Rightwing Media's Distant Relationship with Truth

If you take a swing through the rightwing news media, one thing jumps out at you immediately -- what you find there is virtually indistinguishable from what you find on talk radio. It's a collection of scandal pimps, outrage manufacturers, spinmeisters, and out-and-out propagandists. What you won't find is a lot of factual reporting.

And this leaves conservative news consumers open to a lot of big surprises. Conor Friedersdorf uses the Hagel confirmation to illustrate the problem.


[The Atlantic:]

...Americans who get their news from anti-Hagel conservatives discovered Tuesday that much of the analysis they've long been fed on this subject left them as misinformed about the likely course of events as they were about Mitt Romney's prospects for victory during Election 2012. Of course, a single nomination battle isn't nearly so consequential as a presidential election. This is nevertheless another reminder for the rank-and-file on the right: Demand better from the journalists whose work you patronize, or remain at an information disadvantage relative to consumers of a "mainstream media" that is regularly outperforming conservative journalists.


Rightwing punditry and blogs lost it when Hagel was confirmed and twitter lit up with condemnations of Sen. Rand Paul, who cast a surprise vote for Hagel. But Hagel didn't win by one vote. He cruised to easy confirmation with eight votes to spare. The small, hundred vote electorate that is the Senate makes the math very easy -- Hagel was confirmed in an 58% landslide. Instead of blaming the media sources that had steered them so wrong, conservative news consumers blamed Paul.

Friedersdorf singles out rightwing Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin for criticism, but she's really just one example out of many. Anyone reading Rubin's posts would assume that Hagel would not only be rejected by both Democrats and Republicans alike, but was practically facing execution for the crime of being the Worst Nominee Ever. He offers a very thorough list of examples and I recommend it highly, if only for the chance to see the world as conservatives see it and marvel at just how wrong it all is. Rubin has always been a laughably bad pundit, but to see it all right out there makes you wonder how she keeps the WaPo gig. This isn't analysis, this is a fantasy porn of wishful thinking presented as granite-solid fact; a version of Fifty Shades of Grey, where the truth is the one that gets the spankings.

But if you want another example of a wingnut pundit steering the faithful wrong, head over to Politico, for an op-ed by Keith Koffler titled, "Republicans need to go negative." Right away you spot three problems with the argument:

1. The word he's looking for is "negativer."
2. Negativer is not a word.
3. It's impossible, in any case.
   

Basically, he argues that President Obama has been on an attack campaign as soon as he got into office, that Mitt Romney failed because he wasn't a "true conservative," and that if people just hear conservative principles articulated plainly, they'll flock to the GOP in droves. The problem with that last is, of course, that conservative principles have been articulated plainly -- and it's driven everyone but white Christian males screaming away from the GOP.

But people read these things and they wag their heads up and down, despite all recent evidence that shows it's all happy horsecrap. Not because it's believable, but because they want to believe it -- whether or not it's true. And here's where Friedersdorf goes wrong. Well, half-wrong. He argues that conservative news consumers should rise up and demand some real goddam factual reporting for a change -- and they should.

But the underlying assumption is that they're the victims in this whole thing. They aren't. There's a lot of supply and demand going on here, with the bloggers, radio hosts, and TV networks with reports most favorable to Republicans and least favorable to Democrats being in the greatest demand. The conservative media serves the consumer who wants to be lied to. And if this leads to heartbreak down the road, you cares? They asked for it.

Want to get boatloads of web traffic? Report that all the polls are wrong and that Romney's a shoe-in, report than Chuck Hagel's about to be horsewhipped in the Senate, report that Barack Obama is totally going to take all the blame if the sequester is triggered. The conservative audience doesn't want the facts, they want spin. That's why they keep "falling for" these ridiculous ideas. A poll taken in October found that 71% of Republican voters believed all the polls were wrong and that Romney was going to win. 71%. They can't possibly all be that gullible. They believed what they wanted to believe -- just as they do with everything else, from economics to science to history. That's why tax-borrow-and-spend Reagan is their symbol of cutting taxes, cutting spending, and reducing the deficit. It doesn't make any difference what's real. All that matters is what they want to be real -- and they'll reward any charlatan who comforts them and tells them what they want to hear.

How do you fix this? I don't think you can. At this point, it's a death spiral -- conservative media can't start truthtelling or they'll go broke, because media consumers will just move on to another comforting liar. Brietbart.com can steer them wrong again and again, with hoax after hoax, and they'll keep coming back for more. Don't get me wrong, conservative news consumers are, by and large, chumps. But it's not because they're especially dumb, it's because they want to be chumps.

Like die-hard Soviets, they think that believing all the propaganda with all your little heart is the definition of patriotism.

-Wisco

[photo via Fibonacci Blue]

A Serious Blow to the GOP's Rebranding Effort

After months of soul-searching and wandering the wilderness, the Republican Party has decided it needs to change. Well, not change really, so much as rebrand. After losing every minority group -- plus women as a whole -- to the Democratic Party inn their quest to unseat Barack Obama, it's become clear that the infamous, racist "southern strategy" is finally dead, dead, dead. No longer is the vote of white Christian males enough to elect anyone to national office. It's now clear that "angry white guy vs. the world" is a fight in which the world will now come out on top, every time. Unfortunately for the GOP, that rebranding effort is scheduled to unravel in the middle of March. Then it will become clear (probably to everyone but the Republican faithful) that rebranding is a hopeless effort -- as is real change. In fact, the great unraveling has already begun.


[NationalJournal:]

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was not invited to speak at the annual CPAC conference this year because he broke with conservatives on key issues over the past year, according to American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas.

Cardenas, whose group organizes the conference, wrote in an e-mail to National Journal that while CPAC was “proud” to invite Christie last year based on his record of balancing the budget and taking on teachers unions, Christie’s record over the past year is far less conservative.

“CPAC is like the all-star game for professional athletes; you get invited when you have had an outstanding year,” Cardenas said. “Hopefully he will have another all-star year in the future, at which time we will be happy to extend an invitation. This is a conservative conference, not a Republican Party event.”


For those new to all this, CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference, a yearly convention that basically serves as the rightwing crackpot prom. It's a big, boiling pot of extremists of every stripe -- racists, anti-abortion zealots, homophobes, talk radio hosts, birthers, people who see Communists behind every potted palm, gun nuts, Islamophobes, etc. For obvious reasons, I tend to refer to it as the Crazy People's Action Conference -- and it is poised to set the effort to paint a kinder, friendlier face on the GOP back to square one, if not into negative territory.

If you need any evidence of that, look at the Christie story. Chris Christie, deservedly or undeservedly, is hands down the most popular Republican in America. There is no question. If you want to drag the GOP back into national relevance, you sit down, you shut up, and you listen to Christie. Yet CPAC believes he's not worth listening to, because he hasn't had "an outstanding year." 70% approval is not an "all-star year." He lambasted House Republicans for blocking disaster aid after Hurricane Sandy and now he's embracing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. The very things that make him popular with the general public make him unpopular with the hothouse lunatics at CPAC.

And the people who've had a great year, by CPAC's rigid and totally reality-proof standards? People like Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Allen West. Oh, and Mitt Romney. According to CPAC, Mitt Romney just had an excellent, all-star year.

Bashing the one remaining popular Republican in America is just the start. CPAC speakers will return to immigrant bashing, gay bashing, Muslim bashing, science bashing, Todd Akin-like War on Women frootloopery, accusations of Marxism toward Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular, painting the middle class as "freeloaders," Christian supremacism, etc. Seriously, just skim CPAC's history -- I'm not exaggerating in the least. And this year you can add gun control fearmongering. Believe me, it's just going to be worse. For Republicans looking to change the party's image in the public's eye, no good can come of CPAC. None at all.

The party can't change if the base doesn't change; since somewhere along the line, Republicans decided to lead by following. And the base is ready to listen to Frenzy McCrackpot tell them all about the coming dystopia, where gay atheists force Christians to have abortions in compliance with Sharia law, but they aren't interested in having Chris Christie tell them how to become popular and become a competitive party again.

Maybe Chris Christie could lead the GOP out of the wilderness and maybe he couldn't (personally, I think he's still leading by following, but at least he's following more people than just the 'bagger base). In any case one thing's for sure: the nuts at the Crazy People's Action Conference are dead set on leading the party deeper and deeper back into those dark woods.

-Wisco

[image via Bob Jagendorf]

Rep. Steve Stockman and the Attack of the Imaginary Robots

Louie Gohmert has been getting a run for his money recently. In the realm of stupid statements and clumsy demagoguery, Gohmert was once the undisputed king. Sure, Michele Bachmann mounted an impressive challenge, but when it comes to being congress's most clownish member, Louie always managed to stay one step ahead of Shelly. After being very nearly defeated in her last reelection bid, Bachmann's been kind of quiet lately, leaving Gohmert the crown of Top House GOP Buffoon.

But a new threat to Rep. Gohmert's dominance is rising. From his own Texas, another crazy/stupid Republican with a penchant for headline-grabbing is coming to America's attention. Steve Stockman clearly wants to be the Rep. who most sounds like any unhinged rightwing talk radio host -- and that might just unseat Gohmert from the jester's throne.

After all, it was Stockman who suggested the completely unconstitutional -- not to mention politically impossible -- idea of impeaching President Obama for advocating gun regulation. Granted, I've always argued that the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" was so broad it could mean almost anything congress wants it to mean, but there has to be something illegal to impeach over. You don't just kick a president out because you disagree with him.

And, of course, it was Stockman who invited celebrity rabies patient Ted Nugent to the State of the Union, actually hurting his cause by creating a side show that only made anti-regulation people look like gun nuts and distracted from other advocates who likely had much better arguments than Nugent's gratuitous strings of insults.

Now Stockman has reached a new low by accusing the president of lying about support for his gun regulation push. And his argument is both ridiculously stupid and transparently dishonest.


[The Hill:]

A Texas Republican on Monday said President Obama's gun control campaign is a fraud based on fake messages over Twitter.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) accused Obama of trying to make support for his position look stronger than it really is by flooding Twitter with messages from people who don't exist.

"Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," Stockman said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign."

Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.


He can't even keep his story straight; first, the President is flooding Twitter with a massive spam campaign, then it's a pathetic attempt resulting in only sixteen tweets to Stockman. Which is it?

But what I'm finding most idiotic hear is the assertion that messages with the same wording mean the message-senders aren't real. Here's a fun experiment you can try at home; go to the White House's gun control page, scroll down toward the bottom, click the button that reads, "Share on Twitter," then marvel as a new page magically opens, with the message "#NowIsTheTime to work together to reduce gun violence. RT if you agree. wh.gov/nowisthetime" all set to send. All you need to do is add "@SteveStockmanTX" to send it directly to him. Go ahead and click send to end the experiment.

Congrats, according to Steve Stockman, you've just turned into some kind of fake robot thing. Of course, Stockman doesn't seem to be releasing the actual wording of the robot tweets he's getting "spammed" with, meaning the press can't check his story -- which means he may not have anything at all.

But one thing I can guarantee with absolute certainty: if the White House bought Twitter accounts to launch a viral marketing campaign, they wouldn't buy just six twitter accounts to send spam ads from. In the grand scheme of things, that's nothing.

What may give Stockman the edge in his stupidity contest with Louie Gohmert may be his tremendous ego. Everything he's done so far has been a "look at me!" sort of thing. Gohmert makes up stupid reason to look at problems he wants to address (e.g., "terror babies"), but none of Stockman's stunts can accomplish anything -- other than getting his name in the papers.

Where Gohmert is dumb and clumsy, Stockman seems stupid and vain. It may be that the Dimmer Twins from the Lone Star State will have to share the crown of Congress's Biggest Boob until Steve comes up with a spectacularly idiotic stunt to knock it out of the park. It's hard to beat "terror babies," but that doesn't mean Stockman won't try.

-Wisco

[image source]

Note to GOP: When You Cheer on Sequestration, You Own It

I'd imagine that one of the many problems with being a Republican is that lying wears on your conscience. And even if you're a conscienceless sociopath, it rubs at your psyche. After all, you believe your views are correct, but you also know they're unpopular. You'd just feel so much better if everyone agreed with you. So every once in a while, you tell the truth -- just to test the waters. This almost never works out well for them. In the political world, a Republican telling the plain, unvarnished truth almost always comes across as a gaffe. When you're punished for telling the truth, you don't do it often.

So take a lookie here. It's a rare thing:


[Salt Lake Tribune:]

..."I’m for sequestration," [Sen. Orrin] Hatch said, if Congress can’t cut spending. "We’ve got to face the music now, or it will be much tougher later."

With across-the-board spending cuts set to kick in next week, Hatch said sequestration would lead to an economic disaster in Utah as two-thirds of civilians working at Hill Air Force Base would be furloughed. He said it would be "devastating to our nation’s readiness."


It's not a lot of work to unpack the argument here; it's pretty plain. Sequestration will be "devastating to our nation’s readiness" and "lead to an economic disaster" -- so hell yeah, let's do it! And he's not the only one. There's a pretty good list of examples of GOP truth-telling over at PoliticusUSA, but few are as clear about the consequences as Hatch's "we have to burn the village to save it" argument.

Republican leadership may be trying to wash their hands of sequestration by arguing it was the president's idea, but what the party members say shows that this sort of blame-laying is as irrelevant as it is dishonest -- the sequester will happen because a lot of Republicans want it to happen. When you say things like, "I'm for sequestration," while the president's saying we need to avoid it, you own it. It's yours.

Republicans are fixated on cutting spending in order to avoid raising taxes on the top 1%. But at this point any pretense of sound economic stewardship is out the window. Republicans like Hatch are arguing -- quite plainly and without shame -- that they're not just willing to see the economy go down in flames, but that they want it to go down in flames. Then they get the deep cuts they want and avoid raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires.

Follow their logic here: they've argued that raising taxes on the very wealthy would be bad for the economy. So their argument now is that they have to wreck the economy or raise taxes, which will wreck the economy. There is no continuity in their reasoning, which means that the things they say about taxes and the economy are an ever-evolving rationalization, not fact-based arguments. If they weren't, Republicans wouldn't wind up with contradictions like this. They aren't interested in the economy, they're interested in protecting the wealthy from taxation. The party that shrieks about elitism is firmly in the pocket of the actual elites.

And what does this say about the party of "patriots," wrapped in the flag, outraged that the Pledge of Allegiance isn't recited everywhere, every ten minutes, and shocked that the nation isn't covered in flag lapel pins? It says that their patriotism is as phony as you've always known. When you're arguing that we have to destroy the economy and hurt military readiness in order to protect a handful of very rich Americans from paying their fair share, you get to STFU about how patriotic you are. I mean, for chrissakes, Hatch admitted he was for harming America.

How much more clear do you need this to be? Republicans are not operating in the nation's interest, but in the interest of the elites. Who cares if you lose your job or your community cuts back on police and fire? What's really important is that a tiny cluster of very rich people don't see an increase in taxes -- an increase, by the way, that would affect their lifestyles not at all. They'd still have penthouse pools and private jets and watches that cost more than you make in a month. The very rich would still be very rich.

But serving the nation is not what that tiny gaggle of tycoons are paying the GOP to do. So that's not what the GOP is doing. They're actively crashing the economy, while shouting from the rooftops that they want to do it.

And they still say it'll all be President Obama's fault? That little pack of American aristocrats must've bought their pet party a huge, golden pair of balls.

-Wisco

[image sources Michael Jolley, benwatts ]

America's Current Mass-Murder Prevention Method -- Luck

As so often happens with mass killings in America, time moves on and a horrible crime is forgotten. Maybe it's that there are just so many that it's impossible to keep track of them all, maybe we mentally block it out to keep ourselves from realizing the entire country's a war zone, or maybe we're just so damned tired of it all that we just want to stop thinking about. For whatever reason, a racist 2012 shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma that left three black men dead and two wounded doesn't come up when we talk about mass killings in America. And that's a pity -- not only because the victims deserve to be remembered, but because the case is just so damned instructive. Especially when we look at what set off the gunmen -- Jake England and Alvin Watts -- on their rampage.


The Tulsa shooting spree took place around the second anniversary of England's father's shooting death. The man who shot his father is Pernell Demond Jefferson, who is black. England and Watts are described by authorities as white. England has Cherokee ancestry.

Jefferson is expected to stand trial for charges of attempted first-degree burglary and illegal possession of a firearm in connection with the incident. But he will not face murder charges because England's death was ruled a justifiable homicide by prosecutors under Oklahoma's "stand your ground" law.


So the "shoot first" legalized murder law is what started this whole thing. A "tough on crime" measure that -- like most "tough on crime" measures -- is simpleminded and poorly thought out and designed only to bring votes to fearmongers and demagogues, while selling guns for the special interests they represent. No one should be able to deliberately shoot and kill someone else, only to avoid trial in that killing. That's not how the justice system works. Self-defense is a legitimate and legal reason to commit homicide. If you killed someone because you had to, that should stand up in court. Instead, Oklahoma -- like too many states -- has this idiotic law that allows killers to just walk away, never resolving the issue or airing out the evidence. It just allows grudges to fester, fueled by the complete ignorance that comes from being denied a public hearing of the facts. I'm not excusing England or Watts, I'm just pointing out that Oklahoma's idiotic "stand your ground" law is more likely to make sick jerks like them even sicker. And it obviously made the community of Tulsa more dangerous, not safer.

But if "stand your ground" laws make people less safe, then a more recent case in Michigan proves that universal background checks increase public safety.


[NBC News:]

Federal agents are trying to determine how a suspected Ohio white supremacist with a felony conviction for manslaughter acquired a cache of 18 assault weapons and other firearms, along with high-capacity magazines and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition, according to federal law enforcement officials and court documents reviewed by NBC News.

The storehouse of weapons was discovered late last month when FBI agents arrested Richard Schmidt, 47, the owner of a Bowling Green sporting goods store called Spindletop Sports Zone, on charges of marketing counterfeit goods -- such as football jerseys with NFL logos -- from China.

Although initially portrayed as a probe into the thriving international market for counterfeit clothing, the case took a surprising turn this week when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland unsealed search warrants and an indictment also charging Schmidt with illegal possession of firearms.


So the FBI discovered a felon white supremacist with an arsenal of assault weapons through the rigorous law enforcement technique known by the highly technical term, "sh*t luck." If Schmidt hadn't been stupid enough to sell counterfeit goods from a storefront, he'd still be out walking around and he'd still be in possession of a private arsenal.

And what would did he want with all those guns anyway? A followup story tells us Schmidt "was tracking African American and Jewish leaders in the Detroit area" and that agents found "a notebook in which Schmidt had listed the names, addresses and other personal information of Detroit area community leaders."

"The FBI averted a catastrophe in this case, there’s no doubt about it," Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney in Cleveland, told NBC news.

The evidence points to another Tulsa was in the making -- or another Oak Creek, a recent racist shooting spree quickly fading from public memory. Schmidt's previous conviction was for "homicide after being convicted of killing a man and wounding two others in a shooting during a traffic stop," so he's not squeamish about using firearms to take lives. And he was in possession of "18 weapons that included AR-15 assault rifles, 9 mm Ruger and Sig Sauer pistols, shotguns, high-capacity magazines and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition." He was also in possession of body armor. The man was clearly planning on going to war.


Federal law does not require such checks for private sales or gun show purchases. Seventeen states have mandated them for handgun purchases at gun shows, though Ohio is not among them. Only six states require background checks for all firearms purchases.

A new study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research has found that 80 percent of those convicted of gun crimes acquire their weapons through private sales – making it virtually impossible for federal agents to trace where they come from or who is providing them.

“There’s no documentation required for private transactions. So whatever occurs in that zone is invisible to us,” Charles Houser, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va., said in an interview.


"Our current set of laws for how guns get out [in] the community has a lot of holes," Dettelbach told NBC. "It’s almost like Swiss cheese."

How long do you want to rely on "sh*t luck" and feel-good, but boneheaded and ineffective "shoot first" laws to prevent massacres? Because that was the only thing standing between Schmidt and the racist massacre he so clearly wanted to pull off. And what we're doing didn't work to prevent the other ones.

We need real prevention, not BS laws meant to frighten people into voting for charlatans.

-Wisco

[image sources Dept. of Justice, Flickr, Flickr]