GLIMMERS: Feeling down after Up With Chris Hayes!

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

Part 3—Lacking a glimmer of hope: President Obama was right!

Being a great uncle is very hard work, as we learned in Durham last weekend. Between the soccer, the books and and the hand-clapping games, there’s little time for anything else.

If you want to follow the news, you’ll be getting the news in mere glimpses and glimmers.

That said, we got the chance to watch a bit of the new cable show, Up With Chris Hayes, as we lounged in our flawless Super 8 suite before our duties started last Saturday. At that time of day, we would normally be at our local bagel joint, plowing through the Saturday Post.

Briefly freed by a great uncle's schedule, we were eager to catch a glimpse of Hayes’ new program.

Alas! Despite the program’s name, the analysts’ faces fell as Hayes led a discussion about last week’s number-one dumb discussion. Quite correctly, Hayes started by rolling his eyes at this ludicrous flap—a flap which grew from Hilary Rosen’s snide remark concerning Ann Romney’s history as a stay-at-home mom.

There’s no doubt about it! A pile of faux outrage was put on display as folk discussed this topic last week. The analysts agreed with Hayes’s remarks as he opened the segment:

HAYES (4/14/12): You have probably heard by now, whether directly or through osmosis, all the faux outrage on the campaign trail this week about Ann Romney and her role as a stay-at-home mom. The manufactured controversy was prompted by a stray comment on CNN made by an analyst who was in no way affiliated officially with the Obama campaign.

To watch this full segment, click here.

To be truthful, Hayes’ cable channel is deeply involved in the manufacture of faux controversy too. How many times will they play the tape of Romney’s remark about Michigan’s trees, while suggesting that we can draw some meaning from this pointless jest? But when nonsense is churned by Big Ed or Lawrence, that isn’t Hayes’ fault or doing. And last week’s flap about Rosen’s comment truly was manufactured, faux—largely because, as Hayes pointed out, Rosen spoke for no one but herself when she made her snide, fleeting remark.

Unfortunately, Hayes was soon off in the tribal weeds and the analysts’ faces fell. Hayes is plainly smarter, and better informed, than many players on his channel. For that reason, the analysts teared up, then openly cried, as his tribal devotion overwhelmed his smarts and good sense:

HAYES (continuing directly): But the theatrics obscure a much deeper and more fundamental problem with the way our government and society values the work of women, either inside the home or out.

When Mitt Romney responded to the controversy in a speech to the NRA Friday, he said, quote, “I happen to believe that all moms are working moms”—all moms are working moms. But that hasn’t always been the tune of Republicans on this issue. An entire massive sea change in federal policy, the welfare reform act of 1996, was predicated on the fundamental notion that mothers on welfare needed to get out of the home and go to work and that staying at home and caring for their children did not count as “work.” In fact, as recently as this year, Mitt Romney himself campaigned on the proposition that meaningful welfare reform should require parents with children to get out of the home and into the work force.

At this point, Hayes played tape of Romney praising “the idea that people who are receiving assistance, welfare assistance, have a responsibility of working.” In his remarks, Romney said that he wanted such individuals “to have the dignity of work.”

“This really angers me, it genuinely angers me,” Hayes now said. “...It seems to me there’s a double standard in what we call ‘work’”

By now, the analysts were bawling. Here’s why:

Let’s start with the way Hayes framed this discussion—a discussion which had him genuinely angry. Hayes told his channel’s liberal viewers that Republicans haven’t always sung the same (semantic) tune on this score. He quickly cited the welfare reform act of 1996 as part of his evidence.

But the welfare reform act of 1996 passed with considerable Democratic support. A fellow named Clinton signed the bill, and 25 Democratic senators voted aye. (21 voted no.) The aye votes included such well-known persons as Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, John Kerry, Harry Reid. (Also voting aye: Byrd, Harkin, Levin, Mikulski, Rockefeller, Wyden.)

In the House, Democrats split their votes, 98-98. Voting aye were the following players, a group which included six future senators and a serious White House candidate. (Cardin, DeFazio, Dicks, Dingell, Durbin, Fazio, Frost, Hamilton, Hoyer, Johnston, Kanjorski, Kaptur, Lincoln, Lowey, Meehan, Murtha, Reed, Richardson, Torricelli.)

Democrats have often talked about work the same way Romney does! But so what? Quite quickly, Hayes was in the semantic weeds, quoting the Mittster as he praised "the dignity of work." But whatever you think of the welfare reform—whatever you think of the logic and values behind it; whatever you think of its semantics—this is not a Republican manifestation, except in the tribalized fields MSNBC now likes to plow.

Hayes was soon far off in the semantic weeds. He savaged Romney for alleged semantic inconsistency—alleged inconsistency which has also been voiced by major Democrats down through the years. And then, omigod! He threw to Princeton’s Betsey Stevenson, who punished the world with the following consummate nonsense:

STEVENSON: So it’s a “bad mom, good mom” double standard and I mean that’s the subtext of it and that’s what’s so galling. You know, for poor moms, for single moms, the idea is, “You know what? Your kids are going to be better off in day care because you’re just not that good of a mom. And so you should go to work.” Now, if you’re a rich mom—rich married mom—you’re a good mom. We want you to stay home so in fact we’re going to subsidize that through the tax code.

Good God. With apologies to Paul Krugman, it’s impossible to be that dumb unless you’re a Princeton professor! We were surprised by Hayes’ failure to impose some basic sense on this utterly foolish discussion—a discussion which was extremely foolish no matter what you think about the logic of “welfare reform.”

Earth to tribe: Overwhelmingly, voters will understand the logic of this type of “welfare reform” in a very different way. Rightly or wrongly, they will draw a very basic distinction between stay-at-home mothers who are supported by public assistance (welfare) and stay-at-home mothers who aren’t. In this context, when Romney (and many Democrats) discuss “the dignity of work,” they are referring to “the dignity of supporting yourself and your family through your own earnings.”

Whatever you may think of this type of “welfare reform,” the wide range of voters will understand the logic of Romney’s remarks in that way. When liberals parse his remarks as Stevenson did, they are simply begging for obliteration at the polls. We were stunned to see a smart person like Hayes let this foolish discussion proceed without the slightest attempt to introduce the planet’s most obvious points of clarification.

It’s fine with us if Hayes is angry about this type of welfare reform. (Although you’ll never see his channel’s more famous “liberals” stoop to such a boring discussion.) Many people hotly opposed the 1996 bill, including the editorial boards of both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

If Hayes thinks this legislation was unwise, that’s fine with us. We'd love to see a discussion, minus the work of the clowns.

But the semantics and logic displayed by Romney are those of many Democrats. Presumably, this would include a fellow named Barack Obama. Meanwhile, however much we may pity the children exposed to the logic of Princeton professors, might we suggest that folk like Stevenson be kept off our brave new liberal air—if we want to advance progressive interests within the American political context.

In yesterday’s post, Kevin Drum rolled his eyes at the direction this nonsense has now taken. He decried the “tone deaf” political turn this has taken among some in our tribe.

For ourselves, our reaction came on Saturday morning in a brief break from a great uncle’s duties. In our own brief glimpse of a new cable program, we learned to have even less faith in the brave new liberal world the corporate suits are helping us at The One True Liberal Channel.

Maybe it was just a rare bad segment; we got our news last weekend in glimmers. But the analysts were down, way down, after taking in Up With Chris Hayes.

Return of Seamus: Dumbest in show!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012

Leave it to Sawyer and Dowd: The GSA and the Secret Service have been involved in major embarrassments this week.

Among modern American elites, the clowning bad judgment never ends. This brings us to one of Diane Sawyer’s questions for Romney and Romney.

Sawyer interviewed the Romneys for ABC “News” this week. Sawyer has always been a clown—but so of course is Maureen Dowd, who responds to one of the Q-and-A’s produced by her fellow buffoon:

DOWD (4/18/12): It also doesn’t fly to tell Diane Sawyer that your dog “loved” 12 hours in a crate on top of the car or that it’s “our turn” to be in the White House.

Dowd is upset by the “our turn” talk too! But this week, Seamus is back, dragged back into the national discourse by the flyweight Sawyer.

Sawyer has always been like this. In June 1999, Candidate Gore sat with this high-ranking ABC "journalist" on the eve of his formal announcement speech. This dimmest of mainstream press corps bulbs ran straight to the fading “farm chores” bullroar, even giving Gore a pop quiz to test the highly unlikely idea that he’d ever set foot on a farm.

Sawyer's mother had even sent questions designed to catch Gore in his latest lie! For a full account of that pitiful session, see Chapter 1 at our companion site, How He Got There. Search on “Sawyer;” prepare to writhe.)

Sawyer is as light as they come. But she’s married to Mike Nichols, so by the rules of our nation’s “elites,” no one is able to say so.

Interviewing Romney and Romney, Sawyer asked about Seamus again! Truly, it’s hard to be dumber than this, though Sawyer will surely keep trying.

Big Eddie played the fool last night, responding to these Qs and As. For ourselves, our favorite reaction came from Brett Smiley at the New York magazine blog.

We’ll simply ask the obvious question: How do they get this dumb?

SMILEY (4/17/12): Romney Dog Seamus Actually Loved Trips Atop Car, Says Ann Romney

Well why didn't Ann Romney just say so earlier? It turns out the outrage over the treatment of Seamus the Irish setter is misguided: The Romney family dog, who got strapped to the roof of the family car in an air-tight crate for a twelve hour road trip in 1983, during which he defecated all over himself and on the windshield, thoroughly enjoyed the experience! “The dog loved it,” Ann Romney told Diane Sawyer. “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation." Would Seamus also go crazy when he was shoved in a bath, got tied to a post outside a boutique on a hot day, and had a thermometer jammed in his rear?

Update: Sawyer asked Mitt if he would transport Seamus that way again. He responded, "Certainly not with the attention it's received." Attention is the difference here? We don't think that, were it not for Romney's political ambitions, Seamus would have been tied up and dragged behind the car. But Romney leaves way too much room for doubt.

Yes, that’s what the full post says—and no, we don’t quite understand it. Let's ignore the factual errors, and the fact that Smiley is still deeply puzzled by the confusing term "air-tight."

Journalist Smiley’s main point was the following: Ann Romney should have offered this explanation about Seamus at an earlier date.

How do they get to be like this? In fact, Ann Romney first explained this matter in July 2007, as soon as this flap began to become a story in the small, simple minds of various people who can’t reason or conjure. Go ahead: Just click here.

Let’s ask the other obvious question: How do people like Smiley get jobs? Simple! At the top of your country’s “journalistic” heap sit flyweights like Sawyer and Dowd!

Farm chores back then, Seamus today! This is the way these people “think.” And this is the fate of your nation.

Faux outrage watch: It's time for Chris and Joan to go!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012

The spread of the brave new bullroar: It’s pitiful to watch the brave new bullroar spread—the scripted new bullroar from our tribe, the kind that dumbs our side down.

On Monday evening, Joan Walsh pretended to be outraged by Romney and Romney’s terribly vile choice of words (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/17/12). In this morning’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd is faux furious too:

DOWD (4/18/12): When the Romneys got married and moved to Boston in 1971 so Mitt could attend Harvard, they set up house in a suburb, befriended other young Mormon couples and kept to their cloistered, conservative, privileged, traditional, white, heterosexual circle.

They kept hanging out with heterosexuals! Go ahead—laugh out loud! (Needless to say, Lady Dowd worked in the Mormon thing too. Dowd's an instinctive bigot.)

Dowd’s full column today is a classic. Last night, though, Chris Matthews echoed Walsh’s specific complaints from the night before. Here’s the way this ridiculous person started his closing rant:

MATTHEWS (4/17/12): Let me finish tonight with this:

What sort of person do you think would tell the president of the United States, elected by the American people, to “start packing?” Is this some middleweight boxer mouthing off about his title shot, some trash-talking tackler out to sack the opposing quarterback? Sorry, Mitt. It’s nothing of the sort. And this jive is beneath a major party candidate for president.

Matthews was very upset by what he termed Romney’s “trash talk.” How dare this person tell the president of the United States, elected by the American people, to “start packing?” Nor was Matthews the only cable actor willing to feign such a state of aggrievement. Earlier in the program, Michelle Bernard and Ron Reagan agreed to recite the script too:

MATTHEWS: This entitlement, it’s—I’m not going to the verb, the adjectives. It just strikes me as entitlement.

BERNARD: It looks like entitlement by every stretch of the imagination.

[...]

MATTHEWS: How do you think this is going to help his likability rating now that he's decided it’s time for the president of the United States to pack up?

REAGAN: Not at all.

Entitlement! That's what Walsh said the night before! To observe this full dollop of bullroar, click this, though your IQ may drop several points.

All the children agreed to pretend that they shared Walsh’s faux outrage. As you may recall, Bernard was a leading black conservative through the summer of 2008, when she was allowed to flip on this ridiculous show in response to Obama’s nomination.

It’s sad to see the liberal world dumbed down in this manner. And yes, this faux outrage is dumb to the core. Matthews kept feigning outrage last night at the thought that someone would speak this way to a sitting president. Did he remember the 1992 Democratic convention address by Bill Clinton’s newly-selected running-mate, VP Candidate Gore?

GORE (7/16/92): No, the American spirit isn't gone. But we vow here tonight that in November George Bush and Dan Quayle will be history.

I'm not saying that they are bad people, but their approach to governing this country has badly failed. They have taxed the many to enrich the few. And it is time for them to go.

They have given us false choices, bad choices, and no choice. And it is time for them to go!

They have ignored the suffering of those who are victims—of AIDS, of crime, of poverty, of ignorance, of hatred and harassment. It is time for them to go.

CROWD: Time for them to go!

GORE: They have nourished and appeased tyrannies and endangered America's deepest interests while betraying our cherished ideals. It is time for them to go.

CROWD: Time for them to go!

GORE: They have mortgaged our children's future to avoid the decisions they lack the courage to make. It is time for them to go.

CROWD: Time for them to go!

GORE: They embarrassed our nation when the whole world was asking for American leadership in confronting the environmental crisis. It is time for them to go.

CROWD: Time for them to go!

GORE: They have demeaned our democracy with the politics of distraction, denial and despair. What time is it?

CROWD: It's time for them to go!

GORE: What time is it?

CROWD: It's time for them to go!

GORE: What time is it?

CROWD: It's time for them to go!

GORE: The American people—the American people are disgusted with excuses and tired of blame. They know that, throughout American history, each generation has passed on leadership to the next. That time has come again—the time for a new generation of leadership for the United States of America to take over from George Bush and Dan Quayle. And you know what that means for them. It's time for them to go.

CROWD: It's time for them to go!

Within the context of American politics, Gore was speaking in normal ways. But then, so did Romney this week.

Romney was responding to a typically stupid question from Diane Sawyer, one of the biggest embarrassments in the American upper-class pantheon. But what he said is completely normal, except in the brave new world where hustlers and clowns like Matthews and Walsh drag your IQ to the floor.

They stick big bucks in their pants as they clown. Your IQ is brought very low.

GLIMMERS: Blow loves a parade!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2012

Part 2—Our brave new liberal ethics: When you’re on duty as a great uncle, at best you’ll get glimmers of the day’s news. That said:

Last Saturday morning, while children were sleeping, we perused Charles Blow’s latest New York Times column concerning the Trayvon Martin case.

One day later, also quite early, we read Brent Staples’ review of the Martin case, a New York Times “Sunday Observer” column. And at some point, we managed to scan this post by bmaz, a legal commentator at Marcy Wheeler’s emptywheel site.

In this way, we got a glimpse of the emerging ethics of the brave new emerging liberal world. All in all, we weren’t impressed.

Our first glimpse came from Blow’s column.

Blow was reviewing a major event; George Zimmerman had now been charged with a crime by prosecutor Angela Corey. In the middle of his piece, Blow waved the American flag:

BLOW (4/14/12): On Wednesday, Corey charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder and he was taken into custody. On Thursday, Zimmerman appeared in a Florida courtroom, and Corey released a simple but chilling affidavit for probable cause that painted a disturbing portrait of Zimmerman as a man who “profiled,” “followed” and “confronted” the boy.

This is a moment when America should be proud. The wheels of justice are finally turning. The State of Florida has taken up the cause of the dead boy. His life is no more, but his legacy will live forever.

The state will vigorously prosecute, and Zimmerman will be vigorously defended as is his constitutional right.

The facts should come out in court and under oath and not just over airwaves and in newspapers. Truth will be sought and, hopefully, found. And whatever the verdict, it will be based on the presentation of evidence and the interpretation of the law, as it should be.

“America should be proud,” Blow said. “The facts should come out in court and under oath and not just over airwaves and in newspapers,” he patriotically added.

Unfortunately, we had already read the opening to Blow’s column. Right as he started, the gentleman made the highlighted factual statement:

BLOW: America has heard the calls for justice from a Florida family.

A boy’s blood had been spilled on a rain-soaked patch of grass behind a row of mustard-colored condominiums by a man who had pursued him against the advice of 911 dispatchers. That man carried a 9-millimeter handgun. The boy carried a bag of candy.

Yet it seems, largely on the weight of his own word, the man who killed the boy was allowed to walk out of the police station that night without even a charge.

Will the facts come out in court? Not necessarily, no; there may never be a court case. More on that below.

But before the facts could possibly come out in court, Blow had asserted a fact in a major American newspaper. Is it true? Did George Zimmerman “pursue [Trayvon Martin] against the advice of 911 dispatchers?”

That’s what Corey says in her affidavit; Zimmerman says it isn’t the case. But so what? Blow simply asserted this claim as established fact right there in one of the country’s top newspapers!

Before the facts could come out in court, Charles Blow simply asserted a fact! A key fact not yet in evidence!

But then, so it has always gone when folk like Blow wave the American flag in support of their outlooks and preferences.

Did Zimmerman pursue Martin against the advice of dispatchers? Like us, Blow doesn’t know. But many people believe this is an established fact, thanks to the work of our brave new liberal super-patriots.

In some cases, the journalistic conduct has been worse than that displayed by Blow in his second paragraph. Two days earlier, readers of the New York Times had read this account of that fact:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/12/12): Angela Corey, the special prosecutor, declined to discuss details of the case but said that if the Stand Your Ground law is invoked by the defense, “we will fight it” with evidence that the shooting was unjustified. In this case, Mr. Zimmerman exited his car to follow the teenager despite a 911 dispatcher’s warning: “We don’t need you to do that.”

Blow’s factual claim hasn’t been established; to all appearances, the editors’ claim is simply false. But this is the way it always has been in the case of unpopular defendants. In such matters, the hacks and the shills have always stepped forward to give us false glimpses of “facts.”

It’s very hard to keep up with the news when you’re the great uncle, or even the parent, of a six-week-old baby. In this case, we cited the factual claim in that editorial to a North Carolina resident who has been very busy of late. Was Zimmerman told to stay in huis car? That’s the way she has heard the facts described, she told us.

And no, this isn’t her “fault.”

Will the facts come out in court? Not if Zimmerman pleads to a lesser charge—and folk like Blow, as they wave the flag, are tipping the scales in that direction. On our One True Liberal Channel last week, you were told that Corey is a hero because she filed that charge against Zimmerman. But uh-oh! From flag-wavers like Blow, you’ll never hear about what Alan Dershowitz told guest host Michael Smerconish on last Wednesday’s Hardball:

DERSHOWITZ (4/12/12): Most affidavits of probable cause are very thin. This is so thin that it won’t make it past the judge on a second-degree murder charge. There is simply nothing in there that would justify second-degree murder. The elements of the crime aren’t established. Basically, what’s in the affidavit is what’s in the public domain, with the exception of the few little things that were put forward by your previous commentator.

[...]

It’s not only thin. It’s irresponsible. I think that what you have here is an elected public official who made a campaign speech last night for reelection when she gave her presentation, and overcharged, way overcharged.

[...]

But it’s worse than that. It’s irresponsible and unethical in not including the material that favors the defendant, unless it’s not true. But if it’s true, as we now have learned from other information, that the grass stains are in back of Zimmerman’s shirt, that there are bruises on his head, you must put that in an affidavit. The affidavit has to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

To watch the full segment, click here.

Not being legal experts ourselves, we can’t really evaluate Dershowitz’s judgments and claims. (Unless we're mistaken, the police report said Zimmerman had grass on the back of his short, not grass stains.) But if Corey’s alleged extreme over-charging forces Zimmerman to cop to a lesser offense, no facts will ever come out in court. And please note:

Dershowitz said Corey was irresponsible, perhaps even unethical, in her affidavit. But you won’t be apprised of such concerns from flag-wavers like Blow.

The flag-wavers have always told it just one way. This unfortunate pattern continues today, as we can glimpse from Blow's column.

One day later, Staples presented his own assessment of the case—and in our view, the mind-reading was rather general. (Note the way Staples is able to tell us what Zimmerman “saw” that night.) Are you sure that our emerging “liberal” practices are different and better than those of the American past, when shoes of presumption were on other feet, when high-ranking players tended to invent and embellish their facts to attack people of color?

Blow was busy dishing the bathos about “the boy” with the candy, the boy who was killed by the man. All through the annals of American history, the hacks have tugged on your heartstrings this way as they feed you their version of “facts.”

In fact, there is an actual, non-metaphorical “boy” in Corey’s line-up of cases—that 12-year-old child whom she is currently charging with murder. (He's the youngest person ever charged with murder in American history.) But you’ll never hear a word about him when people like Blow start waving the flag. That might undermine your faith in the (slightly crazy) prosecutor whom we liberals are now urged to trust.

Is Angela Corey proceeding correctly? Not being legal experts ourselves, we can’t really tell you. But on Saturday, we got a glimpse of old-fashioned liberal values when we read this post by bmaz, who actually seemed to be concerned about the way Corey is acting!

But then, bmaz seems to think that the accused deserve justice in our system too! Remember when liberals believed such things? Back before Florida’s biggest crackpots began to perform on our side?

Like Corey, Blow seems to lean one way when he dispenses his justice. His headline—“Justice for Trayvon”—strikes us as an inverted version of the same old familiar shit.

Blow is parading down the street; as he does, Old Glory flaps in the wind. But uh-oh! People who didn’t have the time to study this case heard two facts from the Times last week:

The editors gave them a “fact” which was false. Blow’s “fact” was merely unfounded!

Tomorrow: A glimpse of Chris Hayes

GLIMMERS: The mysteries of the Buffett Rule!

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012

Did the New York Times ever explain: This morning, the New York Times reports the fact that the Buffett Rule got filibustered in the Senate.

The report even uses the term “filibuster,” though not until late in the exposition. The headline and the opening passages are a great deal less clear.

Just a guess: Many Times readers could not explain how this famous proposal failed. But as we read this morning’s report, we asked ourselves a different question:

If you read the New York Times every day in the past week, did you ever learn what the Buffett Rule actually is?

For us, the problem started last Wednesday (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/11/12). In an editorial, the editors explained the Buffett Rule one way. In a news report, Jackie Calmes explained it quite differently:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/11/12): President Obama accomplished two things when he made the case on Tuesday for the so-called Buffett Rule, which would require millionaires to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

CALMES (4/11/12): The Buffett Rule would set a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for individuals on their annual income above $1 million.

Those formulations are vastly different. According to the editors, a person who earned $1 million would have to pay at least $300,000 in federal taxes under terms of the Buffett Rule. According to Calmes, the Buffett Rule wouldn’t affect the first million dollars of income at all.

If you read the New York Times, did you ever see this matter resolved? Today, you learn that the Buffett Rule went down to defeat. But what the heck was the Buffett Rule?

Did Times readers ever find out?

We’d have to say they did not. In today’s news report, these are the passages in which Jonathan Weisman explains, or tries to explain, what the Buffett Rule actually is:

WEISMAN (4/17/12): Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a move to open debate on the so-called Buffett Rule, ensuring that a measure pressed for months by President Obama and Senate Democrats to ensure that the superrich pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent will not come to a decisive vote.

[...]

Republicans say they like that contrast, and their language ahead of the vote on a motion just to take up the Buffett Rule was harsh and aimed squarely at Mr. Obama, who first proposed a 30-percent tax rate floor for anyone earning at least $1 million a year last September.

[...]

Democrats argued for more fairness in the tax code. Their legislation would establish a 30-percent floor for households earning $1 million a year.

Based on those passages, do you understand what the Buffett Rule was? To us, it sounds like anyone earning at least $1 million would have to pay at least 30 percent of his or her total income in federal taxes. But Weisman never quite got around to a clear, concise account. And for various reasons, we’d be surprised if anyone really proposed such a rule. (One reason: Such a rule would create a major incentive for many people to keep their incomes below $1 million.)

Searching through Nexis, we can find no report in the New York Times in the past week which explained this rule more clearly.

Are you surprised when your greatest newspaper never quite explains such a high-profile matter? Question: If the Times can’t or won’t explain something like this, what does it ever explain?

For the record, we linked last week to Andrew Leonard’s report in Salon, which explained the Buffett Rule quite differently. Are you surprised by what this means?

In our view, we should be surprised by the following fact: Explanation plays almost no role in a great deal of modern “press” culture.

GLIMMERS: Joan Walsh and “that woman!”

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2012

Part 1—Faux outrage, all faux, all the time: After four days in Durham, we feel we can make the following statement:

It’s much as Obama recently said. Being great uncle to a 5-year-old and a 6-week-old really is the world’s toughest job—even when a fellow can repair to his suite at the Super 8 for a mid-afternoon “nap.”

(Grandma, down from Maine to help with The Nugget, continued to hog the guest room.)

Being great uncle is real work! Between the soccer games, the kindergarten visit and the non-stop snuggling and cuddling, there was little time for anything else during our visit to Durham! We only got glimmers of “news” this past weekend. This helped us see how hard it can be for actual parents to keep up with events—especially given the clowning performance they receive from so many large “news orgs.”

Over the last four days, we grabbed our glimmers of news where we could, often in the day's early hours. We read this column by Charles Blow—a column about the crying need for (Blow’s conception of) justice. We scanned this detailed report about future taxation by David Leonhardt, then set it aside for later.

Safely ensconced in our Super 8 suite, we watched a weekend morning news program we had never watched in the past. We were surprised and disappointed by parts of the discussion.

And then, there was the service we received last night when we returned to our sprawling campus, having driven six hours from Durham.

This week, we’ll review the glimmers of news we received in four days as great uncle. This morning, we’ll start with the pleasing faux outrage that was dumped on our heads when we clicked on the TV machine thingy last night.

Big Ed Schultz was joined by Joan Walsh and E. J. Dionne; they discussed the latest outrageous conduct from those in The Other Tribe. As his segment began, Big Eddie played tape of Romney and Romney, interviewed on Monday morning’s Good Morning America.

(To watch this full segment, click here.)

A silly discussion had continued right through the weekend—a silly discussion of Hilary Rosen’s recent remarks about Ann Romney. But sure enough:

Complaining about all the fake phony outrage, Walsh ginned a ton of faux outrage herself! Returning home after four days of work, we were struck by the ubiquity of the fake outrage on this “liberal” program:

SCHULTZ (4/16/12): “Dazed and confused” comes into mind when I start thinking about the Romney campaign and where they stand on working moms in America. Did they create even a bigger problem for themselves? What do you think?

WALSH: Oh, I think they did. You know, Ed, I’ve always thought that Ann Romney was, was literally his better half and that she was a better campaigner, a more natural campaigner, more personable in general. But really, with that comment, she shows herself to be so entitled. “A birthday present!”

I mean, we ginned up this faux outrage. Hilary Rosen, I just want to say a kind word to her, she didn’t mean it the way it came out and we all knew it! Had she added three little words, “worked outside the home,” she would have been fine, we understood that’s what she meant, but we all had to have a big hissy fit and a big, you know, horrible conversation. And they declared that President Obama had declared a war on moms?

They ginned up this phony outrage, and then that woman calls it “a birthday present?” And I think it’s really wonderful that you ran that clip also with her husband saying that it’s time for President Obama to “start packing.”

I mean, between the two things, you see the cluelessness and the absolute entitlement of these two people, who expect us to just show them the White House and show that guy out.

Joan was outraged about everything! She was outraged that Mitt Romney, in response to a stupid question, jokingly said that he’d like to tell Obama to “start packing.” (“That’s what I’d like to say,” a laughing Romney said on the tape Big Eddie showed. “Obviously, we have a very different view. The president, I’m sure, wants another four years. But the first years didn’t go so well.”)

Joan was outraged that Mitt had said that. She was also outraged that Ann Romney had referred to the recent flap as an “early birthday present.” These remarks showed the Romneys’ “absolute entitlement,” the outraged pundit said.

Joan was also angry about the faux outrage surrounding Rosen’s remark. She was so angry that she misspoke, saying that Rosen’s remark would have been fine had she simply added three words to her statement: “outside the home.”

In all candor, that isn’t quite true: It still would have been an oddly cutting remark if Rosen had said that Ann Romney “has never worked outside the home a day in her life.”

Almost surely, a silly conversation would have ensued even if Rosen had said it that way. But that’s because our political culture is now almost wholly dependent on faux outrage about pointless remarks—and the dumb conversations which ensue.

The outrage about Rosen’s comment was faux, mainly because Rosen was speaking for no one but herself. But then, Walsh was also pimping faux outrage last night.

In the process, she managed to make the conversation even dumber.

How full of faux outrage was Walsh last night? So full of it that she even referred to Ann Romney as “that woman!” Good God! We marveled last week as Rosen blurted a formulation which progressives dropped a long time ago. But last night, Walsh followed suit, employing the term which provoked so much outrage when Bill Clinton famously used it to refer to “that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

The outrage was faux, and very foolish, when we returned to our campus last night. Question: Were you persuaded to feel pure rage about the vile things the Romneys had said? Most tellingly, did Walsh persuade you that you should be outraged about that “start packing” remark?

Many folk get their news in glimmers. Given the way our big news orgs work, these glimmers can now be quite inane. Last night, returning to our cable TV, we were especially struck by the fake, phony tone of much of Big Eddie’s furious program—and by the foolish, low-IQ way he formulated several real issues.

Of course, faux and dumb tend to walk hand-in-hand, snuggling and cuddling as they go. Over on Fox, the hustlers and hacks have sold you faux outrage for many years now.

Has The One True Liberal Channel explicitly adopted this same corporate policy? Returning from Durham to this big load of faux, we found ourselves asking that question.

Tomorrow: Blow’s conception of justice

Later this week: What we learned in kindergarten

Monday: A philosophical question in Durham!

MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2012

A mission of national import: We're driving home from Durham later today, after visiting the kindergarten of our 5 and 3/4-year old great niece.

On today's visit, we will finally get to observe the magic of her teacher, Miss M—, a legendary figure in this young scholar's home.

Over the weekend, we've been immersed in the wonders of the alphabet more than in the occasional small imperfections of the American press corps. Despite this, we will return to full services on Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile:

If you go to the bank, and you give them a dollar bill, they will give you twenty nickels! But is that actually a good deal?

This question has never been fully settled. Our great niece is far from sure.

And now, for something that doesn’t matter!

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012

Did you understand what this means: No, this doesn’t exactly matter. But did you understand the following passage?

It comes from yesterday’s New York Times—from a news report about the charges which have been brought against George Zimmerman. Do you understand what this says?

SCHWARTZ (4/12/12): The charge of second-degree murder also means that Mr. Zimmerman will not be entitled to be released on bail before his trial. Instead, his lawyer will be able to ask for what Florida calls an Arthur hearing, which can take place weeks after the arrest, to determine whether he should be allowed to post bond.

He can’t get bail—but he might post bond! Do you have any idea what that means?

No, it doesn’t exactly matter. But for ourselves, we’ll admit we do not.

A silly discussion of what Rosen said!

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012

The return of a famous old cult: A famous old cult has sprung back to life—The Cult of the Offhand Comment.

In this case, the offhand comment in question was made by Hilary Rosen. The New York Times is so worked up, the story is on the front page.

As a news event, this is basically silly. Yes, Rosen did make an inartful remark. And yes, her comment does have a bit of a history. And yes, in part, it actually is a history of liberal condescension.

(As Joan Walsh noted on last evening’s Hardball: “I mean, look, feminists learned about twenty years ago that this is a dumb argument. Every mother is a working mother. Let`s just say that, OK? Michael, we know that. Being a mom, whether you stay at home or whether you work, is very hard.”)

Rosen is a perfectly decent person. That said, she did make a fairly inartful remark–but everyone makes such remarks at some point. And at this point, Rosen is just a CNN contributor. She doesn’t speak for Barack Obama, or for Dems in general.

For all these reasons, this comment is hardly worth discussing. But our “press corps” has long belonged to a powerful cult—The Cult of the Offhand Comment. They simply love this sort of distraction. And by the way:

Our side has been deeply involved in this stupid cult too!

Yesterday, we saw a lot of liberals complaining about how stupid this discussion is. We agree—but we liberals have been pimping disputes about all kinds of pointless offhand comments in recent years.

Your lizard brain will say that’s not true. Though we’re out the door, sorry:

It is.

CHILDHOOD’S END: Are ditto-heads born or made!

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012

Epilogue—Piers Morgan v. Cronkite and Brinkley: Are ditto-heads born? Or are they made?

Surely, it’s a bit of both. We’re all inclined to pick and choose (and invent) our facts, supporting the tales we prefer. Until we train ourselves not to do this, it’s something we all tend to do.

That said, we ditto-heads get a lot of help on the road to perdition these days. Here was Catherine Crier, declaiming on last night's Ed Show and pushing a narrative forward:

SCHULTZ (4/12/12): The second-degree murder, is it going to be hard to get a conviction with this law on the books, from what you know on about the case?

CRIER: Well, it’s going to be interesting, because I certainly think that the special prosecutor has made a gutsy call. She could have gone for manslaughter. We all would have accepted it. But I think she was satisfied reviewing the evidence that not only did Neighborhood Watch say you don’t carry a gun; the 911 operator said, “Stay in your car.” There were only about five minutes from the time he ended that call until Trayvon Martin was dead on the ground.

Is that actually true? Did the 911 operator tell Zimmerman to stay in his car? Yesterday, special prosecutor Angela Corey presented an affidavit giving her official account of this matter. This is the sequence Corey described in this official document:

COREY AFFIDAVIT (4/12/12): Zimmerman got out of his vehicle and followed Martin. When the police dispatcher realized Zimmerman was pursuing Martin, he instructed Zimmerman not to do that and that the responding officer would meet him. Zimmerman disregarded the police dispatcher and continued to follow Martin who was trying to return to his home.

In Corey’s sequence, Zimmerman was already “out of his vehicle,” following on foot, when the dispatcher made his remark. But so what?

The story works better the other way, with Zimmerman told to remain in his car! Last night, we ditto-heads got to hear that story again. Crier repeated this much-preferred tale—and Big Eddie just let it go.

(For the record, Zimmerman says he began to return to his car when the dispatcher instructed him not to follow. We don’t know if that is true. We don't know if Corey's qaccount is right.)

People! In part, this is where ditto-heads come from! Yesterday morning, citizens got to read the more pleasing account in a New York Times editorial (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/12/12). Twelve hours later, watching Big Eddie, they heard this account once again. But so it has gone all through the past month as major “journalists” have advanced a stunning assortment of bogus facts about the Trayvon Martin case. (We're not even discussing their "logic.")

They claim they care about this case. But they don’t seem to care enough to honor us with real facts.

We’re not sure we’ve ever seen a case where so many bogus elemenary facts were invented and advanced so widely. And Crier isn’t some hapless shlub Big Eddie dragged in from the street.

Who the heck is Catherine Crier? Incredibly, she comes from the very top of the guild which serves as a successor to your country’s former press corps:

WIKIPEDIA: Crier began her TV career at CNN in 1989, where she co-anchored the programs Inside Politics ‘92 and The World Today. In 1992, ABC News hired her as a correspondent for ABC World News Tonight and the newsmagazine 20/20. After spending three and a half years with ABC News, Fox News Channel hired her to anchor The Crier Report, a live, nightly talk show. In 2000, Crier joined Court TV as host of Crier Today, a daily show concerning legal news, and in 2001, launched a new show, Catherine Crier Live. Catherine Crier Live ran for six years until it was cancelled on April 27, 2007. In 2004, she covered horse racing for ESPN/ABC Sports, which lasted one year.

Let’s guess she managed to keep her facts straight when she was calling horse races! But Crier sat at the top of modern “broadcast news” for almost twenty years.

Last night, she rattled off an account of the facts which seems to be baldly inaccurate. But this is the norm among the guild which replaced the American press corps.

Just a guess: In part, Crier was on the air all those years because she was quite telegenic. Another guess: In part, Andrew Rosenthal is running the Times editorial page because he’s the son of a former Times honcho.

But this kind of performance is now the norm among the successors to our press corps. Bogus facts have been all around as this upper-class guild has pretended to cover the killing of Trayvon Martin.

In large part, this is where ditto-heads come from! Based on yesterday’s affidavit, let’s review the status of a few former facts—factual claims which were widely advanced in the past four weeks:

Concerning that alleged racial slur: In this official court document, Corey says that Zimmerman used the term “fucking punks” as he was pursuing Martin. For weeks, we liberals were assured, on our liberal “news programs,” that trusted pundits could hear him using a racial slur at that point.

Is Corey right in that assessment? We have no way of knowing. But it might be worth reviewing the way this assessment first came to light—or failed to.

On Thursday, April 5, CNN began reporting that Tom Owen of Owen Forensic Services had analyzed the 911 tape. He had concluded that the word in question was actually “punks.” CNN reported this in regular rotation for two straight days, on April 5 and 6.

On MSNBC, you were sheltered from such unwelcome ideas. According to Nexis, the claim that the word was actually “punks” was mentioned just once on The One True Liberal Channel, on April 5. (This refers to broadcasts from 5 PM on. MSNBC doesn’t provide transcripts for daytime shows.)

In this one fleeting reference, Al Sharpton quickly explained that the word “punks” was problematic too—and viewers weren’t told where this new claim had come from. “Now, someone comes out and say no, he didn’t use a racial word, he used the term punks,” Sharpton said.

MSNBC has repeatedly failed to broadcast news that interferes with its preferred story. In this way, liberals get turned into ditto-heads. On cable, this pattern was pioneered, then perfected, by Fox.

Concerning the expertise of our alleged audio experts: Is Corey right about the word “punks?” We have no way of knowing.

But in the past few weeks, we rubes were told that various experts had listened to that part of the tape. These “experts” reached all sorts of conclusions about what Zimmerman said.

One of these “experts” actually said that he couldn’t make out what Zimmerman said. (Good for him, we lustily cried.) But other “experts” said they could make out the word in question, thanks to their brilliant enhancement techniques. According to these various experts, Zimmerman said “fucking cold,” “fucking goons,” “fucking coons” or “fucking punks.”

How reliable are these “experts?” We don’t recall seeing any broadcaster state the obvious: Most of these “experts” had to be wrong! To this day, it may be that they all these “experts” were wrong. Yes, that could include Owen.

Who was yelling for help on the tape: In her affidavit, Corey says Martin can be heard yelling for help on the tape. Somewhat surprisingly, she sources this claim to Martin’s mother, who has “reviewed the 911 calls and identified the voice crying for help as Trayvon Martin’s voice.”

Last night, legal experts noted the relative weakness of that identification. After all, George Zimmerman’s brother has reviewed the tapes; he says the voice is that of his brother. We have no idea why Corey cited Martin’s mother as the source for her judgment. For the record, Tom Owen told the Orlando Sentinel in late March that he had ruled out Zimmerman as the source of the cries, based on enhancement techniques.

Was Owen right about that? We have no idea. But you guessed it! MSNBC widely cited this earlier judgment by Owen, a judgment which fit their preferred story-line. Increasingly, MSNBC now functions like Fox News. You are allowed to hear the facts which support your preferred tribal story. You’re also allowed to hear lots of “facts” which aren’t actually true.

This is where ditto-heads come from. We have our own ditto-heads now!

Tribal war makes strange bedfellows: Is Angela Corey right in her judgments about this case? We have no idea; she included very little evidence in yesterday’s affidavit.

But it was odd to see Al Sharpton praising Corey so highly on Wednesday night. Corey may be perfectly right in her assessment of this case (or not). But how do we fiery liberals feel about the judgment she showed in the following case?

On Tuesday, Lizette Alvarez profiled Corey for the New York Times:

ALVAREZ (4/10/12): Many point to the contentious case of Cristian Fernandez as an example of overzealousness and a lapse in judgment. Cristian is charged with first-degree murder in the 2011 death of his 2-year-old half-brother, David. He was 12 at the time but is being tried as an adult. The boy is accused of slamming David's head into a bookcase while he was baby-sitting. If convicted, Cristian would serve life in prison without parole.

But Cristian's short life has been marred by astonishing hardship. His mother was 12 when she gave birth to him, and he spent time in foster care and was abused repeatedly by his step-father, his lawyers have said. His mother also failed to take the unconscious David to the hospital for eight hours after the incident. She pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter.

The case, like Mr. Martin's, stirred outrage on social media and in the local community. ''Where is your compassion?'' was a common reaction, said Michael Hallett, chairman of the University of North Florida's criminology department, who recently published a study of Ms. Corey's record.

The fiery liberals at MSNBC have had nothing to say about the fate of that 12-year-old child. Warning! Don’t confuse this case with the previous case of Lionel Tate, who was also tried for murder in Florida for an act he committed as a 12-year-old child, while pretending to be a pro wrestler.

Who prosecuted that 12-year-old child? Tate was prosecuted and convicted by Ken Padowitz, who now serves as Al Sharpton’s trusted sidekick on cable TV.

Would these fiery Florida prosecutors have prosecuted 12-year-old white children? On MSNBC, no one is asking! But then, you’re being sold a TV show in which a pre-judgment has been rendered. Padowitz is part of the entertainment. Never mind the kind of judgment he may have shown in the past!

One final point: In that same profile, Alvarez explained how Corey was assigned to the Zimmerman case:

ALVAREZ: Ms. Corey was named special prosecutor in the Martin case after Norman Wolfinger, the state attorney for Seminole County, stepped aside on March 22 after coming under intense criticism for moving too slowly. The state's attorney general, Pam Bondi, who advised Gov. Rick Scott to choose Ms. Corey, said she considers her to be a role model and mentor.

Corey’s judgments about this case may be perfectly accurate. That said, everyone knows how awful Scott is—and Bondi got famous on Fox, where she was cast in a standard role. On Fox, she served as one of cable TV’s young blonde former prosecutors, in whose mind every suspect is loudly assumed to be guilty.

We liberals used to complain about people like these! Now, they’re our trusted helpmates; they're widely praised because our tribe wants a conviction. But then, we have a new hit TV show, a TV show we very much like. These are the peculiar bedfellows in whose judgment we now place our trust.

Last night, Catherine Crier was at it again, enabled by Big Eddie. The previous night, Piers Morgan had continued his own profoundly embarrassing efforts concerning this case.

This is how ditto-heads get born. And they now get born in our tribe.

There was a time when people like these would not have been running “news” programs. Morgan is a former Murdoch hack. This is Wikipedia’s account of how he rose in this country:

WIKIPEDIA: Morgan branched into television mainly as a presenter, but has become best known as a judge or contestant in reality television programmes. In the UK, he was a judge on Britain's Got Talent. Morgan is best known in the United States as a judge on the show America's Got Talent, and as the winner of The Celebrity Apprentice. On 17 January 2011, he began hosting Piers Morgan Tonight for CNN in the timeslot occupied by Larry King Live before the retirement of host Larry King.

[...]

Throughout 2006, Morgan appeared as a judge on the American television show America's Got Talent alongside Brandy Norwood and David Hasselhoff on NBC. Morgan was chosen by Simon Cowell as a replacement for himself because of the conditions of his American Idol contract. Morgan appeared as a celebrity contestant on Comic Relief Does The Apprentice in 2007, to raise money for Comic Relief. During filming, he and Alastair Campbell reduced fellow contestant Trinny Woodall to tears when they tried to sabotage her team's event, and were involved in a brawl with her. Upon his team losing, Morgan was selected by Sir Alan Sugar as the contestant to be fired.

Also in 2007, he appeared as a judge for the second season of America's Got Talent and also appeared as a judge on the British version of the show, Britain's Got Talent on ITV1, alongside Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell. He also presented You Can't Fire Me, I'm Famous on BBC One. In January 2008, Morgan fronted a three-part documentary about Sandbanks for ITV1 entitled Piers Morgan on Sandbanks.

Morgan was the winner of the U.S. celebrity version of The Apprentice, in 2008. The most memorable feature of the programme was the rowdy disagreements he had with fellow contestant Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth. This was resolved in Morgan's favour on 6 March, after her team was defeated by Morgan's in the biggest margin of victory in Apprentice history. Morgan ended up the overall winner, being named Celebrity Apprentice on 27 March, ahead of fellow finalist, American country music star, Trace Adkins (whom he surprised by kissing him on the cheek just moments after an on-air spat with Stallworth) and having raised substantially more cash than all the other contestants combined.

His wife's last name is "Shalloe!" Tonight, you see this fellow on CNN, embarrassing himself as he tries to discuss the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Shield the eyes of the children! Crier’s lack of journalistic skill is evident every time she appears. Big Eddie was a right-wing hack until 2000, when he flipped, becoming a hack for our side. (Sometimes, his work is informative.)

At one time, these people would not have been given major news forums. We would have been forced to get our news about this case from Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley and their correspondents.

Plainly, their work wasn’t perfect. Nor did they live to create ditto-heads (thus building market share), the way the way their successors do.

Matthews says Zimmerman’s claims are obvious!

THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012

The dog that finally howled: We never thought we’d get the chance to criticize a cable talker for this.

But last night, Chris Matthews showed his all-around skill at bungling in all kinds of ways. As he started his 7 P.M. hour, he launched an absurd account of the killing of Trayvon Martin—an absurd account in which he simply assumed the validity of the claims which are being advanced by George Zimmerman.

Here’s the transcript of what he said. The videotape sounds much worse than the transcript reads. To watch this segment, click here:

MATTHEWS (4/11/12): It seems to me, if this case, this matter occurred as so many people believe it did, an incident involving a neighborhood watch person, in this case the defendant now, George Zimmerman, and this victim, of course, Trayvon Martin, he suspected, perhaps, this man of burglary or something or it’s, whatever he was doing, he said he was up to no good in the tapes.

Then the question is, How did the incident develop, how did the provocation lead to a fight of some kind physically, some kind of back and forth that led to this guy pulling his gun and shooting him?

Where does the issue of “reckless disregard” get in here? Isn’t it clear, based upon the defense, that he shot him in self-defense? Where is— Why does that involve “disregard” when he is obviously shooting to stop a person from hurting him badly? Where does the reckless disregard factor come in here?

This was quite a surprise! For one brief murky ridiculous moment, we actually had a major broadcaster pimping Zimmerman’s account of the case as if it was “obvious” and “clear,” beyond dispute, basically proven.

Isn’t it “clear,” Matthews asked, that Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense? He went on to say that Zimmerman “obviously” shot Martin to avoid getting hurt badly.

Did Matthews mean to say these things? Did he mean to assert that the claim of self-defense is obvious? We don’t know, and he quickly dropped this posture.

But there you see the sort of bungled work which has been absent in the past month. One broadcaster after another has offered tortured narrations asserting the obvious truth of anti-Zimmerman claims and narrations. Here, for just one brief absurd moment, you saw Matthews bungling, as he so typically does—but bungling in the other direction.

Briefly, it was obvious, it was clear, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense!

That’s the dog that hasn’t howled over the course of the past month. Matthews was wrong when he howled this way, of course. Many others have been massively wrong when they’ve howled in the other direction.

CHILDHOOD’S END: The New York Times employs Zimmerman's car!

THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2012

Part 4—Where ditto-heads get bogus facts: For decades, we liberals got to pretend that we were smarter, more nuanced, less gullible.

We were better than the ditto-heads, those rubes in the other tribe.

That childish dream has come to an end in the course of the past month. Alas! We now have a set of “liberal” news organs which have cast themselves in the traditional Rush Limbaugh mode.

They've churned reams of bogus facts—and our own ditto-heads now rush to repeat them. So it was when Kevin Drum offered this perfectly sensible post about the dueling video close-ups in the matter of George Zimmerman’s alleged injuries.

Drum asked for comment about the images which have appeared on MSNBC. Before too long, several commenters were churning a familiar bogus fact, one of the many we've been fed about this important story:

COMMENTER A (4/11/12): If the police did their job, they would have taken crime scene photos of all the participants. Compression artifact laden, hour later video is crap.

COMMENTER B (4/11/12): Given this police force's history of racism and the obvious incompetence with which they handled the situation, I am not inclined to trust them. I would, however, have trusted any crime scene photographs. That they did not take them leads me to believe that they handled Zimmerman with kid gloves because his dad was a judge.

COMMENTER B: I'm not trusting the video. I'd trust the crime scene photos that the police should have taken. The fact is, this case cannot be prosecuted because the police didn't do their jobs.

COMMENTER C (4/11/12): I have only one question. I have numerous family members in law enforcement, and they raise the question. If Zimmerman sustained injury during this altercation why weren't pictures taken of his injuries when he was taken in? The case is strange to a certain degree. If there are pictures, release them to shut up the public and let justice proceed.

COMMENTER D (4/11/12): Racists trolls in general, please respond. No pictures of injuries when police investigating a fatal shooting. Seems strange, don't you think? I'm waiting with bated breath to hear your twisted justification (I know you'll come up with something) of this detail.

These commenters spread the word about "this detail:" The Sanford police didn’t take any photos! Other commenters seemed to agree, relating this alleged fact to the alleged general failure of the Sanford police to stage a real investigation.

By now, of course, this pleasing claim doesn’t exactly make sense. We liberals also like to note that the lead investigator at the scene of the shooting wanted Zimmerman charged with a crime.

Why would this man stage a fake, phony probe? Inquiring minds may want to know, but tribal minds don't really care. Our various claims no longer make sense. But we repeat them all the same, just as Limbaugh’s much-reviled ditto-heads always have done.

We used to laugh at the ditto-heads. Now, mega-dittos are us!

The Sanford police didn’t take any photos! In fairness, It’s understandable if our "liberal" ditto-heads think this claim has been established; this is one of the thousand bogus facts our liberal "news organs" have blared in our faces. That said, is there any actual reason to believe that no photos were taken? We know of no evidence to that effect—and the New York Times reported this in its long news report on this matter:

BARRY (4/2/12): Less than half an hour after Trayvon Martin died face-down in gated grass, a privileged crowd of 17,000 rose to their feet at the NBA All-Star game in Orlando, 20 miles to the south, to sing the national anthem. Then, while people enjoyed their after-parties, his body, not yet identified, was taken to the medical examiner's office in Volusia County.

Mr. Zimmerman, meanwhile, was taken to Sanford police headquarters, where, he told his father, the police took many photographs of his injuries. His father said that he had a broken nose, a swollen and cut lower lip, and two cuts on the back of his head.

Is that true? Did the Sanford police take many photographs of Zimmerman’s alleged injuries? We don’t know, but we’ll be surprised if it turns out that they didn’t.

Were photos taken of Zimmerman’s head? Like us, those commenters simply don’t know. But we liberals have our own ditto-heads now; as Limbaugh’s acolytes always have done, we simply repeat the claims we hear from our tribe’s “news organs.” Are these liberals aware of all the claims at these news orgs which have turned out to be bogus—fake, false? People! Remember when Salon's Joan Walsh offered this two-fisted groaner?

WALSH (3/27/08): The fact is, whatever turns out to be true, the president was right: This case looks like too many others where a young black man was gunned down for being a young black man. A 17-year-old was shot to death, and no one was taken to a police station to be questioned about it. It then took police three days to locate the dead boy’s family. Now they’re sliming him with anonymous leaks.

As you can see, a twofer lurked in that pitiful paragraph. Zimmerman wasn’t taken to the police station! And this:

It took the Sanford police three days to notify Martin’s parents!

Both claims were false—disgracefully so. (As of March 27, it was already abundantly clear that Zimmerman had been taken in for questioning.) But so what? Fifteen days later, no corrections appear on Walsh’s bungled report.

Sorry, ditto-heads! Life-forms like the imperial Walsh no longer bother with actual facts. False factual claims serve a very good end. They make us ditto-heads mad!

Alas! A childish dream has come to an end—a dream in which we liberals were the smart, honest, nuanced players. Walsh is now the purveyor of bogus facts—the Limbaugh figure in this drama. And the rubes who keep churning claims like hers have been cast in the ditto-head role.

Have we mentioned the fact that it’s understandable, though unfortunate, when ditto-heads churn these bogus claims? Everywhere today’s liberal looks, he is being misinformed and misled on the basic facts of this case.

The modern liberal’s most trusted sources keep making bogus factual claims. Just consider the editorial in today’s New York Times.

In our view, Andrew Rosenthal doesn’t seem to be up to the task of running this editorial page. This morning, an editorial makes a string of false, misleading or unproven claims about the Martin-Zimmerman case. Eventually, we get this classic howler:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/12/12): Angela Corey, the special prosecutor, declined to discuss details of the case but said that if the Stand Your Ground law is invoked by the defense, “we will fight it” with evidence that the shooting was unjustified. In this case, Mr. Zimmerman exited his car to follow the teenager despite a 911 dispatcher’s warning: “We don’t need you to do that.”

Classic! We would have assumed that every serious observer agreed by now that Zimmerman had already left the car by the time the dispatcher made that statement. Here's why we would have thought that:

When the tape of Zimmerman’s 911 call was released, many pundits noted the fact that you could hear the car door open when Zimmerman left his truck—that you could hear him huffing and puffing as he followed Martin on foot. They noted that these events occurred before the dispatcher’s comment.

Was Zimmerman already out of his car, following on foot, when the dispatcher made that comment? Al Sharpton told the story that way on March 23, just after playing the 911 tape:

SHARPTON (3/23/12): Again, let me play this 911 tape, because there’s nowhere in this 911 tape does Zimmerman even remotely act like he’s being threatened or has to defend himself. In fact, he’s saying the guy is running and he’s running behind him. Listen to this:

(begin audio clip)
ZIMMERMAN: These (bleep)-holes, they always get away.
911 DISPATCHER: Are you following him?
ZIMMERMAN: Yes.
911 DISPATCHER: OK. We don’t need you to do that.
ZIMMERMAN: OK.
(end audio clip)

SHARPTON: So he’s following him, you can hear him huffing, “Yeah.” He’s told, “We don’t need you to do that,” he says, “OK”...

According to Sharpton’s narration, Zimmerman was already out of his truck and huffing a bit when he responds to the dispatcher's comment. Rather plainly, the Grio’s Joy-Ann Reid presented the sequence the same way earlier on that same program. (To watch this whole segment, click here.)

Many observers told the story this way when the 911 tape was released. But for those who want to heighten the fury of us rubes, the story works better if Zimmerman is still in his truck when the dispatcher makes his remark. And so the story has often been told that way, in the best tradition of fact-pimps like Limbaugh and Hannity.

Was Zimmerman still in his truck at the time of that comment? We know of no evidence that this is true. Quite plainly, the 911 tape seems to suggest that this version of the story is wrong on the facts, and Zimmerman's reps have always told the story a different way. In their account, he was following on foot when the comment was made, and he then turned back.

The Zimmerman story may not be true, of course—but we know of no evidence that he was still in his truck when the dispatcher made his comment. But so what? There it is again this morning, presented as an established fact—in an editorial in the New York Times, our greatest American newspaper!

Can you really blame us liberal rubes for repeating false or unfounded claims? Can you really blame us liberal rubes when the lords conduct business this way?

They let Zimmerman walk away with his gun! The Sanford police didn’t take any photos! He wasn’t taken down to the station! And oh yes:

“Mr. Zimmerman exited his car to follow the teenager despite a 911 dispatcher’s warning.”

Can you blame the nation’s liberals for believing various bogus claims? Is it surprising that our side crawls with ditto-heads too, when leaders in the “journalistic” world refuse to stop acting this way?

Tomorrow: Piers Morgan, James B. Stewart, journalism’s end

What the heck is the Buffett Rule, continued!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012

Third time may be the charm: In this morning’s New York Times, readers are given two separate accounts of the Buffett Rule. See our earlier post.

Since the rule will soon be voted on, it might be time to figure out what the heck it is. According to Salon’s Andrew Leonard, this is the formulation which will be voted on:

LEONARD (4/11/12): The Paying A Fair Share Act of 2012 would create “a minimum effective tax rate for high-income taxpayers.” Regardless of whether their income derived from long term capital gains, dividends, wages, or salary, Americans earning over $2 million a year would be required to pay a tax rate equal to 30 percent of their total income. Americans earning between $1-2 million would pay a graduated rate approaching 30 percent.

Leonard even offers a link to the legislation. For the sake of argument, we will assume he’s right.

Having made that assumption, who was right in this morning’s Times—the editors or reporter Jackie Calmes?

If Leonard is right, they both were wrong. (You could argue that Calmes’ account was technically accurate though grossly misleading.) Meanwhile, Leonard offers a range of estimates of how much revenue the act would produce: $47 billion to $160 billion in new revenue over ten years, he says. This morning, the editors kept it simple; “an estimated $50 billion,” they said.

What are the chances of passage? “Zero,” Leonard reports.

Piddle-poo watch: In case you missed it!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012

Quitting E. J. Dionne: Yesterday afternoon, we did a post about a TV discussion between Lawrence O’Donnell and E. J. Dionne. The lads were pretending to share their views about Teflon and Velcro candidates.

They key word there, of course, is “pretending.” Surely, they don’t believe the silly things they said.

O’Donnell is a manifest fraud. But as a liberal or a progressive, have you been able to quit Dionne? If you missed yesterday’s post, we do recommend it:

Click here.

The New York Times surveys the Buffett Rule!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012

So many ways to get played: For our money, the New York Times presents an astounding array of editorials today, including this classic High Manhattan groaner concerning Ozzie Guillen.

(It’s the requisite jibe at South Florida which made the analysts laugh. That and the editors’ subsequent absurd attempt to paraphrase what Guillen said.)

That said, the featured editorial, concerning the Buffett Rule, merits a longer look.

As they start, the editors seem to misstate the rule; they seem to feel required to do this. But early on, we were very much struck by this passage:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/11/12): The Buffett Rule, which would raise an estimated $50 billion over 10 years, would not make an appreciable dent in the deficit or provide a lot more for essential programs. By comparison, letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for taxpayers making more than $250,000 a year, as the president has also called for, would raise $800 billion over 10 years.

Wow. In terms of revenue enhancement and deficit reduction, $50 billion over 10 years is truly less than a drop in the bucket. Citizens might ask themselves if they’re getting played when their president makes such a big deal about an idea which involves such a tiny amount of revenue.

Don’t get us wrong—we support higher taxes on upper-end earners. But that brings us to our second point:

The editors reject the tiny amount the Buffett Rule would bring in. “By comparison,” they praise Obama’s proposal to let the Bush tax rates expire on those who earn more than 250 large.

This proposal would raise $800 billion over 10 years, the editors say—and they seem to regard this as a hefty amount. Later, they say this proposal “is not only fair, it is essential for raising substantial and much-needed revenue.”

We would support that proposal too. But given the size of projected deficits, is $800 billion over 10 years really a hefty amount? We’ll remind you of what Paul Krugman told Charlie Rose last year concerning the need for future revenue (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/26/11):

KRUGMAN (7/22/11): What the long-run solution to the U.S. budget problem is, is controlling health-care costs. It means more of the kinds of things that were already in the Affordable Care Act. A lot of serious, serious efforts to bring the rate of growth of health-care costs down, bending the curve—horrible metaphor, but bending the curve. Which we know can be done because other countries do it, and then we need revenue. In the end, we’re going to need three, four percent of GDP in additional revenue. You can get some of that by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, but we’re going to need more than that.

So in fact I have a prediction. If David [Brooks] and I are still around here 25 years from now, I predict that we will have a much more controlled health-care system that sort of matches the cost performance of other countries, and we’ll have something like a value-added tax to increase revenue. And that is how America will be solvent in the end.

Regarding the Bush tax cuts, Krugman didn’t specify whether he meant all the cuts or just those on income above $250,000. Whatever he meant, he said that wouldn’t provide enough extra revenue. This would mean that the editors’ proposal is inadequate.

Would $800 billion over 10 years be sufficient extra revenue? When the editors at the New York Times type, they treat this as the outer limit of imaginable tax increases. They don’t even consider a third framework—letting all the Bush tax rates expire. Their readers don’t even get to see a discussion of this possibility.

Our public discussions are very weak. The editors are very much part of that problem.

In closing, let’s discuss one more part of this editorial. At the start of their piece, the editors cite the fact that Mitt Romney only paid 14 percent federal tax on his mammoth income last year. If you watch The One True Liberal Channel, you will see various chimps chattering about this fact this week.

Lawrence O’Donnell is having great fun. Let’s consider an earlier candidate, one he hotly supported.

In 2004, Candidate Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, filed separate tax returns, as is often the case when one spouse is very wealthy. Just for some context, the New York Times reported in October 2004 that Heinz Kerry had paid 12.3 percent federal tax in 2003 on $5.1 million in income. That was less than 14 percent!

Yes, that was Kerry's wife; it wasn't Kerry himself. But Lawrence didn’t fling poo about that! We support higher taxes on high earners. But then, we also support the need for honest brokers in high journalistic places.

O’Donnell has played a noxious role in at least two previous White House campaigns. He’s clowning around on your side this year.

Next time, who really knows? When we let clownish cultures develop, such cultures can come back to bite us.

As they have done in the past.

Obama’s formulation: How does Obama describe the Buffett Rule? Yesterday, he offered this formulation:

OBAMA (4/10/12): And Florida, I've told you where I stand. So now it's time for members of Congress to tell you where they stand.

In the next few weeks we're going to vote on something we call the Buffet Rule. Very simple. If you make more than a million dollars a year...then what the rule says is you should pay the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle class families do.

You shouldn't get special tax breaks. You shouldn't be able to get special loopholes.

And if we do that, then it makes it affordable for us to be able to say for those people who make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families do, then your taxes don't go up.

That’s a hazy formulation. (It’s “very simple,” the president correctly said.) The editors were more precise. So was Times reporter Jackie Calmes—and her formulation in today’s news report differs from that of the editors.

Her percentage is the same—30 percent. Her formulation is massively different. ("The Buffett Rule would set a minimum tax rate of 30 percent for individuals on their annual income above $1 million." Our emphasis.)

Classic Times! If it weren’t for contradictory accounts, would America’s greatest newspaper have any accounts at all?

CHILDHOOD’S END: Don’t blame the ditto-heads!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012

Part 3—Learning to blame the purveyors: Are we liberals creating our own ditto-heads as we develop our “liberal” “news” organs?

If so, you can’t exactly blame us rubes for believing a lot fake, phony facts—for becoming ditto-heads of the left. If you’ve been watching MSNBC in the past month, you’ve encountered a blizzard of fake, phony facts, served by the intellectual leaders you probably think you can trust.

On the right, this has been the norm for decades as people have swallowed oceans of guff from the likes of Rush and Sean. Now, the piles of guff are being shoveled at us.

Consider one more example from the coverage of the killing of Trayvon Martin.

On March 27, Big Ed Schultz was helping us stoke our fury. Here's the way he opened his show. We’ll highlight one point:

SCHULTZ (3/27/12): Good to have you with us tonight, folks. Thanks for watching.

Well, the lead investigator in the Trayvon Martin shooting wanted to charge George Zimmerman with manslaughter but the higher-ups told him not to press charges. This is the biggest piece of information to come out of this case since the day Trayvon Martin was killed. This latest report comes from ABC News, according to multiple sources.

Investigator Chris Serino was instructed not to press charges because the state’s attorney office headed by Norm Wolfinger determined there wasn’t enough evidence to lead to a conviction.

Serino filed an affidavit on February 26th, the night Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman that stated that he was unconvinced by Zimmerman’s version of events.

Now let’s grasp that for just a moment. The lead homicide investigator was questioning the shooter’s story. He didn’t buy it. He recommended a manslaughter charge. But the state attorney who has since been removed from the case told the investigator, “Back off.”

Want to know why there’s outrage? George Zimmerman was not charged and Trayvon’s body sat in a morgue for three days before his parents were contacted. Don’t you think somebody needs to explain that?

If you’re still wondering why there’s so much outrage surrounding this case, these latest reports really ought to clear that up for you, folks.

Big Ed was all fired up, as always. As always, Big Eddie was wrong.

Did Serino file that affidavit? If so, this contradicted waves of propaganda we liberals had been fed on MSNBC concerning the attitude of the police officers who arrived at the scene on the night Martin was killed.

Big Eddie didn’t help us see that these earlier claims and insinuations had been wrong. Instead, he fed us a new misstatement, helping us keep our tribal fury stoked.

Question: Is it true? Did Trayvon Martin’s body “sit in a morgue for three days before his parents were contacted?” That’s what Big Eddie told us this night—and he told us we should be outraged.

Unfortunately, this latest claim was false, like so many other claims he has made. Because we had seen so many people seeming to pimp this claim on The One Liberal Channel, we were surprised when we read the 5000-word news report in the New York Times on April 2.

Dan Barry was the lead reporter. He described the process by which Trayvon Martin’s father learned of his son’s death:

BARRY (4/2/12): Early next morning [after the shooting], no sign of Trayvon, still. Mr. Martin called his son's cellphone, which again went to voice mail. He then repeatedly called the cousin until he answered, only to share the distressing news that he had not seen Trayvon.

Now it was Mr. Martin calling 911. He reported that his son was missing, and then described what his son was wearing. Soon he was outside, meeting a couple of responding police officers. One of them took out a photograph of a dead body from a folder.

''Next thing I heard was a scream,'' Ms. Green said. ''I never want to see anybody in that kind of pain again.''

Mr. Martin cried and cried. At the police station later that day, he said, detectives told him that they had not arrested the man who had shot and killed his son. They explained that George Zimmerman was claiming self-defense.

In fact, Martin’s father learned of his son’s death the morning after the shooting. Trayvon’s body did not “sit in a morgue for three days before his parents were contacted,” the bogus fact Big Eddie had pimped, telling us we should be outraged.

But so what? Big Ed, a ghoul, has been stuffing his pockets with the thrill of such outrage, outrage he has repeatedly stoked with his store of bogus facts. Nor was he the only person pushing this fake fact around.

Did Big Eddie really believe that Trayvon’s body sat in a morgue for three days before his parents were contacted? We don’t know, but if he did, he may have been misled by something he heard on Lawrence O’Donnell’s horrible program. Eight days earlier, radio talker Mark Thompson had angrily offered this:

THOMPSON (3/21/12): Those who killed Emmitt Till left him missing for three days. [Sanford police chief] Bill Lee kept Trayvon missing from his family for three days. Not only did he say that, he also said, if you recall, I’m looked at unfairly—I’m paraphrasing—because I’m a white man in uniform, as if to invoke some type of sympathy or empathy for his situation.

Carefully parsed, that isn’t the same thing Big Ed later said; Thompson’s statement can perhaps be defended as technically accurate. But as various hustlers were crafting such statements, other folk were being misled—and they were feeling upset. Example: Two days later, columnist Annette John-Hall offered this remarkable portrait in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

JOHN-HALL (3/23/12): As a mother, I'm upset about a lot more than that.

How about the fact that authorities bagged Martin's body and tagged it as a John Doe. Even though they had his cellphone and could easily have reached his father, who called it repeatedly when his son didn't come home.

It was three days before Martin's parents were notified of the death of their son—the teen who loved football, his little brother, talking to his girlfriend, and who clearly had parents who loved him unconditionally.

Discarded as a worthless stray.

Just a guess: John-Hall had heard a set of carefully phrased statements, like the statement made by Thompson—and she had been misled. She thought she heard these people saying that Martin’s parents weren’t notified for three days—and she transmitted this bogus fact, saying it had her upset.

Her bogus fact led her to say that the Sanford police “discarded” Martin like “a worthless stray.” On line, no correction has been added to her work.

Four days later, Big Eddie repeated this same inaccurate factual claim, telling us we should be outraged. One night later, Jesse Jackson repeated that factual claim to Schultz—or he may have seemed to. (Jackson: “Since they know who Trayvon Martin was, why John Doe? And why keep him in the morgue for three days away from his family?”)

In fact, Martin’s father learned of his son’s death the morning after he was killed. What had led John-Hall and Schultz to state this inaccurate fact?

Here’s the basic background:

The morning after Big Eddie’s show, the Orlando Sentinel published one of its efforts to stop public figures like Schultz from making so many misstatements. In her very first point, reporter Rene Stutzman addressed the claim which lay behind Schultz’s misstatement:

STUTZMAN (3/28/12): The Trayvon Martin case has generated thousands of news stories and scores of speeches and public proclamations. Sometimes the facts get confused. Here are a few examples:

The Volusia County Medical Examiner's Office refused to release Trayvon's body to his family for three days, an unusually long wait.

Not true, according to the Medical Examiner's Office. It picked up the body at the scene just after 10 p.m. Feb. 26 and notified a Fort Lauderdale funeral home 39 hours later that the body was ready. The funeral home, Roy Mizell and Kurtz, did not pick up the body for an additional 24 hours, the medical examiner reported.

Oops. Judged by this rendering, Schultz had even misstated the claim. According to Stutzman, the claim was that the examiner’s office refused to release Martin’s body for three days—not that Martin’s parents hadn’t been notified of the death. According to Stutzman’s reporting, even this claim was false. But Schultz had made a more heinous claim, a claim which was plainly false.

As he made his bogus claim, Schultz told us liberals that we should be outraged. We tend to agree, though we’d suggest that serious progressives should be outraged by the conduct of people like Schultz.

This is only one of many fake facts which have been pimped by the hustlers, harlequins and hoors found on The One True Liberal Channel. (We’ve been detailing such bogus facts for weeks.) This conduct is highly reminiscent of the long-standing conduct of hustlers on Fox—and of the long-standing conduct of Rush Limbaugh, who helped invent the modern culture of fact-averse tribal pimping.

For decades, we liberals laughed as Limbaugh’s “ditto-heads” recited the bogus claims he spewed. Now, the hustlers are found on our “liberal” channel, and we have our ditto-heads too!

A childish dream has come to an end as we see our own liberal world working this way. Absurd gullibility isn’t just for the other tribe's rubes any more!

Go ahead! Just visit any comment thread and you will see the new generation of ditto-heads—ditto-heads pushing bogus facts they’ve heard from the likes of Ed Schultz. Stutzman has fact-checked various points in the Sentinel—but fact-checking seems to play little role in the work that is now being done on The One True Liberal Channel.

As they stoke our fury and our rage, they move from one fake fact to the next. Sometimes they drop a discredited claim—but have you ever seen one of these horrible people go back and admit to their liberal viewers that they were actually wrong on a factual claim?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at another fake fact Our Own Ditto-heads have been pushing this week. But let’s repeat what we said at the start: It’s understandable, if undesirable, when we see so many gullible liberals repeating so many bogus facts.

As with Rush, so now with Big Ed: Gullible liberals turn to his show, thinking he’s dealing with them in good faith. Sorry! Big Ed Schultz has been pimping fake facts as he stuffs lots of dough in his pockets.

Tomorrow: Three words you can’t say on TV

Where it began: Where did this bogus claim begin? MSNBC began its coverage of the Martin case on Monday evening, March 19. On that night, the New York Times’ Charles Blow served this confusing stew to Schultz:

BLOW (3/19/12): But what has really troubled me and the questions that really arise from this case are how the investigation may or may not have been unfolded with respect to this family. For instance, the fact that the father—

By all accounts, the child left the house with his cell phone, we don’t know if he had a wallet, we don’t know if he had it with him. But he had his cell phone on him.

After he was killed, according to the attorney, he was taken to the medical examiner’s office and he was held there for three days. Now, I don’t know if that includes the day he was shot or not. But the family attorney says three days.

The child has a cell phone on him. So, the father is calling the cell phone to see where his son is. He calls missing persons as well after he doesn’t get called.

I’m trying to figure out, are you telling me that the police did not answer that phone when the father is calling that phone?

The bogus fact may have started here. From that jumbled narration, aothers may have gotten the impression that Martin’s father was calling his son’s phone for three days while the callous, uncaring police refused to answer.

The facts were wrong—but the fury felt good. Where have we seen this before?

The biggest test for the modern liberal!

TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012

Can you quit E. J. Dionne: For the modern liberal, it’s the biggest test of your ability to resist the tribal imperative.

Here’s the test: Can you quit E. J. Dionne?

He seems so rational, so decent, so good—so well-intentioned, so palpably honest! But here’s what Dionne said again last night, guesting on The Last Word:

DIONNE (4/9/12): You know, if I could just say something about all that stuff you ran before. I think there are Velcro candidates and there are Teflon candidates. Teflon candidates like Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, where nothing sticks, and then Velcro candidates like—Al Gore never even said that "I invented the Internet," and yet that stuck to him.

And Romney, from the ease with which you can play those reels, you know, “two Cadillacs,” you know, “the trees are the right height” and all of that, he is looking more and more like a Velcro candidate. And that I think is his core problem.

To gain the full effect of this dog-and-pony show, you have to watch the tape. Listen to the heartfelt concern with which Dionne expresses his point:

Al Gore never said, “I invented the Internet!” And yet, the bullshit stuck!

Of course, Dionne knows why the bullshit stuck. It stuck because people like O’Donnell kept saying such things during Campaign 2000—even as people like Dionne kept refusing to challenge their conduct.

Al Gore said he invented the Internet! The mainstream press corps pimped that tale for twenty months, from March 1999 through November 2000. And according to Nexis, Dionne never spoke up, not even once, to challenge this twenty-month war. The bullshit stuck because the “good people” did nothing while the very bad people—the folk like O’Donnell—conducted their twenty-month war.

We researched this matter in 2010, when Dionne first made this statement about Gore and the Internet in a column (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/27/10). We found no sign that Dionne ever spoke up.

It’s how George Bush reached the White House.

Last night, Dionne seemed so good, so pure, so sincere. He was playing you, right to the core.

To this day, are you able to quit him?

What O'Donnell did: As the conversation continued, O’Donnell played the stupidity card, with Jonathan Capehart serving the crepes. Eventually, O’Donnell pimped some SNL jive concerning Candidate Gore.

Can you spot the flaw with O’Donnell’s story?

O’DONNELL (continuing directly): And, Jonathan Capehart, [Romney] spent Easter weekend at his southern California beach mansion, the place I guess where he’s trying to put in the elevator for the four cars. But he apparently did body surfing, which my guess is, that`s a less politically damaging than wind surfing was for John Kerry.

CAPEHART: Yes, because lots of people do body surfing. I've never done it, but I know people who have done it and I've seen people do it. It looks fun, but it's not for me.

O’DONNELL: And, Jonathan, to the SNL thing, I think E.J. raises an important point in that in 2000, Saturday Night Live did some penetrating stuff on Al Gore that I think gave the electorate a vocabulary in a certain sense for what made them uncomfortable about Al Gore. And it seems like they’ve zeroed in on the essential defect in the Romney candidacy, which is that pandering, which is that willingness to say anything...

When a person like O’Donnell talks about wind versus body surfing, he’s treating you like a low-IQ fool. Which is exactly what you are if you're willing to tolerate this in the name of tribal unity.

Regarding Gore, please understand:

O’Donnell refers to a SNL skit on the first weekend of October 2000, after the first Bush-Gore debate. At that point, Dionne’s colleagues had been pushing the “invented the Internet” tale for nineteen solid months, without a single word of rebuttal from Dionne, who feigns such concern today. And omigod:

That very same weekend, O’Donnell appeared on the McLaughlin Group where he pushed another bogus “lie” by Gore. Sitting in one of the program’s “liberal” chairs, he said the lie—which Gore never told—was “one of his most ridiculous and his most relevant untruths.”

To review O’Donnell’s disgraceful conduct, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/3/05. This is how Bush reached the White House.

Bad people then, awful people today! Dionne was playing you last night.

Lawrence O’Donnell? Much worse!

Regarding that SNL skit: In April 2003, we took part in a panel discussion of political humor at the University of Virginia.

Larry Sabato chaired the event. Also appearing was James Downey, kingpin of SNL.

At one point, Downey aired tape of that very skit, the one which featured the “penetrating stuff” about Candidate Gore. We expressed our views regarding its quality.

In our view, the young college kids got a lively discussion. To see what you think, just click this.

But just for the record:

Dionne had been refusing to speak for nineteen months by the time that worthless skit aired. That is how George Bush reached the White House, despite the things these very bad people tell you on TV today.

Terrible state of the public schools watch!

TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2012

Paul Krugman messes with Texas: Yesterday, the New York Times ran a news report about funding cuts to the Texas schools. Click here.

On his blog, Paul Krugman praised the Times report, then messed with Texas—bad:

KRUGMAN (4/9/12): A good article in the Times about the terrible state of Texas schools—followed by a truly awful comment thread, in which many readers rush to blame, you guessed it, teachers’ unions.

Folks, this isn’t an article about New York, where three-quarters of public-sector workers are unionized. It’s about Texas, where only one in five public workers belongs to a union. Blaming unions for the problems of Texas is like, well, blaming Jews for the problems of Japan: there aren’t enough of them to matter.

Sigh.

At THE HOWLER, we sighed too!

First, a matter of opinion: That was not a “good article.” It was journalistically weak in many ways. In our view, it was massively underfed work.

(Earth to the Times: That high school kid walking a mile to school was not an impressive focus.)

Having said that, let us also say this: Few comments in the Times comment thread “rushed to blame, you guessed it, teachers’ unions.” (At least as far as we could stand reading.) Many of the comments were uninformed, as comments about poublic schools always are. But what comments was Krugman reading?

We have no idea.

That said, the most significant comment in Krugman’s post would be his instant, extremely vague jibe about “the terrible state of Texas schools.”

Liberals enjoy reading such things about Texas, as can be seen from some of Krugman’s commenters. But how terrible are the Texas schools? A commenter, writing from London, reacted to Krugman’s post exactly as we had:

COMMENTER: As bad as Texas schools may be, it's interesting to note that white students in Texas outperform white students in Wisconsin on standardized tests, black students in Texas outperform black students in Wisconsin, and Hispanic students in Texas outperform Hispanic students in Wisconsin. Overall Texas comes out lower because it has many more Hispanic students, who perform worse for whatever reasons (language?).

“As bad as Texas schools may be?” Judging from years of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Texas schools don’t seem to be “bad” at all.

Last year, we discussed this topic in some detail. To see NAEP scores from Texas compared with those from a half dozen other states, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/25/11. For a simpler assessment of this general point, see Matt Yglesias’ short but accurate post in yesterday’s Slate.

In the Texas public schools, all three major demographic groups have tended to outscore their peers from around the nation. It may be that funding cuts will harm this statewide performance. But in recent years, there have been large funding cuts to public schools in other states too. In our view, the failure to compare the size of the Texas cuts to those in other states was one of the obvious, groaning flaws with yesterday’s news report.

Bottom line: Conservatives do enjoy blaming the unions. Liberals like to mess with Texas.

We live in highly tribal times. Such times may tend to lower comprehension among even the brightest players.

Final question, for extra credit: Do the lives of American children matter? Or are school children useful props for enjoyable upper-class war games?