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Christian evangelist Franklin Graham’s unkind words for Islam spurred some typical abuse last week from rabid leftist radio host Mike Malloy, the former CNN employee. As usual, on Thursday, Malloy wanted his hate object to commit suicide:
MALLOY: Somebody ought to lock this guy up and give him a bag of cocaine and just let him blow his own brains out. He really, I mean…it’s common knowledge that Franklin Graham is a cokehead of the worst kind…
Kind of like George W. Bush; look what happened to George W. Bush; Bush became this delusional, dry-drunk God talked to him, told him to invade countries…Jesus!
So Franklin Graham, apparently God told him to bust up on Muslims and continue to agitate and irritate a billion people on, um the planet; but now Franklin Graham is warning the President of the United States you’re going to lose a millions of evangelical votes…Yes you are! (sighs)
He said, uh, because he was denied entry into the Pentagon, which Obama has nothing to do with. But Graham is a coke freak; he is, uh, an ex-junkie, and that means his head is planted wherever he needs to be in order to find a line or two…
Malloy had also ranted against Franklin Graham on Wednesday’s program:
MALLOY: Now you’re thinking, Franklin! Every once in a while when you’ve done too much coke, a thought will get through, a real thought! In the interview in USA Today, Franklin also renewed his criticism of Islam, saying Muslims do not worship the same God the father I worship; uh, yes they do; but oh, oh the father thing in there…I see, OK.
Well, actually Franklin, you coked-out freak — uh, Jews and Christians and Muslims all worship the same god. That’s why you people are out of your goddamn minds because you’re always killing each other! He took a swipe at Hinduism, saying – now get this. Now tell me this guy is not drugged out of his mind. Tell me this is not someone whose brain has been burned into a cinder from too much coke. ‘No elephant with 100 arms can do anything for me!’
On the April 22 Larry King Live on CNN, which was rebroadcast on Saturday, magician and comedian Penn Jillette – who is a self-described libertarian – challenged assertions by actress Rachael Harris that the Tea Party movement is motivated by "racism" against President Barack Obama. Jillette: "Well, that’s the magic word. Once you say ‘racism,’ the other side loses automatically. And I don’t think we have very much evidence that that’s what it is. Don’t they have to be doing racist things besides you just saying that they’re racist?"
Harris cited the racial makeup of the Tea Party movement as evidence of its racist motivation: "No, but they’re looking at the number of people that are in, like, the majority of the people that are in the Tea Party," leading Jillette to respond: "So the race that they are makes them racist by definition?"
After Harris and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane joked for a moment that they had gotten together and created the movement, Jillette and Harris continued their debate over whether Tea Party members were motivated by racism:
RACHAEL HARRIS: Yes, but I think it’s very anti-Obama. You know, it’s very, like, it’s-
PENN JILLETTE: But there are groups that were anti-Bush, too. I was really anti-Bush.
HARRIS: Yes.
JILLETTE: And yet no one called me racist.
HARRIS: Well, that’s right, but Bush wasn’t the first black President either.
JILLETTE: So once he’s the first black President, if you’re against him, you’re a racist?
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Thursday, April 22, Larry King Live on CNN, which was repeated on the Saturday, May 8 show:
LARRY KING: Tea party movement. Are you going to make fun of it yet?
SETH MACFARLANE, CREATOR OF FAMILY GUY: I think it kind of does that on its own. I-
KING: It is what it is?
MACFARLANE: Yeah. You know, the Tea Party movement is, I always have a problem with people who say, "You know what, it’s not the Republicans, it’s the Democrats, it’s all politicians. They’re all the problem." And I don’t think, in this case, that’s true. I think you had one party that actually was trying to affect change, particularly this health care bill. You had 60 percent of the people in this country who wanted a public option. It was ignored.
KING: So you’re saying it’s right-wing Republicans?
MACFARLANE: And another side that filibustered everything that stands to lose big if Obama does anything right or anything productive. And I think, in a lot of cases, it’s just kind of laziness when it comes to knowing the facts and knowing what’s really going on out there.
KING: What do you think of the Tea Party?
PENN JILLETTE, MAGICIAN AND COMEDIAN: I, there’s a lot I disagree with them on, and I’m not really part of it, but I always think that a distrust of the government is the healthiest thing Americans can have. I think that the country was built, the most American thing you can have is a distrust of leaders. Don’t follow leaders, watch your parking meters.
KING: Rachael?
RACHAEL HARRIS, ACTRESS AND COMEDIAN: Yeah, well, I don’t completely share the same opinion with Penn. I feel like the Tea Party group in particular isn’t really, I mean, they can sort of mask themselves as saying that it’s about taxes and it’s about all these other issues. But I really find it to be sort of this upper middle class white-run organization that’s not really, that’s not really about affecting change. It’s about this sort of, I do tend to think it’s more-
KING: Class?
HARRIS: I wouldn’t say class, I do think it’s more about racism as opposed to being a really political-
JILLETTE: Well, that’s the magic word. Once you say "racism," the other side loses automatically. And I don’t think we have very much evidence that that’s what it is. Don’t they have to be doing racist things besides you just saying that they’re racist?
HARRIS: No, but they’re looking at the number of people that are in, like, the majority of the people that are in the Tea Party-
JILLETTE: So the race that they are makes them racist by definition?
HARRIS: Well, no, I don’t think the race that they are by nature makes them-
MACFARLANE: If you want to, like, if you want to legitimatize them for a moment, you know, some of their gripes are legitimate. The average American has not had a pay raise adjusted for inflation since 1973 while guys like us have gotten richer and richer-
JILLETTE: ‘73? I was making like $4 an hour.
MACFARLANE: But the problem is, they’re misdirecting it. It’s always been fascinating to me that they, that groups like this will direct their anger at the left. And you know, I think it’s, it should be noted that-
KING: Because they’re not getting mad at the right?
MACFARLANE: Yeah. Well, did you have-
JILLETTE: They’re pretty mad at the right.
MACFARLANE: -the $100 million or $1 billion Koch family that funds FreedomWorks, which supports the Tea Party. They benefit by getting these guys riled up about this guy who’s trying to affect health reform as opposed to getting mad at the rich guys themselves.
JILLETTE: But is it, is it rich people telling them what to do or is it white people-
MACFARLANE: I think it’s a little bit of puppeteering, yeah.
JILLETTE: Which one is it? Are they a racist organization or are they a puppet organization?
HARRIS: Well, when Seth and I got together and created the Tea Party-
JILLETTE: Okay, that’s what I’m wondering. That’s what I’m wondering. Which is it?
HARRIS: We had a big, yeah.
KING: It’s finally come out now.
HARRIS: Right, exactly.
JILLETTE: It might also be people who have different opinions that you, that have different opinions than me. That’s possible, too.
MACFARLANE: It was supposed to be a stitchery group.
HARRIS: Yes, but I think it’s very anti-Obama. You know, it’s very, like, it’s-
JILLETTE: But there are groups that were anti-Bush, too. I was really anti-Bush.
HARRIS: Yes.
JILLETTE: And yet no one called me racist.
HARRIS: Well, that’s right, but Bush wasn’t the first black President either.
JILLETTE: So once he’s the first black President, if you’re against him, you’re a racist?
HARRIS: No, I’m not saying that, but I do think if you (END OF SENTENCE DIFFICULT TO HEAR)
While many on the right expressed concern for the media’s sympathetic treatment of Times Square car bomber Faisal Shahzad, New York Times columnist Frank Rich is far more worried about how MSNBC couldn’t take its cameras off the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to even mention what was happening in the Big Apple.
According to Rich, as he was watching the festivities on that gross caricature of a news outlet, the attempted bombing "didn’t even merit a mention on a crawl."
"MSNBC was instead busy covering the correspondents dinner itself, so we could feast on journalists schmoozing with mostly B-list show business folk — and sometimes C-list, as in Kim Kardashian," he wrote Sunday.
And that was just the beginning of his criticism:
That MSNBC couldn’t be bothered to interrupt its two-hour coverage of these festivities to report on the attempted bombing was particularly embarrassing, given that the network’s headquarters are just blocks from Times Square. If NBC journalists in the Washington Hilton ballroom were too busy gawking at Justin Bieber to pounce on the bulletins moving through the BlackBerry-and-Twittersphere, you’d think someone back in New York would.
Apparently little short of King Kong climbing up 30 Rock could have grabbed the network’s attention. When MSNBC did take a brief break from the dinner for news updates at 9:30, Times Square didn’t make the cut. Whether this was due to ignorance, ineptitude or an unwillingness to play party pooper is a distinction without a difference. Real-time coverage of Leno bombing (since when is that news?) mattered more than any actual bombs. Only as the dinner wound down, at 10:54, did MSNBC at last muster a "breaking news" bulletin about the Times Square story that had in fact been breaking for hours. Even then, we were told that NBC News couldn’t independently confirm the facts MSNBC was recycling from Reuters.
A liberal bashing MSNBC. Fascinating.
Yet Rich didn’t only go after that joke of a cable news network. He also bashed all the journalists in attendance who also felt the affair was more important than a possible terrorist attack:
As we venerate the heroic street vendors who gave America its reality check last weekend, we should remember that they were the first to report what was happening in Times Square and that those covering and attending the White House Correspondents Dinner were the last.
Well, Frank, a journalist has to have his priorities.
Most economists are not susceptible to partisanship in their work, a new scholarly study finds. But anyone who reads Paul Krugman’s columns in the New York Times will hardly be surprised to learn he is a glaring exception to the study’s findings.
He consistently changes his fiscal views depending on the party in power.
"Krugman has changed his tune in a significant way regarding the budget deficit when the White House has changed party," found Brett Barkley, an economics student at George Mason University. The study, published in Econ Journal Watch, a peer reviewed journal, examined statements from 17 economists from 1981 through 2009, and gauged the consistency of their stances on deficit spending and reduction during Republican and Democratic administrations.
According to the study, Krugman was the only economist of the 17 to "significantly" change his stance on the federal budget deficit for partisan reasons.
Barkley wrote,
Large budget deficits represent a burden on the future, and debt accumulation eventually poses great problems. Economists writing for the public can either highlight such truths, neglect the issue, or try to allay worries or excuse or justify large budget deficits (as anti-recession policy, for example). Economists affiliated or aligned with one of the parties may be suspected of changing their positions on budgets deficits to serve their favored party or win favor with its constituency.
Krugman "explicitly supported deficit reduction in the 1990s and early 2000s under Republican administrations," the study found, "then changed his view once Clinton entered office in 1993 and the Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006."
This study lends academic weight to a theory anyone who consistently reads Krugman’s work has no doubt already postulated. In his never-ending quest to score political points for the left, Krugman has even gone so far as to contradict his own findings to bash Republican politicians.
Revealingly, the only other economist who the study found had more than a "minor" partisan bent to his work — though his "moderate" partisanship is less severe than Krugman’s — was Alan Blinder, another liberal.
Blinder, who worked in the Clinton administration and on the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, "consistently supported deficit spending that resulted from Democratic policies and criticized deficit spending that resulted from Republican policy," according to the study.
People always ask me if the media’s liberal bias is caused by ideology or ignorance.
My answer is "Both."
Exhibit A: Cynthia Tucker, the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, actually believes Republicans controlled Congress in 2007.
Appearing on this weekend’s syndicated program "The Chris Matthews Show," Tucker said the following after the host asked her why neither political party, including the current president, seems to be able to do anything concerning immigration (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Cynthia, why didn’t even the shock factor of Arizona, where we saw what draconian measures would be followed, which will lead to some kind of profiling, even that hasn’t gotten the grownups, the Democrats and Republican leaders of this country, even the President, to step forward and say, "Here’s a compromise: we’ll get tough on enforcement, tough on employment, but there’s a chance here for people who live here to become Americans." Even with the perfect solution, nobody’s moving.
CYNTHIA TUCKER, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Well Chris, remember that we had almost this exact same package of compromises three years ago when George Bush was president, Republicans dominated in Congress, and the economy was much better then than it is now. If they couldn’t get it done then, it’s unlikely they’re going to be able to get it done now, because people are so uncomfortable with demographic change. I’m not going to blame that all on the Republicans. There are many people broadly who are uncomfortable with it.
Um, Cynthia: aren’t you forgetting that the Democrats took back Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, and that Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) became the Speaker of the House in January 2007 at the same time Harry Reid (D-Nev.) became Senate Majority Leader?
Apparently so.
A little less surprising: nobody corrected her.
I guess liberal media members are allowed to say anything they want when there isn’t a conservative on the set.
And don’t give me Kathleen Parker, because she’s about as conservative as New York Times columnist David Brooks.
With that in mind, this program once again demonstrated exactly why these talk shows are an affront to the senses when there isn’t at least one real conservative present.
“This is a damn outrage,” a disgusted David Brooks, the faux conservative columnist for the New York Times, declared on Sunday’s Meet the Press reacting to Republican Senator Bob Bennett’s loss Saturday at Utah’s Republican convention which chose two others to compete in a June primary for the seat. Brooks fretted he was punished for being “a good conservative who was trying to get things done” by “bravely” working with Democrats on health care and supporting TARP. “Now,” he repeated, “he’s losing his career over that. And it’s just a damn outrage.”
Sitting beside Brooks on NBC’s roundtable, liberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr,. a former New York Times correspondent, saw “almost a non-violent coup because they denied the sitting Senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot.”
Over on Fox News Sunday, NPR’s Juan Williams expressed exasperation: “This is evidence of how the American political center is losing, on the right wing of the party a guy like Bob Bennett, who is a right-wing conservative, is being driven out because he’s not sufficiently conservative?”
ABC’s Jake Tapper brought Rudy Giuliani aboard This Week to address the handling of the Times Square botched bomber, but wouldn’t let him go before bringing up Bennett’s defeat as proof of an intolerant GOP: “Are you worried at all that the Republican Party is not only growing more hostile to more liberal to moderate Republicans such as yourself, but also conservative Republicans who are shown to, at least shown an ability to work with Democrats?”
Later, during the roundtable, George Will answered the presumption Bennett was the victim of an ideological purity test:
This is an anti-Washington year. How do you get more Washington than a three-term Senator who occupies the seat once held by his father, a four-term Senator, who before that worked on the Senate staff and then as a lobbyist in Washington? He’s a wonderful man and a terrific Senator. But the fact is, he’s going against terrific head-winds this year and he cast three votes: TARP, stimulus and an individual mandate for health care. Now, you might like one, two or all three of those, but being opposed to them is not outside the mainstream of American political argument.
Brooks admired those very votes from Bennett, hailing the Wyden-Bennett health plan as “a substantive, serious bill, a bipartisan bill, with strong conservative and some liberal support. So he did something sort of brave by working with Democrats which more Senators should do and now they’ve been sent a message to him don’t do that.”
As if this would convince conservatives, Dionne pointed to how “you just had an election in Britain where David Cameron, the conservative, almost got a majority by saying we need to de-toxicfy, take the rough edges off conservatism, appeal to a broader constituency.” But he didn’t get a majority with that approach!
From the May 9 Meet the Press:
DAVID BROOKS: This is a damn outrage, to be honest. This is a guy who was a good Senator and he was a good Senator and a good conservative, but a good conservative who was trying to get things done. The Wyden-Bennett bill, which he co-sponsored — if you took the health care economists in the country, they would probably be for that bill, ideally. It was a substantive, serious bill, a bipartisan bill, with strong conservative and some liberal support. So he did something sort of brave by working with Democrats which more Senators should do and now they’ve been sent a message to him don’t do that.
The second thing is the TARP. Nobody liked the TARP. But we were in a complete economic meltdown and sometimes you have to do terrible things. And we’re in a much better economic place because of the TARP. So he bravely cast a vote that nobody wanted to really cast and now he’s losing his career over that. And it’s just a damn outrage.
E.J. DIONNE: I agree with David on this. And I think that something’s happening inside the Republican Party that I think in the long run won’t be good for the Republican Party. You just had an election in Britain where David Cameron, the conservative, almost got a majority by saying we need to de-toxicfy, take the rough edges off conservatism, appeal to a broader constituency. And here you have a state party convention, by the way, not a primary. It’s almost a non-violent coup because they denied the sitting Senator even a chance of getting on the primary ballot. And I think the party in the long run risks a backlash among voters who may not be liberal at all, but don’t like this kind of politics.
And before people on the right crow too much about this, it is a party convention in Utah. I would imagine the left would win a party convention on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. So let’s not, sort of, make this into a bigger thing than it is. But it is a big deal to dump somebody like Bob Bennett.
From Fox News Sunday:
JUAN WILLIAMS: This is evidence of how the American political center is losing, on the right wing of the party a guy like Bob Bennett, who is a right-wing conservative, is being driven out because he’s not sufficiently conservative?…If I lived in Utah, I’m going to give up Bob Bennett and his seniority and connections?
BILL KRISTOL: Why do you need the seniority? To bring the pork home?
WILLIAMS: To bring the pork home?
KRISTOL: That’s worked well over the last several years.
WILLIAMS: Oh, so you’d sit here and say, “oh TARP was terrible, bailouts were terrible,” even though we saved ourselves from depression? That’s rational? That’s good, inspired caring about America?
Time’s Jay Newton-Small writes that Democrats are in search of a Republican to help them carry the load of "comprehensive immigration reform" (amnesty). But with deportations on the rise, she also claimed that Team Obama is relentlessly conservative on immigration:
In fact, the Obama Administration has gone so far to the right on enforcement that some immigrant rights groups, already peeved at the lack of action on comprehensive immigration reform, are calling for a boycott the 2010 elections. It is a powerful threat.
No one in this Time piece is on the "left" — typically, the left in this story is badly disguised as "immigrants rights groups" and "Latino advocates." But Newton-Small cites them to insist that conservative Republicans are in more danger than liberal Democrats:
But if the immediate danger is to Democrats seeking Hispanic votes this November, the longer-term danger is to Republicans if they’re perceived as blocking the legislation. The Arizona law, authored and passed by a Republican-controlled legislature and a Republican governor — means that the GOP starts this cycle with a black eye with the Hispanic community."There’s a great deal of pressure in the Republican Party to address it and once and for all move it off the table so they can start repairing their relationship with the Latino community," says Clarissa Martinez de Castro, director of immigration and national campaigns at the National Council of La Raza, one of the country’s largest Hispanic advocacy groups. "Not doing so sets them on a suicidal course going into a presidential election."
Before the media hoopla begins in a few hours for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, let me squeeze in a quick look at the flavor Sunday night’s fawning 60 Minutes profile of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which, after some questions about the Time Square botched bomber, framed her job around the challenge of fixing a world abused by George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, a situation exacerbated by U.S. debt. Picking up from her initial rejection of the position, Scott Pelley asserted:
Now she’s gone from “not interested” to an all-consuming global campaign in a time when the U.S. is the biggest debtor in the world, fighting two wars, and accused of abandoning its ideals to the struggle with terrorism….Right away, she found that America is in a crisis of credibility.
Pelley soon proceeded to how “she doesn’t let anyone work harder” and “she’s the only person in American politics with global star power close to” that held by Barack Obama:
Many back in Washington have more foreign policy experience than Clinton, but she doesn’t let anyone work harder. The Afghan trip was typically brutal. She spent 27 hours on the ground, had countless meetings, plus interviews and speeches. And then, on departure, she stopped to see the troops.
This is exactly what the President got in return for swallowing the bitterness of the campaign and reaching out to Clinton. She’s the only person in American politics with global star power close to his own. She can pack a room anywhere. A few Secretaries of State have been famous; none has been a first name celebrity like Hillary.
From ABCNews.com reported moments ago:
President Obama has selected Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press.
If her nomination is approved by the Senate, Kagen would fill the seat left open by the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens and become the fourth woman ever to sit on the nation’s highest court.
Kagan is considered one of the finest legal scholars in the country, dazzling both fellow liberal and conservative friends with her intellectual and analytical prowess but also her ability to find consensus among ideological opposites.
Kagan serves as the solicitor general arguing the administration’s position at the Supreme Court, as well as supervising the handling of litigation in federal appellate courts.
Read the entire piece for more of her background.
href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Supreme_Court/elena-kagan-president-obama-supreme-court-nominee/story?id=7541402">
