Day: November 9, 2010
Prop 19: Pot Prop Lost But Got 350K More Votes Than Meg Whitman, 258K More than Fiorina
350,000 Votes
Despite receiving 3,477,746 “yes” votes, Proposition 19, the ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana in California, lost. Paradoxically, Prop 19 received 350,000 more “yes” votes than total votes for losing GOP governor candidate Meg Whitman (3,152,366) and 285,000 more than losing GOP U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina (3,219,797).
At Least 30 GOP-Fox Channel Propagandists Contributed to, Endorsed or Raised Money for Republican Campaigns This Year
As you doubtless know by now, Keith Olbermann is returning to work tonight on MSNBC’s “Countdown” after being suspended for making three political donations to Democratic candidates in the last week or so of the midterm election campaign.
“There are multiple people being paid by Fox News to essentially run for office as Republican candidates. If you count not just their hosts but their contributors, you’re looking at a significant portion of the entire Republican lineup of potential contenders for 2012.”
– Rachel Maddow
– Rachel Maddow
As his colleague Rachel Maddow said Friday night, Olbermann’s suspension — like CNN’s firing Rick Sanchez and NPR’s firing Juan Williams — draws a sharp distinction between the ethical boundaries of real journalistic organizations like MSBNC, CNN and NPR and the lack of any similar journalistic ethics at the GOP-Fox propaganda channel:
MADDOW: Here’s the larger point, though, that’s going mysteriously missing from the right-wing cackling and old media cluck-cluck-clucking: I know everyone likes to say, “Oh, cable news, it’s all the same. Fox and MSNBC — mirror images of each other. But if you look at the long history of Fox hosts not just giving money to candidates, but actively endorsing campaigns and raising millions of dollars for politicians and political parties — whether it’s Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck or Mike Huckabee — and you’ll see that we can lay that old false equivalency to rest forever. There are multiple people being paid by Fox News to essentially run for office as Republican candidates. If you count not just their hosts but their contributors, you’re looking at a significant portion of the entire Republican lineup of potential contenders for 2012.
They can do that because there’s no rule against that at Fox. Their network is run as a political operation. Ours isn’t. Yeah, Keith’s a liberal, and so am I. But we’re not a political operation — Fox is. We’re a news operation. The rules around here are part of how you know that.
Indisputable evidence of this is the fact that at least 30 people who work for Fox donated money and/or time and/or endorsed Republican candidates in the midterms. According to Media Matters, if Fox was a legitimate news organization, it would have to suspend most of its marquee names, including Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, William Kristol and even the propaganda channel’s owner, Rupert Murdoch.
Here’s the list from Media Matters:
Charlie Gone Wild
The newly independent Gov. Charlie Crist (NPA – Fla.) is going rogue during his last weeks in office, starting with a possible posthumous pardon of the Doors’ lead singer, Jim Morrison.
“Stay tuned,” Crist told The Hill this week. “It’s something I’m willing to look into in the time I have left.”
Morrison, for those of you too young to be reading this post, was arrested in Miami on charges of exposing himself during a concert in 1969. It was a time of assassinations, shootings of college kids by National Guardsmen, inner-city riots, and pop stars dropping like flies from drug overdoses, so Morrison’s arrest was just one more crazy thing. In fact, it wasn’t even his first (or last) arrest.
Morrison arrived at the oversold gig looking the worse for wear, fired up from a day of drinking and a provocative play he had seen in Los Angeles the night before. He antagonised the crowd, and recordings certainly show he used some naughty words. He did take off his shirt, though, and he did ask if the audience wanted to “see his cock”, but it’s unclear if he did actually, er, show the audience his morrison. He spurred a stage invasion and got into a fight with the promoter. But the subsequent six-week trial was filled with contradictory testimonies and debates over “free speech”.
Morrison was ultimately cleared on charges of lascivious behaviour and, bizarrely, drunkenness, but he was convicted of profanity and indecent exposure. Sentenced to six months in prison and a $500 fine, he died on bail in Paris, pending appeal.
Charlie has previously expressed interest in clearing Morrison’s, and Florida’s, names by taking it all back after the fact. One wonders, though, what else is on Crist’s To Do list in his remaining days as governor. Can we revisit that whole Bush v. Gore thing, do you think?
