Month: March 2010

Beck Fails to Out-Victim Massa in Interview – Earlier Had On-Air Spat over Massa with Malkin

Jon Ponder

Glenn Beck’s interview with former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) was a huge embarrassment — his first indisputable failure since he misspelled “oligarch” in September.

Beck apparently went into the interview believing that Massa would finally provide evidence of the Democrats’ purported “culture of corruption” that Beck and Michelle Malkin have been flogging but can’t seem to prove. If horse-trading for votes in Congress is corrupt, then Congress has been steeping in corruption for centuries. And these same soulless right-wing propagandists were largely silent about Bush-era corruption allegations against Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and their approval of torture techniques; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his DOJ hive of inept Christian law school grads; betrayers of national secrets Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby; convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff; twice-indicted former House Minority Leader Tom DeLay; Rep. J.D. Hayworth, now running against Sen. John McCain in Arizona; and convicted Rep. Duke Cunningham, just to name a few.

But Massa was not only unforthcoming on corruption, much to Beck’s dismay, he pulled the floor out from under Beck by trumping him on the foundational hypocrisy of Beck’s ideology — hypocrisy he shares with Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity and the rest — that victimhood is a sign of weakness in liberals but a supreme virtue in themselves and their fellow travelers on the right.

Here’s Michael Scherer at Time:

Beck, who is used to controlling the gravitational force of victimhood around him, kept interrupting to point out that he was a bigger target of even greater forces than Massa. “I have two unauthorized biographies coming out against me in the spring,” Beck said at one point. Minutes later, Beck went even further. “Do you realize my family is at stake?” he said. “You’ve got a little scandal with your children in college. I’ve got one for all time now, because I am not going to resign. I’m not going to back down. I have come to a place where I believe at some point the system will destroy me.”

…But in Massa, Beck found a sort of liberal doppelgänger, a mesmerizing train wreck of a man who was impossible to undercut in the classic fashion. To many conservative allies of Beck, it probably didn’t come as too much of a surprise. In recent days, prominent Republicans like Bill Kristol had expressly warned Beck and others about coming to Massa’s defense just because he was alleging dirty tricks by the Obama White House. “We shouldn’t get into the business of being pro-Massa just because we are antihealth care,” Kristol said Monday on Fox. The ruling talk-radio king, Rush Limbaugh, spent much of Tuesday making clear that he would not be tied to Massa, after spending much of Monday praising Massa’s revelations about Democratic Party politics. “Anybody who embraces this guy is in big trouble,” Limbaugh said…

The conservative blogger Michelle Malkin called into [Beck’s radio] show to tell Beck he was making a mistake. “This guy deserves 60 minutes of our time, really?” Malkin asked.

Beck would not budge. But as those 60 minutes came to an end Tuesday afternoon, the rabble-rouser seemed to recognize that he had fallen into a trap. The Beck big top has room for only one carnival barker at a time. “I think I have wasted your time,” Beck said, staring into the camera at an audience he once spent weeks telling about fanciful FEMA prison camps. “I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time.”

Here’s the audio of Beck and Malkin squabbling over the Massa interview:

Limbaugh Says He’ll Move to Costa Rica If Health-Care Reform Passes – Apparently Unaware That Costa Rica Has ‘Socialist’ Health Care

Jon Ponder

HuffPo:

LIMBAUGH: I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.

Apparently Limbaugh doesn’t know that Costa Rica has a nationalized — or according to right wingers “socialized” — health care system:

Costa Rica has universal health care, one of the best health systems in Latin America. As always with nationalized health care, expect red tape and long waits, but the quality of Costa Rica’s health care is excellent. Private health care is also available, very affordable, and high quality. Many doctors speak English and have received training in Europe, Canada, or the U.S. …

With a government-sponsored network of more than 30 hospitals and more than 250 clinics throughout the country, the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS) has primary responsibility for providing low-cost health care services to the Costa Rican populace. Although sometimes overburdened, this system has worked well for Costa Ricans for the past 60 or so years. Open not just to Costa Rican residents, the CCSS provides affordable medical service to any foreign resident or visitor. Foreigners living in Costa Rica can join the CCSS by paying a small monthly fee–based on income–or they can buy health insurance from the state monopoly Instituto de Seguro Nacional (INS), valid with over 200 affiliated doctors, hospitals, labs, and pharmacies in the private sector.

Washington Post Defends Cheney Witch Hunt against DOJ Lawyers

Jon Ponder

Media Matters:

Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen defended the witch hunt against Justice Department attorneys who previously represented terror suspects and other detainees, falsely suggesting that criticism of the witch hunt has come only from progressives, when, in fact, conservatives have also condemned the attacks.

Mrs. Graham is spinning in her grave.

Romney to Tea Baggers: Third Party Run in ’12 Would ‘Divide and Fail’

Jon Ponder

Politico:

In an interview with Newsmax, a popular right-wing source for tea baggers, 2012 GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney told them get in line. Otherwise, “Divide and fail is the result …That would hand over the country to [President] Barack Obama and [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed.”

He also threw a bone to Ron Paul, but it was wrapped around the inference that Romney is a party insider and Paul is not. “[We] welcome his participation in our party … [We’re] a big tent party.

The New Jim Crow: More Blacks in Correctional System Now Than Were Enslaved in 1850

Jon Ponder

Tom Dispatch:

From Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste — a larger percentage of blacks can’t vote today under felon disenfranchisement than the year the 15th Amendment passed; more black children were raised in two-parent homes during slavery than today.

And:

If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

Packard Heir: As CEO, U.S. Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina Almost Destroyed HP

Jon Ponder

Politico:

Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP co-founder David Packard, wrote the letter to the three Republican senators who recently endorsed Fiorina – James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma as well as Jon Kyl of Arizona – over former Rep. Tom Campbell and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

Packard, who supports DeVore, the tea bagger in the California U.S. senate race, said of front-runner Fiorina’s tenure at HP, “The stock price dropped by 50 percent only to rally 10 percent on the announcement of her firing. She fired 28,000 people before she herself was fired, departing with the $21 million golden parachute that is financing her campaign.”

Ken Starr Attacks Cheneys over McCarthy-ite Witch Hunt on DOJ Lawyers

Jon Ponder

Spencer Ackerman:

[No] less a Democratic persecutor than Ken Starr went on ‘Countdown’ last night to admonish the Cheneys for slandering Justice Department lawyers who defended Guantanamo detainees. “It’s very important for lawyers to be willing to take on unpopular causes,” Starr said.“This is in the finest traditions of our country. I hope schoolchildren still learn about the example of John Adams, because we certainly teach it in law school — John Adams taking on [as clients] the British Redcoats who were charged with the Boston Massacre.”

The Lies of ‘Conservatism’ and the ‘Center’ are Immoral

Jon Ponder

Mark Karlin at BuzzFlash:

The modern “conservative” movement is nothing more than a massively funded and highly effective communications strategy to shift America into an oligarchy that functions for the super wealthy through tax cuts and for corporations through the elimination of safety regulations for the public good and the privatization of government.

That’s not conservatism; that’s highway robbery. It’s a crime.

All this came about through the organized strategy and financing of wealthy financiers and corporations to build a network of think tanks, media-owned outlets, reporters toting the oligarchy line on the “benefits” of unrestrained “free trade,” public relations initiatives, and front organizations to move America from an evolutionary society relying on the strength of innovation and a dynamic educated middle class to a relatively static society in which those at the top are in a members-only club growing obese with wealth while kicking others down from the ladder to the top and demanding tithes from them.