Interesting, that is, If you're a competent journal

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So the foreign money into the Chamber coffers story is "out there" but neither the Post nor the Times gets it right, says Think Progress.

At this point, we take a brief timeout for the timeworn aphorism about the person whose paycheck depends on his ignorance....

To which we add,willful ignorance is bliss until your deniability is so pathetically laughable that it strains what little credulity ye olde trad med crumbling pillars have left.
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Oh, and, thanks oodles, Justice Kennedy.
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Rich Raging

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Frank Rich opines on the sorry reaction to the smearing of Shirley Sherrod.

Maybe Frank gets together with these guys for tea and crumpets from time to time. But it's long past time to recognize that this situation, this evil, persists because too many in the media, too many in the political elite, treat the Breitbarts and Limbaughs and Drudges as some amusing little theatre.

Yet incidents of violence are on the rise, threats of danger are on the rise. Who will own the tragedy now foreshadowing?

Who will look in the mirror honestly and admit the false equivalencies, the ginning-up, the "it's out there" level of danger growing within? Beck? O'Reilly? Ailes? Murdoch? Armey? McConnell? Bachmann? Angle? Palin? Erickson? The numbers are legion.

The willful blinders shamefully obvious. The enabling media equally so.

The Breitbarts never change. The evil oozes out of them like fetid slime, spreading fear, hate, division. The wonder is that so many, still, whitewash the full depth of what they do.

White sheets...too easy to crawl between 'em and close your eyes.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Productive Pelosi

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I'm with Gail Collins.

Give me one savvy productive Pelosi

over the whole swamp of puerile Palindom any day.
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Prairie Recommends: Frank Rich

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Just in case you didn't notice that the choleric rage from the right was about more than healthcare reform.
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Loyal-ties

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Loyalty has been on my mind today, ever since I caught portions of Morning Joe's conversation during the Political Roundtable. Not sure who said it, Joe or Mika or guest Matt Bai or the nonentity from Newsweek, but the consensus seemed to be there is no loyalty anymore...it's cultural these days not just the political quakes we're seeing courtesy the teabaggers and other independents.

No loyalty to party, no loyalty to employees or employers or spouses or....well, you get the idea.

So when I came across this commentary, John Hoeven (Opportunist-ND) for US Senate, at North Dakota's premier political blog, northdecoder.com, I decided to share it with you. Because right now a lot's being said about Governor John Hoeven's inevitability to take the Senate seat long held by Byron Dorgan.

But there's a growing volume of talk about Hoeven's party-hopping, too. Portraying his fealty to loyalty as the political equivalent of corporate values like companies who've gotten all kinds of tax breaks by communities to locate there only to jump borders for cheaper labor, or faux family values like John Edwards or Mark Sanford's concept of loyalty to their wives.

Whaddya think about Chet's posit that Hoeven [and perhaps other minority party novices] would rather switch and be powerful than stay in the far reaches of the minority once reality sets in? And should Democrats accept 'em in the fold? Is there a value to loyalty anymore?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Prairie's Reading: Krugman's Tidings of Comfort

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If you're like me, snowed in by the Blizzard of 2009, not to be confused with the Big Flood of 2009 last spring...well, it has been a year, now hasn't it...

You're likely reading old-fashioned mysteries--a fresh collection--or a newfangled Sony Reader that'll take some getting used to, but definitely fits a travel-minded spirit.

But in the meantime, go, read Krugman. Now here's some Candid Christmas Spirit worth pondering.
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Prairie Recommends: Frank Rich Balloons

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Actually, the most resonant part was the commenter to Rich's column who noted:

7.

mhughes

Grasshopper Junction, AZ

October 25th, 2009

8:51 am

“They put on a very good show for us, and we bought it,” the local sheriff, Jim Alderden, said ...”

Rich: “His words could stand as the epitaph for an era.“

Or a nation.

True that.
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Sadly those who should most read Rich's column are likely staring in their mirrors, posing.
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Prairie Recommends: Krugman

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...ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern.

Krugman.

Required reading.

Always.
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Prairie Recommends: Rich Rabbit Ragu

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After reading Frank Rich's take on the rabbit raguicizing of Washington under Democratic domain, all that's left is to barf.

Next required reading: Animal Farm.
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The DeeCee Disconnect

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Frank Rich cuts through the punditization and fetishization of inside-the-Beltway thinking and, well, basically, the rest of the immediate world's reality.

Smokin'!
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Substance

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The other night on the Daily Show, outgoing White House press secretary Dana Perino chastised the media for not focusing on substance. No argument there...

So here's some substance.
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Prisoner of....

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More and more, John McCain is looking like a prisoner of slimeball rightwing political "consultants" and cronies and "conservative" voices of the Atwater-Rovian School of sleazeball politics. Delivering hostage tapes of lies to appease those who control him.

At least that's the only possible alternative explanation to John McCain being so desperate and covetous of winning the Presidency that he will stoop to any vile tactic of race-baiting and inciting hatred and anger in the crowds who attend rallies to hear his and, even more, Sarah Palin's scathing and disingenuous attacks on Barack Obama.

Attacks that are joined by the likes of Cindy McCain and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Some company to keep.

Even as he calls McCain to account, though, Frank Rich like too many of his fellow reporters and opiners gives him a pass--and a benefit of the doubt that McCain no longer deserves.

The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder.

Friday in Lakeville, Minnesota, McCain grudgingly responded to one of Minnesota's lesser nice [shorter: Lice] citizen's attack on Obama as an "Arab" by saying that Obama was a decent family man, a citizen, that they had disagreements.....

Now, maybe McCain had an epiphany and realized he needed to pull back from the rants and rousing of the rabble. Or maybe not.

Because just moments from that comment, McCain was attacking Obama as someone who never worked across the aisle. A flat-out bald-faced thou-shalt-bear-no-false-witness lie that would come as a surprise to Senator Dick Lugar [R-IN] and Senator Tom Coburn [R-OK]...for starters.

But then, when McCain signed on with the merchants of hate and gambled on Palin the Barbarian, he signed away his Honor Conduct.
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UPDATE: Garrison Keillor has thoughtful words for real honor conduct. And Matt Tiabbi dons his hazmat suit to delve into the world of Rove.
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[crossposted at Firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette]

What We Know

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What we know about the two presidential presumptives, thanks to Rev. Rick Warren's Faith Forum, is that:

John McCain is congenitally incapable of diverging from his stump speech talking points to the extent that he'll even alert you that he's going to ignore your question so he can bombast about his talking points.

Barack Obama is cool, measured, thoughtful, reasoned, nuanced, diplomatic and have I mentioned thoughtful? Guess that "aloha spirit" from his "foreign, exotic" vacation with his family in the state where he grew up was good for him. Maybe we should all toss in a few coin and send Chippy, erm, Cokie Roberts over there for a little attitude adjustment.

But how much more did we learn about the candidates? Did we learn where Johnny McCain got his wacky sense of humor? Did we learn why his Mommy sued his first wife after he dumped her for a younger, rich heiress blonde wife...getting his marriage license before he even had his divorce papers finalized? Did we learn about Johnny's ties to lobbyists and their ties to most all the scandals and controversies of the day?

Some say we've heard too much about Barack Obama. Some--like Frank Rich--say we haven't yet heard enough about John McCain.
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Manchurian Bush

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Now is the winter of our dishonor as a nation?

NYTimes is reporting this morning [props to Atrios] that interrogations used by Americans at Guantanamo have been based on a 1957 Air Force chart in an article entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.”

Yes, "interrogation techniques" used by Chinese Communists against our own American soldiers. Techniques that were known to produce false information.

But I guess when you blow up frogs as a kid...and mock the deaths of those whose lives are in your hands when you're governor of Texas...and diss the family of a black man chained and pulled to death behind a pickup...and become president and from the cosy confines of the Oval Office and Camp David let your gut send others to their deaths for oil....

then it's not about the information, it's about the sadism.
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More Must Reading

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To yesterday's weekend list, add Frank Rich, the uber columnist of the New York Times, writing about McCain's pastor Hagee.

For the media, it seems so far, it's the hypocrisy, stupid.

And Tom Friedman's back from book leave asking Who Will Tell the People? Maybe instead of focusing on the candidates, he ought to direct his question to his media colleagues who yet today persist in push-pastoring the pastor-who-shall-not-be-named.

And what's the what Tom wonders "who" will tell? Hey, while we've been cowering under our desks between shopping trips to the mall, the world's passed us by. Oh, we ain't North Korea, but we sure's heck ain't what we used to be, either.

So, what's the scorecard to be by the end of the day? Which Sunday pundits will have justified their existence? And which will have delivered just more of the same ol', same ol'? My money's on Schieffer.