GOP propaganda machine in high gear

This morning, I thought I'd drop by Drudge's Website Republican Homepage to see what sewage he's spewing in the face of a pretty dreadful day for this party. It didn't take me long to find stories & rumors that are a best wild distortions, and at worst made-up crap that plays into the GOP's PR fantasy machine. Right at the top of the page, I read the headline, "REPUBLICAN ELECTION BOARD WORKERS THROWN OUT IN PHILLY..." so I clicked on the link.

After clicking, I was taken to a site that I hadn't heard about in a long time and that I care about even less, Townhall.com, a right-wing site that is even more blatant than Drudge about everything from climate change to voter fraud to Obama's associations and Ronald Reagan's papacy.

Anyway, the story, entitled, "A Repeat of 2004 Philly Voter Chaos, Fraud," has so many holes in it, I won't try to debunk them all. But, one thing did catch my eye.

In 2004, Drudge breathlessly reported, without doing any reporting, mind you, that machines in Philadelphia had started the day with thousands of votes already rigged for John Kerry. The media in Philly was hot on this story for about 15 minutes, and it died a quick death - not a shred of truth to it, period. In the meantime, before the veracity of the story was revealed, I got a phone call that day from a very good friend of mine, indignant that Philly was rigging the vote for Kerry. It's amazing and stupefying to me that a total frickin' liar and partisan like Drudge drives the news cycle in this country. Maybe someday legit media will wake up to his partisanship, but I sincerely doubt it.

Fast forward to today, and here's how Townhall's story reads at the bottom:

The City of Brotherly Love was roiled in controversy during the 2004 election because of rigged voting machines that showed nearly 2,000 votes for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry before the polls had opened. A man also used a gun to intimidate poll workers at Ward 30, division 11 in 2004.

I know for a fact that no machines were rigged with extra votes for Kerry, so that gun accusation rings more than a bit hollow, too.

On to today's story... According to Townhall:

GOP Election Board members have been tossed out of polling stations in at least half a dozen polling stations in Philadelphia because of their party status.

A Pennsylvania judge previously ruled that court-appointed poll watchers could be NOT removed from their boards by an on-site election judge, but that is exactly what is happening, according to sources on the ground.

It is the duty of election board workers to monitor and guard the integrity of the voting process.

[...]

"Election board officials guard the legitimacy of the election process and the idea that Republicans are being intimidated and banned for partisan purposes does not allow for an honest and open election process," said McCain-Palin spokesman Ben Porritt in a statement to Townhall.

Before we rush to judgment about what's going on in Philadelphia, perhaps a legit media outlet ought to do some actual reporting vs. partisan sites like Drudge & Townhall making wild, unsubstantiated accusations about voting conditions on the ground there. As for the '04 recap, both sites are no doubt counting on low-information voters, many of whom will witlessly read and/or hear what Townhall and Drudge "reported" and assume that all of it happened in '04.

To be clear, I abhor voter intimidation and suppression of any kind of any party, and I would more than publicly condemn it if this is indeed what's happening in Philly. But, I'm just more than skeptical because many GOP hack sites lack so much as a morsel of credibility considering all of the lies and innuendos that were spread in '04.

What's more, this is a classic play from Karl Rove's playbook. As wholesale election fraud is taking place around the country (plenty of reports are already coming in about it, and I will write about this at length later today and tonight), the right cooks up a story about poll workers being ousted in Philly, and that gets all the press. Well, it's not going work this time, at least if the Obama campaign has anything to say about it, and here's betting that it has plenty to say.

The right, led by Drudge, is losing it

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As if we needed any more proof that the right, led by its assignment editor, Matt Drudge, is completely melting down and losing it in the face of a likely Obama victory tomorrow, take a look at Drudge's totally asinine headline on his site as of 9:30 tonight - one that accuses Obama of giving the finger to McCain by "congratulating" him.

In a word - pathetic.

Gallup: All signs point toward Obama

Happy Sunday morning, everyone. Here's hoping you enjoyed the extra hour of sleep; I just woke up an hour earlier. No complaints, though - it's more time to blog about one of the most important elections in recent American history - two days to go.

Anyway, despite what some GOP hacks are promoting - the idea that McCain is gaining on Obama - the polls are not bearing this out. Yesterday, Drudge pimped a one-day Zogby poll that had McCain ahead 48%-47%. One day? A pimple on the face of the electorate. Even this morning, Drudge has up a Zogby poll that puts Obama up by 6. In the national polls, Obama is up by an average of 7.8%, which is just a bit over yesterday. WaPo has a pretty revealing story about polls - in the last 159 national polls, Obama has led them all.

McCain seems to be narrowing Obama's lead slightly, including right here in Pennsylvania, but I believe it will be too little, too late. I'm not at all surprised that the race is narrowing, however - the last two presidential elections, nefarious vote counting tactics aside, have been very, very close, and I don't think this one will be any different. Of course, I would love to be wrong - I'd love to see Obama run away with it in a landslide, but I have my doubts about that.

We all have to keep fighting - e-mailing, talking to friends, donating some time on Tuesday or even donating a few dollars through Obama's Website. Remember, Obama will still need resources after Tuesday, especially if, heaven forbid, we have a replay of 2000, when the lawyers and ground efforts have to be dispatched if the election is disputed. So, even if you can spare $5, please donate.

There's some good news and bad news in the Senate races. On the bright side, Ted Stevens is going to get bounced out on his ass in his up north after being convicted on seven felony counts this past week; and Kay Hagan is leading the insipid, vapid Elizabeth Dole by five points after her despicable ads portraying Hagan as an atheist. A bit of bad news, though: Norm Coleman now has a small lead on Al Franken in Minnesota, and Saxby Chambliss is up by 5 in the latest polls over Jim Martin, BUT both races are still winnable by the Democrats, especially if Obama carries both states (he will in Minnesota, and he has an outside shot at carrying Georgia).

To that end, please support these Senate Democratic candidates (and of course, others, too) by clicking the links below giving a little bit of money. Even $5 can help to make a difference in the final days.

Jim Martin in Georgia
Al Franken in Minnesota
Kay Hagen in North Carolina

Getting 60 votes in the Senate would be a major plus to Obama if he gets in, and would obviously be useful in blocking some of McCain's more ridiculous proposals should he prevail on Tuesday.

Drudge propaganda in overdrive

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You have to give GOP hack Matt Drudge credit - he is consistent. Consistently wrong, but consistent.

The latest example of his desperation and exasperation is how he mindlessly pimps polls numbers that are manipulated at best, and in most cases are flat-out wrong. According to every poll I've seen, Obama has a pretty good, but not insurmountable lead, on McCain.

According to Electoral-Vote, here are the latest polls (and the Votemaster updates polls every day):

- AP (Obama +8)
- Battleground (Obama +4)
- Diageo (Obama +7)
- Gallup expanded (Obama +9)
- IBD (Obama +4)
- Marist (Obama +7)
- Rasmussen (Obama +4)
- Research 2000 (Obama +6)
- Washington Post/ABC (Obama +9)
- Zogby (Obama +5)

So much for McCain "being in the lead." Just because Drudge puts it on his GOP talking-points site doesn't make it so. Unfortunately, many in our corporate media take their talking points right from his site, as if Drudge is some sort of journalist or something. By the way, what's with the McCain & Palin winking at every opportunity, as well as the right-wing media's obsession with portraying it? Someone needs to tell them that when you *Wink* in most cases it means that you're kidding, being devious, joking, etc. Wait - hopefully they keep doing it.

To look at the headlines, it's not too hard to conclude that like many McCain supporters, he's simply making shit up now to make Obama and the Democrats look bad.

We'll know in three days.

McCain smears now coming fast & furious

The Obama campaign has articulated pretty clearly lately how it feels about Fersatz News, our State TV Network. On Monday, Matt Drudge, who functions as the assignment editor for our right-wing corporate media, ran with another phony news story - this time it's about what Barack Obama allegedly said about the Supreme Court during a 2001 interview. First, what he actually said:

You know if you look at the victories and the failures of the Civil Rights movement and its litigation strategy in the Court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I would be okay.

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical, it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf and that hasn't shifted.

And one of the I think the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that.

This is a far cry from how the right, led by Drudge and the McCain campaign, has been spinning what Obama said. Fortunately, the Obama campaign isn't letting the lies and smears go unanswered; they are responding swiftly and firmly, just as they should. Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, appeared on Fox on Monday to talk about the allegations:

This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all-too-common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain, who apparently decided to close out his campaign with the same false, desperate attacks that have failed for months. In this seven-year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all. Americans know that the real choice in this election is between four more years of Bush-McCain policies that redistribute billions to billionaires and big corporations and Barack Obama's plan to help the middle class by giving tax relief to 95 percent of workers and companies that create new jobs here in America. That's the change we need, and no amount of eleventh-hour distractions from the McCain campaign will change that.

Very well said - this is one of the many last- gasp, pathetic attempts to distract voters from the real issues by McDrilly's dying campaign, but it certainly won't be the last; McCain's handlers no doubt have plenty more tricks, misinformation and lies up their sleeves.

Honestly, every time I hear McCain or Palin talk about "spreading the wealth around" or "wealth redistribution" or "class warfare," I can't help but hope that Obama throws this right back in his face. What he really needs to do is force McCain to defend wealth concentration, which has risen to new heights under the Bush administration. Obama should go on the attack and force both of these economical morons to defend how the top one percent of wealthy Americans control 90 percent of the wealth in this country. Good God, would I love to hear their answers.

Actually, I'm guessing we'd just hear crickets.

Pat Buchanan is a laughingstock

As if there was any doubt about Pat Buchanan's credibility, his behavior since right after the vice presidential debate has left little doubt.

I remember laughing out loud right after the debate when Buchanan appeared with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, when Buchanan said with a straight face, "Of all the four candidates, Biden, Obama, McCain and Palin, Palin is the most attractive of the candidates." Words fail me on that point.

Anyway, his absurdity reached new heights when he played stand-up comedian last night on Hardball as he cited non-scientific polls from The Drudge Report and AOL as "evidence" that Palin won. Bob Shrum also joined in the fun.

Buchanan: "Well, I mean Drudge found it 70-30, AOL found it 500,000 split.”"

Matthews: But those aren't polls. Those are people emailing in on conservative blog sites. We can do those! [Laughter]

Shrum: "For Pat to be citing, like, the AOL poll or the Drudge poll which is set up, shows us how much he wants to do cartwheels because she didn't commit a pratfall on stage."

Pat Buchanan must really hold viewers in contempt for suggesting that people would be stupid enough to believe a poll put together by GOP hack Matt Drudge.

h/t Crooks & Liars

Mika Brzezinski must be mixing medications

When I saw the footage above, my first thought was that Mika Brzezinski must have done some morning blow* before appearing on Morning Joe.

C&L covered this pretty extensively yesterday, and I don't have much to add, other than to say that Brzezinski's observations are, to be charitable, a wild departure from reality, and the truth. Yesterday, while reading viewer e-mail regarding Obama's resignation from the Trinity Unity Church of Christ (and most of the letters were not happy with the media's coverage), Brzezinski let loose with this whopper:

"Okay, umm... first of all, I think we covered the Hagee story as much, umm... the Reverend Wright situation injected itself into the news cycle for sure, but having said that, don't you think that there is a difference or is there not, especially given the fact that he resigned from his church."

She should have said, "Excuse me," for passing all of that hot air.

Not only MSNBC (Keith Olbermann aside), but all the spokes in our corporate media wheel treated the Jeremiah Wright story like it was a national emergency for weeks on end. Anyone who thinks otherwise (including Brzezinski) is either lying, has Alzheimer's (or a horrific memory), or is a rabid Republican. It's also a good time to remember just how badly distorted Wright's sermons were, too, and how those distortions got started - the uneducated Sean Hannity and the GOP shill himself, troll Matt Drudge.

Anyway, you don't even have to be an avid viewer and reader of news to know that McCain's ties to controversial people in the clergy like John Hagee and Rod Parsley has received passing mentions at best in most instances.

Quite frankly, I'm bored and sick to death with these insipid "minister stories" - they don't affect me in any way, nor do they affect the American electorate. They merely serve as a distraction to bigger and much more significant issues - the war(s), the economy and just how badly many people are suffering in this country (and in Iraq!) right now.

* - It's a joke, people. Calm down. I don't know if Brzezinski does blow, but I'm pretty sure she's a moron.

McClellan's book a stinging defection for W

Ron Ziegler's Scott McClellan's book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception is turning into one of this summer's must-reads for political buffs, yours truly included. And, when the smoke clears, there can be absolutely no doubt that McClellan, Bush's former White House press secretary, will join the lengthening list of former Bush administration officials who will be attacked, vilified and crucified as if they have committed the worst, treasonous acts by another human being by just about any current member of the Bush cabal. (Richard A. Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Colin Powell, and there will undoubtedly be many others.)

I'll get to some excerpts in a minute, but having only read some excerpts from the book, I have to at least tentatively give McClellan some credit for having the courage to stand up and call out the Bush administration. However, my big question is, while all this was happening, why didn't he stand up then? It takes considerably less courage to stand up to a president when your ass isn't on the line. Courage in presidential administrations is so rare these days. It may happen behind the scenes somewhat, but I can't even remember the last time a high-level man or woman in an administration said, "I resign" over a decision made by a president. Gone are the days of people like Jerald terHorst, President Ford's press secretary, who immediately resigned when he learned that Ford, in a controversial move to this day, pardoned President Nixon.

Yesterday, The Politico ran some very interesting excerpts from the book. Among them:

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in the State of the Union address of 2003: "Signing off on these facts is my responsibility. … And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign." The offer "was rejected almost out of hand by others present," McClellan writes.

• Bush was "clearly irritated, ... steamed," when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: "'It's unacceptable,' Bush continued, his voice rising. 'He shouldn't be talking about that.'"

• Instead, McClellan's tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial," and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that "Karl was convinced we needed to do it - and the president agreed."

"One of the worst disasters in our nation's history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush's presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush's second term," he writes. "And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath."

Of course, the ideological buzzards are already circling McClellan's political carcass, ready to rip him to shreds. Actually, it's already started, and there are only excerpts out right now.

Keith Olbermann offered come commentary last night on McClellan's book, along with Air America's Rachel Maddow...

Probably my favorite part of the above clip is when Olbermann and Maddow mention what McClellan writes about propaganda and its role in selling the War in Iraq to the American people. Propaganda?!? In a time of war? Wow.

Below is Karl Rove McCain campaign consultant, political commentator for Fersatz News Channel, throwing McClellan to the wolves.

It's amazing how someone who was Bush's press secretary for so long is now all of a sudden an imbecile, just because he now thinks it's appropriate to speak out against all that Bush has done.

So, let's get this straight - every single word Scott McClellan wrote is a total lie, and Karl Rove is completely innocent. RIGHT! Is there anyone who honestly believes that? C'mon...

McClellan will be on NBC's Today Show tomorrow morning, so set your DVRs, or your alarm clock, because it should be a good interview. Here's hoping that Matt Lauer brings his A-game.

Actually, my favorite reaction so far is from the GOP toad and mouthpiece, Matt Drudge...

Bitter beer face, Drudge. It kills me that Drudge keeps up the act that he's a "non-partisan" site, that he "goes where the story goes," yet that's a screen shot from his site this morning, bemoaning McClellan's book "snitching" on the Bush administration. Notice it doesn't say "Scott the Liar" - he's merely a "snitch." Draw your own conclusions.

Hillary's "smear" about RFK a total crock

So the right-wing blogosphere is all aflutter of a comment that Hillary Clinton made earlier today about staying in the race. During a conversation with newspaper editors, she mentioned that her husband, President Clinton, locked up the nomination in June 1992. She then mentioned that Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968. Certainly it was a misstep and a gaffe, but only a moron (see Matt Drudge's screen capture from earlier today, above) would try to distort what she meant. It's obvious that if you take her remark in CONTEXT (a word that most of the press, and virtually all political pundits [esp. on the right] seem to have forgotten during this election), she was talking about her reasons for not withdrawing from the race.

Anyway, her comments are below - take a look and you be the judge.

Frankly, I don't even want to waste any more time on this, because it's such a non-story, but of course it will bounce around newscasts all weekend, with the implication that Hillary Clinton was somehow making light of RFK's assassination. Of course, right away she issued an apology to the Kennedy family, but few rational people, including I'm guessing anyone in the Kennedy family, probably thought that it was even necessary. But, Hillary is in the non-offending business right now, because she so desperately needs any support she can get in her fading campaign for the presidency.

What a difference a few days makes - just days ago, some on the far right were revisiting the Chappaquiddick incident and other misdeeds by Sen. Ted Kennedy in light of his brain cancer diagnosis. Now, all of a sudden, right-wing blowhards like Drudge are raking Hillary over the coals for allegedly making light of RFK's assassination. What a joke.

It's just another example of the scathingly critical, unspeakably moronic press that this woman has had to endure since she declared her candidacy about 18 months ago. There's no doubt that a portion of it has been self inflicted, but it certainly is a small percentage compared to the mindlessly stupid stories, name calling and slanders that have been run against her. I didn't vote for her in the Pennsylvania Primary, but someday I just might get the chance to proudly cast my vote for her in a national election, press coverage be damned.

Another Drudge global warming distortion

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Perhaps some feel that Drudge isn't even worth the time to debunk. I'm not one of them - this guy has millions of hits on his Website every month, so it's safe to assume that some people actually believe this crap.

Quite frankly, I don't know what's more pathetic - Drudge's blatant distortions, or the fact that more than a few will simply see his absurdly misleading headline without clicking on the story. Anyone who actually clicked on the BBC News link would have quickly deduced after about three minutes of reading that scientists have concluded that global warming is happening, and that one shouldn't draw lots of conclusions from one year, or even a few years. So, global warming deniers (such as morons like Drudge and Sen. James Inhofe) love to make hay out of one or two cold years.

Funny, I didn't notice Drudge or his ilk saying much about the chunk of ice seven times the size of Manhattan that broke off of Antarctica last week. I guess 100 square mile+ chunks of ice just break off of the West Antarctic peninsula when the Earth is cooling.

Hill & Bill have made million$ - so what?

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I have to give GOP hack Matt Drudge credit for one thing - he's brilliant at coming up with new reasons for totally despising him.

Splashed across his site when I got home tonight - the above headline - which probably marks the 988th time he's taken the GOP lead in attacking the Clintons. If I could get good enough odds from a sucker, I'd bet a few c-notes that this dominates the news over the weekend, especially the Sunday morning talk shows.

After I saw this headline, I got into 1990s mode all over again - frothing at the mouth with partisan outrage. Both Hillary and President Clinton have disappointed me immensely and on more than one occasion during this presidential campaign, but I have no problem at all with this and I really wonder what the big deal is.

Why? Well, first of all, all modern presidents get rich when they leave office. Reagan certainly did. Bush Sr. hasn't been hurting for cash, that's for sure. Neither has Clinton. Quickly now, look into your crystal ball - how many millions do you think Dubya and Laura will be worth? Each successive president cashes in, and Clinton is no exception.

I remember a time not so long ago that people were outraged and outright LIVID that President Clinton raised in the neighborhood of $500 million for his presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas. His political opponents to this day are furious that the list of donors have not been disclosed, and they do have a point. I don't like the fact that outgoing presidents can do all sorts of favors (ahem, pardons) in return for a fat wad of cash for the monument under construction to himself, i.e., the presidential library.

But guess what?

President Bush hasn't disclosed the hundreds, if not thousands of donors to his presidential library. Current estimates have the cost of his self-serving monument costing in the neighborhood of $1 billion. When the day comes that Bush discloses all of his donors and how much they have given, I will be the first to condemn President Clinton and give kudos to Bush on this Website. Guess what? It's not gonna happen. No, let me rephrase that - look right - THAT'S when Bush will come clean with all of his political favors.

I'm not happy about political favors in exchange for money or political donations on the part of any politician in our country. But, it happens, and it's been part of the system for so long, it's impossible to single out any politician for particular scorn, unless it's a hugely corrupt politician or a very special case.

The bottom line is that our Natural Embarrassment, the clown currently in the Oval Office, is the most secretive president since at least Nixon, and I'd make the case the most secretive ever. We probably won't even ever know the extent to his secrecy and under-handed dealings, but I do know this - Kenneth Lay, before the rape and pillage fall of Enron, donated hundreds of thousands to Bush's inaugural ball in January 2001. Following 9-11, guess which company got tens of millions in tax breaks? C'mon, I don't really need to write it, do I?

Here's another cheerful thought - the Clintons were millions and millions in debt when they left office due to legal bills from the GOP witch hunt to get them at all costs. And by the way, Drudge played no small part in that.

One final thought - I wonder if Mitt Romney or America's Profiteer, Rudy Giuliani, would be getting this kind of financial scrutiny if they were still in the presidential race? In a word, no.

I can only hope and pray that McSame will be stupid enough to pick Romney or Giuliani as his running mate. Please, God, PLEASE.

Update:
It's already starting. I don't expect HuffPo to be as blatantly partisan as Drudge is, but really, Arianna?

Amusing Drudge spin after Libby pardon

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I got a kick out of this... As if we needed any more evidence that Drudge is the GOP's biggest shill and cheerleader. This is a screenshot of Drudge's Website in the wake of the Scooter Libby pardon. (Yes, I'm calliing it a pardon - I don't care what the White House calls it.)

GOP: Um, Matt, don't forget to mention the Clinton pardons.

DRUDGE: No problem!

Bad Iraq news continues; Look! Over here! A Gore speech from '92

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It's interesting that the right-wing smear machine is already gearing up for Al Gore's potential candidacy. Of course, GOP shill Matt Drudge leads the way. The screen capture above is from The Drudge Report this past Tuesday. Of course, he's highlighting an Al Gore speech from 1992, part of which is below.

This speech is interesting to watch. Our country's past with Iraq and Saddam Hussein is a complicated one, and by complicated I don't mean that President Clinton is completely innocent, but he's far from the guiltiest, either.

What I found particularly poignant was Gore's Cliff-Note-tour of our country's involvement with Iraq in the 1980s. I won't get into it too much more in this piece, other than to say I've read the exact same things Gore speaks of in this video clip, lest anyone think Gore was merely spouting campaign rhetoric (the video dates from 1992).

Richard Clarke, who worked counter-terrorism under presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Dubya, discussed in detail how Saddam brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of Iranians and Iraqis during that decade, all of which were under Republican, um, "leadership" in the White House. These facts often don't fit into the well-worn rhetoric of Republicans - that Saddam was a "brutal dictator" who "murdered his own people." Clarke details all of this and more in his stunning tome Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror, a book I highly recommend.

Sidney Blumenthal also covers our relations with Iraq in the 1980s (but less than Clarke) in his outstanding book, The Clinton Wars. Blumenthal served as President's Clinton senior political advisor during his second term.

The bottom line here is that America (Read: Ronald Reagan, and later, Bush Sr.) didn't feel the need to do anything about Iraq until the flow of oil was threatened by Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. I can still remember, with my own two ears, Bush Sr. on television declaring that "We are going to war to defend our way of life." Seems patently absurd now, doesn't it? If it doesn't, it should.

If you read about Kuwait, it's anything but a democracy, too.

Now that the neocons' grand experiment has failed MISERABLY in Iraq, setting our foreign policy back 25 years, people like Drudge are busy digging up video tape from 15 years ago in a lame, half-baked attempt to smear a undeclared candidate for president INSTEAD OF rightfully criticizing Bush's Iraq policy of perpetual war.

It's easy for someone like Drudge to dig up old video of Gore, ignoring the events of the past 15 years. What it does NOT take into consideration is what happened following Desert Storm; sanctions, no-fly zones and close monitoring during the 1990s had Saddam mostly boxed in - he had no nuclear program, and, we now know, no WMDs.

Over 3,500 hundred Dead Americans later, to say nothing of the $500+ billion in American dollars spent in Iraq, but Drudge chooses to not talk about that; instead, a Gore speech from 15 years ago takes priority.

What a pathetic canard, even for Drudge.

Global warming debunked! As you were...

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I don't mean to harp on Matt Drudge. Wait, yes I do. Anyway, it's no secret that he's merely an extension of the RNC, but of course he paints himself as objective, saying, "he just goes where the stories are."

Sure.

His gossip blog is visited by millions every day, so I drop by at least once a day to see what the Right is reporting.

Anyway, this is what I woke to this morning.

Of course, John McCain using the f-bomb is the most important story of the day. I also got a kick out of the fact that Fox News labels Michael Moore's latest movie, SiCKO, which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, "brilliant and uplifting." (More on that later.)

But, what I found particularly amusing was the headline, "Climate expert says 'it's time to attack the myth of global warming.'"

I wonder just how many people see that headline, store it away as fact, and move on without even clicking on the story to see the exact source of this blarney.

I clicked the link, and I was taken to a Website called the Timaru Herald. It took some clicking, but I soon found out that this "expert" is merely a meteorologist, and the newspaper is based in New Zealand.

I don't know much about the newspaper, but something tells me it resembles The Washington Times here in the U.S. - a thoroughly irrelevant right-wing tip sheet that is merely the laughingstock of journalism in our nation's capital.

I don't like to copy/paste whole articles, but this is a relatively short article, so it's worth it (the original article can be found Here):

Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.

Man's contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn't change the climate if we tried, he maintained.

"We're all going to survive this. It's all going to be a joke in five years," he said.

A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin had created the current hysteria and it was time to put a stop to it.

"It is time to attack the myth of global warming," he said.

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

"If we didn't have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time."

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man's activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

"That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then," he said.

"We couldn't do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates."

Yet the Greens continued to use phrases such as "The planet is groaning under the weight of CO2" and Government policies were about to hit industries such as farming, he warned.

"The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is?

"It's become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt," he said.

So, a weatherman has debunked global warming, huh?

One can picture Drudge (or a team of crack researchers) hunched over computers looked for the most mundane, obscure article which contains someone, ANYONE who says that global warming is a myth.

When he finds one (like the article above), he links it to his Website, and viola! Global warming is a myth. In the last 24 hours, 13,220,669 people (as of 12:43 this afternoon) have visited his Website. (According to him - I have no way in verifying this fact.) Even if half that number have actually visited, it's a big number.

So, conceivably, 13 million people potentially have it in their minds that global warming is a myth. Nah - let's say that 1/4 actually believe that.

It just strikes me as absurd.

It's not a stretch to say that Drudge is the Fox News of the Internet. It's altogether startling, amazing and amusing that people read this stuff and could actually believe it.

Drudge's job (aided by frequent conversations with the RNC) is to just place doubt about issues like global warming. If he can just plant the seeds of doubt, he'll have accomplished his mission.

Drudge screws up again

It never gets old pointing out when right-wing blogger Matt Drudge screws up a story.

According to Media Matters, Drudge has claimed that Media Matters is a "[George] Soros operation."

No so, says the Website:

"In fact, Media Matters has never received funding from progressive philanthropist George Soros," read a statement earlier today on the site.

Soros has donated millions of his billions to liberal causes and organizations, including about $25 million of his own money in 2004 to PACs to try and get President Bush out of the White House.

My guess is, MM irks Drudge by exposing his lies. MM does it in quick fashion, too - I'm not sure how many people work for the Website, but they are always on top of questionable stories from the right-wing noise machine.

If you aren't familiar with MM, and you enjoy reading the news behind the news, then MM is a can't-miss Website. MM was founded in 2004 by David Brock to fight back against right-wing talk radio, Fox News and any other right-wing leaning organizations that don't have any problem putting misleading stories in the media.

Brock is an ex-conservative - he used to write for The American Spectator, a far-right, conservative magazine. During the Clarence Thomas hearings, Brock famously wrote in the Spectator's pages that Anita Hill was, "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty." He also participated in a few of the more notable stories to attempt to discredit Bill Clinton before and during the early years of his presidency, including Troopergate and The Arkansas Project.

Brock repented and wrote Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative and never looked back. He even apologized to President Clinton, Anita Hill, and many other people he smeared during his career as a right-wing hatchet man.

Founding Media Matters for America is part of his transformation.

Gone are the days when people like Drudge can print something with the flimsiest of proof (if any), only to take the story off of his Website when the truth came out (if, in fact, it did at all).

Drudge's clumsy attempt to smear CNN's Michael Ware, after he made a fool of Judas John McCain about Iraq, fell flat. And Drudge's motives were transparent, too - Ware made McCain look bad, so it was payback time.

I urge you to visit MM often, and support the site if you have the means. It really is a one-stop shop for the liberal looking to debunk the right's lies, distortions and smears.

I click it every day and use a great deal of the media available on the site.

When it's cold, Drudge is GOP's hot cocoa with lame global warming jokes

Could Matt Drudge possibly be any more lame? Or predictable? Every time a cold snap hits a portion of the US, you can always count on the GOP shill to poke fun at the global warming debate by pointing out how cold it is.

I use his ridiculously crude "siren" above just to mock him. Here's a guy who is always boasting how much traffic his site has, and he uses a "siren" that resembles something a first-year computer science major would make. Drop a few bucks on some real graphics, you cheap bastard.

Anyway, as usual, the GOP blowhard couldn't resist poking fun at global warming on his site today after NYC's latest frigid weather with the screaming headline "NEW YORK CITY APRIL COLDEST ON RECORD?" with the picture above. Right underneath was a link to a Bloomberg story about NYC's cold weather, and had several other columns prominently featured that dispute the science of global warming. The only dispute, in my mind, is why people insist that the evidence is inconclusive.

As for late, Drudge is trying to be a little more subliminal in his criticism of global warming - he's toned it down since he's taken, ahem, heat for using the stupidest of stupid global warming jokes several times this past winter.

I don't know why Drudge doesn't simply link to Senator Jim Inhofe's Website - the most prominent global warming denier in Congress. I'd at least respect Drudge for making his allegiance transparent to the easily duped.

Wake up, Matt - the threat of global warming is real and legitimate, unlike your Website. We all know you get your talking points from the RNC. You're about as objective as Bill O'Reilly.

The Drudge fudge

Just in case you were wondering, here's the text of the complete fabrication that Matt Drudge posted on his Website, trying to smear CNN reporter Michael Ware. As soon as various media starting to call b.s., it mysteriously disappeared from his site.

"During a live press conference in Baghdad, Senators McCain and Graham were heckled by CNN reporter Michael Ware. An official at the press conference called Ware's conduct 'outrageous,' saying, 'Here you have two United States Senators in Bagdad giving first-hand reports while Ware is laughing and mocking their comments.'"

-- Matt Drudge, on his site. A videotape of the conference proved the "exclusive" story to be a complete fabrication.

Good work, Matt.

KO's worst people - spot on again

This episode of Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World, from yesterday's show, is notable for a number of reasons.

First - Matt Drudge. It really angers me that a person like Drudge, who has ethics and scruples much lower than the rest of the civilized world, will smear any enemy of the Republican Party, or even someone who has merely embarrassed the GOP.

Drudge's latest target - CNN Iraqi Correspondent Michael Ware, who has more than embarrassed Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain before and during his current visit to Baghdad. Really, McCain has embarrassed himself; Ware has merely succinctly pointed it out.

Yesterday, Drudge posted some inaccurate and disparaging information about Ware on his über-popular Website, The Drudge Report, as Olbermann states above, including that Ware heckled McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at a press conference along with the insinuation that Ware has a drinking problem.

As soon as Ware flatly denied the report, stating on CNN "check the videotape," video indeed appeared on the Web, backing up Ware's claim - not a speckle of heckle. Mysteriously, Drudge's entry on Ware disappeared from his Website. Surprise!

Drudge has a history of disparaging individuals on his site - Sidney Blumenthal comes to mind as one of the more noteworthy cases. Drudge posted libelous statements about Blumenthal, senior political adviser to President Clinton in his second term, (I won't rewrite them here) and Blumenthal sued him. Blumenthal later dropped the suit when it became clear that it wasn't worth the time or effort to go after Drudge. (Quick plug - Blumenthal's tome, The Clinton Wars, is arguably the best book on Clinton's presidency available anywhere. [aside from Clinton's autobiographical My Life] Sid's book is an awesome political read. )

It's not a stretch to say that Drudge has a "post it now, verify later, if at all" mentality, journalistic standards be damned. This right-wing shill dares people he's disparaged to come after him. It's also a well-known fact that Drudge is in regular contact with leaders of the Republican National Committee, who give him talking points.

And Drudge's stories make it into the mainstream media with stunning regularity. The Ware case is the latest example - I'll repost the CNN footage:



Notice how Soledad O'Brien brings the rumor up in this exchange with Ware. Two schools of thought here: 1. She brought up Drudge's b.s. to give Ware an opportunity to respond to the ridiculous allegations, or 2. O'Brien did what many other MSM anchors do these days - if it's on Drudge, it's news. History suggests the latter is more accurate - since Drudge "broke" the Monica Lewinsky Scandal on his site, he's shockingly become the darling of MSMs looking for news on the Web.

One recent example - when John Edwards announced a few weeks ago that he would have an announcement about his wife's health the following day, Drudge and The Politico leaped into action (these two Websites seem to be entangled in a passionate love affair as of late). The Politico, which has plenty of credibility problems of its own as of late, reported that Edwards would drop out of the race with a one-source story. Drudge pounced, reporting it on his site as fact, and from there, it went to all of the cable news networks, including CNN. The next morning, I was listening to Thom Hartman on my drive in to work, and he announced that Edwards was dropping out of the race, "according to CNN."

Twenty minutes later, Edwards was on television announcing he intends to stay in the race.

Whaaaaa Whaaaaa Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant.

Virtually every cable news network got the story wrong - because they relied on dopes like Matt Drudge to get their story, in lieu of getting a story the old fashioned way - by cultivating sources and doing some investigating. I guess that's too much work for journalists these days. Drudge is as credible as a jilted spouse who's been cheated on, looking for revenge in a divorce proceeding. Reliability police - pull over!

##

Anyway - Olbermann's other target in the clip above - Bill O'Reilly. It's beyond comedy the way O'Reilly treats people, especially military veterans who know more in their toenails about the military than O'Reilly could ever hope to learn in a lifetime.

Update: I found the video of Billy dressing down Col. Ann Wright, a 29-year military veteran. Check it out:



There you have it - Fox News - Fair and Balanced; Bill O'Reilly, fairly imbalanced.

Olbermann uncovers facts behind Gore Swiftboating

Speaking of global warming, I've been meaning to get to this one.

It took less than 24 hours for the smear mongers to come after Al Gore following his big night at the Academy Awards. Pretty impressive, actually. Unfortunately, pretty predictable, too. Haven't we seen this play before? John Kerry knows the answer.

By now, it's pretty obvious the neocons weren't about to let Gore enjoy even the slightest adulation without attacking him in some way.

Enter stage left - the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. On its Website, the TCPR presents itself as "an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to providing concerned citizens, the media and public leaders with expert research and timely free market policy solutions to public policy issues in Tennessee."

It takes less than 30 seconds of poking around on its site to quickly figure out that the TCPR is about as nonpartisan as Rush Limbaugh.

What really irked me about the Gore smear campaign is how it was reported as hard news (Read: fact) by so many new organizations. This is a case study about how a smear migrates to national news. A right-wing think tank issues a smarmy smear, which of course leads to Matt Drudge putting it on a plate and sopping it up with a biscuit. And the road from Drudge, a known right-wing shill for the Republican Party, to the national media is a short one. It's amazing how much credibility Drudge has. Funny how the stories he gets wrong don't seem to get reported, but that's another post for another time.

Anyway, media such as CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and a host of other highly visible, popular media outlets reported the "facts" without obviously doing much, if any, reporting, unless you consider reporting as reading what Drudge and the TCPR Websites published and presenting it as news.

Here's an example of tertiary reporting at best, which took me inside of 10 minutes: Drew Johnson (right), the president of TCPR, has this line in his biography on TCPR's Website: "Johnson’s work has appeared in over 300 publications including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Human Events."

Any journalist who can find his rump with his own two hands should have raised a red flag when reading that in his online bio. Considering the coverage, I doubt anyone decided to read it. Does anybody actually investigate anymore, or is that something looked upon as quaint or old fashioned? One can imagine some of these "reporters" sniping, "That was something that Woodward and Bernstein did, but I don't have time for that - I've got deadlines to meet!"

USA Today aside, the other three publications mentioned in Johnson's bio are known right-wing publications; National Review and Human Events make Rush Limbaugh look liberal, and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page reads like a press release from the RNC.

One person who did bother to do some research was Keith Olbermann. If you haven't listened to the clip above yet, click on it and listen.

Olbermann ticks off some great facts about Johnson, highlighted by his work for the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank which denies global warming exists. The AEI has received funding from these credible, non-partisan sources: ExxonMobile and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. Anyone familiar with the Clinton witch hunt in the 1990s knows the name Scaife.

The number that sticks in everyone's mind is that Gore's electric bill is "20 times the national average." Nevermind that the average home in the United States is about 2,500 square feet. Gore's house has 20 rooms, two offices and a guesthouse, as well as other security measures that are necessary as a former vice president. Why would a house like that use more electricity? It escapes me.

As usual, let's not let facts get in the way of a good 'ole fashioned Swiftboating.

This is PR 101, as well as a well-used page out of Karl Rove's playbook: Put out the smear, knowing that it might be debunked by anyone who bothers to perform 20 minutes of actual reporting. But, the lie will stick more than the facts that come out after the smear is widespread.

In a sick, twisted way, you almost can't blame the GOP and its supporters. This tactic has worked before - remember "I invented the Internet"?

My favorite part in the Olbermann clip is when he wonders how the global warming deniers get around the fact that even President Bush, one of our most anti-environmental presidents ever, has acknowledged that global warming is a problem, as well as evangelical clergymen.

What we are seeing here is the pathetic, last gasps by big business and its donors against a global problem that just about everyone who isn't to the right of Ann Coulter on the political spectrum has acknowledged - is that global warming is here to stay. And it really is an inconvenient truth to some.

Global Warming is the New Big Tobacco

Global warming is beginning to remind me of big tobacco. For decades, the cigarette companies denied, denied, denied and paid hundreds of millions to keep their big lie going. Eventually, the house of cards (or should I say, cash) collapsed around them, and they had to acknowledge what scientists had been saying for years - that smoking cigarettes kills.

I really hope Gore gets in the '08 race. I'd love nothing more than to see Gore settle the score from the 2000 race, and to trounce whomever the GOP nominates.

Urge Al to run by clicking Here.

Lots of new stuff...

Phew! I put up a great deal of new stuff last night down the right side of the blog ~ take a look if you have time. I'm in full-blown election mode, and it's March 2007, so you can imagine what I'll be like six months from now?

It's bitter cold this morning here in Philadelphia, so I wonder how long it will take for Matt Drudge or some another right wing hack to make another lame global warming/cold weather joke. I'm old enough to know that the absence of empirical proof isn't proof there isn't a real problem.

Since I spent so much time updating the site last night, I'm way behind on my writing. I have a little time to catch up now, and I'll do much more writing tonight and tomorrow.