Dick of the Week: Juan Williams

So, Bill O'Reilly has a blogger from the Weekly Standard along with NPR/FOX News "contributor" Juan Williams on The Factor to have a little discussion on Michelle Obama and her role as First Lady...What'll her "causes" be?...How will she do?...etc.

So, who do you suppose goes off on a tear about Obama as if she's some kind of Rev. Wright crossed with a Black Panther, just waiting to blame whitey?



Yup. Supposed token liberal Williams. That would have been bad enough coming from Dick Morris or some other rightie douche, but from Williams? He totally mis-portrays Obama as a radical, going so far as to call her "Stokely Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress" for fuck's sake.

Who is that, you say? Stokely Carmichael was civil rights-era socialist revolutionary who coined the term "black power." Carmichael was frustrated with the peaceful methods of MLK, was integral in the formation of the Black Panthers, who also were not militant enough in Carmichael's eyes. Carmichael later left America to return to Africa, formed the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party which advcated for a unified socialist Africa and began wearing a military uniform complete with a pistol.

Oh, and Stokely Carmichael was a man.

And Juan Williams fears that's the true personality of the new First Lady.

By the end of the segment, O'Reilly and the Weekly Standard hack are sticking up for Obama and trying to walk Williams back. You know you're off the deep end when Bill O'Reilly is throwing you a lifeline.

As a result of this outburst, NPR has now forbidden Williams to be credited as an NPR contributor while on FOX. They should just take it all the way and can his ass. He's clearly more comfortable in his role on FOX as a self-hating liberal.

Journey to the Dark Side is complete

Shorter Paul Krugman:

"President Bush once said “Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream.” Since one of Obama's advisors also once said something about home ownership being good, today's column tries to loosely link the two and is about how home ownership is risky and bad."

Seriously, Professor?

I am about to relocate to a new part of the country for a new job, so I've actually spent some time thinking about this lately. I've had to grapple with the decision to buy or rent in the new location. I've made the decision on that and I am in the process of buying (high) and selling (low) a home right now, so I am quite aware of the risks.

As such, there is no question that there are debatable issues regarding own vs. rent—of which I've done both—and that's a fair debate, but that's not what you are doing.

You don't present ANY of the reasons why the government does incentivize ownership, you just list your gripes (all valid, btw), and use them to demagogue about the housing bubble/collapse. Um, okay...

But where you go off the rails, and what is pissing me off, is inserting a totally gratuitous reference to Obama in this column.

It might be a passing reference, but it is NOT relevant to your premise. It now seems to me you have crossed the line from embittered Clinton supporter to outright partisan asshole. You are now actively damaging the Democratic nominee for reasons I cannot fathom, and you are now indelibly included on my aforementioned shitlist.

More on the Fall of Paul

Mark Kleiman with perhaps the most scathing condemnation of Krugman I've seen yet. Not on the substance of Krugman's column, but what he says about Krugman's motives [emphasis added]:

[...] But he still can't bring himself to say a single positive thing about the only person standing between John McCain and the White House. Instead he gives the nominee a bunch of bad and condescending advice. The Bush years have been good for Krugman; he could continue into a McCain Presidency without breaking stride. A Clinton Presidency might have brought him a senior appointment. But an Obama Administration would make Krugman a marginal figure.

Do you think his unconscious mind has figured this out? Or is there any other explanation for his continuing to do what he can to weaken the nominee of the party he claims to favor?

[...] As a long-time admirer of Krugman, I remain appalled by the breathtaking dishonesty of his attacks on Barack Obama, and the result is an anger that no doubt sometimes interferes with my judgment. I hadn't known that Krugman had disclaimed any interest in a Washington job; that part of my attack was clearly off the mark.

Still, under President Clinton Krugman would have the President's ear; under President McCain he'd have an excellent target; under Barack Obama he'd be carping from the sidelines. I'm still looking for another explanation for writing a column designed to weaken the man Krugman admits will be the nominee of your party. To be a friendly critic, you must first establish your friendliness.

Strong stuff. Kleiman follows up by sharing a convincing justification of Krugman's actions sent to him from a Professor of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon. It's worth reading, and far be it for me to get caught up in the rumble between Professors at Berkeley, Princeton and Carnegie Mellon—but, personally, it just makes Krugman sound more petty and like more of a dick.

It's Monday, and we all know what that means...

...Paul Krugman is pissing me off.

Today's column is titled "Divided They Stand" and in it you'd expect Krugman to lay out a plan for the Democrats to unify the party to take on McCain. Well, he'll get to that in a minute...First, he has to spend four paragraphs bemoaning the latest "fake scandal" that is being trumped up against Clinton—never mind that this RFK thing was entirely of her own making. Yes, the outrage amps were cranked up "to eleven," but it was Hillary herself that kicked it off, and then compounded it with her weak-ass "apology."

Krugman in his rush to absolve Hillary and shift blame to Obama (or the universally vague "Obama supporters") never mentions that Obama and his campaign were pretty goddamn gracious about the whole thing and resisted piling on like Clinton did every time she had a chance to show some class or grace.

Krugman gets down to the business of "uniting the party" by announcing Obama has a problem:

Mr. Obama will be the Democratic nominee. But he has a problem: many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Mr. Obama the White House.

To bolster his case, PK points to some stupid poll showing that Obama trails McCain in Florida while Hillary leads. In fucking May—with the Dems still splitting votes versus McCain. From that poll, Krugman extrapolates that this is all the result of disgruntled Clinton supporters, and that Obama needs to win over and bring them back to the party.

First, I think the number of "I'm so disgruntled that Hillary lost that I'll vote for McCain or stay home because Hillary had a tough time and I blame it all on Obama" is way overblown. It certainly pales in comparison to the number of African American voters who would be (far more justifiably) disaffected if Clinton were to somehow abscond with the nomination. Plus, let's not forget the excited youth vote (aka the future of the party) that Obama actually seems to be delivering for once.

Second, these disgruntled die-hard Hillary supporters (I tangle with them regularly at Shakesville) are beyond Obama's appeal, if not all reason. They are the equivalent of Bush's 23-percenters, and that brand of identity politics is not worth bending Obama's platform to embrace.

Krugman blames Obama (?!?!) for dismissing Clinton's support as "a purely Appalachian phenomenon." More bullshit. That's only come up as a result of three recent primaries, all of which took place with Clinton desperately trying to close the gap, and SHE is the one that attempted to use those numbers as an indication that Obama can't win with "hardworking white Americans." Obama and his campaign would just assume not acknowledge those losses, but when forced to explain them, the only thing differentiating these "blue collar whites" from the ones that Obama carrieds everywhere else—from Oregon to Wisconsin—IS the Appalachia/racism factor.

The big problem really is that Krugman, as always, is laying all of Clinton's mistreatment (and there has been plenty) at the feet of Obama and "Obama supporters." That's bullshit. And frankly, this sounds disturbingly like February's "Nixonland" column when Krugman used his email inbox as illustrative of the wide world of Obama supporters.

Disgruntled Clinton supporters can and should be pissed at the treatment of their candidate by the media and punditry—it's been at times awful and disgusting—but Obama and his "official" campaign have been pretty fucking easy on her. There have been tussles, but by and large, he has run a pretty high-road campaign, even as Clinton threw the kitchen sink at him, and even questioned his qualifications for the job—while endorsing their GOP foe's.

Krugman spends exactly one brief paragraph on what role Clinton has had and will have in all of this:

Mrs. Clinton needs to do her part: she needs to be careful not to act as a spoiler during what’s left of the primary, she needs to bow out gracefully if, as seems almost certain, Mr. Obama receives the nod, and she needs to campaign strongly for the nominee once the convention is over. She has said she’ll do that, and there’s no reason to believe that she doesn’t mean it.

What fucking planet has Krugman been on the last week? I was actually ready to write almost the same thing—two weeks ago! Before Hillary decided to head down to Florida and undermine the legitimacy of the presumptive nominee. That's not playing the spoiler? Comparing the electoral process to Zimbabwe is being graceful?

So when Krugman concludes that it's Obama that has to clean up the race, it's almost laughable. Hillary has been setting fire to everything she can as she goes down, but "mainly it’s up to Mr. Obama to deliver the unity he has always promised..."

One thing to do would be to make a gesture of respect for Democrats who voted in good faith by recognizing Florida’s primary votes — which at this point wouldn’t change the outcome of the nomination fight.

Really, then why was the gracious, non-spoiling Hillary continue to beat the Florida thing into the ground?

The only reason I can see for Obama supporters to oppose seating Florida is that it might let Mrs. Clinton claim that she received a majority of the popular vote. But which is more important — denying Mrs. Clinton bragging rights, or possibly forfeiting the general election?

Yeak, Professor, Hillary just wants "bragging rights" and a "Perfect Primary Attendance Trophy"...she would use that exact popular vote scenario (dubious though it would be) to try and hijack the race. In fact, she's already trying...

What about offering Mrs. Clinton the vice presidency? If I were Mr. Obama, I’d do it. Adding Mrs. Clinton to the ticket — or at least making the offer — might help heal the wounds of an ugly primary fight.

Here’s the point: the nightmare Mr. Obama and his supporters should fear is that in an election year in which everything favors the Democrats, he will nonetheless manage to lose. He needs to do everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Of course to Krugman, adding Clinton to the ticket has no down side. None at all. As if the droves of disaffected Republicans currently sitting this one out wouldn't be awakened by a Clinton anywhere on the ticket. Pretty sure there're more of them than there are pissed-off Hillarybots. And nowhere in there is there anything that Clinton could do—like perhaps to knock some sense into her supporters?...it's all on Obama to try an win them over, while Hillary goes about stoking the embers.

Andrew Sullivan wraps up his critique of Krugman..."I've been open to an Obama-Clinton ticket; but the more you see of the Clintons, the more you realize that getting rid of them - and the assumptions they represent - is part of what this entire campaign has come to be about."

Yeah. Pretty much.

UPDATE: More from: Carpetbagger, Too Sense, John Cole, Aravosis

LIVE IN PORTLAND! The Decembrists! (some Obama guy might show up)

Obama's Decemberists
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Turns out that Obama's opening act at the megarally was The Decemberists, a hugely popular indie rock band, which typically opens their concerts with the Soviet National Anthem.

How odd that the MSM didn't tell us that a few of the 75K in attendance may have come for the tunes.

And did the Obama rally begin with the Soviet National Anthem? The concert went for 45 minutes and was widely pitched on Facebook etc. But did the band trim their act to make it Obama-appropriate?

Yeah, you tool, like The Decembrists are U-freaking-2. The opening band had nothing to do with who and how many attended that rally. I appreciate the fact that Obama is providing some entertainment for the crowd who often has to wait hours for the candidate to appear. If Hewitt and the others on the right think there are tens of thousands of devoted Decembrists fans that could care less about Obama or politics, yet decided to line-up for hours ahead of time, go through security, sit in the sweltering sun and through a speech they care nothing about all for 30 minutes of free music you are, to put it kindly, brain-damaged.

As "proof" Hewitt cites an "evite" from the Obama campaign. That evite actually neglects to even mention the band by name—instead listing band members as special guests.

Trying to claim that Obama's big draw was his merely piggybacking on a Woodstock concert crowd is beyond mendacious, it's freaking hilarious.

[Hewitt sources this even more hilarious "article" from Newsbusters—check the comments, hysterical. I got to Hewitt from Sullivan.]

A Cup for Paul Krugman

Professor, I really didn't want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice... I understand that you support Hillary Clinton. That's fine. But you are still pretending you are neutral, and that you offer sober analysis, yet you have been little more than a campaign mouthpiece and now seem to be completely through the looking glass and even exceeding the rhetoric of the campaign itself.

The day after Hillary Clinton shoves her foot all the way down her throat regarding the work habits of white people*—with no clear extrication procedure available—you decide to take pen in hand and write a column about a candidate, and a campaign, that has a "problem" with race, and you write it about Barack Obama?!? Are you fucking serious?

Fellow academician Mark Kleiman said it perfectly:

If you actually wanted to help Barack Obama (who is, as you note the presumptive Democratic nominee) you would give him advice in private and praise him in public. Telling him that he shouldn't disrespect white people is neither necessary nor helpful. You might at least pretend to believe that some of the people who voted for your preferred candidate were voting for her, rather than against him.

Take a fucking sabbatical until this race is over, Professor, and join us on the other side. You are embarrassing yourself.

* In defense of HRC, I think she made a horrible mistake when she spoke, and NOT a dogwhistle remark. I could be wrong of course, but I'm hoping not.

"I submit that you are illogical"

Alas, Evil Spock Krugman still lives...

Today on his NY Times blog, the once-good Professor weighs in on the issue of the gas tax. He's an economist...he's a Clinton supporter...could this be interesting? Will he be the first economist with a pulse to support it? Or will he go off the reservation and hammer Clinton for this idiocy?

Gas Tax Hysterics

OK, this has gone overboard.

Hillary Clinton’s proposed gas tax holiday is not, in my view, a good idea. [...]

Whoa! Krugman's gonna join the reality-based chorus? He's gonna call this out as the politics, rather than policy, that it is?...

Not exactly.

Krugman instead uses this column to hammer other economists for making a big deal out of what he deems a really unimportant little issue.

But the furor over what is, when all is said and done, a small and temporary policy proposal is entirely disproportionate... [economists] place excessive weight on issues where professional judgment differs from lay opinion...So when a presidential candidate says something that conflicts with economistic wisdom, it becomes THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE EVER. Except, you know, it isn’t.

Um, Professor? I don't really think it's the economists that are making this the biggest fucking issue facing the planet—it's your candidate! Have you been in a cave the last two weeks? Hillary is putting on a demagoguery clinic! The reason responsible economists are weighing in is that for once the media is doing it's job (slightly) and asking them.

What's that? You can explain that too?

Part of it, clearly, is the fact that many people in the media really, really want Obama to win and Clinton to lose...and have seized on the gas tax as their latest proof that she is ee-ee-vil.

Ho-lee fuck. Now it's the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy...

Of course, the Gas Tax Holiday IS a stupid little issue. Not only stupid, but actually irrelevant to this race as it won't actually happen this summer no matter what HRC promises to the contrary. But the reason this has become such a BIG deal is because Hillary Clinton has made it the centerpiece of her revamped populist approach, AND as her main weapon against Obama—declaring him "elite" and uncaring" for disagreeing with her (and McCain). She has made it a big deal, and the fact that she is presenting the whole thing dishonestly and disingenuously requires responsible economists speak out.

Perhaps one day, you will once again join them Mr. Krugman.

UPDATE: That column is from May 6, before results from that days primaries. Here is Krugman today:

Talleyrand and the gas tax holiday

I’m on record as saying that Hillary Clinton’s advocacy of a gas-tax holiday, while it wasn’t good policy, didn’t rise to the level of a crime.

Judging from last night’s results, however, it was worse than a crime: it was a mistake.

Wrong. It was a crime against decency and integrity—it was fraud and it was perjury. The public showed her (and you apparently) that we've had enough of that shit.

Angry Black Man?

Over the last few weeks there've been videos of Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton and others "losing their cool" in public, with the press or out on the stump. Tuesday, ABC News tries to fit Barack Obama into the same category. He's "losing it" because the Clintons are in his head. Or something.

Here's Obama—while shaking hands, greeting supporters and signing autographs—responding to this insightful, thought-provoking, issue-oriented campaign coverage: "Are you allowing President Clinton to get in your head?"



[NOTE: TPM squeezed that to fit under a minute. ABC's video starts slightly earlier, is higher quality and uninterrupted—but I can't embed it.]

Now read how ABC portrays the event [added emphasis mine]:

Is Bill Clinton Getting in Obama's Head?
ABC News' Sunlen Miller Reports: It should have been an easy question for Sen. Barack Obama: “Are you allowing President Clinton to get in your head?”

Yet, it took Obama three tries to answer the question, in what turned into a testy exchange with the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny following a campaign event in Greenwood, South Carolina.

"I am trying to make sure that his statements by him are answered. Don't you think that's important?" Obama shot back, while walking away.

When Zeleny yelled a follow up question suggesting the Illinois senator had not answered the question, Obama fired back angrily, "Don't try cheap stunts like that."

Obama then walked away and shook hands with the mass of voters that surrounded him.

A few minutes later, Obama came back and confronted Zeleny again.

"I will answer your question though off the record, would you like to talk off the record?" Obama asked. Zeleny refused to go off the record and then motioned toward the gaggle of TV cameras gathered around him.

Obama then returned to his supporters and began shaking more hands before returning a third time to the group of reporters.

"My suspicion is that the other side must be rattled if they’re continuing saying false things about us," Obama finally responded, ignoring follow up questions as he left the room.

Maybe this ABC jackass-reporter ought to pepper me with inane questions to find out what "testy" tastes like...

File Under "Bat-Boy"

I hesitate to even give this Drudge/Enquirer story legs or a link, but I feel like I should point out that I think it is total and complete crap. Any evidence tying this to another campaign would finish them in my book. Even Obama.

Dick of the Week: Jerry Bowyer

Is it too early to commit on Dick of the Week? Perhaps, unless somebody else comes to pry it from Jerry Bowyer's fat, stupid, lying conservative hands...

The California Fires: Where were the Looters?
by Jerry Bowyer | Posted: 11/01/2007
Did you see any looters on television last week? Neither did I. When New Orleans was flooded two years ago, there were looters all over my TV screen...

What about the rapists? There were rapists at the refugee camp formerly known as the Superdome, but did you see any reports about rapists at Qualcomm Stadium last week? I didn’t. Did the mayor of San Diego cuss and then lash out at George Bush on your TV screen last week? Did Governor Schwarzenegger cry for the cameras? Did he pass the buck?

San Diego had a major fire just four years ago. Did they wallow in their victimhood and demand more government funding? Did they play the race card, claiming that George Bush just doesn’t like Mexicans?

Where to begin? Let's first look at just the geographic and type-of-catastrophe differences: San Diego is a huge spawling region with dozens of lanes of interstate highway going in and out in all directions, plus local and secondary roads, and few natural obstacles.

New Orleans is an old city built in a bowl at the end of a peninsula surounded by water with very few ways out.

Hurricanes are massive catastrophic forces that hit all at once and disrupt/destroy hundreds of square miles simultaneously with a combination of deadly wind, rain and flooding.

Wildfires, by definition, start in uninhabited areas, spread locally and more slowly, and can be more easily avoided. Evacuations can be handled on an individual neighborhood level, rather than an entire metropolitan area at once.

Katrina is widely recognized as the worst disaster in U.S. History. This years wildfires, while tragic, are a frequent occurance in an area familiar with dealing with them. The fires in 2003 were worse. Mr. Genius continues...

The answer to all these questions is ‘no’. Here’s why: culture matters. San Diego is an entrepreneurial city. It’s a technology savvy, business-friendly region with unusually high rates of self-employment. Few of its citizens are unemployed; few receive welfare. Not many of its employed residents work for government. San Diego has seen its share of troubles. Like Pittsburgh had been a steel town and Detroit had been a car town, San Diego had been built on the defense industry. But when the Berlin wall came down and the defense budgets dried up, it shifted towards the next big thing – biotechnology. These changes have come from the bottom-up; from the marketplace.

San Diego sure has pretty beaches, and palm trees, and more laptops per capita, I'm sure—but Jerry's grand socio-ecomomic assertions are total bullshit...

Unemployment rates:
San Diego—4.6% (January 2005)
New Orleans—5.0% (December 2004)

Largest Employers:
San Diego—Government (18%)
New Orleans—Government (17%)

Oh, and any of the rest of you recall "defense budgets drying up"? I didn't think so. Anything else, Jerry?

I wonder if a reverse 911 evacuation call like the one that went out to a million San Diegans would have even worked in New Orleans.

Um, no. Because everyone in New Orleans was told to leave at once, too late, and with no way to do so. Plus, they had to flee the entire region. In San Diego, things went a bit differently:

Residents were subjected to a mix of mandatory and voluntary evacuations, depending on their location in the projected path of the fire. Voluntary evacuation areas were typically further from the fire's path, while mandatory evacuation areas faced a more imminent threat...

Many residents were notified of evacuations via a computerized Reverse 911 phone call system. Law enforcement officers also notified residents by driving through evacuation areas.

The 513,000 people notified by Reverse 911 is not actually "a million" and the system only existed a month before the fires... Oh, and all of that helpful stuff done in San Diego? It was the government, and it was implemented in large part in response to what went wrong in New Orleans.

And the Superdome versus Qualcomm comparison? Hmmm. Did the people in San Diego wade through sewage and corpse-ridden water to get to a ill-equipped, ill-supplied refugee camp where they were left trapped, in some cases forced at gunpoint, without food, water, electricity or sanitary conditions? While a hurricane ripped the roof off?

Or did San Diegans calmly drive in their cars, park in a parking lot and check into an overstaffed, well-prepared camping ground with 70 degree weather?

He concludes with one of the wierdest amalgams of red herring and straw man meets hypothetical I've ever read [emphasis mine]...

I’m already bracing myself for the hate mail. “YOU’RE BLAMING THE VICTIMS!” they will blare. But I’m not blaming them, I’m trying to help them. Poverty stinks to begin with, but it’s even worse when a hurricane or an earthquake attacks. If I told you that today you were going to be hit with a natural disaster, but that you got the pick the city where your family would be when it hit, would you pick a rich one or a poor one? Would you pick one with honest and efficient road construction agencies or patronage ridden ones? Would you pick a town where almost everyone had Blackberries and cell-phones or where almost no one did? Would you pick a town were most people were business owners or where most of them were on welfare?

Too bad nobody told the poor, car-less inhabitants of New Orleans they could have chosen to be in a fantastic city where they'd have flying cars and two-way wrist-tvs instead of trapped in a fucking swamp.

Whose blaming the victims? Not Jerry.

The Frost "Estate"

[photo: Baltimore Sun]

Pretty much exactly what I was picturing from my wanderings around Bal'mer. The fact that Malkin could drive up to that stoop, look at it, and then go home and write the fictitious smears she did just boggles the mind.