sense to get questions from the right like that, but in a democratic primary it's just fucking stupid.
• DKos: The questioning in tonight's debate--—mostly straight out of 1988—was an abomination. Gun control. 60's radicalism. Inflammatory black pastors. Respecting or disrespecting the flag. Taxes. Being out of touch with the military. Affirmative Action. I'll bet if they had more time, ABC anchors Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolus would probably have gotten around to asking Obama and Clinton about Willie Horton and Piss Christ.
• Editor & Publisher: In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.
• OpenLeft: Halfway through the debate, not a single question on any policy issue had been asked, it was obvious that this debate was prime-time hit job on Obama. The questions so far have been why he doesn't wear a flag pin, whether or not his pastor loves America, why he can't win, and how many people were offended by his bittergate comments. Except for Clinton being asked about why she wasn't trustworthy, and both of them being asked about their vice-presidential choices, that has been the entire debate. As Master Jack said in the comments, nothing on Iraq, nothing on the economy, nothing on health care, nothing on housing, nothing on global warming, nothing on torture. This is nothing but a prime-time hit job on Democrats, although mainly a hit job on Obama.
• Tapped: Seriously "does rev. wright love america as much as you?" Really? REALLY?!!! Also, "what will you do when clips" of Wright "play over an over" on TV? [... A woman asks if Obama "believes in the American flag" because he doesn't wear a flag pin. Charlie Gibson says that questions about the flag are "all over the internet" -- along with Pamela Anderson's sex tape, cats with bad grammar, and Rick Astley. Journalism at it's finest.
• Huff Post: Why in the world George Stephanopoulos felt compelled to ask Barack Obama if Reverend Wright "loved America" after he had already been made to give another recitation of his repudiation of Wright's remarks is a question that simply defies the imagination. What sort of sensible answer can be given to that question? It would require astral projection to properly gauge another man's emotional state. And if you want to ask Hillary Clinton to account for the odd contortions she advanced on the matter of her Bosnia recollections, just sack up and ask. Don't hide behind the additional, pointless cruelty of a random voter's scoldings that Clinton lost their vote. What a wholly superfluous pile on! And the flag lapel pin question came with this admonishment from Charles Gibson: "It
  keeps coming up, again and again." Well, no shit, Charlie! It keeps "coming up, again and again" because the media resolutely refuses to obtain the necessary courage to stop doing so.

Also from Americablog.com:

"Today's front page Washington Post article about the debate last night comprised twenty-five paragraphs. This is the 23rd paragraph:
The debate also touched on Iraq, Iran, the Middle East,
taxes, the economy, guns and affirmative action.
That pretty much sums up the debate. It's almost comical. One line, in the 23rd paragraph of a 25 paragraph article. Granted, because of the performance of Stephanopoulos and Gibson, the Post didn't have much to work with. The political reporters and pundits didn't get what happened last night, but the Post's media critic, Tom Shales did ..."

Finally ... Here is a great video summarizing the descent of George's career.

Congratulations to TPM!

The first blog I go to any time I'm online is Talking Points Memo. I have blogged about this site before here, and how it is changing the nature of online journalism. Today, TPM and its founder Josh Marshall won a prestigious George Polk Award.
Here is another excellent blogger, Will Bunch of Attytood.com with details:

A landmark day for bloggers -- and the future of journalism

The George Polk Awards are kind of like the Golden Globes of American journalism . Not as well known as those Oscars of the news business, the Pulitzer Prize, the Polk Awards are nevertheless probably a close second in terms of prestige, and this year I am especially blown away by the quality of the work they honor. But I want to highlight one Polk Award that shows there are emerging models for using the very tool at the root of the turmoil of the news business -- the Internet -- as a newfangled way to re-invent investigative reporting -- by using new techniques that emphasize collaboration over competition and by working with readers and through collective weight of many news sources to expose government misconduct.
It would have seemed incredible a couple of years ago, but a George Polk Award was given this morning to a blogger.
Not just any blogger, of course. Josh Marshall (top, with his son Sam) of Talking Points Memo may have started back in 2000 as a kind of blogging stereotype, posting late at night from his small D.C. apartment and from the corner Starbucks and -- in just two years -- shining a light on the remarks that cost Sen. Trent Lott his GOP Senate leadership post, but he's turned his operation into much, much more.
Since 2002 Marshall has moved to New York and -- thanks to increasing ad revenue -- made Talking Points Memo into a new kind of journalistic enterprise for the 21st Century, hiring a staff of a half dozen talented young journalists and rewriting the rules with a mix of commentary and original muckraking while highlighting the work of other to focus like a laser on the big political questions.

There is much more to read ... go do it!

FISA fight proves Bush is a Fascist

Another Special Comment last night from Keith Olbermann:

We will not fear any longer.
We will not fear the international terrorists -- we will thwart them.
We will not fear the recognition of the manipulation of our yearning for safety.
We will not fear calling out the vulgar hypocrites in our government.
We will not fear George W. Bush, nor fear because George W. Bush wants us to fear.

Watch it at Crooks and Liars.

Rogue Columnist

If my wife ever leaves me it would probably be for this man.
Stay away, dude!
He's a great writer, a former columnist for the Arizona Republic, and an author. We recently discovered his blog and look forward to reading him again on a regular basis.
Here are some of his recent posts:

• Who is this 'Maverick' I keep hearing about?
• What's really wrong with newspapers
• What I didn't write at the Arizona Republic

How can he see in there?

Chris Matthews continues to be an embarrasment, especially when compared to the man he is sitting next to tonight, Keith Olbermann.
We just watched Matthews interview Saint John McCain about Bush's SOTU speech. Matthews was so far up McCain's butt that we may need to drill a hole to pump in some oxygen while we wait for the rescuers from the Mine Safety and Health Administration to arrive.
God, I wish I knew how to do a Google Bomb for Chris Matthews and Fluffing.*

*Warning -- Mature content.

A news reporter rises to the occasion ...

I found this confrontational exchange between Mitt Romney and Associated Press reporter Glen Johnson fascinating. Take a good look at the expression on the Mittster's face when the reporter challenges his assertion in public. Dan Savage blogs about it here:

"The reporter sitting on the floor putting actual, tough, reality-based questions to Romney is AP reporter Glen Johnson—and someone ought to pin a medal on him. Romney lied, Johnson called him on it. He didn’t run off and find a Democrat or a rival for the GOP nomination to “dispute Romney’s claim.” He reacted the way any reporter—any person—ought to react when they’re being lied to."

I found the reporter's assertiveness refreshing compared to the actions of many other reporters covering the presidential campaigns. Martin Schram in the Sacramento Bee shares similar feelings.

UPDATED: I exchanged the initial YouTube video I posted with one that better explains why Mitt Romney's statement was so disingenuous. Of course, all of the campaigns have lobbyists attached at their hips, but Slick Mitt tries to say he is above that sort of thing. He will say anything to anyone at any time if it will help him get elected.

UPDATE II: The name Barbara Comstock pops up in the video above as a close Romney advisor. Here is ... a brief history of Barbara Comstock's corrupt shenanigans.