Cheesed Off Over A Right-Wing Blogger Whine

(Get it, “whine” and cheese…never mind.)

So it looks like someone named Naomi Schaefer Riley is all in a snit over her firing from the Chronicle of Higher Education, because…well, as noted here…

…last week, on the Chronicle’s “Brainstorm” blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and “a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,” at worst.

For instance, the author of a dissertation on the history of black midwifery began her research, she told the Chronicle, because she “noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature.” Another graduate student blamed the housing crisis in America on institutional racism. And a third argued that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and John McWhorter have “played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.”

…

Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post. A number of the dissertations aren’t even available. Which didn’t seem to stop the Chronicle reporter, though. And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.

(By the way, about the “Chronicle Reporter,” it should be noted that Schaefer Riley wrote her post in response to a story appearing previously in the CHE called “Black Studies: ‘Swaggering Into the Future,’” in which the reporter described how “young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline.” Of course, the reporter didn’t name names of critics of the “black studies” program, so Schaefer Riley, being a good little wingnut-ette, felt the urge to speak up right away, thus bringing all of this upon herself when all she had to do was keep her mouth shut.)

In response, I think the following should be noted from here…

Schaefer Riley admits that she hadn’t read these dissertations, but she had no compunctions about assailing the work of three grad students by name.

Note that academics read the Chronicle the way that New York media types read Gawker. Being called a disgrace to your discipline in the CHE is a crushing blow for a young scholar. I mean, consider the source, but still….

Schaefer Riley’s main self-defense is that she made the same arguments in a book she wrote before the Chronicle hired her.

She scoffs at the idea that she should have read these dissertations before attacking the students by name. Her disregard for the facts justifies the Chronicle’s decision to fire her all by itself.

…

Schaefer Riley is trying to paint herself as a victim of political correctness. She’s no such thing. The Chronicle fired her for impugning the reputations of scholars with no evidence. She proudly declared herself guilty as charged in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. QED.

The question is not why she got fired, but why the Chronicle picked her up in the first place.

I really have tried to avoid blogger hissy fits particularly in the world of academia, but as I read about all of this, all I could think of was the witch hunt against Melissa McEwan and Amanda Marcotte (orchestrated by the perpetually odious Bill Donahue of the Catholic League), two bloggers of my political stripe who went to work for John Edwards when he ran for president, which as noted here, led to Marcotte’s resignation before she had the opportunity to do anything whatsoever on behalf of the campaign. Where were all the cries from the wingnuts about “political correctness” then?

As Lindsay Beyerstein noted in her criticism of Schaefer Reilly, all of this dustup will no doubt win the latter a cushy gig at the Heritage Foundation anyway (or perhaps a job at Fix Noise, assuming that Schaefer Reilly has a bottle of peroxide handy and has no trouble squeezing into a form-fitting dress with a plunging neckline, and showing plenty of leg for Rupert, Roger and the boys also).

Wednesday Mashup (4/25/12)

(Testing, testing…is this thing still on ?)

OK, allow me to back up and do some ‘splainin’ here…

I pretty much walked away from this site about a year and a half ago out of total disgust, keeping Blogger as my main platform for this kind of thing. Not with WordPress as a blogging platform, I wish to emphasize, but with the impending Dem loss of the U.S. House, including the PA-08 seat of Patrick Murphy to “Mikey The Beloved” Fitzpatrick (guilty of this recent, particularly heinous moment which, in a manner utterly true to form, has been thoroughly ignored by his house organ, the Bucks County Courier Times). Also, at the time, I wasn’t sure if the Senate would fall either, but thanks to the intervention of the teabaggers, who made sure that “Yes, Wiccan” O’Donnell was nominated in Delaware along with Sharron Angle in Nevada and John Raese in West Virginia, the Senate remained under the control of the Dems. I wanted the post with the Rachel Maddow video to remain as the first thing a reader saw at this site as a “J’Accuse!” gesture of sorts (I think it’s safe to say that, after all this time, I’ve made my point).

Well, Blogger is now thoroughly hosed when it comes to fairly long, textual posts and I have neither the time nor the desire to figure out how to deal with the problem. So, on the infrequent, oft chance that I am able to generate content again, I’m planning to do so here for the immediate future.

And with that boring pretext out of the way, allow me to bring you the following from the New York Times on Monday (from here)…

Under federal labor law, employees have the right to join together to seek better pay and working conditions, with or without a union. If an employer tries to punish organizers, employees have the right to seek protection from the National Labor Relations Board. But employees still don’t have the right to be informed of their rights.

Last August, the N.L.R.B. issued a rule requiring employers to post a notice in the workplace telling employees of their rights. The rule was prompted by the board’s finding that young employees, recent immigrants and workers in nonunion workplaces were generally unaware of the law’s guarantees and protections.

The backlash was furious. The National Association of Manufacturers sued to block the rule in federal court in Washington, D.C. The United States Chamber of Commerce sued in federal court in South Carolina. In both cases, industry claimed that the law did not expressly permit the board to require employers to post a notice.

And yes, to answer the question, those opposing the notice were acting typically ridiculous, thus inspiring this video.

If you want to understand exactly how much this notice (at the very least) needs to be posted, click here to find out how Target has been fighting the efforts of its workforce to form a union (including making a video using unionized actors, believe it or not), click here to read how T-Mobile workers were trying to do the same thing (its parent company in Germany employs a unionized workforce, though that isn’t the case here – Dem U.S. House Rep Tim Bishop and Dem Sen. Richard Blumenthal supported the effort, as noted here), and this tells us how workers at Station Casinos started a seven-day hunger strike in an effort to unionize, and have faced a campaign of illegal intimidation and firings as a result.

Next, Ken Blackwell is back to attack Hillary Clinton (some things never change), including taking a shot at the new START treaty (here – in response, this tells us the following)…

The treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to each reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 – 30% lower than the previous ceiling.

Mr Obama said it was an important milestone, but “just one step on a longer journey” of nuclear disarmament.

Mr Medvedev said the deal would create safer conditions throughout the world.

If ratified by lawmakers in both countries, the treaty will replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) of 1991, which has expired.

Update: My bad – should have noted that, despite the caterwauling of Repug Sen. Jon Kyl, the treaty was ratified by the Senate, as noted here, and a particularly brainless update is here.

Blackwell also whines as follows…

This is the same Russia whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, Hillary famously gifted with a red “Re-set” button on their first meeting. That was to signal the new administration in Washington wouldn’t fuss about Russia’s 2008 aggression against the Republic of Georgia.

In response, this tells us how the Obama Administration, far from acting like wallflowers while the Russia/Georgia conflict simmers, brokered the following deal…

At the end of last year, the final roadblock to Russian entry into the (World Trade Organization) was Georgia’s insistence that Russia agree to increase transparency of trade across Russia’s borders into Georgia’s breakaway autonomies of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. (WTO rules allow every member the right to veto a country’s membership, and Georgia, as a member, could do so with Russia.) The August 2008 war between Russia and Georgia led to Russian military occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Moscow’s recognition of the autonomies as independent states. Even before the war, however, Russia controlled both sides of the crossings into Abkhazia and South Ossetia and staunchly refused access to either Georgia or international monitors.

While Russian membership in the WTO has been a priority of the Obama administration’s Russia policy, the administration has also made a point not to pressure Georgia into giving its consent. The administration thus insisted to Moscow that it had to negotiate the conditions for its accession directly with Tbilisi, while it underlined to Tbilisi the importance the United States placed on a successful agreement.

The result is, on paper, a spectacular success. The WTO agreement provides a novel mechanism for monitoring trade between Russia and Georgia across Abkhazia and South Ossetia (as well as at their third, already functioning, land crossing in undisputed territory). Both governments have agreed to report data on trade to the WTO and to affix electronic seals on outbound cargo to facilitate the tracking of goods. They have also agreed to allow a private company to confidentially monitor trade and to recommend, on the basis of that monitoring, the inspection of cargo by either party. Finally, the agreement establishes a mechanism for arbitrating disputes.

Blackwell should really avoid anything more substantive than attacking children’s television programs, as noted here, which is actually more of his speed.

Finally, someone named John Hawkins at Clownhall.com presented five “devastating” numbers that supposedly show Number 44’s “incompetence” (here).

1) The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.”

This is from an analysis from Mark Knoller of CBS News, who, as noted here, has a history of absolving Former Commander Codpiece of any financial wrongdoing and laying all blame at the feet of Number 44.

Besides, as Media Matters points out…

In 2001, President George W. Bush inherited a surplus, with projections by the Congressional Budget Office for ever-increasing surpluses, assuming continuation of the good economy and President Bill Clinton’s policies. But every year starting in 2002, the budget fell into deficit. In January 2009, just before President Obama took office, the budget office projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession. Mr. Obama’s policies in 2009 and 2010, including the stimulus package, added to the deficits in those years but are largely temporary.

The second graph shows that under Mr. Bush, tax cuts and war spending were the biggest policy drivers of the swing from projected surpluses to deficits from 2002 to 2009. Budget estimates that didn’t foresee the recessions in 2001 and in 2008 and 2009 also contributed to deficits. Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much. [The New York Times, 7/23/11]

Continuing…

2) This country has already lost its AAA rating, we’re 15 trillion dollars in debt, we have 100 trillion dollars in unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities…

The reason we lost our Triple-A rating was because of the dithering of Man-Tan Boehner and that sleazy weasel Eric Cantor on raising the debt ceiling. The debt was mentioned previously, and Social Security (which, as noted here, is projected to drop off funding to about 70-80 percent in 20 years, which is still more funding than what is paid out today…more here) has nothing to do with the deficit. And yes, we need to look at Medicare, but even that isn’t the biggest driver of the debt.

3) We’re now up to 1,091 days without a budget despite the fact that it’s the most basic function of Congress and it’s required by law.

Oh brother – as noted here…

HONOLULU — President Obama agreed on Friday to delay a request to Congress to expand the government’s borrowing authority by $1.2 trillion, allowing lawmakers time to return from recess and register their views on it.

The delay, which a White House official said would be only a few days, will not jeopardize the operations of the government, as last summer’s impasse over the debt ceiling did. The budget agreement of Aug. 2, which broke that deadlock, has made it highly unlikely that Congressional Republicans could block an increase in the debt limit through the 2012 election. Since signing legislation to codify that agreement, Mr. Obama has already obtained two increases totaling $900 billion.

And as noted here, Boehner and his pals are making noise like they might renege on the debt deal later this year (figures).

4) One of the great ironies of this election is the still rabid support that black Americans have for Barack Obama. This is kind of like Columbine High School throwing a “We Sure Do Miss You” Memorial Rally for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Let’s see, tasteless, racist, and utterly inaccurate all at once? Yep, pretty much.

And as noted here…

During an exchange with Fox News analyst Juan Williams during a debate in South Carolina on Jan. 16, Gingrich defended previous statements that poor kids lack a strong work ethic, that they should be put to work as janitors (child labor laws be damned), and that black Americans should “demand jobs, not food stamps.”

“Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?” Williams asked.

“No,” Gingrich responded, to roaring applause and rolling laughter. “I don’t see that.”

“It sounds as if you’re speaking to belittle people,” Williams added later in the exchange.

“Well, first of all, Juan,” Gingrich said, “the fact is, more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.”

This statement, while technically true, is no more reliable as a factual observation than other conservatives’ claims that Obama has governed during the highest unemployment spike in decades, or that his presidency has overseen the biggest national debt in history.

All three statements may be true on their face, but they lay responsibility for the greatest recession since the Great Depression at the feet of a man who wasn’t even president when the economic floor caved.

Funny, but I don’t hear Democrats questioning the work ethic of men and women of color. And I know that’s a little tangential to job numbers, but it does have something to do with stigmatizing the employment prospects for a rather significant demographic in this country.

And in terms of economic policies that actually help African Americans, Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett said here that unemployment funds are a stimulus of sorts, earning her the right-wing umbrage noted here.

More to the point, though, this tells us the following…

Even here, the black employment outlook is mixed. Black men appear to have gained jobs since February 2011 in manufacturing, construction and the service sector. And while government employment held steady this month, deep staff cuts in state and local government have hit black women particularly hard. Indeed, government agencies, a sector that has slashed about 500,000 jobs since February 2010, employed just over one-quarter of black women before the recession began. That has caused the number of black women with jobs to fall, although that number held steady in February, (Bill Rodgers, a Rutgers University economist who studies inequality) said.

The issue is spending to create demand not just to spur hiring for a racial class, but an economic class that will lift all of the proverbial boats, as it were.

And concluding with Hawkins…

5) The average unemployment rate during George Bush’s time in office was roughly 5.3% as compared to 8.2% today, which is part of the longest streak of over 8% unemployment since the Great Depression. However, because of the way the unemployment rate is calculated, even those horrific numbers don’t give you the full sense of the Mt. Krakatoa-like havoc that Barack Obama has wreaked on the job market.

In response, please click here to read each of the three charts, including the last one, showing job losses from Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History and job gains under the current occupant of An Oval Office.

Oh, and one more thing: Hawkins begins his screed with the following…

Whether you’ve had some form of head trauma that has caused you to like Barack Obama or like all good hearted people, you can’t stand him, his performance has objectively been terrible.

I realize that violent imagery and veiled threats of physical harm are right out of the typical right-wing playbook (along with typically pejorative, “us versus them” rhetoric about how all “good hearted” people can’t stand Obama), but I would just like for this fool Harkins to consider something here.

This is a picture of the late actress Natasha Richardson, who died three years ago last March. She fell while on a skiing trip and, indeed, suffered the “head trauma” that Harkins apparently thinks is something to use to ridicule those with whom he disagrees. She left behind a grieving husband and two young boys.

Find a conscience somehow, you contemptible guttersnipe.

Join The “Mosque-Keteers” In A Sing-Along!

Seriously, I’d love to know how much “Astro Turf” money is being spent on this operation (here – and actually, I think we have our thoroughly unsurprising answer here).

Oh, and by the way, the guy wearing the head scarf, or whatever that is, is a guy named Kenny who is a Union carpenter working at Ground Zero (and as he tells us later, he most definitely is not a Muslim.)

(Also, as far as I’m concerned, this bunch of protesters might as well be teabaggers, and here is a doozy of an item about that bunch.)

Monday Mashup Part One (8/23/10)

1) Kudos to letter writer Rob Turbovsky of Holland, PA for writing a Letter to the Editor of the Bucks County Courier Times criticizing J.D. Mullane’s ridiculous blog (here).

Of course, it would have meant a lot more if the paper had printed it before Mullane went on vacation, forcing him to respond (problematic as to whether or not he’ll do that when he returns).

2) Also, Time’s Amy Sullivan reports the following about the “SCARY MUSLIM” rumors about President Obama (here)…

Where is this confusion coming from? I asked (Alan Cooperman of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life) who suggested this explanation: “Part of what’s going on here may be that there’s been a relative–especially compared to the previous president–absence of information from the president himself and from the White House about his personal religion and his practice of his personal faith. In the relative vacuum of information, suggestions from the president’s critics have been able to gain more currency and uncertainty is rising.”

In response, I give you the BS factory known as Marc Thiessen today (here)…

The poll on Obama’s religious affiliation probably would have been a one-day story had the White House not launched a surprisingly aggressive defense of the president’s Christian bona fides. The White House immediately put out a statement declaring “President Obama is a committed Christian, and his faith is an important part of his daily life.” We soon learned from White House officials that the president reads a daily devotional on his BlackBerry each morning and that he dialed three Christian pastors to pray with him on his birthday. The White House even made one of those pastors, Joel Hunter, available to the media to discuss Obama’s Christian journey.

Soo…the story is Obama’s fault because he didn’t say enough about his religion (probably because of the full plate of urgent issues left to him by his clueless predecessor…more on him shortly…that he thought he should devote his energy to instead), but it’s also Obama’s fault because of his “surprisingly aggressive defense.”

Truly, our corporate media wants us to be stupid.

Update: And by the way, h/t to Atrios for this.

3) Next, we have another item I was unable to get to last week from John Feehery at The Hill (here, about the upcoming elections)…

That President Bush is making a comeback at the expense of President Obama in the 40 most vulnerable Democratic seats speaks volumes about where the collective head of the American people is now.

Of course, Feehery is choosing to ignore the very real possibility that those voters who allegedly support Dubya more than Obama in those 40 Democratic seats would have done so regardless of anything Obama did.

And as if it isn’t bad enough that a bought-and-paid-for GOP stooge like Feehery would say something like this, along comes someone a bit more legit like Howard Fineman of Newsweek (here)…

To answer the billboard question of a year ago — Do You Miss Him Yet? — the answer about Bush remains “no.” But it’s less emphatic than it was a few months ago.

I guess there’s a lot I could say in response, but I’ll merely link to this Media Matters post debunking yet again the “zombie lie” that a “Bush Bounce” is right around the corner.

The people ruling our discourse working for the initials-for-names news organizations just loves them a whole big bunch of GOP sugar daddies, people. And none bigger than Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History.

4) Finally, Joe Pitts continues to propagandize at The Daily Caller (here)…

Over the past nine weeks the House has been in session, Republicans have offered more than $120 billion in cuts to wasteful government programs. These cuts could have paid for extensions of unemployment compensation, COBRA health insurance assistance and state Medicaid assistance — and there would have been tens of billions of dollars left that could have gone toward reducing the deficit.

It’s really hilarious to read Pitts claim that he supports COBRA benefits considering that he voted against funding those benefits here.

Continuing…

All of these cuts were offered as part of the YouCut program, an effort to include the American people in the fight to cut government waste. Each week that Congress is in session, Republican Whip Eric Cantor hosts a poll on his website. The poll offers five different government programs that could be considered wasteful.

Participants can vote for the cut they support by voting online or sending a text message from their phone. The cut receiving the most votes is offered as a motion on the House floor and every Member has to decide whether they support the program.

What type of cuts have been winning polls so far?

…

The winning cut in week six aimed to stop taxpayer support for union activities. Some federal employees currently spend their entire workweek on union activity. Federal employees should be doing the business of the people, and union membership fees should be used to compensate workers for performing union organizing and lobbying. It’s estimated that in a single year $120 million is spent paying federal employees who are doing union work.

In response, the following should be noted from here (from a Fox site, surprisingly enough)…

Another program is described as “Taxpayer Subsidized Union Activities” which, if eliminated, would save about $120 million a year by not paying federal workers who spend their time on union activities. Unions already are at a disadvantage in dealing with the federal government because they are not permitted to strike. Having as officers individuals who are federal employees and know exactly what goes on in the workplace is an important effort to level the playing field.

…

The point, though, is not to challenge each of the programs selected for popular vote. It is probably easy to find, and describe, programs which might incur the wrath of the electorate and its budget paring. Ronald Reagan famously railed against a welfare queen – later found to be fictitious — as he argued against federal welfare programs.

And Think Progress tells us here that YouCut ended up leading the Repugs to suggest shutting down a successful jobs program.

Also, I believe the following should be noted (here)…

Given the Republican Party’s history of fiscal recklessness, it’s no surprise that Eric Cantor and his House colleagues want to outsource responsibility to the conservative activists that will traffic his web site. But their fuzzy math doesn’t work. Even as the GOP and its Tea Party base calls for a balanced budget, they want the Treasury-draining Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to be made permanent.

Of course, a balanced budget could theoretically still be achieved if the GOP and its Tea Party storm troopers were willing to make draconian budget cuts to the $3.8 trillion federal budget proposed by President Obama. But these faux fiscal conservatives won’t make the choices. We know this, because they told us so.

A quick note on the basic math of the budget. President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 is forecast to produce a $1.3 trillion deficit (down from $1.6 trillion in 2010). National defense and Social Security each come in at $738 billion. Medicare totals $498 billion, while Medicaid and other health care services add $260 billion and $25 billion, respectively. Throw in the required $251 billion in required interest payments on the national debt, and those portions alone of Washington’s bill total over $2.5 trillion. Meanwhile, given that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure and more than half over the next decade, the Obama budget rightly calls for letting the Bush tax cuts expire for Americans earning over $250,000.

The Perspectives post tells us more about how those zany teabaggers, who are alleged to be budget hawks, have “taken the big ticket items off table when it comes to budget cuts.”

And “Republic” Party blowhard Pitts concludes with this…

Our debt isn’t a Republican problem or a Democrat problem.

In response, please click here to support Lois Herr, Pitts’ Dem opponent in the PA-16 congressional race.

This Week In Blackness

(And it isn’t even February – imagine that.)

Yo, Dr. Laura, wassup! (h/t Daily Kos – potty mouth alert, by the way)

“Worst Persons” from “Countdown” on 8/13/10

Google maps gets the “bronze” for not clearing up the supposed “mystery” of the dead girl in the street, who, happily, is very much alive; Sharron Angle gets the “silver” for stating that we should privatize Social Security based on what Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet did – nice; but Dr. Laura Schlessinger gets the “gold” for the utterly bald-faced racism that actually came after her recent “N”-word rant (I never could tolerate her and…those…idiotic…pauses…after…every…word…she…said…to…make..them…sound…more…important…than…they…are).

“Worst Persons” from “Countdown” on 8/13/10, posted with vodpod

Update 8/17/10: And I’m sure her ratings sucked too (here – h/t Atrios)…

Maddow Responds To The Great White Dope

(Even though that description fits a lot of conservatives, for our purposes, it applies to Bill Orally.)

No, I realize this doesn’t qualify as “insult ping-pong,” which is just as well. Still, though, the adage that the truth hurts definitely applies…

…and this little number goes out to Billo.

Monday Mashup (7/26/10)

1) The Bucks County Courier Times brought us more riotous comedy yesterday from Repug Mikey Fitzpatrick, running to reclaim his PA-08 House seat from Dem Patrick Murphy (here)…

Unemployment has risen 100 percent in the four years Congressman Murphy has been in Congress; notably, his party has been in the majority in every one of those years.

It has only occupied the White House for a year and a half, though (of course, Mikey omits that incon-vee-nient detail). And the event that triggered the skyrocketing unemployment rate was the fall of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, which took place on the watch of A Certain 43rd President, as well as approval of TARP funding soon afterwards.

Besides, based on the graph that appears here, the Repugs and their “leader” in the White House had nothing on the employment numbers of the full eight-year Democratic presidential administration that preceded it (and here is more on Murphy and jobs).

And a lot of other House members, both Democratic and Republican, have held their House seats since 2006, so I guess you could say that they brought us a “100 percent” increase in unemployment also.

Otherwise, Mikey’s screed was full of the “tax cuts, magic of the marketplace” mythology that got us into this mess to begin with, as well as “Murphy-Pelosi Murphy-Pelosi Murphy-Pelosi baad scary liberals vote for me I’m a native Bucks Countian with six kids” stuff (and to help his opponent, click here).

Update: Oh, and P.S…

Fitzpatrick Spending Cuts While in Office: 0

Former Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick’s criticism of Murphy bill to cut spending shows complete lack of an agenda to move country forward.

(Bristol, PA) – Former Congressman Fitzpatrick announced last week that, given the chance to return to Washington, he will not fight for legislation to cut government spending and waste. He criticized Patrick Murphy for passing a new law to cut spending but clarified that he agreed with the content, just not the act of passing a law.

“We are all against waste, fraud and abuse,” former Congressman Fitzpatrick said, “but shouldn’t the federal government be working to eliminate fraud without new federal legislation?”

Patrick Murphy’s campaign manager Tim Persico noted that it was unclear what, exactly, Fitzpatrick suggested we do to cut spending and eliminate fraud, since it seems unlikely that asking agencies nicely will work.“Fitzpatrick’s comments pretty much sum up his economic agenda,” Persico said. “If sent to Washington, Fitzpatrick promises not to fight for legislation to cut spending and waste.”

This matches up neatly with his past record. When the voters of Bucks County gave him a chance in Washington, Fitzpatrick failed to introduce or pass a single bill to cut spending. However, he was happy to support massive, unpaid tax breaks for the richest people in the country. Now, in a bit of sour grapes, he’s whining that we’re finally making progress against outrageous and wasteful spending. It’s his own record in Congress – not Patrick Murphy’s – that Mike should take issue with.

# # #

For Immediate Release, July 23, 2010
Contact, Tim Persico, (215) 783-3736

—————————————————-
BACKGROUND:

Passing this law is the latest in a series of initiatives that Patrick Murphy has championed to cut spending. He worked with Republican Congressman Tim Rooney (FL) to pass a law closing loopholes in Medicare that were allowing billions in fraud. He also has a measure to eliminate a massive corporate welfare scheme in the Department of Agriculture that would save $500 million taxpayer dollars.

Additionally, Murphy has fought to eliminate the F-22 savings taxpayers $3 billion, and he has crossed party lines to vote for $20 billion in spending cuts.

And Fitzpatrick? His bipartisan bills to cut spending while in Congress? …0

Successfully passed Fitzpatrick bills to cut spending while in Congress? …0

2) And speaking of big yuks, Jonah Goldberg chastised Tom Friedman in the New York Times yesterday since Friedman quite rightly took umbrage over what could be the death knell for common sense climate change legislation this year (here)…

But when DC — and the entire East Coast — was shellacked by an historic snow storm and deep freeze, Friedman thought it was flat-out stupid to cite abnormal weather as evidence in political squabbles:

I realize there are a lot of different directions I can go to point out that only a life form with a single-digit IQ could contest the fact that man-made global warming has accelerated to the point where our planet is melting and sane people need to do what we must to try and stop it, but I think this will suffice for now.

Oh, That Doughy Pantload.

3) Also, I’ll “cut to the chase” concerning this Matt Bai column in The New York Times yesterday; he blames the Shirley Sherrod mess last week on Obama because he isn’t “transcendent” enough on the race question – there really is no further need to frustrate yourself by trying to make further sense of it.

4) And in a related story, as they say, Mark Halperin tells us the following on the Sherrod business here (comparing her case to the O.J. Simpson mess – Memo to Halperin: lay your hand on the table, open it up so your palm faces upward, and then smack yourself in the forehead)…

But the coverage of both sagas — Simpson literally for years and Sherrod for the better part of a week — was insanely overblown. The Sherrod story is a reminder — much like the assault in 2004 on John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — that the Old Media is often swayed by controversies pushed by the conservative New Media. In many quarters of the Old Media there is concern about not appearing liberally biased, so stories emanating from the right are given more weight and less scrutiny. Additionally, the conservative New Media, particularly Fox News Channel and talk radio, are commercially successful, so the implicit logic followed by decision makers in the Old Media is that if something is gaining currency in those precincts, it is a phenomenon that must be given attention. Most dangerously, conservative New Media will often produce content that is so provocative and incendiary that the Old Media finds it irresistible.

I guess this is as close as Halperin actually gets to something approximating introspection, but I still believe the following should be noted from here (in the matter of “Old Media” preoccupation with largely conservative “New Media”).

5) Finally, the Washington Times continues to give column space to Ted Nugent, with predictable results (here)…

We shouldn’t expect anything different from a president and administration who don’t have a clue about how private industry works or how Fedzilla’s policies stifle growth. At least from my research, I still can’t find anyone on the president’s closest team who has actually started a successful business.

From here…

In Obama’s Cabinet, at least three of the nine posts that Cembalest and Beck cite — a full one-third — are occupied by appointees who, by our reading of their bios, had significant corporate or business experience. Shaun Donovan, Obama’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, served as managing director of Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., where he oversaw its investments in affordable housing loans.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed the electronics research lab at one of America’s storied corporate research-and-development facilities, AT&T Bell Laboratories, where his work won a Nobel Prize for physics. And Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, in addition to serving as Colorado attorney general and a U.S. senator, has been a partner in his family’s farm for decades and, with his wife, owned and operated a Dairy Queen and radio stations in his home state of Colorado.

The post also tells us that the only Obama cabinet appointees who do not have had “significant private sector experience” are Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

And funny, but as I read this, I don’t have an inclination that Nugent, were he deprived of a guitar, a weapon, or his big mouth, would have the slightest clue as to how the “private sector” works either.

The One Thing Breitbart Got Right

I thought this was an appropriate summation of the whole Shirley Sherrod mess featuring Eric Boehlert of Media Matters (yes, the Obama people screwed up, but I honestly believe they’ve done their best to try and put things right – and it would be funny to listen to Breitbart’s “humuna, humuna” act at the end if it weren’t so pathetic).

Vilsack’s Vexing Sherrod Slam (updates)

Seriously, how dumb do you have to be to let yourself get played by Breitbart again (can you say “Son Of ACORN”)?

And by the way, What Digby Said (here – h/t Atrios…more from Media Matters here).

It’s awfully hard to watch stuff like this play out and then encourage people to support national Democratic political campaigns, considering that the de facto leader of the party has allowed all of this to happen.

And all of which suits Breitbart just fine, of course.

Update 1 7/21/10: Brietbart is a pathetic slug of a human being (here), and apparently, the White House is trying to lean on Vilsack to do the right thing (here).

Update 2 7/21/10: Typical wingnut hilarity – everyone is blamed here except Breitbart for doctoring the tape (his name only appears in a comment).

Update 3 7/21/10: If Sherrod isn’t offered a job of comparable pay and responsibilities, considering that she’s unsure about accepting her old one back (Vilsack apparently offered it and she’s thinking about it), then she should act on the last sentence here (and name Breitbart in the suit too).