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Bipartisan Zombies (by digby)
[Sunday] we [had] none other than the centrist drivel king, David Broder, reporting that a group of useless meddlers, most of whom who were last seen repeatedly stabbing Bill Clinton in the back, are rising from their crypts to demand that the candidates all promise to appoint a “unity” government and govern from the … center — or else they will back an independent Bloomberg bid… Isn’t it funny that these people were nowhere to be found when George W. Bush seized office under the most dubious terms in history, having been appointed by a partisan supreme court majority and losing the popular vote?…We can wish for conciliation all we want, but unless the Democrats can do it without any cooperation from the Republicans, it will be just another game of Charlie Brown and the football.
Your Daily Digby: Bipartisan Zombies (by John Amato at Crooks and Liars)
[See Digby’s comments above.] Matt Stoller has a great post up: Here’s Your Bipartisanship, America. As Chris Bowers and Matthew Yglesias among many others have pointed out, what this bipartisanship is really about is undermining the public’s ability to participate in policy-making. Partisanship in other words would mean a progressive country responsive to the public, and bipartisanship means an authoritarian country where the public is cut out.
Click through for links. Krugman weighs in below.
AWWMNUUBM (by Paul Krugman)
That’s Aging Wealthy White Men for National Unity Under Billionaire Media Moguls. I like it. Seriously, why does anyone think this makes sense? I read a lot of polls, and they suggest that the center of public opinion on the issues is, if anything, left of the center of the Democratic Party. This seems to be a solution in search of a problem.
The Great Divide (by Paul Krugman)
Yesterday The Times published a highly informative chart laying out the positions of the presidential candidates on major issues. It was, I’d argue, a useful reality check for those who believe that the next president can somehow usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation. For what the chart made clear was the extent to which Democrats and Republicans live in separate moral and intellectual universes.
The chart is here, and it’s a very useful link to send to people who want to know how ALL the candidates stand on the most important issues.
Kenneth Starr: Open to the public (by Jim Newton, Los Angeles Times)
To meet Kenneth Starr is to question the anger of his most partisan critics and the ardor of his most ideological admirers. As few have forgotten, Starr’s pursuit of President Clinton endeared him to Clinton’s enemies but also made him, for some, a modern Inspector Javert… And yet, here Starr is, atop the law school at Pepperdine University, cheerfully imagining a culture of engaged and conscientious young lawyers, wistfully harking to a time when the nation was less divided and acrimonious.
Kenneth Starr wrote the book on divisiveness and acrimony, and now he’s worried about the situation he worked so diligently to create? This man should never get a pass on what he did in pursuit of President Clinton. Not ever.
Media Insiders Shaft Biden, Richardson, Dodd, Kucinich and America (by Brent Budowsky, writing at The Huffington Post)
Immediately after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto the front page story in the Washington Post about Pakistan and the presidential campaign did not even mention Joe Biden, the only candidate who seriously distinguished himself on the Pakistan crisis… [T]he Washington Post editorial page, which has supported Bush on the Iraq war as Pravda supported Leonid Brezhnev, followed up with a lead editorial on candidates and Pakistan, [and] did not even acknowledge … Joe Biden. Here is why the major media, including the daily newspapers, has lost such credibility with the American people and in the case of insider print media, so many subscribers who moved their business to internet sites.
Don’t Cry For Me Iowa Caucus (by digby)
“I always thought the problem with Hillary was, her notion of government was, ‘I am Evita, I am the one who gives gifts to the little people and then they come and bring me flowers and they worship at me because I am the great Evita. And I give things to people. I give them universal health care; I give them an energy program. I give gifts to the little people.’”… If you guessed [the speaker to be] delusional gasbag Chris Matthews of the new “liberal MSNBC,” talking with his “liberal MSNBC” colleague Joe Scarborough, you’d be right. Thank goodness we have salt-o-the-earth, regular-Joe multimillionaire TV celebrities speaking out on behalf of us “little people” who resent elites thinking they’re better than us.
Noonan defines ‘reasonable’ (by Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars)
The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan [argued Saturday] that her top characteristic when evaluating presidential candidates is “reasonableness.”… Here’s her take on the former senator from North Carolina: “John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards’s populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can’t have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can’t.”… Noonan’s looking for a candidate with a “prudent understanding of the world.” I’m looking for a columnist with the same attribute.
This Week: Edwards Scares The Punditocracy… (by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
…otherwise, why would they spend so much time trying so hard to dismiss him?… [A]s the discussion moved to the upcoming Iowa primary and whose message was resonating most, again, Edwards’ message of populism was brought up. David Brooks immediately pulls a Noonan and discounts how “tough” Edwards can be, and George Will then subverts the whole definition of populism to pull as many conservative scare tactics as possible… Why does George & Co. feel the need to dismiss Edwards? Could it be that in head-to-head match ups, Edwards is the candidate who fares the best?
Click through to watch the video.
Obama’s Health Care Ads Fail Scrutiny and Honesty Tests (by SusanUnPC at No Quarter)
Obama’s new health care commercial, running in Iowa, “misrepresents some newspaper assessments of the Illinois Democrat’s proposal,” reveals a careful analysis in the WaPo, “Incomplete Picture in New Obama Health Care Ad.”… Worse, Obama has resorted to robocalling with an ethically iffy, factually dishonest script.
Paul: Fox News is ’scared of me’
PLAISTOW, N.H. — Ron Paul said the decision to exclude him from a debate on Fox News Sunday the weekend before the New Hampshire Primary is proof that the network “is scared” of him. “They are scared of me and don’t want my message to get out, but it will,” Paul said in an interview at a diner here. “They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative.”
WorldNutDaily is reporting that the debate in question has been canceled, and in fact was canceled several weeks ago.
Correction: On Saturday, I posted a link to a Truthdig article, “Romney’s Firm to Buy Clear Channel”, quoting Lew Rockwell that Mitt Romney had just bought conservative media giant Clear Channel Communications. The deal between Clear Channel and two private equity firms, one of which was founded by Romney, was actually announced in November of 2006. Liberal Talk Radio has reported (scroll down) that Romney “cashed out” of the firm in 2001, but according to the Los Angeles Times on December 17, 2007, Romney “retains a profit share in Bain Capital until 2009, as well as investments in more than 30 Bain funds.”
Washington Post – Managed by slightly trained chimpanzees? (by Chris in Paris at AMERICAblog)
[The Washington Post wants us] to believe that Bush really cares about global warming. Moreover, he “bristles” when he hears that people like us think he doesn’t care… A legacy of trashing the environment for years and then talk of change at the end, but without any real change[?]… Bush wants to have it both ways and the friendly scribes from the Post comply… If Bush wants to work on his legacy, fine, that’s his business. There’s no need to confuse a real story with an image makeover by political consultants. That’s what this article is all about.
David Shuster smacks The Scar over his trying to pump “Bush’s foreign policy” as successful (by John Amato at Crooks and Liars)
The Scar says that Republicans are suddenly very pleased with George Bush’s performance as the Decider including his….cough…cough….foreign policy. David Shuster wouldn’t let him get off with painting a bright and shiny picture of the Bush Doctrine … “Joe, I don’t even know where to begin….If the US had taken care of business in Afghanistan along the Pakistan border, had taken care of al-Qaeda, had sent 150,000 troops there instead of to Iraq which had nothing to so with the al-Qaeda attacks on 9/11, then al-Qaeda and the Taliban, they wouldn’t have the influence, the destabilizing influence they have over Pakistan today.”
Click through to watch the video.
Sky Is Blue…Joe Klein Lies Again…News At 11 (by David Sirota at Campaign for America’s Future)
Joe Klein … lays another egg: “NAFTA has been a wash, creating as many jobs as have been lost.” According to government data, NAFTA has cost America at least 1 million jobs. This is not new information – but it still never ceases to amaze me that a high-paid journalist at any publication is allowed to simply lie without as much as a nod to the actual facts.
Kristol Clear: It’s Official –’NYT’ Explains Hiring New ‘Op-Ed’ Wag
A day after the Huffington Post first reported it, The New York Times has announced that it has indeed hired conservative pundit, and Fox News analyst, Bill Kristol, as a new regular op-ed columnist.
Kristol: The New York Times ‘Should Be Prosecuted,’ ‘It Isn’t A First-Rate Newspaper’ (Think Progress)
For years, Bill Kristol has been at the forefront of a vitriolic right-wing crusade against the New York Times. Sadly, the Times has chosen to reward him for it. After the New York Times in 2006 disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions, right-wing pundit Bill Kristol said this: “I think it is an open question whether the Times itself should be prosecuted for this totally gratuitous revealing of an ongoing secret classified program that is part of the war on terror.” [Fox News, 7/2/06]
Click through for more examples of Bill Kristol’s (former?) opinion of The New York Times.
Germans say “Nein” to television
MUNICH (Hollywood Reporter) – For the first time in recent memory, Germans spent less time in front of their TVs in 2007 than they did the year before, according to a new survey.
Internet opens elite college materials to all
Top universities have finally joined the world of online education. And mostly, they are giving it away.
Now we’ll see how all these free trade perfessers feel about giving away their work for free.
Aspiring radio talkers take to the Web
Anyone with dreams of being a talk radio star can play host on their own show, right on the Web.
Radio’s Challenge: Counting the Young
The electronic audience measurement tool, the “people meter,” has so far produced odd results.
Study: Young Adults Heavy Library Users
NEW YORK (AP) – Young adults are the heaviest users of public libraries despite the ease with which they can access a wealth of information over the Internet from the comforts of their homes, according to a new study.
N. J. law restricts some sex offenders on Web
Convicted sex offenders who used the Internet to help them commit their crimes will be banned from using the Internet under a measure signed into law Thursday.
Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use
Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing… Now, in … legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.
Music biz lawyers wary of labels’ new grab
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Like it or not, major record companies are expected to continue drafting their artist contracts so that labels share a piece of most — if not all — of the artists’ rights in all types of revenue streams, not just record sales, but also concert tickets and t-shirts.
Love, others may follow Radiohead’s no-label lead
DENVER (Billboard) – Rock band Radiohead’s decision to release its new album “In Rainbows” by itself — online, without a record label’s help and at any price the user chose — rocked the industry last fall.
Fledgling Web sites help indie musicians
NEW YORK (Billboard) – The next Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube: There are millions of dot-coms out there, all claiming to be the next bonanza.
Wikia search to launch Jan. 7
San Francisco – Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has set Jan. 7 as the launch date for an open-source search project that eventually hopes to challenge Google and other established players.
Mobile on mobile (by Jeff Jarvis)
Andy Carvin tweets that we can listen to his NPR report on mobile blogging from our phones. Just call: 202-683-7002. This is, indeed, where content and communication merge: We can listen to whatever we want whenever we want as if we’re just phoning up content. We can create and interact with content that way. Phone? What’s a phone?
What’s That Catchy Tune? A Song for Car Insurance Makes the Charts
“From Where You Are,” a song written for an Allstate commercial, is the first jingle in years to make the charts.