This has been a repeated pattern for months now. The latest example is on the liberal leaning Daily Kos website, where today, a front page recommended “diary” piece asserted the following, ascribing ill motives to those they disagree with, simply by virtue of their disagreement:

Dear Michael Moore, Kucinich, Jane Hamsher, Howard Dean, Arianna, Adam Green, etc etc etc., other people who are looking out for number one at the expense of 31 million uninsured.

How is it that they are looking out for “number one”?

Theda Skocpol, Phd Harvard, Professor of Government and Sociology says Progresives need to undertsand the president is trying to lead. Progressives need to follow:  All Dems, including Progressives, Need to Back Obama on Health Reform.

Well, that settles it. Theda Skocpol (and others) say it, so those who don’t support it, can’t possibly disagree; so, therefore, they must be looking out for number one.

And, in a far right wing favorite (Al Gore is only interested in promoting climate change remediation because he has invested in green technologies, never mind that he has invested in green technologies because he believed in climate change remediation), as there is always something to gain by one’s position (even if that gain has to be make believe), FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher (emphasis added):

Is a film maker.  She is looking to make money off of going against the administration.

Of course. That’s why she opposes the bill. She can’t possibly think it’s a bad bill or anything like that.

It is amazing how the left often can’t seem to make any cohesive case beyond their own largely self reverberating choir against the right or far right. But then when it comes to their own, they sometimes sabotage each other viciously. It’ seems in some ways a perverse extension of the “no one can possibly see it another way” mentality, which is why they so often both fail to make a cohesive case against their political opponents, and fail to realize that they have or that they even need to. Because “no one can see it any other way.”

One a slightly more amusing note (or not) another front page recommended “diary” on the same popular Daily Kos website, at the very same time, pointed out how Sarah Palin used to cross the border to Canada to receive “socialized” medicine back before she and her husband had, well, better health care privileges.

On the other hand, some areas in Queensland,Australia, were particularly hard, as the entire population of the Southern Town of St. George may have to be evacuated due to flooding expected to be even worst than the regions last great flood 130 years earlier.

On yet another hand, there were daunting rescues of citizens imperiled by the rising waters occasioned by handcuffing one to a drainage grate?

In the Brisbane suburb of Algester, police say the 14-year-old autistic boy entered a drain that empties into a creek and walked 500 metres against the current to a grate at the other end.

Police say the boy spent almost an hour struggling against a torrent of water and could have drowned had they not handcuffed him to the grate.

Which seems to raise the question: Why not just help the boy get away from the grate in the first place?

Perhaps the handcuffing was a temporary measure until enough help could arrive and or the initial officers on the scene were able to fully stabilize the boy against the current sufficient to remove him from it. But it’s hard to tell.

Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.

As the original material source suggests (and reasonably, if one listens to the actual audio of the statement), it seems that Representative Trent Franks did not really mean the comment as racist, “paternalistic” or as an insult. But the statement is rather incredible, regardless.

Here’s guessing that “far more” if not all of the people who are “African American” prefer the “policies to today” to slavery, and that a lot of people, perhaps rightly so, would take great offense at Frank’s statement.

It’s easy to just scapegoat a group, and mix in a few wildly exaggerated and in most cases idiotic stereotypes that appeal to our deepest and most base emotions.  It’s the exact opposite of leadership. It’s cowardly, it’s insecure, it’s mean spirited. It’s ignorant.

At CPAC today, Tim Pawlenty went off an a really nasty rant about how liberals all sneer at conservatives for not having gone to Ivy League colleges and for not liking “brie and chablis.”

As this country moves further and further to the right, and– as we continue to have the opposite of our best and brightest, but the most gifted spinmeisters, seek to inform and lead our debate — misleading rhetoric continues to replace fact and understanding, America is beginning to slowly change. We are starting to enter the age of ignorance.

With all this information and misinformation abounding, in journals, magazines, books, universities, Internet sites galore, few can tell anymore what is spin and what is fact; with that which appeals to the lowest common denominator often rising to the top.  Like a shipwrecked crew in an ocean locked lifeboat, water all around yet dying from dehydration, our democracy — with information all around as misinformation continues to lead our national debates, is itself being threatened. From the inside.

For the record, Chablis is pretty lame. But we’re not liberals, so maybe we just don’t know — like 12 year school yard kid Pawlenty clearly does.  But this 12 year old prejudiced, ignorant, snob is a Governor of a state.

Maybe some Liberals can come off as a little elitist at times. Some, not understanding conservatives, sometimes do show disdain. It’s not helpful, and the disdain, with far more effective framing and messaging, is often shown right back.

But it’s idiotic, to bring brie and chablis into it. It’s not a metaphor. It’s a friggin’ cheese, and a crappy wine.  It’s the fallback for the weak, the lazy, the unthinking mind.  Exactly what Pawlenty seems to be insecure about being accused of, or, more likely, is trying to capitalize on, exploit, appeal to, foment,  in others.

Incidentally, Pawlenty graduated from one of the best law schools in the country.  He (theoretically) should know better. As should those putting up with this kind of lame reverse elitist snobbish contempt from the anti Chablis one time junior varsity Hockey Player.

One who, by the way, is considering a presidential run in 2008. No, not president of the local crass and lame divide and conquer stereotyping club; president of the United States.

A potential presidential candidate who — in addition to railing against any personal preferences for the easy targets of brie and chablis, picked an odd time to use a violence against Government metaphor:

Conservatives could learn a lot from Tiger Woods’ wife Elin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said at the Conservative Political Action Conference today.

“She said, I’ve had enough,” Pawlenty said. “We should take a page out of her playbook and take a 9-iron and smash the window out of big government.”

One day after one Andrew Joseph Stack, using an airplane as a missile, did just that.

Pawlenty, in this same CPAC speech, also rails against Liberals trying to take away freedoms, and how conservatives will “fight back.”

It’s not clear which freedoms he is talking about, since neither group has a full monopoly on taking away freedoms, but it seems conservatives have the clear if not lopsided edge here.

Yet clearly Pawlenty is not talking about the most basic freedoms of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, because once we “suspect you” of something, you have no more rights. Which defeats the ENTIRE purpose of having rights, in the first place. But that’s okay, just rail about protecting freedoms and at the same time rail against those laws and constitutional provisions that actually protect them, while blaming, of course, “Liberals” for everything once again. Classic rhetoric. The new fuel for America.

There are a few reasons for this, that seem transparent, and perhaps, others, more veiled.  We don’t know.

First, as documented frequently, this website is not a fan of the one time Pulitzer prize winning and now seemingly vacuous, vague, stereotpying, false balancing Dowd. Nor is this rather well researched, and written site here (by a former college roommate of Tommy Lee Jones, Eric Siegel, and Al Gore).  Although that is a decidedly liberal site, whereas Donkasaurus Post is decidedly neutral (with due note that in today’s world’s, the facts themselves, are decidedly not) a snapshot look as to the reasons why that site is also not a fan of Dowd’s, is illuminating.

And we know — or at least it seems — that Dowd’s site carefully monitors to protect her from overly critical assessments of her work.

And third, we imagine that despite the inanity, and borderline sexual indulgence of some of Dowd’s columns, the Times does not want to encourage links to what it must surely (and somewhat ironically), view as puerile meanderings.

Today, Dowd wrote yet another somewhat inane, fanciful column.  In it, she tried to make the point about extreme Cheney was. At the same time, she also played into some of Cheney’s arguments, and seemed to make the questionable assertion that Cheney had no right to criticize Obama’s approach to our “counter terrorism” efforts. (We refuse to use the idiotic “war on terror,” “war” “enemy combatants” or “battlefield,” all of which play right into these psychotic terrorist criminals recruitment and proselytizing efforts as something other than the simple, lowly, depraved common murderers that they are, and which they absolutely do not want to think of themselves as, or be perceived as.  Newt Gingrich doesn’t get this point either.)  And of course she played into the pure spin argument, while seemingly trying (ineffectively) to mock it, that Obama is “weak” on terrorism because he does not use five time military deferrer Cheney’s constant drumbeat of war rhetoric.

Thus, it was, that in response, the following comment was of course blocked from all fair readers potential considerations.  As submitted in comment form to the Dowd’s column today, unedited, unabridged, and unaltered from it’s original puerile fulsomeness:

Well, you hit a lot of stereotypes Maureen, and played into a lot of misleading framing, but did so in a ‘balanced’ way.

But were you just afraid it was going too far?

Or was there some other reason that you left out that in addition to being weak — and afraid to use the manly words “war” and “enemy combatants” even though this plays right into our lowly, common murderous psychotic enemy criminals’ hands (and recruitment) that they are in some sort of grander “war” and are instead the more noble “combatants” in a war — how in addition to being weak, Obama is also prejudiced?

How’d you miss this clearly also relevant nugget. Weak and prejudiced. What kind of leader is that?

If Obama won’t frequently and constantly use “architect against terrorism” Dick Cheney’s manly war words and make our enemies all goose bumply thereby, couldn’t he at least cease from being prejudiced against homosexual fish, also?

It seems fair to ask.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSrtMPIqoaY&feature=related

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/15/obama-calls-kanye-west-jackass/

http://donkasauruspost.com/2009/09/15/beck-half-correct-president-obama-is-prejudiced-after-all-hates-gay-fish/

Dick could have pointed that out too, in the above fireside chat, don’t you think?

I’m just askin.’

What a pity that the Times readers could not revel in the sophomoric-ness and juvenile-ness of it all, while reading about how Obama is “weak” on terrorism because he relies less upon grandiose sweeping battlefield phrasing, and how Obama should tell Cheney to be quiet because THAT emboldens our enemy. (When it seems to us that both are likely wrong. The only thing that emboldens our enemy is their irrational hatred of the U.S., and culturally psychotic approach to visualizing it, along with our turning them into something they are not. That is, combatants, rather than lowly murderous criminals, and playing up to them publicly in some big game of rhetoric, rather than quietly and powerfully framing the effort so as to lessen recruitment appeal, and finding, minimizing, and where applicable, wiping them out.)

Today, Dowd wrote a column in the NY Times very space limited op ed pages, essentially saying that 3d movies are cool, or might be cool, or that people like them, or some such. In response to the column, one of our 82,000 or so Deputy Editors happened to witness the posting of the following comment to Dowd’s post. In full:

Times’ op-eds have nothing better to cover than 3d movies??

Why don’t you write about this — good update to a NY times comment on the issue, too.

Or this.

Nah. Bring us movie talk on the oped page. Maybe Entertainment magazine’s editorial pages can cover the substantive stuff.

Who knows who monitors these, but the comment was blocked from readers’ gentle thought considerations. Unlike the one just below that makes a small fraction of the same point, while taking two ridiculous shots at President Obama for using a teleprompter (similar to essentially every other president ever since teleprompters have been in existence), and more. Or perhaps it was double reverse sophisticated satire, that few readers would ever get. We don’t know:

I wondered what compelling issues you would write about with the departure of the Bush administration. Movies, how fascinating! There is plenty of farce to be found in the Obama administration and the Democrat lead Congress. Tell us what you think about the teleprompter President please. No sarcasm needed, just the facts, and we can weep or laugh as prompted by his deeds.

The links from the blocked comment — the one that was too thoughtful to actually allow in examples by way of contrast — go to substantive pieces regarding critical issues that go to what our country is all about. Yawn, snooze, ready?:

One on a subject that has been occasionally covered; the undue influence of corporations now, in addition to everything else, upon our election process in the wake of the abysmal decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. (Some more analysis on Citizens that misses the point and paints a false paradox, with good commentary following).

The other on something that has not been very well covered; clandestine government infiltration into non governmental speech, influence and information activities, and its parallels to the anti Constitutional theories upon some of the Bush Administration’s unchecked and clandestine actions to set aside Congressional Statutes — and even potentially set aside provisions of the Bill of Rights — were based.

Maybe this stuff is too highfalutin for Dowd. Fair enough. But entertainment merging as news is not what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said the given the choice between newspapers and government itself, he should take newspapers. And it was not because of their official op ed page opinions on 3d movies.

But then again, this is the NY Times. It’s not like it’s a leading newspaper or anything. How could it be with op ed pieces like this?

But we’re not all for the blatant pattern of subjective misrepresentation that goes on, virtually unchecked, all over the Internet — including by sites that are routinely, well, cited.

In this Post, a Biggovernment.com writer starts blatantly spinning in the second sentence (emphasis added):

…basis of calls for extreme climate change regulation.

But it is in the title, and the very first sentence, where the piece starts of misleading, right off the bat.

The title: “Penn State’s ‘ClimateGate’ Inquiry Determines Further Investigation Is Needed.”

How is this misleading? Well, for one, it gives no indication of the more relevant fact that Mann was cleared of any wrongdoing in three of the four charges, and the only three that really matter, namely:

1. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to suppress or falsify data?

2. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions with the intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data, related to AR4, as suggested by Phil Jones?

3. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any misuse of privileged or confidential information available to you in your capacity as an academic scholar?

Which charge was Mann not yet cleared on?

4. Did you engage in, or participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously
deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research or other scholarly activities?

Notice the difference between “conceal, destroy, misuse, falsify (No.’s 1-3) and “seriously deviating from accepted ‘practices’ within the academic community” (No.4) — along with how subjective that latter standard might be. It’s not unethical; it is prima facie evidence, if in fact it is found to have been the case, of having made an academic mistake. Sometimes going outside of such practices may even be a good thing. (We are not suggesting that this is necessarily the case here, just pointing out the subjective, and somewhat insignificant nature of this charge.)

Mann has been accused of all kinds of things, including some very serious allegations made round the Internet in striking and very public and repeated fashion (including at Biggovernment.com.) To come out with a headline that reads “Inquiry Determines Further Investigation Is Needed” in light of these facts, and the actual findings, is being purposefully misleading.

The very first sentence to the piece is also misleading:

In looking at four “possible allegations” of research misconduct against meteorology professor Michael Mann, a Penn State University panel has determined that further investigation is warranted for one of them

People have short attention spans, the most relevant points are put first (except here at Donkasaurus Post, were we expect you to be bored before you have even gotten past the title.) Only at the end of a long sentence is it noted that further investigation is warranted for “one” of them, meaning, by exclusion, not the other three. But there is no mention that Mann was exonerated on all three of the first three allegations. Or what they were, in comparison to the “fourth charge.”

No mention in the second paragraph either. Or the third. Or the fourth. But what is mentioned in the fourth paragraph, instead?

I suspect panel members are secretly hoping someone else will shoulder responsibility for determining Mann’s guilt or innocence.

Note: “Mann’s guilt or innocence.” And his guilt or innocence over what, exactly? This article has never told the reader, who is only informed by finding allusion to it, buried deep in the recital of the official press release that is included as part of the piece, finally.: That is, his “guilt” or “innocence” as to having “engaged in practices that seriously deviate from accepted practices.” (Note also that the sentence strongly implies that the panel came to no decisions whatsoever, although it is true that the first sentence does somewhat implicitly contradict this.)

For a site that is presumably concerned with “Big Government,” that sounds more than a bit “Big Brotherish.” But it’s probably not intended as such; but instead, only as much spin as can be gotten away with, to make it seem like the gap between the intense hype and heavy accusations against Mann that reverberated around the Internet and even into the mainstream media, and what Mann actually did, is not nearly as large, as in fact, it is.

As long as we are using the terms “guilt or innocence” completely inappropriately; on charges of blatantly misleading its readers, Biggovernment.com is found guilty by this panel, of the charges leveled against it…

..Namely, we’ll bury deep down in the repeated press release, of “seriously misleading its readers.” Unfortunately, “seriously misleading its readers,” is not a very big deviation from “accepted practices.”

And that is the problem, in America, today.

Obama makes a point about the Supreme Court. A good point, too, since it will be impossible to disentangle the pure nationality of many large corporations today. And coming on the heels of what is probably one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of the United States. And suddenly, to some on the far right, it’s a hateful,”fomenting” attack.

By this standard, whereby Obama simply impugned the decision of the Court itself, what would one call what has been said by many leaders of the far right wing against Obama?  Rape and pillage?  That may still not do justice to the disparity between what the far right has said about Obama, and getting upset at Obama for publicly disagreeing with, and calling out a decision that he (for the most part correctly) claims overturns decades of law, and even more precedent, in this country.

Here’s the real issue, and it’s one of substance, not of attacks.  (But turning it into this once again anti-Obama game is a way to avoid the substance):

Was Citizens United v.  the Federal Election Commission a good decision or not?

Corporations can now spend unfettered amounts on behalf of candidates for public office. Corporations are not individuals, but represent an amalgamation of individuals, organized into what is purely a legal, in many ways fictional entity, with a decided and usually very solitary goal — normally the pursuit of profits in its field.  Now, suddenly, money expended — which directly correlates the ability to acquire money, and the money so acquired, with the ability to directly influence the outcome of elections — can be spent by body-less legal entities that have almost none of the responsibilities of an actual human being.

Body-less legal entities who nevertheless now, under this bizarre, and extremely ill founded Supreme Court decision, will have not just the same free speech rights as individuals, but in some ways even more “right,” or at least practical ability — as a corporation’s ability to make money is often unlimited. In fact, such ability is in most cases, a corporation’s sole purpose.

This is not bad, normally, but it is when radically right wing Supreme Courts (four far right wing Justices, four moderate to liberals, and one conservative who in this ruling made a mistake) decide that this is also unfettered free speech, as well; and that the battle for the greatest direct influence upon our elections should be between corporations and individuals, not between  individuals as members of corporations or not, and between those corporations, yet again still, with the most money.

There is already too large of an influence of money upon the integrity of our larger elections, and invariably, on the part of those who hold office. The Supreme Court, voluntarily, through a terribly reasoned opinion, just made it a lot worse; and, in some ways, much more direct. If advertisements didn’t work, our economy wouldn’t revolve around them.  It’s little different for politics.  Only now, its body-less, sometimes even border-less, often for profit, corporate entities, doing the advertising. Sometimes, with it not even being openly acknowledge or recognized as such.

She’s a bit off on the numbers, too.

As noted here, by actual blogger Tbogg (not to be confused with “Tbow” who is Donkey Joel – Here might be the most ignorant and presumptuous media post ever — Achenbach’s “man“):

Megan McArdle – neither economist nor historian:

But the last two recessions were characterized by lingering unemployment–the infamous “jobless recovery” under Clinton and Bush.

Reality:

When Clinton was in the White House, the economy generated 17.6 million jobs during the corresponding period — from January 1993 to December 1998.

Bites:

The Unemployment Rate Was 4.2 Percent in 1999 — the Lowest Since 1969. The unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in December bringing the average unemployment rate for 1999 to 4.2 percent — the lowest since 1969. The unemployment rate has fallen for seven years in a row. It has remained below 5 percent for 30 months in a row. For women the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent — the lowest since 1953.

Obviously unemployment is not understood by those who should be unemployed.

A professor weights in on McArdle, on another occasion:

But the punchline for this story is that Megan McArdle in fact knows very little — not nothing, but not much either.

Which brings me back to my headline.  I don’t read McArdle much because I know she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and the glibness of her ignorance and the infantile quality of her ideology … piss me off.

Well, at least, for a person who claims to be an economics expert, McArdle knows her unemployment facts.

Not exactly: