Is there nothing one can do or say to get barred from appearing on MSNBC? Allowing Ann Coulter on to spread her vile, hate-filled, rhetoric is disgusting. And she does not fail to offend, repeatedly calling Barack Obama, “B. Hussein Obama” because she thinks it's funny. In light of Coulter's antics it's worth reading Naomi Klein's article about the use of such racist tactics.
But MSNBC doesn't stop there, the cable news outlet also helps the hatemonger pimp her latest book. This is seriously outrageous. Some MSNBC email addresses follow below should you agree and desire to express yourself to the MSNBC management:
MSNBC Feedback: feedback@msnbc.com
MSNBC President: Erik.Sorenson@MSNBC.com
Booking Unit Producer: cynthia.antoniak@msnbc.com
Everyone is abuzz about the NY Times McCain philandering/ethics story but for the wrong reasons. The most troubling aspect of this story is its timing as the Times sat on the story since before the Iowa caucuses. Why run it now a day after the Wisconsin primary and once John McCain has all but wrapped up the GOP nomination?
The answer is what happened in the Wisconsin primary -- that Barack Obama creamed Hillary Clinton and all but assured himself the Democratic nomination for the general election. This was and is horrible news for John McCain and Republican hopes for recapturing the White House in November. As I blogged about here and here, Barack Obama matches up far better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain. This is why we recently found everyone from President Bush to Fox “News'” jumping on the Hillary bandwagon while simultaneously attacking Obama at every opportunity.
Once Obama essentially wrapped up the nomination last night, it became abundantly clear that Republicans needed a Plan D (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson representing Plans A and B to the McCain Plan C). That Republicans are so willing to throw McCain under the bus is hardly surprising considering he fell into the nomination based more on his supposed opponent (Hillary) and the failure of the other Republican presidential hopefuls rather than based on anything he brought to the table. Once coroneted, McCain still failed to win the hearts of the hardcore CPAC haters or the evangelical base and he continues to struggle against Mike Huckabee despite a full-court press by the GOP establishment.
Clearly the Republican elite saw the Wisconsin results as the last straw. They know that McCain cannot beat Obama no matter how much they rely on the Southern Strategy and stealing elections (which need to be relatively close). The fact is that there is not one significant area where McCain is superior to Obama:
Old vs. Young
Old vs. New
Old vs. Good looking
Anti-hope vs. Hope
Plain spoken vs. Articulate
Uninspiring vs. Inspiring
Another 100 years in Iraq vs. Against the war from the start
Terrible fundraiser vs. Great fundraiser
Lousy campaigner vs. Crazy good campaigner
So while we are going to hear conservative talk radio and Fox “News” rail against the bias of the New York Times in the coming days, it would be wise to withhold judgment until the newspaper clarifies why it held the story until now. Did a GOP insider or a former McCain underling finally corroborate parts of the story? If so, it's safe to assume that those orders came from Republican higher-ups since it would otherwise be career suicide.
And if that is the case, just what is Plan E? Jeb? Cheney? Romney? Newt? Perhaps only Bush's Brain knows...
Excellent piece on the legendary dirty election campaigning South Carolina is known for. The Republican primary in South Carolina is on January 19th while the Democratic primary is on January 26th.
DISCLOSURE: The producer of this NOW on PBS story is a relative.
Chris Matthews takes his job of representing the establishment elite very seriously. That's why he was up in arms over the New York Times piece exonerating his boy, Rudy G., of any wrongdoing regarding the accounting in the Judith Nathan trysts matter. Matthews believes that the one-week long story might have cost Rudy 10 points in the polls and may ruin his chances at the presidency.
But, Matthews fails to exhibit any remorse when it comes to his eight years of propaganda filled coverage of Al Gore dating back to his presidential campaign against another Matthews favorite, George W. Bush. Throughout that campaign Matthews was quick to spread the ridiculous propaganda about Gore being a constant fibber and a prolific exaggerator.
As this mashup evidences, that entire line of propaganda pushed by Matthews and others was bullshit from the start and despite numerous articles proving such, Matthews has continued to promulgate his lies about Gore eight years after the fact. No where does Matthews show concern for contributing to Gore's loss in 2000 and the subsequent harm his antics caused the country via the Bush presidency.
But one should not expect anything more from the rank propagandist, outright liar and ultimate hack that is Matthews.
Karl Rove is the ultimate partisan operative who guided a career underachiever with a checkered past to the White House. He is credited with keeping the 2000 election close enough, through dirty campaigning and still dirtier election engineering and fraud, to allow the Supreme Court to step in and gift wrap the presidency for his boss. Suffice to say no one uses dirty tricks more effectively or more often than Karl Rove. As such, many Americans who care about the Constitution, Democracy, the rule of law and plain decency, long ago concluded that Karl Rove sucks.
Rove loved the praise bestowed upon him from his friends and foes alike. But then everything came crashing down around him and now his “genius” moniker is in serious need of repair. In an astonishing turn of events, Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in 2006 despite Rove's repeated assurances to the contrary:
“I’m looking at all of these [races] and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I’m entitled to the math” - Karl Rove (10/24/06)
Meanwhile, George W. Bush's approval ratings have been on a steady decline and now rest at 30%, 1% above their all time low.
It is hardly surprising that all of the GOP presidential candidates continue to distance themselves from Bush's body. Worse, Rove's permanent majority has been replaced by a public that favors the Democratic Party over the GOP by a whopping 50% to 35% margin. And independents favored Democrats in 2006 by an even larger 57% to 39% margin. It seems that the politics of hate, racism, division, war, war-mongering, propaganda, cheating, lying and stealing can only take a party so far.
But Rove will not go down without a fight. And thankfully propaganda rags like the ridiculous Newsweek magazine have given Rove a platform to win back his genius (In Newsweek's defense, it is not Time magazine). Despite the new gig, Rove proved to be every bit the partisan with his first column: “How to Beat Hillary (Next) November”:
“And so the question to John McCain from a woman at a town hall in South Carolina last Monday was tasteless, but key: ”How do we beat the [rhymes with witch]?“ Right now, Republicans are focusing much of their fire on Senator Clinton. Criticizing her unites the party, stirs up the unsettled feelings many swing voters have toward her and allows each candidate to say why he is best able to beat her.
For now, that's enough. But when a GOP nominee emerges, he needs to remember no Republican is as well known as Hillary. The Republican has room to grow in the polls as voters get a better sense of who he is and what animates him. Here's what he needs to do.”
The truth is that Karl Rove and the entire Republican Party are salivating at the opportunity to face off against Hillary Clinton and her “high negatives”. And why not, in a Zogby Poll released last week, Hillary now loses in the general election to all five GOP frontrunners while Barack Obama handily defeats the same five:
With this backdrop it seems clear as day that one should take Rove's latest piece in the Financial Times, “Memo to Obama: win Iowa or lose the race”, with many grains of salt:
“Not that you have asked for advice, but here it is anyway: Iowa is your chance to best her. If you do not do it there, odds are you never will anywhere.”
And Rove's stellar advice:
First, stop acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson. Striking a pose of being high-minded and too pure will not work. Americans want to see you scrapping and fighting for the job, not in a mean or ugly way but in a forceful and straightforward way.
Hillary may come over as calculating and shifty but she looks in control. You, on the other hand, often come over as weak and ineffectual. In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her. She offers you openings time and again but you do not take advantage of them. Sharpen your attacks and make them more precise.
Please! Could Rove give any worse advice than to turn the nice-guy, above the fray, uniter that is Obama into, well, Karl Rove? All can plainly see that Rove is rightfully scared of Obama whom he admits has “the buzz” and could very well win the nomination and upset Rove's plans to keep the White House in GOP hands. And as Frank Rich so ably points out, facing off against Obama would be a far more difficult task than defeating Hillary:
But much like the Clinton campaign itself, the Republicans have fallen into a trap by continuing to cling to the Hillary-is-inevitable trope. They have not allowed themselves to think the unthinkable — that they might need a Plan B to go up against a candidate who is not she. It’s far from clear that they would remotely know how to construct a Plan B to counter Mr. Obama. The repeated attempts to fan “rumors” that he is a madrassa-indoctrinated Muslim — whether on Fox News or in The Washington Post, where they resurfaced scurrilously on the front page on Thursday — are too demonstrably false to survive endless reruns even in the Swift-boating era.
Part of the Republicans’ difficulty in countering Mr. Obama, should they have to, is their own cynical racial politics. For the most part, race has been the dog that hasn’t barked in this campaign despite the (largely) white press’s endless fretting about whether the Illinois senator is too white for black voters and too black for white voters. Most Americans aren’t racist, most Republicans included. (Those who are won’t vote for the Democratic presidential candidate even if it’s not Mr. Obama.) But the G.O.P., by its own doing, is nonetheless saddled with a history that most recently includes “macaca” and Katrina, Mr. Bush’s appearance at Bob Jones University in 2000 and the nonexistent black population of its Congressional delegation.
As the Republican leadership knows, this record is an albatross, driving away not just black voters but crucial white swing voters, too. Ken Mehlman, the former G.O.P. chairman, and Mr. Rove, as recently as in that Newsweek column, have implored their party to reach out to minorities. So have Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp. But not even conservative leaders of this stature could persuade their party’s top 2008 presidential contenders to show up for a September debate moderated by Tavis Smiley for PBS at the historically black Morgan State University.
So the polls emphatically prove that Hillary would be far easier prey for Republicans in the general election than Obama. And if statistics aren't your thing, commonsense clearly dictates the same. And finally, just about every political pundit from Karl Rove to Frank Rich have written as much. So what does Wolf Blitzer of the Clinton News Network wonder about Karl Rove's latest advice column?:
OMG! He is actually taking Rove's words at face value! LOL! Could Wolf really believe that Rove has forsaken his legacy as the greatest partisan political operative of the last 20 year in order to go legit and is now an uninterested, outsider, merely commenting on the political landscape? ROTFL! Yeah, that's the ticket, Rove couldn't possibly have ulterior motives.
The way I see it, there are two possible explanations for Wolf's comments: 1) he is an imbecile, or 2) he wants Hillary to get the nomination. Either way, he should be laughed out of his job. Of course, this is nothing new from Wolf or the Clinton News Network which showed its true colors at the last democratic debate in Nevada:
To be fair to Wolf and CNN, avid Clintonites like George Stephanopoulos, who formerly helped Bill Clinton get elected President and served as his communications director before moving on to become Chief Washington Correspondent for ABC News and host of his own Sunday morning show, also spew the same nonsense:
All of which makes Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency all the more remarkable. He continues to rise in the polls and threatens to win Hillary's “inevitable” nomination despite having to fight against Karl Rove, the entire Republican Party, the Clinton machine, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George and most of the mainstream media.
If the Illinois Senator can overcome those long odds he certainly has what it takes to lead the country.
Talk about your smoking gun documents! Truthout has the details in a preview of tomorrow night's “Voter Caging” segment airing on NOW (Check your local PBS listing). What is vote caging? Well, according to the truthout article:
Vote caging is an illegal tactic to suppress minorities from voting by having their names purged from voter rolls when they fail to respond to registered mail sent to their homes. The Republican National Committee signed a consent decree in 1986 stating they would not engage in the practice after they were caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986.
And vote caging was one tactic, albeit a large one, used by the GOP to steal Ohio and the 2004 presidential election. And it was a massive conspiracy perpetrated by the George W. Bush reelection campaign and the Republican party. Want proof, check out the damning emails below, many of which carry the subject line, “Voter Reg Fraud Strategy conference calls.”
Want more proof? Why might have the perpetrators have been worried about leaving GOP fingerprints? Perhaps because their effort were highly illegal. Not to mention the general public frowns upon stealing elections and then launching and perpetuating unwanted wars.
Note the email domains include both “georgewbush.com” and “rnchq.org” (Republican National Committee Headquarters) and that they are still worried about leaving “fingerprints”.
Finally, it is worth pointing out some of the famous names in these emails. First we have ringleader, former interim US attorney for Arkansas (until the White House got worried that his confirmation hearings would bring up his role in minority voter suppression seen here), Karl Rove protege and crybaby, Tim Griffin!
Second, I am proud to introduce Terry Nelson, who was implicated in a New Hampshire election day phone jamming scheme that helped the GOP steal a 2002 Senate election and led to criminal convictions of many of Nelson's colleagues as well as the New Hampshire Republican State Committee settling a lawsuit brought by state Democrats for $125,000. Having this kind of blight on your resume is exactly the kind of thing that gets you named Political Director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign. In addition to the dirty work seen here and his ties to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Nelson was responsible for the 2006 race-baiting ad against Congressman Harold Ford Jr. that got much national exposure and lost his firm an account with Walmart. Finally, Nelson has ties to the Tom DeLay scandal. All of which made him the #1 campaign guy to get for 2008 which is exactly what frontrunner (at the time), John McCain did, naming Nelson his campaign chief in December 2006.
Also in on the emails according to the truthout article was “Coddy Johnson, the national field director of Bush's 2004 campaign and former associate director of political affairs, working under Karl Rove. Johnson's father was Bush's college roommate at Yale.”
And “Jennifer Millerwise, a former deputy communications director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign and a former spokesperson for Vice President Cheney. Millerwise was interviewed by Patrick Fitzgerald during the federal investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.”
Mark “Thor” Hearne made the emails and conference call as well. For the most comprehensive coverage on the web of this shady GOP political operative, see this rather large BRAD BLOG archive.
While this damning evidence does not prove that Bush stole the 2004 election (in addition to the 2000 election), it does prove that his team tried to steal the election which is illegal. By the way, there is mountains of 2004 election evidence that suggests that Kerry did win and rather scant evidence (read almost none) that would indicate a Bush victory. See The Free Press, BRAD BLOG, Mark Crispin Miller, Black Box Voting, the Brennan Center and RFK Jr., among the many election integrity websites, to see for yourself.
Finally, kudos to NOW for covering the story. Perhaps the mainstream media will finally figure out what the US attorney scandal is all about and report it. Ha. Just kidding. That's not gonna happen.
So the Bush administration has never won an election. They are criminals. Nobody wants them around anymore, not even most Republicans. And we can't impeach why?
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