Even if you ignore the silly Jesus stuff in the beginning of this video, it’s obvious that the ridiculous ACORN witch hunt is not about illegal activity, it’s about ideology. There are government contractors with FAR more egregious records of fraud (Northrop Grumman, etc.) and other illegal activity including murder (Blackwater) that are not receiving the same scrutiny.
In fact, Sean Hannity dismissed Blackwater’s actions because they are, in his words, “keeping us safe.” (Don’t get me started on that little bit of wingnut fantasy.)
As I’ve posted before, if Acorn was in the business of KILLING brown people instead of HELPING them this would not be an issue.
Oh, and the Defund ACORN Act IS a “bill of attainder” and, as such, is unconstitutional. But Fox won’t tell you that. In fact, the only way it could be constitutional is if it is applied equally to “any organization that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency [, or applied to] any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.”
Copied from an email exchange between me and Mrs. Chickenbutt:
I’d argue that Michelle Malkin is worse than Ann Coulter. Coulter is clearly just in it for the fame and the entertainment value. She really doesn’t know anything about any of the issues, she just goes on TV and says the most inflammatory thing possible so they’ll keep inviting her back. Her books are the same way. They’re poorly written and famously unsourced. Most people just read them to see what asinine thing she’ll say next.
Malkin, on the other hand, is so stupid she’s actually dangerous. She has a legion of devoted followers who will literally do anything she says. These are the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts, the people who have created a bizarre proto-reality around themselves wherein Democrats and liberals all have devil horns and white Christians are the most put-upon people in the country. (Did you know she sicced her minions on the family of a six-year-old who had the audacity to appear at a Dem photo op regarding SCHIP? They stalked the kid and his family, peered in the windows of their house and described everything in detail on her blog.)
Malkin will slam her fist on the table and shout at the top of her lungs that black is white, and when someone actually takes the time to prove to her that black is irrefutably black she’ll just shrug and move on to the next faux outrage.
EJ Dionne has an excellent opinion piece over at the Washington Post. Regardless of my incendiary headline, the whole thing bears reading because he outlines many of the points that progressives have been making for years about our corporate, establishment media.
I’ll post some highlights, but you really ought to read the whole thing.
If you doubt that there is a conservative inclination in the media, consider which arguments you hear regularly and which you don’t. When Rush Limbaugh sneezes or Newt Gingrich tweets, their views ricochet from the Internet to cable television and into the traditional media. It is remarkable how successful they are in setting what passes for the news agenda.
…
For all the talk of a media love affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the media’s discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from the moderate left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.
The media has an interest in defining the terms of the debate, indeed a self-interest, given the conglomerates that they are. When ABC News gives the same amount of space to Sean Hannity as they do to the Secretary of State, implicit in that editorial decision is the fact that Hannity has spent many years as part of the ABC Radio Network.
…And the ten questions that every member of Congress should answer, to their constituents, before they vote “Yes” on the bailout.
I painfully watched the “60 Minutes” interview with Secretary Hank Paulson last night.
I was frustrated at the interviewer Scott Pelley’s inability to ask the really important questions. Instead, all we got were easy softballs that facilitated the requisite platitudes and generalities of your average Bush-appointed hack (see Brown, Michael and Gonzales, Alberto).
Curvy, smokin’ hot and imminently spankable British TV cook Nigella Lawson has admitted that she doesn’t allow her show’s cameramen to film her butt. “Not if they want me to be nice and feed them.”
