Screw You – Leave My Liberal MSNBC Alone!

With MSNBC taking second place in the nightly line-up ratings for October (which isn’t over yet, so it’s weird the ratings for the month are already out…), all I have to say is, Damn Straight! We liberal-leaning political junkies need our opinion/analysis fix – or at least spirited discussion. No one would accuse Joe Scarborough of leaning left, yet his numbers are up as well.

CNN

CNN President Jon Klein

Now, CNN is getting defensive. The network president Jon Klein is quoted in The Huffington Post as saying MSNBC’s partisan programming is giving it a boost before the election, but CNN’s post-partisan line-up will serve well in the long-term.

Um, “post-partisan”? We already have bi-partisan and non-partisan. I mean, how many prefixes can you attach to one term? Anyway, on The Daily Show Oct. 27, Campbell Brown said “We are banking on the idea that people want us to play it a little more straight than that.”

Okay, we get it, CNN. You’re the mature, unbiased news analysis. We.Get.It! (although, I think CNN’s daily news coverage tends to be a bit sensationalist, even if it’s unbiased sensationalism)

FOX

Do I even have to devote space in this blog to FOX News? Well, if I must sully myself, I must. I’ll just have to wash with LAVA afterward.

FOX is partisan. Everyone knows it. I mean, Roger Ailes is an absolute trollop for the Republican Party – especially Neo-Cons. He basically has one of those “puff, puff, give” relationships with them.

And who gives a crap, really? If FOX wants to be partisan, let them be partisan! It’s not as if their shit doesn’t reek and we intelligent people can’t all smell it. Everyone knows their angle and I’d have no problem with it if they didn’t claim to be fair and balanced. There has to be a special place in Hell reserved for the people who repeatedly say this and those who actually believe it.

Which brings me to – did anyone catch the video of Obama spokesman Bill Burton having a confrontation with anchor Megyn Kelly?

FOX's Megyn Kelly

It’s priceless watching her get all hot and bothered by Burton’s repeated accusations that FOX has an agenda. She was so irritated, when referring to FOX News coverage, she actually repeated the phrase “fair and balanced” three times. “Oh! Maybe if I say it enough, it’ll be true! Where’s my fairy godmother, dammit!”

I don’t know what kind crack they’re smoking over there at FOX HQ, but I’m sure it’s illegal in the lower 48. Let’s think about this. Brit Hume called the Democratic National Convention “a spectacle.” Their show hosts are Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, and Sean Hannity – who’s “Hannity’s Obama & Friends: A History of Radicalism” made our likely next president look like Al Qaeda’s puppy dog mascot. Outwardly and inwardly repulsive William Kristol and Karl Rove are big-time FOX commentators and the network just hired Glenn Beck.

People, I am throwing up inside. Are you with me? OK. Let’s continue.

Jed L of Daily Kos conducted a search from Oct. 12-Oct 16 and found FOX News “mentioned ‘ACORN’ or ‘Ayers’ 1,231 times,” compared to MSNBC’s 407 and CNN’s 391. And, according to Rasmussen Reports – run by FOX darling Dick Morris (which is why his poll is the oft-quoted poll on FOX), a survey released August 6 of this year indicated 87% of FOX viewers said they planned to vote for McCain. EIGHTY-SEVEN PERCENT. Now, if they were fair and balanced, don’t you think their viewership would reflect that? (Oh, FYI – only 26% of CNN and 30% of MSNBC viewers planned on pulling the lever for the Republican.)

And, just for recreation, have a look at this picture of their website’s homepage (also posted on Daily Kos by Jed L):

For chrissakes, FOX – own your partisanship. Be one with your partisanship. Be proud that anti-intellectual, Right Wing Nut Jobs have a home among the cable news giants. No one thinks you’re FAIR AND BALANCED – not even FOX News watchers. I know pah-lenty of them and they will fully admit your slant and fully admit to liking you just for that reason.

You may be many things and receive high ratings through deals with some devil, but fair and balanced you are not.

SIDEBAR ISSUE: McCAIN NEWS COVERAGE

Now we’re hearing echoes of Hillary Clinton Campaigns lamentations from McCain’s clusterfuck of a campaign. They’ve been whining over their media coverage for quite some time – even Mark Salter said he thinks the media want Obama to be president.

What the Clinton campaign failed to understand, and what the McCain campaign is now unable to grasp is that when you run a negative campaign, the media reports it. And if your campaign is negative, the media will investigate that, they will investigate your claims and attacks. If your campaign is positive and about yourself, the media will report that and investigate your policy assertions.

McCain wanted to generate negative coverage of Obama with attacks and lies and accusations. What they didn’t understand was that they made their own attacking and accusing THE story. When a politician behaves in such a manner, the media turns its attentions on the aggressive politician because attacking and lying are much juicier story lines. The media is hungry for ratings, not truth.

Had McCain run his campaign of 2000 – which the country was wanting – media coverage of McCain would have been much more positive. But, a campaign run by former Bushies and lobbyists can’t see the forest for the trees or satiate their taste for blood. They themselves are negative entities and black holes with little character. And that, in an of itself, attracted negativity.

Perhaps they will learn this lesson before Sarah Palin gives her own executive ambitions a go in 2012, but something tells me they won’t.

BACK TO MSNBC

Now, everyone’s attacking MSNBC for being too liberal. A meeting of television peeps last Monday produced much criticism of MSNBC, with Linda Bloodworth-Thomason saying Keith Olbermann-type programming “diminishes us.”

Well, get over it. For far too long, this electorate has had a Right-Wing opinioned network and their viewership follows them over the cliff of falsehoods, guilt-by-association, ugly insinuations and outright lying. I’ve been an MSNBC watcher for a while and I’m a fairly informed person. The lying that goes on on FOX – the softballing of their favorite candidates, etc. does not happen at MSNBC. I will absolutely agree that the opinionated nighttime line-up at MSNBC leans left. And MSNBC exec producer Senior VP Phil Griffin said the passionate voices at MSNBC were part of the “rough-and-tumble world of politics.”

Rachel Maddow. Yay.

I agree. If you can’t handle the heat – get out of the frizzeaking kitchen. There are outlets of non-partisan news and analysis available anywhere you want to look. These days, we want opinion. In the era of a tidal-wave of Neo-Con, anti-intellectual, gutter politics, liberals are practically begging for someone to say, This situation is ridiculous and we’re going to tell you why we think so. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are not enough; we’re looking for people who are seriously concerned and seriously angry and aren’t afraid to say it and aren’t afraid of Republican, White House tactics that did Dan Rather in.

Plus, I’m so happy this influx of political opinion is replacing endless reruns of Lockup and To Catch a Predator. I mean, I felt dirty after watching those programs. Hate them.

Now, I’m no slave to MSNBC. And, just to prove it, I’ll allow you the special privilege of insight into my evening television-viewing habits:

I do watch Hardball and sometimes Race for the White House (which is hardly partisan – the other day Tim Pawlenty and Nicole Wallace were the only one-on-one guests. Plus, David Gregory comes from the same non-partisan school of journalism as Tom Brokaw and Brain Williams). Countdown with Keith Olbermann has too much ranting and hardly ever gets my eye – I’m normally tuned into the reruns of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report which I undoubtedly missed the night before. I always check to see what’s happening on Larry King before I commit to Rachel Maddow, whom I love (and can catch her again, later). And then, at bedtime, I’ve got Anderson Cooper on while trying to read the multitude of books I should have finished weeks ago.

And, lest you think my eyeballs permanently glued to the television, I’m almost always doing something else in conjunction with watching these programs: cooking, reading, cleaning, writing, researching, polishing my toenails, playing with my dog or husband, polishing my collection of pundit bobbleheads (kidding. i have no such collection. i mean it.), or other insanely fascinating activities which I cannot recall at this particular moment in time.

So, those of you getting a little squeamish over MSNBC’s liberal commentary – screw off! Leave me my guilty pleasures of Matthews and Maddow. At least MSNBC has the balls to keep Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan on the payroll. Hell, even my old boss – a Republican Strategist – was on there the other day giving his two cents and looking like a goober.

But the nighttime at MSNBC belongs to those of us who want a bigger voice against the religious, Republican idiocy that has released a plague across our country’s legions of uninformed and uncurious, intolerant and close-minded. There are times I want to yell, Right On! No Shit! Finally, someone said it! And MSNBC gives me that opportunity. And I wouldn’t trade it or sacrifice it for all the vanilla, non-partisan, boring, dignified news in all the world. I get my facts all day. At night, I want something different. And MSNBC gives it to me.

Don’t Call It A Timetable

I’ve been anticipating the White House explanation for the coming draw-down in U.S. forces in Iraq. How would the administration, in all their pride and arrogance, deal with the hints that this new strategy is a capitulation to the growing demands to draw this military debacle to its appropriate conclusion?

The drums for Afghanistan are beating louder every day as the violence continues to climb in this forgotten war. Furthermore, the Iraqi refusal to establish an agreement for a long-term U.S. military presence was nothing less than an embarrassing slap in the face for the Bush administration. Glorious, indeed, wasn’t it – reading those headlines?

And just this weekend, as Obama traverses foreign lands, Der Spiegel is reporting Maliki agrees with the Democratic presidential nominee’s plan for withdrawal. Gasp! (UPDATE: Maliki’s spokesman is saying Der Spiegel misinterpreted Maliki’s statements, according to MSNBC. UPDATE: haha. ThinkProgress is reporting the Bush administration has pressured the Iraqi government to “walk back” on the statements made in the Der Spiegel interview, the translator worked for Maliki, not Der Spiegel AND the NYTIMES obtained a recording of the interview and supports the original interpretation).

Perhaps this recent period of political bassackwardness and insanity under W. will soon be behind us. And how does the White House present the surprising injection of reason in their policy?

Of course, they present it as a new strategy of their own formulation, complete with their own semantic flavor – amusing to boot. This morning, as I watched the airing of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s exclusive interview with CNN bear Wolf Blitzer, it was clear the administration has finally embraced a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. But she didn’t call it “timetable.”

No, Bush cronies would never use that liberal cuss word “timetable”, so those clever little word smiths introduced their new phrase for future troop reduction and it’s a beaut if I do say so myself: ASPIRATIONAL TIME HORIZON.

Not timetable. Aspirational Time Horizon. I couldn’t have come up with a better phrase myself if you’d given me a month and an unlimited supply of pinot grigio. And I am kickass at Family Fued.

So, I hope you will enjoy, as I will and as the flame of the W. Bush presidency is wonderfully extinguished, one of last sieges of megalomania from our executive branch.

And one more time for shits and giggles: Aspirational Time Horizon. It just rolls of the tongue!

Decreased Violence in Iraq – More to do with Money than the Surge

It is intensely irritating to hear McCain repeat again and again that he supported the “Surge” strategy and that this strategy is responsible for a reduction in violence in Iraq. Furthermore, Obama is now whistling this tune in an effort to endear uninformed Americans and convince them of his competence on national security.

In all this talk of surge success, very little is being mentioned of the immense amount of cash being handed over to many of Iraq’s violent tribes and militias – putting vast amounts of criminals on U.S. payroll to NOT reach for their automatic weapons and plant IEDs. You got it. We’re monetarily bribing down the violence. And we’ll likely continue to do so as we reduce troop numbers.

I’m not saying I oppose this strategy. Whatever works, right? But to continuously claim “The surge is a success” without acknowledging the effect of these payoffs is equivalent to presenting a facade to the American people. Of course, we should expect nothing less. How many lies were told to garner support for the war in the first place?

Yet we hear over and over that the surge’s success has proven McCain right. I know at some point I should develop a callous to the lies, but it seems nearly impossible and we’re all left with high blood pressure and anger over our leaders’ inabilities to prioritize truth over popularity.

Finally, CNN offered an interview with terrorism expert Peter Bergen on 360 last night in which he said,

I actually think both the Democrats and the Republicans have been overemphasizing the surge. If it was just about the surge, the violence would be back up again because the surge is over. There are some underlying factors that are much more important in Iraq in my view.

One — the fact that Al Qaeda in Iraq, they basically scored a series of own goals by its Taliban-style tactics, producing this wave of revulsion against and amongst the Sunnis. Now we put up a 100,000 Sunni militia on the American payroll, people who used to be shooting at the United States who are now on our payroll.

We also see the Prime Minister Maliki, no one could say a good thing about him a year and a half ago in Washington. Turning out to be a somewhat effective leader going into Basra, taking out the Shia militias there, going into Sadr City, taking out the Shia militias there.

We’ve also seen the Iraqi army which, Anderson, is really much larger than the Afghan army and much more effective in a country which is smaller and with a smaller population.

So there were some underlying factors that actually suggest that long- term success in Iraq is plausible. It’s possible the surge, of course, was one aspect of it. But to say that the surge caused all these changes is I think simply very simplistic essentially.

Also, Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films produced a video report entitled Uncovering the Truth Behind the Anbar Success Story showing Sunni leaders who had formerly been associated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and responsible for ethnic cleansing being paid off. In an interview with Katie Halper of Alternet.org last September, Rowley indicated,

There have been a lot of reports about the fact that the people who the U.S. is working with, the supposed “freedom fighters,” the “counter-insurgents” are former insurgents. They were Iraqi al Qaeda before they started working with the Americans. That is troubling because if they were fighting the Americans once, they’ll fight Americans again. And more troubling for the future of Iraq is the fact that many of the tribes that the U.S. is working with are war criminals who are directly responsible for ethnic cleansing and who are using American support to prepare for sectarian civil war. The U.S. is funding Sunni militias. They already funded the Shia militias. They’re now funding all sides of this sectarian war.

Here’s an NPR interview with British journalist Peter Cockburn discussing U.S. payments to Iraqi militiamen.

In an April 2008 report, The Christian Science Monitor stated,

He (Abu Abdullah of the Islamic Army of Iraq) also maintains that while the US has succeeded in driving a wedge between AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) and Sunnis in Anbar Province, many of the tribesmen there who are now on the American payroll are still aiding IAI and other insurgent groups.

Members of these US-backed militias now number almost 91,000 and are paid a total of $16 million a month in salaries by the US. They are often lauded by President Bush in his speeches on Iraq.

The US military now calls these Sunni militias “Sons of Iraq.” Iraqis simply refer to all these groups as sahwas. But the Shiite-led government is resisting US pressure to fold these groups, especially the ones in Baghdad and Diyala provinces, into the Army and police. “Trust me, the sahwas are ultimately with the resistance, heart and mind,” says Abu Abdullah.

There is no debating the fact that the drop in violence in Iraq is largely due in part to the payoffs – right or wrong – the U.S. is giving the militias. I am not squabbling with this strategy. I am merely raising my voice in protest of the campaign of misinformation of the surge’s success by the president, McCain and now Obama.

We cannot judge our approval or disapproval of these candidate’s ideas if they are not straightforward. I have little doubt the empty political rhetoric will continue, but at least those of us with a minute ability to apply research and information to our opinions and decision-making can help proliferate necessary evidence to support or refute the politicians’ shameful mumbo-jumbo.

UPDDATE 09.05.08: The International Herald Tribune gives more detail of the Shia government’s potential targeting of Sunni Awakening leaders.

The Awakening members are currently paid by the American military to operate checkpoints, guard buildings and, in some cases, to refrain from bombing military convoys and shooting at American and Iraqi soldiers.

Earlier in the day, Jabbar, 31, who is known in the neighborhood as Abu Sajad, said angrily that the government was trying to undermine the councils and to make them fail.

Unimportant Notes About the CNN Debate 2/21

Remind me to write CNN and request that they never schedule a debate the same time as “Survivor” ever again. For those of us who play Fantasy Survivor, it was just too much! I had to digitally record the Fans vs. Faves – so don’t tell me who was kicked off!- we’re watching it tonight. Come one, James!

Now, let me ask you, can you recall any other, out of the tens of presidential political debates held during this campaign season, seeing the audience sitting on bleachers??? NO! I love my alma mater – especially this year’s basketball team – but COME ON! I discussed earlier that holding the debate in the Rec. Center would add a WT element, but seeing the bleachers just brought it all home. Of all the venues in all of Texas and Austin alone, they chose one in which the majority of the audience would be hunched over, uncomfortable and waiting for the discussion (these are not debates) to end. And it did end earlier than usual – it didn’t even last a whole two hours. (it was neat seeing William Powers, the president of UT, onstage with the candidates – I used work for his secretary when he was a professor at the UT School of Law. I wonder if he still walks around with an unlit cigar in his mouth wearing soccer sandals…)

And poor Hillary, that TX humidity had really gotten to hair – all flat and unflattering – but she made up for it by treating the moderators like annoying gnats and asserted her own topic schedule many times during the night. Personally, I think it’s great when the moderators shut up for a bit and let the candidates go at it – that’s a debate! In any event, Chris Matthews said something on MSNBC last night to the effect that they wouldn’t be able to pull those shenanigans next Tuesday during their debate with Brian Williams and Tim Russert at the helm. He’s probably right.

Hillary did comment about how amused she was when she watched “some show” this week and an Obama supporter couldn’t name his legislative accomplishments. I’m pretty sure Kirk Watson was in the audience, but I wouldn’t be my life on it, and he was probably wishing the Earth would swallow him. That comment kind of made me want to pop her in the mouth, but she was booed for her “change you can xerox” comment and that made it better. I wish before all this broo-ha-ha someone had asked one of her smaller surrogates about her legislative accomplishments. Something tells me the word “litany” would not apply to their answer.

There were not fireworks, no surprises, other than her conciliatory “I’m honored to be sitting up here with Barack” and “no matter what happens, we’ll be fine” comments. He seems so appreciative, I thought they were going to start making out then and there. She did set herself up for an honorable exit from the race March 5, however.

I think she’s pretty much out of it now, and thinks it’s best to maintain solidarity in the Democratic party and that’s so sweet of her. Texas and Ohio are not going to give her the delegates she needs – probably because she hasn’t had a good campaign since Feb. 5 – and, as Obama pointed out last night, every major newspaper in TX has endorsed him. I’ve been seeing Obama ads since then and Hillary’s only started up here a couple days ago. And the background guitar on one of his ads is awesome, so I actually like seeing it over and over as opposed to almost all other political ads I’ve ever been subjected to.

The only other thing I found noticeable about the debate is the great detail with which MSNBC covered it. It was, after all, a CNN debate and MSNBC has shown resistance in their coverage of debates on other networks in the past. Last night, they showed clip after clip with CNN all big and bright behind the candidate’s heads. CNN had covered MSNBC debates in the past – now I guess they’re getting chummy with their quid pro quo.

PS. The phrase “after all” needs to be one word. Afterall. That’s how I automatically write it and then spell check kicks in and tells me what an idiot I am. Afterall. Like nobody and another and nevertheless. Am I right? Webster’s? Anybody? Bueller?