Month: July 2010
Verbatim
I’ve done this. I’ve been in government and overseen thousands of businesses. I’ve run charter schools. Those are businesses. She ran her … her website.
— California gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown (D), in an interview with Time, on his challenger, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (R).
The Racist Editor
We knew it right from the start,
He was born with mean genes and no heart.
He edits creatively
Dependably deceptively,
And there’s a special spot in hell for Breitbart.
O’Reilly Responds to Maddow’s Race-Baiting Charge Against Fox News: But We Get Bigger Ratings
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
On her MSNBC show on July 20, Rachel Maddow lambasted Fox News over its race baiting campaigns, including its current attack on USDA staffer, Shirley Sherrod, who was fired, in part, because Fox aired video that had been deceptively edited to appear to depict Sherrod admitting she discriminated against white people. (See Maddow’s detailed indictment against Fox’s racist coverage in the video above and transcript below — and note that we had published a similar charge against Fox earlier that day, even before the truth about the Sherrod video had come out.)
Last night Bill O’Reilly offered a tepid apology to Sherrod, admitting that he should have listened to her entire speech before judging her to be a racist — he couldn’t resist adding a caveat, of course. “If a white public servant referenced ‘his own kind’ or ‘one of his own’ when speaking about an African American,” O’Reilly claimed, “that white person would be fired on the spot.”
O’Reilly went on to answer Maddow’s attack on his network’s racist editorial policies — first he played a segment of her show in which she said: “Just like the fake ACORN controversy, Fox News knows it has a role in this dance. That’s not new. That’s not even interesting about this scandal. Fox does what Fox does.”
O’Reilly responded: “Which is kick your network’s butt every single night, madam.”
Got that? He didn’t deny Fox News’ racist attacks, but rather acknowledged that race baiting produces ratings, and that counts more than accuracy — forget about fairness and balance.
[…]
Verbatim
I’ve got real empathy for those who are unemployed, as most of you know I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters. I know that three of my brothers lost their jobs, I’m not sure whether they’ve found jobs, yet, so I’ve got a lot of empathy for those caught in this economic downturn.
– House Speaker-in-Waiting John Boehner (R-Ohio), trying to explain why he opposes extending benefits to the unemployed
Matalin Calls Them “Tea Bag People;” Carville Loses It
This should have been titled, “Even Mary Matalin calls them teabaggers.” Sorry that the only version available is CNN’s and I can’t change the width, but you can clearly see James Carville lose it when Matalin lets a “tea bag people” reference slip.
Figuring out how these two folks stay married could save the United States, but it’s still hard to listen to Matalin grind away.
Caught Race Baiting, Breitbart’s Site Blames the People Breitbart Snookered
The scandal around the firing of USDA staffer Shirley Sherrod began on Wednesday when Andrew Breitbart, the notorious tea-bagger propagandist, posted a deceptively edited video of a speech Sherrod gave on racism to his website, Big Government. Here’s part of what he wrote about the video then:
Verbatim
So many of the elected politicians in Washington seem to be shackled by the fear of a primary. It’s liberating. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m convinced it’s what the people want.
— Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I), in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, on no longer having to worry about the most ideological voters as an independent candidate.
Crist: Republicans Only Concerned with “Regrettable Glory” of Party Ideology
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has called a special session of the legislature to consider a constitutional ban on offshore oil drilling. Republicans are crying “foul,” citing the fact that there are already statutes that determine how close drilling can be to Florida’s shores.
“I think it’s completely unnecessary,” said Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, in a view expressed by others. “There’s absolutely no reason we have to go and create a law for something that’s already unlawful.”
Crist: Republicans have “completely lost their way.”
What Hudson is saying is that there is no need to add something to the state constitution that’s already been dealt with by statute. Kind of like adding an amendment to the Florida constitution banning same-sex marriage when there’s already a law against it. Obviously there’s no need for that, right?
Hudson didn’t think so in 2008, when he and almost every other Republican politician in Florida, including then GOP-er Gov. Crist, publicly endorsed Amendment 2, a Republican initiative to make same-sex marriage double-triple-really-really-quadriple illegal in Florida.
