Category Archives: journalism

CNN blew it. MSNBC got it right.

Posted on by
1

POLITICO: And when the dust from Boston Marathon bombing clears, viewers will remember two things about the cable news coverage of this historic event: that John King blew it, and that Pete Williams got it right.

On Wednesday, while CNN was self-destructing after falsely reporting that a suspect has been taken into custody, Williams rightly reported otherwise. Through Thursday, he reported what was known, while resisting the temptation to speculate on what he did not. Then, in the early hours of Friday morning, Williams was among the first to report on the ongoing developments of the search for the suspects — including that one of the suspects was dead and that both suspects were legal residents with foreign military training. [...]

“MSNBC isn’t a news network — they don’t do news,” is something I’ve often heard folks at CNN say.

This week’s coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings demonstrated that that is a false argument. MSNBC doesn’t need to “do news,” because they have the resources of NBC — they have Williams, Michael Isikoff, Richard Espositio and Jonathan Dienst, just to name a few. CNN may have more boots on the ground, but in the chaotic 21st century media environment, viewers want quality not quantity.

Our “liberal lamestream” media: the President is golfing!

Posted on by

I’m constantly amazed by how much our “liberal lamestream” media has reported on President Obama being on another vacation over the weekend, how he’s golfing, he’s on a separate vacation from Michelle and the girls, he’s not working, etc. etc. etc.

Has there been any reporting about how the Republican-led House voted itself ANOTHER week-long break? Or that because they voted themselves another vacation, when they finally return to “work” on Feb. 25 they’ll have exactly FOUR DAYS to work on the Sequester before it goes into effect on March 1? Has there been any kind of reporting by network media on the fact that NOT ONE Democratic member voted for this break? Or that Nancy Pelosi and the other Democrats were angry because they wanted to stay and work on a bill to replace the Sequester?

Your tax dollars at work, Teabaggers.

Deconstructing the 5 most ridiculous myths about Barack Obama – The Week

Nate Silver is not having any of the news orgs’ infotainment, reality-show, photo-finish bullshit

Posted on by

“If the state polls are right, then Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College. If you can’t acknowledge that after a day when Mr. Obama leads 19 out of 20 swing-state polls, then you should abandon the pretense that your goal is to inform rather than entertain the public.”

— Nov. 2: For Romney to Win, State Polls Must Be Statistically Biased – NYTimes.com

“What I find confounding about [those who believe the race is a tossup] is that the argument we’re making is exceedingly simple. Here it is: “Obama’s ahead in Ohio.”

— Nate Silver, fivethirtyeight.com

via: silas216, politicalprof

Make it so: VOTE!!

What happened to our country? Hurricane Sandy and fanatical rightwing extremists

Posted on by

Fanatical, extremist, pseudo-Christian, racist, rightwing nutjobs happened to our country — and we’ve suffered ever since. The simplest and most immediate answer to this problem is to not allow politicians who stand for those values to be elected or re-elected. Take away their voice and their power.


via: con-tem-plate (Photo: REUTERS/Larry Downing)

“Heckuva Job Brownie” criticizes Obama for responding to Hurricane Sandy “so quickly.”: “One thing he’s gonna be asked is, why did he jump on [the hurricane] so quickly and go back to D.C. so quickly when in…Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas?” Brown says. “Why was this so quick?… At some point, somebody’s going to ask that question…. This is like the inverse of Benghazi.”

Rush Limbaugh on Chris Christie meeting with President Obama: “He’s fat and a fool. Don’t listen to Governor Christie. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” But Limbaugh clinched the quote with his reasoning for being so vicious: “He makes fun of me all the time.”

Wonkette: “Yes, what a fat fool, how dare Chris Christie not support the guy who wanted to privatize FEMA and then didn’t really know what he wanted to do with FEMA and then decided that only a crazy person would privatize FEMA? ”

Dan Amira: “You’re not hearing a lot of complaints about FEMA these days. As ABC News points out, the agency is “basking in unaccustomed glory” from the likes of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, New York senator Chuck Schumer, and others. One reason is money: FEMA, often cash-strapped in recent history, is flush with enough funds to cover its Sandy relief efforts, and has thus been able to keep mayors and governors happy by providing whatever aid they need to help with the recovery effort. FEMA seems to also have planned well and acted quickly. It distributed emergency supplies, including 400 generators, before the storm hit. In Atlantic City today, President Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced that 2,000 FEMA members were already on the ground.”

Kevin Drum: ”Why has Chris Christie suddenly embraced President Obama as a long-lost brother in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy? This joins many other great questions of the universe. Who is John Galt? Who promoted Perez? Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? What did he know and when did he know it? What is the meaning of life? [...] I sort of give Christie the benefit of the doubt here. Partly this is because he does seem to be a genuinely emotional guy and may simply be reacting to the moment. But the other reason is that I find it hard to believe that Christie truly thinks he has a chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2016 regardless of what he does.”

Christie_Obama

Charles Johnson: “the conservative base responded to Christie with an overwhelming deluge of hatred, insults, and conspiracy theories. The hate is all over the right wing blogs today, and LGF reader Silvio Breckman collected some of the vile tweets they’re sending out on Twitter…”

Some examples of the deep-thinkers who support Mitt Romney:

ABC reports: ”78 percent rate Obama’s response to the hurricane positively (as excellent or good), while just 8 percent see it negatively. Romney, who naturally has had a far less prominent role in this issue, is rated positively for his response to the hurricane by 44 percent, negatively by 21 percent, with many more, 35 percent, expressing no opinion.” Even 63 percent of Republicans approve of Obama’s disaster leadership…”

Bob Cesca: “Christie’s embrace of Obama as a management partner during the hurricane required integrity and toughness, especially given the shitstorm from the fire-eaters on the right he was surely due to receive as a consequence. That said, there are probably quite a few Republican voters right now who wish that Christie was their presidential nominee and not Mitt Romney. The contrast couldn’t be more striking. Again, I don’t expect Romney to swoop in and personally organize bucket brigades to drain the subway tubes in Manhattan, but the actual Republican presidential candidate appears to have been barely phased by the fact that there was a national emergency.”

Alex Pareene: “But my favorite explanation comes from genius political analyst Joel Pollack at Big Government… Christie is praising Obama because Mitt Romney is so far ahead that it doesn’t matter: ‘But the truth about Christie’s outreach to Obama is blindingly obvious: Mitt Romney is now running away with this election, freeing Christie to praise the president without fear that doing so will tip the scales.‘”

And finally, THIS:

Andrew Sullivan: “Christie is coping with a disaster. To have the president checking in at midnight and providing all the assistance he has must feel like a burden shared and lessened a touch. Christie’s a blowhard, but in so far as I have been able to see any coverage, struck me as completely genuine.”


TPM: President Obama, center, and Federal Emergency Management (FEMA) administrator Craig Fugate, left, watch as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, second from left, meets with local residents at Brigantine Beach Community Center, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012, in Brigantine, (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

UAW / SEIU to file ethics complaint against Romney and the millions he made on the auto bailout

Posted on by

Willard “the car guy” Romney is having more problems with cars… and with hypocrisy, and full disclosure, and ethical behavior. In other words, business as usual. Apart from writing op-eds entitled “Let Detroit go bankrupt,” or lying that Jeep is shipping American jobs to China, we’ve learned that Lord and Lady Romney’s secret investments bought them a 3,000 percent return on investment — from the auto bailout. From taxpayer dollars!

However, Mitt didn’t disclose any of that. From the Huffington Post:

The United Auto Workers (UAW), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and other groups plan to file an ethics complaint against Mitt Romney for allegedly failing to disclose his profits from the auto bailout… The groups are calling for an investigation by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate Romney’s alleged violation of the Ethics in Government Act, which requires presidential candidates to disclose their personal finances. The ethics complaint comes on the heels of an Oct. 17 article in The Nation, which alleged that Romney has hidden his personal gains of at least $15.3 million from the auto bailout.

“He made his fortune off the misfortune of others,” Bob King, president of the UAW, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday. “Why should we have to find out from the media about this?” [...] Romney and his wife allegedly made millions from the auto bailout through their investments in the hedge fund Elliott Management, which held a stake in the auto bailout recipient Delphi Automotive, according to The Nation. The return on this investment amounted to more than 3,000 percent, according to The Nation.

The Toledo Blade: “It’s time for Mr. Romney to follow the law. That’s really not too much to ask for someone who would be our president,” Mr. Woodruff said. A spokesman for the Romney campaign could not be reached for comment. Mr. King said the American people have the right to know about any potential conflicts of interest that might exist in Mr. Romney’s investments. “Mitt Romney’s refusal to come clean on where he has his money invested is much more than an ethics violation… The public deserves to know where, when, and how much Mitt Romney bet against American workers with his investments.”

And you just know that Romney’s profit from the bailout is now sitting somewhere in the Caymens or Bermuda or Switzerland, collecting interest, not creating even ONE American job. The worst part of it: there are people who will vote for this guy on Tuesday.

You really must do your part: VOTE!!

Five days to go: Romney is now just turning up the volume on his lies

Posted on by

Vice President Joe Biden tore into Mitt Romney on Wednesday for running ads with a widely debunked claim about Chrysler and General Motors shipping American jobs to China, saying it calls into question the character of the Republican presidential nominee. …”What a cynical, cynical thing to do,” Biden said of Romney. [...] The vice president said the ad calls into question something even greater about Romney: his character. He asked people to consider who they trust more in this election. “Presidential elections are overwhelmingly about character,” said Biden. “My guy, your guy, has character … [He] does not engage in deception. He means what he says.” — Joe Biden Torches Mitt Romney For ‘Flagrantly Dishonest’ Jeep Ad

###

Steve Benen: ‘An exercise in deception’: It’s been eight days since Mitt Romney first floated his Chrysler/Jeep/China falsehood, which he then doubled and tripled down on, even as industry executives called him out for lying. Unfortunately for the Republican, the story isn’t going away.

The New York Times editorialized today, “It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.” What’s more, the Toledo Blade chastised Romney today for “conducting an exercise in deception about auto-industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign.”

EVEN BY MITT’S CAMPAIGN STANDARDS… because he has none.

At this point, the Romney Campaign is pretty much telling the Red Cross to F*ck Off

Posted on by

After Mitt Romney’s campaign rally faux “storm relief” event / photo op on Tuesday in Ohio, the Red Cross has stated that they do not want or accept donations of items and goods like food, clothes, blankets, etc. Not only do goods create a huge burden on volunteers because of the necessary storage, sorting and distribution, but many items may not even be needed. It’s a request that has been posted to their website for … forever.

Of course there are no photo-op moments in writing out a check to the Red Cross, so what can Team Romney do if they want press attention for pretending to help victims of the recent weather disaster?

From Zeke Miller | Buzzfeed:

“Start Packing.” The order was given by a campaign staffer about 20 minutes before Paul Ryan entered the GOP victory office here. Two dozen campaign staffers and volunteers pulled boxes from under six tables laden canned food and dry goods to be shipped to New Jersey for storm relief. Just across the tables were an equal number of reporters, videographers and photographers.

[...] In Hudson, the packing was proceeding too quickly, and the supporters wearing red “Team Wisconsin” t-shirts were given the order to slow down and then to stop to be sure there were still goods to be packed when Ryan entered. One by one the boxes were filled and loaded into a waiting U-Haul, and then they stopped to wait for the candidate.

“Thanks a lot, thanks for doing all this,” Ryan said to the supporters when he arrived. More than a hundred supporters waited outside to cheer Ryan — many of them bringing supplies — chanting “Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.”

“Go home, and if you can, donate to the Red Cross,” Ryan said outside, standing on a metal chair next to the truck. He noted that victory centers across the state and the country are accepting donations of non-perishables.

As Ryan walked back through the office to the motorcade volunteers finished packing the supplies, which are being driven to a Red Cross facility in New Jersey. As supporters walked out the door they were handed a flier about the GOP’s election night party.

The items will be driven to a Red Cross facility in NEW JERSEY. Does that destination have anything to do with Gov. Christie and Pres. Obama touring the storm’s devastation together yesterday?

The Romney Campaign is directing their supporters to go spend their money on goods that may never get to victims of Hurricane Sandy, much less help them. Romney is having his supporters engage in this craven political stunt of collecting-of-the-goods-and-packing-the-goods-and-transporting-the-goods-to-New-Jersey, when instead they could actually be helping people by donating the money they spent on props for the Romney Campaign’s photo-ops directly to the Red Cross.

Maybe Romney supporters are aware of all of this and, like their candidate, they just don’t care. Maybe they’re as opportunistic and cynical as Mitt… and maybe that’s part of the reason they support him.

http://www.redcross.org/charitable-donations

The elaborate stagecraft behind Mitt Romney’s “Storm Relief” Event

Posted on by

Photo: An image of Romney’s plan for disaster relief: you’ll get a bottle of Gatorade, some soup, and a hearty “Good luck, Citizen!” What you won’t get is assistance from FEMA because: 1) FEMA is an “immoral” debt which ”makes no sense,” 2) the military will be getting an additional $2 trillion it says it doesn’t need,and 3) more tax cuts for rich people!

McKay Coppins of Buzzfeed reports on Mitt’s elaborate, $5,000 (worth of groceries) photo-op in Dayton, disguised as helping victims of Hurricane Sandy:

“[Team Romney] wasn’t quite ready to lose a full day of swing state visibility with a week left in the race. So, after some deliberation, the campaign decided to use their existing venue in Ohio to stage a makeshift, and nonpartisan, humanitarian project. It would be a way for Romney to show leadership — and get on the local news — without looking craven or opportunistic.

[...] The plan was for supporters to bring hurricane relief supplies to the event, and then deliver the bags of canned goods, packages of diapers, and cases of water bottles to the candidate, who would be perched behind a table along with a slew of volunteers and his Ohio right-hand man, Senator Rob Portman. To complete the project and photo-op, Romney would lead his crew in carrying the goods out of the gymnasium and into the Penske rental truck parked outside.

But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it “did donate supplies to the relief effort,” but would not specify how much it spent.)

…When reporters arrived on site ahead of the candidate, they were given press badges describing the event as a “victory rally” — a result, one aide told BuzzFeed, of the event’s last-minute repurposing. He said the badges were printed Monday morning, before the change had been announced. And shortly thereafter, the two large projector screens near the ceiling lit up with a glossy, 10-minute biographical video about the candidate, one that debuted at the Republican National Convention. A state campaign official blamed “someone from the audiovisual team” for playing the video without the campaign’s permission.

But even as Romney, clad in blue jeans and rolled-up sleeves, hustled around his area of the gym, shaking hands, thanking supporters, and stacking cases of bottled water on top of each other, signs of stagecraft remained. …Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, “What if we dropped off our donations up front?” The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. “Just grab something,” he said.”

###

apsies: 

FEMA: Cash is the most efficient method of donating – Cash offers voluntary agencies the most flexibility in obtaining the most-needed resources and pumps money into the local economy to help businesses recover. Remember, unsolicited donated goods such as used clothing, miscellaneous household items, and mixed or perishable foodstuffs require helping agencies to redirect valuable resources away from providing services to sort, package, transport, warehouse, and distribute items that may not meet the needs of disaster survivors.

Andrea Mitchell reports: Red Cross tells us its grateful for Romney donation [ED: what else are they going to say?] but prefer people send money or donate blood. Don’t collect goods; NOT best way to help.


via: christopherstreet

Related: 

Romney storm relief event: don’t call it campaigning (even though it was campaigning)

Photos: Hurricane Sandy overnight

Posted on by


mildlyamused: Flooded subway station at 148th street/Lennox Terminal.


buzzfeedandrew: East Village flooding


buzzfeedandrew: Long line of ambulances outside the NYU Medical Center.Source @bananarams


queenofadodi: This is some Titanic shit. The MTA was smart to shut down the train lines ahead of time.


hatie123: Water rushing into the Battery Tunnel. via Reuters

Video: Water Rushing Into Battery Tunnel

…


NOTE: this report about the NYSE turned out to be FAKE — and by a Romney supporter. Yes, really! Read more…


coalspeaker: Here is a graphic from RSOE.. all of the nuclear plants in Hurricane Sandy’s path..

  • Green icons = nuclear power plant
  • Black icons = Main airports


Water pouring over hallowed ground of the World Trade Center.


buzzfeed: Gantry State Park in Long Island City.


dashboardemergency: SUPERSTORM SANDY UPDATE: The majority of Manhattan is currently without power.


buzzfeed: Security camera footage from the Hoboken Path station.

thedaily.com: Weather forecasters said Hurricane Sandy was going to be ugly. And it was.

• Utilities are estimating that at least 5.2 million East Coasters are without power today. Nearly 2 million are in New York and New Jersey. More than 700,000 in the dark live in Manhattan.

• Storm damage is projected to be $10 billion to $20 billion, possibly making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

• Airlines canceled more than 12,000 flights — 8,900 Sunday and 4,800 yesterday. Metropolitan New York shut down its three airports — two in Queens, the other in Newark, N.J. Aviation officials guaranteed that travel will be disrupted through the week.

Team Romney’s new confidence game to sucker the press corps: he’s pulling ahead!

Posted on by

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gestures beside his wife Ann following the third and final presidential debate with US President Barack Obama at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, October 22, 2012. The showdown focusing on foreign policy is being held in the crucial toss-up state of Florida just 15 days before the election and promises to be among the most watched 90 minutes of the entire 2012 campaign.

Jonathan Chait explains the weird, giddy vibe coming from Romney HQ: “Despite a lack of any evident positive momentum over the last week — indeed, in the face of a slight decline from its post-Denver high — the Romney camp is suddenly bursting with talk that it will not only win but win handily.”

“This is a bluff. Romney is carefully attempting to project an atmosphere of momentum, in the hopes of winning positive media coverage and, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Over the last week, Romney’s campaign has orchestrated a series of high-profile gambits in order to feed its momentum narrative. Last week, for instance, Romney’s campaign blared out the news that it was pulling resources out of North Carolina. The battleground was shifting! Romney on the offensive! On closer inspection, it turned out that Romney was shifting exactly one staffer. It is true that Romney leads in North Carolina, and it is probably his most favorable battleground state. But the decision to have a staffer move out of state, with a marching band and sound trucks in tow to spread the news far and wide, signals a deliberate strategy to create a narrative.

Also last week, Paul Ryan held a rally in Pittsburgh. Romney moving in to Pennsylvania! On the offensive! Skeptical reporters noted that Ryan’s rally would bleed into the media coverage in southeast Ohio and that Romney was not devoting any real money to Pennsylvania. Romney’s campaign keeps leaking that it is planning to spend money there. (Today’s leak: “Republicans are genuinely intrigued by the prospect of a strike in Pennsylvania and, POLITICO has learned, are considering going up on TV there outside the expensive Philadelphia market.” Note the noncommittal terms: intrigued and considering.) The story also floats Romney’s belief that, since Pennsylvania has no early voting, it can postpone its planned, any-day-now move into Pennsylvania until the end. This allows Romney to keep the Pennsylvania bluff going until, what, a couple of days before the election?

[...] If you look closely at the boasts emanating from Romney’s allies, you can detect a lot of hedging and weasel-words. Rob Portman calls Ohio a “dead heat,” which is a way of calling a race close without saying it’s tied. A Romney source tells Mike Allen that Wisconsin leans their way owing to Governor Scott Walker’s “turnout operation.” That is campaign speak for “we’re not winning, but we hope to make it up through turnout.”

Obama’s lead is narrow — narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.”

###

Besides that, as quickhits point out, “the media is desperate find some action at a time when polling seems to have leveled off. They’ll eat this up — even knowing it’s all bullshit — because they’re afraid that if they don’t tell you something about the race, you’ll change over to The Weather Channel.”

In any case: 

Register to vote | Volunteer | Contribute

“I can’t believe you haven’t returned my call. Here I am making a second call…”

Posted on by

“I can’t believe you haven’t returned my call. Here I am making a second call… I haven’t heard from you.” — An incredulous Mitt Romney, leaving a second and third message in the voicemail of a grieving mother he’d called to console on the loss of her son in Iraq… Kern’s husband told the Boston Phoenix that he had heard Romney’s second and third messages and remembers Romney saying “I’m a busy man” in one of them.

Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, refutes the accounts of the fallen soldier’s mother and father — they’re lying, in other words.

The Boston Phoenix — The Huffington Post

Related: 

Hey, remember when CNN used to report the news?

Posted on by

‘CNN seems to be absolutely determined to call the debate a draw. Their own poll has Obama winning the debate by eight points, but no matter. They’ve got a narrative and they’re sticking with it…’

Morning coffee

Posted on by

Bar graph

A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

— BBC poll: Obama favoured globally

We have the power to make the world a little happier:

Register to vote | Volunteer | Contribute

The new tire swing*

Posted on by

This is the press that America so richly deserves:

NY Times: “Mitt Romney will be participating in his own political version of Monday Night Football when he faces off against President Obama in their final debate of the campaign cycle. But on Sunday morning, Mr. Romney took a break from debate preparation to make a stop at a gridiron of a different sort — a flag football beach face-off between members of the news media and members of Mr. Romney’s staff.”

And this facepalm:

(Full disclosure: This reporter also played, winning the coin toss for her team, but doing little else by way of yardage accrual.)

After Paul Ryan claimed to have scored 50 touchdowns, each journalist then took turns giving Mitt a shoulder rub. It was all very professional.

*Tire swing, swinging on the tire

Mitt Romney isn’t qualified to run U.S. Foreign Policy

Posted on by

When conservatives want to put another version of George W. Bush in charge of U.S. foreign policy:


…

OFA: In a series of interviews, Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Senator John Kerry, Admiral John Nathman (ret.), and Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy explain why Mitt Romney is not prepared to be commander-in-chief. They each lay out how President Obama’s leadership has made America stronger, safer and more secure while Mitt Romney has nothing to offer except bluster, chest-thumping, and a commitment to endless war. As Monday’s debate will demonstrate, blunder and bluster are no substitute for strong leadership.

And this:

Mitt Romney’s Neocon War Cabinet: “Romney is loath to mention Bush on the campaign trail, for obvious reasons, but today they sound like ideological soul mates on foreign policy. Listening to Romney, you’d never know that Bush left office bogged down by two unpopular wars that cost America dearly in blood and treasure. Of Romney’s forty identified foreign policy advisers, more than 70 percent worked for Bush. Many hail from the neoconservative wing of the party, were enthusiastic backers of the Iraq War and are proponents of a US or Israeli attack on Iran. Christopher Preble, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, says, “Romney’s likely to be in the mold of George W. Bush when it comes to foreign policy if he were elected.”