Showing posts with label chuck todd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chuck todd. Show all posts

Friday, February 6, 2015

How MSNBC Has Failed The Viewers - and it's not just Morning Joe

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Previous Related Posts:
Joe Scarborough Attacks Unite Blue
Morning Joe Quarterbacking for Chris Christie
Krystal Ball Freaks Out Over Obamacare Website
MSNBC Ratings Fall as Hosts Go Emoprog
MSNBC Chooses Tea over Truth in Sacking of Martin Bashir
Chuck Todd Admits Truth Isn't Part of his Job Description
The Uppity Stranger ~ Chuck Todd's Book Slams President Obama
President and Malia Obama: Chuck Todd's Book is "Sad"
Chuck Todd Shills for Mitch McConnell
David Gregory Has Man-Crush on Paul Ryan

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I've been watching MSNBC ever since it first appeared on my local cable TV. I was a huge fan of Keith Olbermann, and sad when he was asked to leave the channel. I won't go into all that here ~ read this article for some background. Keith is still a TV icon to the Left because he would stay on a story for weeks after it was dropped by other networks, and he never backed down in his attacks on rival Fox News, especially Bill O'Reilly. While obviously his personality was too strong for some, and maybe too strong for cable news, he wasn't just a mouthpiece for a bunch of talking points like say, cough, cough, Joe Scarborough, cough.

I will always miss Keith's commentaries, but I got over it and became a fervent MSNBC watcher again during President Obama's 2012 campaign. I loved their "Lean-Forward" message, and Rachel Maddow's speech to the Tea Party about all the things that weren't going to happen now that Mitt Romney had failed as a candidate.

But just after the election something changed. Time and again from 2013 till now, MSNBC has disappointed their main viewership, made up of Democrats and Liberals like myself who voted for Barack Obama. It's not just one thing, it's an accumulation of wrong-headed mistakes. If I had a dollar for every time someone on Twitter told me to turn off MSNBC and boycott them, I would have a chunk of change.

The bottom line is this: MSNBC has forgotten who their demographic is. In their quest to steal from Fox and CNN, they think they have to become a right-center network. But in doing so, they are offending the very people who have stuck with them since before Keith Olbermann got the boot.

A little background on the long decline of MSNBC:

From PoliticusUSA
MSNBC’s decline can be traced back to one decision. At the time, when he let Keith Olbermann walk out the door, MSNBC boss Phil Griffin believed that his network’s brand was strong enough to replace the former 8 PM host. Griffin was wrong.

After Lawrence O’Donnell had failed, Griffin put Ed Schultz in the 8 PM slot. Griffin shuffled Schultz off to the weekends because he believed that MSNBC could attract more young viewers by developing several clones of Rachel Maddow’s successful 9 PM show. Phil Griffin decided to go wonky with Chris Hayes at 8, which led to many former MSNBC viewers leaving and not coming back.

Hayes has been a disaster at 8 PM, and viewer demand for Schultz was so strong that the blue collar populist was put back on to the weekday lineup at 5 PM.

MSNBC was floundering, and Griffin made things worse by caving to Sarah Palin and the right by defacto firing Martin Bashir for some blunt comments that he made about the former half term Alaska governor.

Bashir never has the audience that Olbermann did, but his removal from 4 PM sent a message to MSNBC’s viewers. Lean Forward was just a marketing slogan. When push came to shove, MSNBC easily caved to right-wing pressure.


Martin Bashir was fired after reading a historical document about slavery on the air in response to Sarah Palin, who had tossed slavery into her word salad about GOP oppression caused by President Obama. Bashir was disgusted with Her Royal Stupidity misinterpreting history, and he made a choice to speak some serious truth so she would understand the demeaning tortures that real slaves in the South had to endure.

While it's true that some details of the history lesson were distasteful (so-to-speak), the far-right on Twitter spread the untrue story that Bashir had told Palin to "eat sh*t" on the air. The Tea Party kept the pressure on until the President of MSNBC, Phil Griffin,fired Martin Bashir.

Phil Griffin has a long history of pandering to the Right:







Griffin is known for having "pets" at MSNBC, and they know who they are. Take Joe Scarborough, please. He did an interview last year, after the firing of Bashir, explaining his relationship with Griffin:

Via Mediaite
Appearing on Steve Malzberg‘s NewsMaxTV show Wednesday, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough spoke out about the controversy surrounding his colleague Martin Bashir...
. . . Malzberg asked Scarborough why MSNBC hadn’t suspended Bashir or publicly reprimanded him. Obviously hesitant to comment on internal matters, the Morning Joe host suggested that, much like how Fox chief Roger Ailes doesn’t allow his hosts to attack each other, MSNBC’ers are unable to do the same.
However, he did say:
Every time something horrific is said like that, I go in and I talk to Phil Griffin, who I’m good friends with. And I say, Phil, this is unacceptable. Either they apologize for it or I’m going to bring it up myself.

Personally, I can't stand "Morning Joe" and I usually only see clips of it on Twitter. But apparently it started out to be MSNBC's one right-leaning show to "balance" the rest of the network. Maybe that would work if the namesake of the show had an ounce of humility and a willingness to learn from others. Unfortunately, Joe Scarborough is a loud-mouth bully who dominates not just sidekick Mika, but anyone else who shows up in the morning.

Last year, Scarborough verbally attacked the large and growing Democratic and Liberal-leaning Twitter group Unite Blue, of which I am a member. He called our members "freaky fringe haters" or something like that, never thinking for a minute he was shooting himself and MSNBC in the foot. Somehow he thought it was a good idea to attack the very demographic that was keeping his job available to him, since Dems and Liberals watch most of the other shows.

That display of arrogance should have been enough to get him fired like Martin Bashir, but we soon found out that "pets" get to stay, and the feelings of a huge group of Democrats don't mean very much to Phil Griffin, compared to someone important like the Tea Party's Sarah Palin.

But Lean Forward, right? LOL.

BINGO!







For a long time many have called for Joe Scarborough to be fired to save the rest of the network, but instead, Griffin tried him out on the night shift last week, in place of Maddow and Chris Hayes. It's unbelievable.





This recent article warning of impending doom at the network makes no mention of Joe Scarborough, choosing to blame mainly Chris Hayes, and warning that Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid may be on their way out. Looks like he wants to "save the pets" while kicking off the strays.

From The Wrap
January ratings revealed double-digit declines compared with January, 2014 in all ratings measurements. During the day, MSNBC was down 20 percent in viewers and 37 percent in the advertising-coveted 25-54 demo. In primetime, it fell 23 percent in viewers and 39 percent in demo.

From Politico
In October, MSNBC President Phil Griffin said the network was "experimenting" with new ways to regain momentum, spawning widespread speculation that he planned to make significant changes to the lineup. Ronan Farrow's show, which debuted last year and has received dismal ratings ever since, is one program that is widely believed to be up for removal. On Tuesday, it brought in just 11,000 viewers in the demo.
An MSNBC spokesperson declined to comment on the Tuesday ratings.


But Morning Joe isn't the only problem at MSNBC. Even the mainstays of the network seem to lean some other direction besides Left.

Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, for all the good they do night after night, often go a little nuts and out of step with ordinary liberals out here in the heartland, to the point that real Democrats just turn them off. This has become more of a cumulative effect since the 2012 elections. Yes, they have a right to their opinions, but if you want to know why the ratings are so low, look back over the past two years at topics that may seem unimportant in the scheme of things, but which made viewers angry enough to boycott MSNBC.

I love Rachel Maddow and I really enjoy her show. She is witty, entertaining, funny, and at her best, her show has the spirit of Keith Olbermann.

But unfortunately she sees herself as a "War Historian," and whenever President Obama seems to be on the verge of doing something with American firepower or diplomacy anywhere in the world, Maddow goes berserk. I remember the first time I went "click" on her show. She was saying that President Obama had every right to intercede in Syria, but that he needed to ask permission from Congress or he might get us trapped into another war in the Middle East. It still makes me go "huh?" She sounded just like the nuts on Fox who didn't want that uppity President to do anything like any other President who has ever lived.

And what's worse, Maddow seemed to have no sense of irony that the Congress she was suggesting he ask for "permission" is the same wingnut Congress she reported on every night as a bunch of warmongers obsessed with guns and Benghazi. He was supposed to ask them? She even invoked the Constitution, which is right up there with Sarah Palin!

Some people forgot to watch her show after that. Oh, and they were really mad at her. Some of them still are. Some viewers just aren't coming back.










There are some problems with Chris Hayes too. His chirpy, giddy and cerebral persona were more appropriate for his Saturday morning show "Up," but Griffon thought he could save their prime-time lineup and attract the younger demographic. It was soon apparent that it didn't work out that way. I think he means well and much of his reporting is excellent, such as his work during the Ferguson marches.

What I didn't expect was that he would become the sudden champion of an out-and-out traitor to the United States, Edward Snowden, the Russian "patriot" defector.

Viewers didn't leave the show because Hayes criticized the NSA. Viewers just got fed up with MSNBC's elevation of Snowden's partner/mentor/witness/whatever Glenn Greenwald as some kind of hero journalist and paragon of virtue who wants to save the world. The real Greenwald is a raging Anti-Government Libertarian and Near-Anarchist who calls the President an "Imperial Emperor" (just like the rightwing nutjobs) and thinks anyone with allegiance to any country is a "statist." After a few weeks of Greenwald worship, Chris Hayes figured out that most Democrats don't like him, but by then Hayes was like a little boy whose balloon got deflated all of a sudden by criticism on Twitter and the falling ratings.











DUH!






Griffon can blame Ronan Farrow, Joy Reid, or anyone else he likes for low daytime ratings. But he should look at his pets, for instance the ever-exasperated Andrea Mitchell and the ever-smarmy Chuck Todd. Day after day since the last election they have been going into hysterics over President Obama's "Optics" - "Why is he playing golf" or "Why is he going out for dinner?" "Why is he drinking coffee?" "Why doesn't he care?" "Why is he on vacation?" - stuff no one ever said about George W. Bush or any other President in history.










Krystal Ball from "The Cycle" is another problem. She is so far-left, she is nearly to the right of Rand Paul sometimes. She's not that horrible sometimes, but other times, she is. I don't hate her, but I don't watch her anymore either.

Ball went on a crazy tirade about the Obamacare website back when it was having problems, helped along by some whining by then MSNBC fixture, Ezra Klein - who wanted background music while waiting on the phone. Of course now that the same website is enrolling millions of new people into health insurance,and yes, Krystal Ball does seem to take pride in that - NOW. But back at the beginning, Ball certainly helped the Far-Far Right by slamming ACA Obamacare because it wasn't working automatically.

Considering that just this week, two years after Ball and Klein attacked the Obamacare website, my own state of Tennessee just turned down Medicaid expansion again due to Obamacare haters in the GOP, it was never a good thing that Krystal Ball decided to attack ACA from the left. Maybe MSNBC has chosen to forget this wrong-headedness, but it's harder to forget here in a red state.






She also praised Libertarian Nutcase Rand Paul as "courageous, and begged Hillary Clinton not to run for President. . Last year, she said President Obama's State of the Union "depressed her." What. The. Hell? Is it any wonder that viewers sometimes wonder whose side she is on?













Last year, Chuck Todd wrote a book about President Obama called "The Stranger," which the President and his daughter mocked just before Christmas as "a sad book." Todd is famous for stating that he had no obligation to report "the truth" about Obamacare to the GOP - that tells you all you need to know about his life as a "journalist." He replaced the lame David Gregory, another Phil Griffin favorite, on NBC's Meet the Press, and I'm sure the ratings have plummeted even more. Todd also turns up frequently on MSNBC shows such as Morning Joe and Hardball to discuss "Lame Duck" or "Weak" President Obama. What Democrat wants to hear that stuff day after day? Not this one!



My point here is that there are many problems with MSNBC, and they are so deep it may not be fixable with Phil Griffon at the top. Unfortunately he seems to be tone deaf to the viewers, and incapable of firing his pets. They can turn the network into another version of Fox News and probably lure some wingnut viewers if that's what they want, but it would be a shame to see the network of Keith Olbermann go completely down the toilet.













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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Disturbing Dick Cheney Defends Torture

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Dick Cheney appeared on NBC's Meet the Press with Chuck Todd on Sunday and defended the torture of prisoners of war, even though it led nowhere and degraded the collective soul of the United States. The interview came after the release of the "CIA Torture Report" that unveiled the gruesome and inhuman details of what our own country did under the cover of "national security."

From Time
. . . former Vice President Dick Cheney took the defense of the Bush administration’s policies to the next level in a Meet the Press appearance on Sunday. Declaring that he would “do it again in a minute,” Cheney insisted that he had “no problem as long as we achieve our objective.”



From Mashable
(Chuck) Todd repeatedly asked Cheney to define torture, but he avoided answering the questions multiple times.
“Torture to me, Chuck, is an American citizen on a cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the World Trade Center on 9/11," the former vice-president said.



Earlier in the week, Cheney appeared on Fox News:

Via CNN
Washington (CNN) -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney called a Senate panel's report on U.S. interrogation tactics during George W. Bush's administration is "deeply flawed" and a "terrible piece of work."
"The report's full of crap," he said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday evening.













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Monday, December 1, 2014

President and Malia Obama: Chuck Todd's Book is "Sad"

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Previous Related Post:
The Uppity Stranger: Chuck Todd's Book Slams President Obama
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The President and his daughters were shopping in a Washington Bookstore called "Politics and Prose" when he starting joking about how sad he looked on the book cover of NBC pundit Chuck Todd's book, The Stranger.

President Obama: “Oh, Chuck Todd! Let’s see what Chuck has to say here ... The Stranger, Barack Obama-- looking lonely"

Malia Obama: “How is he already writing a book? Sad.”

Bookstore Checker: "They tried to find the saddest photo."

Pres. Obama: "He’s just sad."

Malia Obama: "It's a sad book."



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Monday, November 24, 2014

Rudy Guiliani Blames Black People for #Ferguson

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In a game of "change the subject," Ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuiliani appeared on NBC's Meet the Press and stated vehemently that the REAL problem these days is "black on black violence," which has nothing to do with the topic he was discussion, which was Ferguson, Missouri, in which a WHITE cop shot down a black unarmed kid, which has led to white police harrassing black protestors.

From MSNBC
The conversation erupted when “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd began discussing the disproportion of white police forces to the communities they serve in areas across the U.S. aside from Ferguson, including Newark, New Jersey and El Paso, Texas. ”All of those places could become future Fergusons,” Todd said.

Giuliani quickly pivoted the conversation, arguing “the fact is, I find it very disappointing that you’re not discussing the fact that 93% of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. We’re talking about the exception here.”

Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson chimed in, saying “First of all, most black people who commit crimes against other black people go to jail. Number two, they are not sworn by the police department as an agent of the state to uphold the law. So in both cases, that’s a false equivalency that the mayor has drawn, which has exacerbated tensions deeply embedded in American culture.”

...“What about the poor black child that is killed by another black child? Why aren’t you protesting that?” Giuliani asked.
“Those people go to jail!” Dyson fired back.

“White police officers won’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70% of the time,” Giuliani added, as Todd attempted to ease the heated volley.

“This is a defense mechanism of white supremacy at work in your mind, sir,” Dyson replied.



















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Sunday, November 9, 2014

The Uppity Stranger ~ Chuck Todd's Book Slams President Obama

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Previous Related Posts:
Chuck Todd Admits That Truth Isn't Part of His Job Description
Chuck Todd Shills for Mitch McConnell after Slamming Alison Grimes
Jealous Clown Todd Wonders Why Obama Isn't an Alpha Dog

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Chuckles the Todd, who was recently chosen as the new host of NBC's flagship "Meet the Press," has written a poison-pen screed against President Obama. The so-called journalist who famously said it "wasn't his job" to truth-check the GOP on Obamacare now thinks it IS his job to 'splain all of the Obama-fail.

It's enough to make a Tea Partier weep with joy. And those are Chuck Todd's people. He has done them proud.

Let him tell you something about The Negro, just like Cliven Bundy.

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. . . if The Stranger is revelatory, it’s not in the way Todd intended. For all his strengths (and they are myriad), Todd has written a disappointing book, a slab of pedestrian punditry marbled with occasional insight. The Stranger purports to tell the story of a president who couldn’t transcend his environment. The story it ultimately—and unwittingly—tells is of the perceptive political geek who couldn’t escape Beltway groupthink.
~ Elbert Ventura, Columbia Journalism Review

Six years in, our 44th president remains a cipher, someone “everyone is still trying to get to know,” as Mr. Todd writes. Particularly vexing is a basic irony that this book seeks to address: “How does one of the most successful politicians in American history . . . appear to be so bad at practicing the basics of politics in the backrooms of Washington, whether on Capitol Hill, on K Street, or at the Pentagon?”
. . . To that nagging question about how someone so intellectually advanced could be so politically stunted, the author’s final answer is that Barack Obama’s “arrogance got the better of him.” As a novel twist on this familiar theme, Mr. Todd theorizes that Mr. Obama’s happy experience as editor of the Harvard Law Review “gave him a false self-confidence that burns in him—and burns him—to this day.”
~ via Wall Street Journal Book Review

Todd’s attempts to peer deep inside Obama as an individual don’t take us far. “As is the case for many Americans, the president’s unusual upbringing shaped him to be the person he is today,” is not an encouraging start. Todd makes much of the fact that Obama’s mother was an anthropologist, which somehow transmitted to her only son “instinctive observational skills that allowed him to read and understand folks better than most politicians.” At the same time, being biracial “infused in him the temperament and patience that have marked his presidency both positively and negatively.” As a politician, Obama is described as “passive and arrogant,” and at times he is “all telescope and zero microscope.”
. . . As befitting a political junkie chronicle, the book is generous with political cliches. Throughout “The Stranger,” field days are had, rocky shoals are navigated, skies pose limits, writing appears on walls, fuel is added to fires, dies are cast, and collective sighs of relief are breathed. And there are sentences like this one: “Early on, there were signs the Republicans wouldn’t follow the presidential Pied Piper to postpartisanship.”
~ Washington Post Review of The Stranger
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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

NBC's Chuck Todd Shills for Mitch McConnell Against Alison Grimes

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Previous Related Posts:
Chuck Todd Admits that Truth Isn't Part of His Job Description
Jealous Clowns Brooks and Todd Question Obama's Manhood as the Alpha Dog
John Stewart Invents #McConnelling
Kentucky Zingerfest: Grimes Vs. McConnell at Fancy Farm

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NBC recently decided to replace the dreadful David Gregory as host of their Sunday "Meet the Press" show. Lo and behold, they chose Chuck Todd, who is so much like Gregory that news watchers everywhere predicted instant failure. Just a few weeks later, Todd is caught up in a political web that fulfills the expectations of his non-fans (including myself).

He has always been negative towards Democrats and especially President Obama, saying it "wasn't his job to sell Obamacare" and implying that the President failed when ACA was actually a roaring success. But this time he went on Morning Joe and said that Dem candidate Alison Grimes had "disqualified herself" from the job of Kentucky Senator by downplaying the fact that she voted for the President, as if he suddenly thinks the world of Pres. Obama - yeah, right. Of course, he doesn't explain how it would HELP Grimes to admit close ties to Obama in a state where she is vying for every crossover GOP vote. Every Democrat in a Red State has to do this at times to survive, so Todd put way too much emphasis on what she said.

The cringeworthy crew on Morning Joe discuss Alison Grimes as cringeworthy.



Now to be fair, many Dems also criticized Grimes for her position on that day, and even agreed with Todd - at first. But when it became clear that Grimes was just speaking like a careful politician, while Todd seemed to be shilling for McConnell, the picture was clear.

And believe me, the Mitch McConnell team saw a golden opportunity in Todd's dismissal of Grimes (almost as if it was planned, cough, cough), and immediately used the clip in one of his campaign ads.

From Washington Post
. . . the harshest critique probably came from "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, who appeared on "Morning Joe" on Friday to discuss Grimes's weird reply. "I think she disqualified herself," Todd told host Joe Scarborough — an extremely strong statement.
Miss that segment? Well, don't worry, Kentucky. The campaign of Grimes's opponent, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), will be putting it into heavy rotation with its new ad, titled "Disqualified."



Todd, meanwhile, denies that any of it matters, he's not partisan, he's not helping the GOP. And anyone who thinks so is not living in reality, apparently - or as Todd defines reality, whatever the Beltway pundits are saying at the moment. You gotta hand it to Todd - he is a consistent toady. But once again he is insulting our collective intelligence if he thinks he can at once be a "fair" judge of politics while bashing a major candidate trying to overturn a GOP leader in a Red State. He pounced on that one line and ignored how well Grimes is doing in every major poll (except on Fox News, of course, where they are always right - oh wait).

From Facebook via politicusUSA
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Right - if people choose to vote for Grimes they are "cheerleading," but if Todd sends a great quote to McConnell he is being "realistic." Riiiight.







And he went even further, blaming Grimes herself and taking no responsibility for what he said:

Via Daily Kos
How does Chuck Todd respond to this journalistic mistake? He blames the candidate. "I think that is one of those situations where she invited this on herself," Chuck Todd said. "It feels like she had a lot of consultants whispering in her ear, 'Whatever you do don't give Mitch McConnell a line for a TV ad.'" Alison Lundergan Grimes did her part. Chuck Todd failed as a journalist. He became the news. He gave Mitch McConnell a line for a TV ad.

And a disclaimer: I'm not here to be "fair" to Todd. I think he is an ambitious warped individual who started out as a numbers guy and he's risen to a nice level of incompetence due to the Groupthink at MSNBC, where they routinely let go of any talented person who questions the GOP (Martin Bashir, Goldie Taylor, etc). I have been a critic of Todd on Twitter, and was recently blocked from retweeting or responding on his account right after having this conversation, which seems legit considering some of us saw Gregory as a loser for YEARS before NBC gave his job to Todd. Maybe they should listen to us now.



It seems as if Alison Lundergan Grimes is going to get the last laugh on both Todd and McConnell, as she is leading in the polls now. Which I'm sure he will say is incorrect, or just more cheerleading. Whatever!







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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Virginia's Brat Stumbles On Day One

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Previous Related Posts:
Upset in Virgina as Cantor Loses to Libertarian Brat

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The main joke about the Brat Campaign on Day One was their name. I saw many variations on Twitter of "Brat Wurst/Worst" or "Worst Brat." Then there were the jokes about the literal meaning of "Brat" as a snotty-nosed kid, a description that might apply to his defeated opponent, the snarky Eric Cantor, as well as himself.









But it turns out, all silly jokes aside, the Beltway pundits were actually awestruck by Professor David Brat, the man who "Vanquished" Eric Cantor the same way Harry Potter vanquished the Dark Lord. He was some kind of superhero who had not only melted the wicked Republican warlock of Virginia but had come out of academia like Indiana Jones cracking the bullwhip.

David vs. Goliath times 1,000. ~ Chris Cuomo on CNN

But then he got his first big network interview, and this happened:



From Forbes
Chuck (Todd of MSNBC) began by tossing Professor Brat a softball, asking whether the candidate supported a federally mandated minimum wage.
Bear in mind that this is a candidate, an economics professor, who had spent the majority of the interview up the point of Todd’s question, extolling the virtues of a free market. Yet, when asked for his position on a federal minimum wage he struggled to avoid the question, obviously afraid of angering any voters who might be listening or create any news he felt could be harmful to his chances in November.
Smelling blood in Brat’s lack of a solid response, Todd pushed him for an answer, causing Mr. Brat to reply—

“I don’t have a well-crafted response to that one.”

. . . (Todd) “On a foreign policy issue, arming the Syrian rebels. Would you be in favor of that?”

. . . “Hey, Chuck, I thought we were just going to chat today about the celebratory aspects,” Brat said. “I’d love to go through all of this but my mind is just— I didn’t get much sleep last night. I love all the policy questions but I just wanted to talk about the victory ahead and I wanted to thank everybody that worked so hard on my campaign. I’m happy to take policy issues at any time, I just wanted to call out a thanks to everybody today.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So what we have with Brother Brat is another shining meteor like Rick Perry or Sarah Palin - flashy on the outside, but not all that deep on the inside. In fact, most voters will quickly figure out that his message is quite familiar, a carbon copy of Paul Ryan's rejected message from 2012: Money is truth and the greater good; the poor are moochers and immigrants are undesirables. Almost all government is BAD, even though he will be so proud to work in Washington and draw a paycheck and benefits for life.

And many have been quick to point out that the GOP has cast aside the only Jewish member of either the House or Senate, and a man who wasn't particularly religious, for someone who has some, uh, interesting Christian beliefs. Except I don't recall Jesus preaching much about Capitalism.

From Raw Story:
“Read Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the weak modern Christian democratic man was spot on,” Brat wrote. “Jesus was a great man. Jesus said he was the Son of God. Jesus made things happen. Jesus had faith. Jesus actually made people better. Then came the Christians. What happened? What went wrong?”
“We appear to be a bit passive,” he continued. “Hitler came along, and he did not meet with unified resistance. I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily. The church should rise up higher than Nietzsche could see and prove him wrong.”
Brat encouraged Christians to harshly condemn their neighbors’ sins.
“We should love our neighbor so much that we actually believe in right and wrong, and do something about it,” he wrote. “If we all did the right thing and had the guts to spread the word, we would not need the government to backstop every action we take.”
. . . “I think the main point is that we need to synthesize Christianity and capitalism,” Brat concluded. “Augustine synthesized Plato and Christianity. Thomas Aquinas synthesized Aristotle and Christianity. Calvin synthesized all the rest, but capitalism was still coming. There is a book in here somewhere for the next Calvin. Go. God Bless.”



Brat is walking a tightrope like literary hypocrite Elmer Gantry - praising Jesus and Friedrich "God is Dead" Nietzsche at the same time, proving he is just another Tea Party schnook with cognitive dissonance, and probably not any nicer of a guy than Eric Cantor. And some of his campaign associates are worse, if that is possible (see quotes below). We know he is an anti-government Libertarian, but we don't know if Brat is a misogynist yet, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt (until he starts referencing rape and ladyparts). He ran against Immigration Reform, so he's obviously not too fond of the brown people. With his Biblical base he probably has a few cringeworthy things to say about The Gay.

So all we can do is watch and wait for the next shocking utterance as the new Tea Party "hero" in due time becomes the next Todd Akin or Ken Cuccinelli. Let's hope the Virginia Dems can get out the voters in November. I'm already planning a donation to Brat's opponent, Jack Trammell.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

. . . on the morning after, Brat is either the Tea Party's white knight or its motley fool – at center stage if also at the edge of the political spectrum.
But come the fall, Brat may be an historical footnote, having beaten the first sitting majority leader since the position was created in 1899, only to have gone on to lose the general election. (Which is unlikely when running against a Democratic slave-trade / disabilities / vampire scholar in one of Virginia's most conservative districts, but possible, especially given how wrong all the primary polling was, by a clean 34 points or so.) Or Brat will be one of dozens of incoming freshmen Congressmen … which is to say, an historical footnote in the making.
~ Ana Marie Cox in The Guardian



The media is making it seem like Brat was some sort of underdog, but in reality, he's strapped to the hilt with billionaire support and billionaire money.
. . . Like hundreds of other college professors across the country these days, David Brat is really just a  bought-and-paid-for shill of Charles and David Koch and their buddies.
But the connections between Brat and the dark money machine don't stop there. He was also the hand-picked candidate of the Koch-backed world of right-wing media..
Over the past few months, right-wing talkers like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin have been pushing Brat and attacking Cantor non-stop on their radio shows. Ingraham even went so far as to say that she wished that President Obama traded Eric Cantor to the Taliban in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl.
~ Truthout and Thom Hartmann




This is being branded as a tea party victory. That's not quite accurate, and Brat addressed this last night. Not one major tea party organization came out and endorsed Brat. Supported Brat in any meaningful way. We had a difficult time getting the tea party groups and Brat connected. They bascially told him, 'you don't have a chance,' they wrote him off.
And there were a few people -- myself, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Mickey Kaus, Breitbart News, The Daily Caller -- they were pretty much the only people covering this race. I said this yesterday on Fox & Friends. We had 625 people hanging off the balcony of Eric Cantor's own country club last Tuesday night and there was no major media there except for Breitbart News and a little reporter from the local NBC. That's it.
~ Laura Ingraham, paid shill, on Fox News

I hope it will at least shut down any more happy talk about amnesty this year. I wish it would have the effect of Republicans waking up and seeing that this is a winning issue for the Republicans.
. . . Republicans have gotta put their foot down to the Chamber of Commerce and say, ‘Look, if we bring in 30 million, 40 million illegal aliens who are going to break for the Democrats, we’re not gonna be able to give you anything else. That’s it, because it’s gonna be the end of the Republican Party in this country.
~ Pundit Ann Coulter on Fox News, via Raw Story




Stop chasing ethnic groups, stop chasing genitalia. Talk to the American people. Talk about liberty, opportunity. Explain to them that Obama’s wrong, and that we need to unleash the American people and unleash the economy.
~ Conservative Radio Host Mark Levin discussing Brat's campaign strategy with Fox's Sean Hannity




And finally, Brat may want to get a new campaign manager. The one he has is only 23 years old and had to scrub his facebook account yesterday due to so many weird posts.

Via Yahoo News
The campaign manager for the tea party-backed Republican who ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in one of the biggest upsets in congressional history is a 23-year-old class of 2013 Haverford College graduate who posted a slew of provocative opinions on a public Facebook page that was removed from view overnight following David Brat's victory.
. . . “Can someone who was outraged that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of ‘SOMETHING ANYTHING’ and who is simultaneously pro-choice explain the logical dissonance there? Ie. Why its not ok to kill someone who is banging your head into concrete but its ok to kill someone for simply existing who, through your conscious actions, you brought into the world?” Werrell had written in an Oct. 24, 2013, posting.
. . . On Oct. 29 of that year, it was a piece by Fred Reed from Lew Rockwell’s website on the wussification of boys that set him off. “There is a war on boys!” Werrell wrote. “Rough housing, playing soldier, etc, are all punished or medicated away. And we wonder why there is gender inequality in the classroom and in college/attendance/graduation rates.”
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Friday, June 6, 2014

#Berghazi - Flip-Flopping Wingnuts Continue to Trash Bergdahl

photo Corbis-42-15472022.jpg

The Bowe Bergdahl story is fast become the new #Benghazi - call it #Berghazi if you will - another case of too much angry hooplah and not enough facts. As the wingnuts cry for firing squads and impeachments, they are also ironically scrubbing their social media to erase the fact that just a while back they were praying to Jesus and beseeching Obama for his release. This is another case in which Obama can't win - if he had left the guy to rot with the Taliban, the GOP would be screaming about "weak, do-nothing, anti-military, heartless Obama." Since he got Bergdahl released, he is "making deals with terrorists" and "saving a traitor."

But the bottom line is that our Armed Forces don't leave anyone behind. That is not going to change. President Obama said he isn't going to apologize to the critics, and he shouldn't. And why would the GOP or anyone else want a military that didn't rescue their own soldiers? Who would volunteer for such an army?

Previous Related Posts:
Bergdahl Swap Causes GOP Brain Meltdown

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Liberal radio host/producer Matt Binder of Majority Report went on a mission last week to dig up as much Right Wing hypocrisy and flip-flopping as he could find. And boy howdy, he hit the jackpot! He re-tweeted some of the schizo timelines, which read like verbal whiplash. I love the first example from Charlie Daniels!














Next: Let's take a short break from the crazy stuff and move to someone trying to be the voice of reason on Fox News. Thank you, Sheppard Smith! And why are you still wasting your life on Fox?

If you desert or commit treason, you have to be proved to have done so. We can't just decide because some people come on television and yakety yak, and we've got a report of this and a report of that and that's what happened. As the Army said, as the Pentagon said, you bring them home. You bring them home first, and then you investigate.
~ Sheppard Smith, Fox News



Now, back to the crazy: Fox's Geraldo Rivera agrees with Shep Smith, but their colleague Kimberly Guilfoyle had a better idea - Bergdahl should have been shot by the men who were looking for him. No muss, no fuss. I thought she was a lawyer? What about Due Process?

Geraldo: . . . One of the things (the soldiers) take great security in is a absolute maxim that if anything happens to them, they’re going to be brought home, that we will not leave them behind. I don’t care who Bergdahl is, we don’t leave him behind. If you violate or waver from that hard principal, then the military forces will be stripped of what is absolutely the thing that makes them most secure. They know their colleagues won't leve them behind.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: Yeah, but it seems to me he’s pretty lucky that he was brought home the way he was. Because if those special forces had found him and encountered him — and they were looking for him — he would have come home either in a body bag or come home and gone straight to jail. But now what we see is his family at the White House, he's being celebrated as a hero, we have Susan Rice saying he served with honor and distinction. They have to walk that back because obviously, Geraldo, the evidence is quite alarming and striking to the contrary.

Geraldo: I don't care! I don't care! Makes no difference to me.



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Morning Joe Scarborough went on a tirade against Bowe Bergdahl's father that even shocked the right-leaning Chuck Todd. And crazy Joe is in epic form, touting himself as the perfect father. Wanna bet?

Scarborough: I keep holding up this image where Barack Obama has his arm around a man who is reaching out to pro-Taliban forces, talking about killing Americans.

Todd: Joe, Joe, don’t criticize the parents. Don’t criticize the parents in here, that are missing a child? Their son is missing for five years. You know what? It is not logical. You cannot handle it. You put yourself in his shoes –”

Scarborough: I have a 26-year-old son, and if my son is out on the wire and he is out there with fellow troops and he is writes me up and says he hates America and he’s thinking about deserting and he’s thinking about leaving his post, I can tell you as a father of that 26-year-old or 23-year-old son, I’d say, ‘Joey, you stay the hell right there,’ I would call his commander, I would say ‘Get my son. He is not well. Get him to a military base in Germany.’ I would not say ‘Follow your conscience, son.’ I would not reach out to the voice of jihad.

Todd: I’m not backseat driving how someone parents.

Scarborough: That is not backseat driving. I am a father. Any good father would not tell their son to follow their conscience and leave men and women on the line.

Todd: So he’s a bad father?

Scarborough: Yes!Yes, he is! Oh my god, Chuck.

















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Lindsey Graham wants to IMPEACH!!!! Because Obama is Black, or Something.

From the Washington Examiner
I don't mind opening a new jail up – I just don't want to empty this one,” he told the Washington Examiner on his way to a closed-door administration briefing on the Bergdahl matter. “It seems to me that they don't have a desire to continue to hold these guys under the law of war. I'm all for moving the jail to another location as long as you don't let everybody go."
. . . "It's going to be impossible for them to flow prisoners out of Gitmo now without a huge backlash," he said. "There will be people on our side calling for his impeachment if he did that."
Graham didn't use the word impeachment during his brief interview with the Washington Examiner. Instead he seemed content to throw up road blocks to any new detainee transfers and wait out the Obama presidency.
“You can keep clamping down restrictions and wait until he leaves,” Graham said when asked what he could do to stop the president from releasing more prisoners.











~~~~~~~

Soldier Elliot Ackerman explains why there is so much anti-Bergdahl sentiment from other soldiers: He was a "Jonah" - a bad-luck charm, and a scapegoat for every death. In other words, the soldiers projected all their frustration about the war onto him. The "idol of discontent."

Elliot Ackerman via New Republic, writing about his own experience in Afghanistan
At night my colleagues and I would climb on our bunkered roof, a tumbler of scotch or a cigar in hand, and watch the drone strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership in South Waziristan. During those days, Bergdahl’s case loomed ever-present. The irony that an iconic figure in a war that had largely been deserted by the American people was probably a deserter himself was never lost on us. It seemed just our luck.

Among sailors, a crew member who brings bad luck is known as a Jonah. It’s a long-held superstition, deriving from the Book of Jonah. Then the sailors said to each other, ‘Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.’ They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. And like the hapless crew that sailed Jonah to Tarshish, we found ourselves in a storm fighting in Afghanistan. With Bergdahl’s disappearance always in the background, imaginations ran wild. Why did the Taliban in Paktika execute attacks with such unusual precision and lethality? Some hypothesized that Bergdahl had informed them of our tactics. Why did Afghan civilians refuse civil aid that they so obviously needed? Others believed rumors that Bergdahl had participated in a propaganda campaign against us. None of this could be substantiated, but over there Bergdahl became the idol of discontent for so many. He was the Jonah.

Other soldiers have not been as circumspect or self-aware:

Former Army Sgt. Josh Korder to CNN's Jake Tapper
He is at best a deserter, and at worst a traitor. Any of us would have died for him while he was with us, and then for him to just leave us like that, it was a very big betrayal.
. . . As soon as he is able and as soon as he is fit, I do believe that he needs to be questioned, and basically tried if necessary.
. . . I don't think that I could have continued to go on without being able to share with you and ... the people the true things that happened in this situation. Because if you guys aren't made aware of it, it will just go on, and he'll be a hero, and nobody will be able to know the truth.

The only problem is, there are questions about Korder's own service. Is he a reliable source, or just an attention-seeker with a chip on his shoulder?

Josh Korder, a former Army sergeant from Minnesota who served with Bowe Bergdahl, signed a non-disclosure agreement, and admits he may be in violation of that by speaking out. He also left the service with an “other than honorable” discharge.
~ Via Freakout Nation

What does "Less Than Honorable" mean?

From About.com
Examples of factors that may be considered include the use of force or violence to produce serious bodily injury or death, abuse of a special position of trust, disregard by a superior of customary superior-subordinate relationships, acts or omissions that endanger the security of the United States or the health and welfare of other members of the Military Services, and deliberate acts or omissions that seriously endanger the health and safety of other persons.
. . . (1) Desertion; (2) escape prior to trial by general court-martial; (3) conscientious objector who refuses to perform military duties, wear the uniform, or comply with lawful orders of competent military authorities; (4) willful or persistent misconduct; (5) offense(s) involving moral turpitude; (6) mutiny or spying; or (7) homosexual acts involving aggravating circumstances.

And it turns out, he is less than honorable in civilian life too, since he has started the "Josh Korder Fund" to raise money to pay his back child-support. Wow - Is anyone surprised?






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