Overseas, they’re laughing at Republicans. The German newsweekly Spiegel on the GOP primary…

Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed — well, they shouldn’t make such a big deal about it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they’ve been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what’s still the most powerful job in the world.

As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop.

It’s true that on the road to the White House all sorts of things can happen, and usually do. No campaign can avoid its share of slip-ups, blunders and embarrassments. Yet this time around, it’s just not that funny anymore. In fact, it’s utterly horrifying.

It’s horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They’re ruining the reputation of the United States.

They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They’ve shown such stark lack of knowledge — political, economic, geographic, historical — that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe.

“When did the GOP lose touch with reality?” wonders Bush’s former speechwriter David Frum in New York Magazine. In the New York Times, Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s former chief-of-staff, called this campaign season a “reality show,” while Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan confidante Peggy Noonan even spoke of a “freakshow.”

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So the US elections are a reality show after all, a pseudo-political counterpart to the Paris Hiltons, Kim Kardashians and all the American Idol and X Factor contestants littering today’s TV. The cruder, the dumber, the more bizarre and outlandish — the more lucrative. Especially for Fox News, about which Fairleigh Dickinson University found out that its viewers are far less informed than people who don’t watch TV news at all.

Obviously, Spiegel has been paying attention. They refer to the entire cast of Republican candidates as “a club of liars, cheaters, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites and ignoramuses.”

And what a lovely club it is.
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Every once in a while, Joe Scarborough gets it just right.

“Michele Bachmann’s first answer, Mark Halperin, was “I wish the federal government had defaulted.” Had defaulted, a week after Americans had lost–some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401(k)s, when trillions of dollars went down the drain [pounds the table] with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause, and if anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way when this rolls out of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, in the early stages, and really gets going, they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines. I’ll let you go now. I got it off my chest.”

Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. And now I will pass it on to you. Her answer is a joke, her candidacy is a joke, and anybody that sits here and says she has any chance of winning anything is out of their mind. Take your straw poll, take your caucus, but Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.”

So, can the joke win the Republican primary? I’d like to think not but then I’m reminded of another joke who won it in 2000, so yeah, she can win it.

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I’m not a David Brooks fan but I have to give him credit for trying to knock some sense into the heads of Republicans. In his latest NYT op-ed piece, he laces into Republicans over their failure to accept what he saw as a debt ceiling deal favorable to conservative ideals – one which could have “been a glorious moment in Republican history.” The deal was one in which the White House was willing to mess with Medicare and Social Security in a serious way and reduce the size of government to the tune of $3 trillion over the next decade. Republicans turned it down over their insane insistence that a deal could not include one cent of tax increases.

The interesting part of Brooks’ piece is that he gets specific in naming who he feels are the true culprits on the Republican side. In fact, he’s got them categorized into four groups.

• Beltway Bandits (Grover Norquist who “enforces rigid ultimatums that make governance, or even thinking, impossible.”)
• Big Government Blowhards (Limbaugh and other right-wing media jocks who “are in the business of building an audience by stroking the pleasure centers of their listeners.”)
• The Show Horses (Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann who “produce tweets, not laws.“)
• The Permanent Campaigners (Republican politicians who do not “take responsibility for the state of the country and make it better. It’s to pass responsibility onto the other party and force them to take as many difficult votes as possible.“)

Very good. As I said, I’m not a big fan of Brooks and what usually comes off as twisted conservative logic but I do believe he’s nailed this one.

All of these groups share the same mentality. They do not see politics as the art of the possible. They do not believe in seizing opportunities to make steady, messy progress toward conservative goals. They believe that politics is a cataclysmic struggle. They believe that if they can remain pure in their faith then someday their party will win a total and permanent victory over its foes. They believe they are Gods of the New Dawn.

Unfortunately for Brooks, he’s going to get vilified by the very same people he’s correctly identified as the evildoers. No one tells a Norquist, Limbaugh or Palin that they’re hindering the great conservative dream. Conservative pundits are simply not allowed to tug on the cape of conservative gods. Just ask David Frum.

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They don’t call Orly Taitz the crazy Republican (<– redundancy?) without reason.
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There you have it, a perfect example of the right-wing fringe in action which has become less fringe and more mainstream with each passing day . And should anyone make the claim that Taitz is more exception than rule, than may I suggest that either: a) you have not been paying attention to the endless stream of hysteria emerging from the right over the last three years or b) over-exposure to Fox has undoubtedly fried one brain cell too many.

The age of teabagging/birtherism/lunacy/batshit crazy is fully upon us and all it took was the simple act of voting in a black liberal to the White House.
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With little more than truth and the fool’s own words, Jon Stewart neatly puts away Bill O’Reilly.

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There is little chance that this is going to be the end of the exchange.  Typical of people like O’Reilly, Beck and your everyday wingnut, they will divert from the original point by introducing non-related issues and accusations of their own until the original thread gets lost in a murky cloud of words and nonsense.

Deny, deny, deny. Lie, lie, lie. Deny, deny, deny. That’s how they do it.  Dicks are always right because dicks are unable to see themselves as ever being wrong.

See?  It’s not complicated at all.

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This should not have been a shocker, but it was.

Keith Olbermann, the combative left-leaning anchor of MSNBC’s most popular program, “Countdown,” surprised viewers Friday night by announcing that the show would be his last. Olbermann said he had been told by MSNBC that the cable network was ending his contract.

Is it mere coincidence that KO was let go in the same week that federal regulators gave Comcast the go-ahead in its takeover of NBC?  Probably not.  His style and strong progressive views clashed with Comcast’s corporate image and philosophy. Expect Ed Schultz to be booted out in the next short while.

There is something seriously wrong with a system that has a Glenn Beck freely spreading lies and hate on a daily basis but has no room for a Keith Olbermann.  Think what you will of Keith’s style but no one can accuse him of fabricating facts – a practice which is standard procedure over at Fox.

Olbermann said out loud what many could only feel.  He was a voice of reason in a sea of insanity and a source of hope when total frustration was the only sensation one could muster during those long years of Bush and Cheney and neocon madness.

With the loss of a strong progressive voice, the airwaves are a little less balanced today…exactly the way Comcast and every other corporate fat cat would want it to be.

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Wow.  A whole two day suspension.

STATEMENT REGARDING KEITH OLBERMANN – SUNDAY, NOV. 7

From Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC:

After several days of deliberation and discussion, I have determined that suspending Keith through and including Monday night’s program is an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy. We look forward to having him back on the air Tuesday night.

And I’m sure the online petition which drew over 300,000 Olbermann fans to protest MSNBC’s decision had nothing to do with Griffin’s decision to bring Keith back.  Right.

Somewhere buried in the Olbermann suspension is the deal being put together by General Electric and Comcast which will have the latter merging with NBC Universal.  The deal will give Comcast 51 percent ownership and managing control of the venture.

Any guesses as to which political party Comcast favors?

Almost two dozen, most Republican, representatives told the FCC June 17 that they were concerned about “any further delay” in the FCC’s review of the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal joint venture.

Led by Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member Joe Barton (R-Tex.) and Communications Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the reps said in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that they believed the voluntary public interest commitments the two companies have made should be sufficient to “compel the commission to conclude that the transaction, without any additional conditions, furthers the public interest and should be approved.

It takes no great effort to imagine a scenario where Comcast would want to clear house even before the merger became a done deal.  I’m betting that the back room boys were hoping that Olbermann would resign in protest over his suspension.

No doubt, we’ll soon see a Plan B put into effect.

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This is ridiculous.

Keith Olbermann has been suspended from MSNBC, indefinitely and without pay, after news that he had made political contributions to three Democratic candidates. “I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night,” Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said in a statement.

“Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.” Politico reported this morning that Olbermann had made the maximum donation, $2,400, to three Democratic candidates this year: Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords and Senate candidate Jack Conway.

According to MSNBC, Olbermann’s suspension comes not from his political contributions but from his failure to obtain prior approval from the network.  Griffin and Olbermann have a history of butting heads and early indications are that what we have here is Griffin having found a way to push his weight around.

Rumors that Olbermann is considering a Fox gig alongside Christine O’Donnell have not been confirmed.  Stay tuned.

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I haven’t commented on the Juan Williams firing from NPR because, honestly, I just don’t care.  Williams has never struck me as particularly insightful or brilliant.  I tend to view him as the quintessential Fox Liberal – a sort of political Goldilocks and the Three Bears, not too hot, not too cold but just right.

As for his comment regarding Muslims, I’m with Sullivan on this one.

“…the full context in no way exonerates Williams in his conflation of Muslims – not Jihadists or al Qaeda or extreme Muslims or radical Muslims – but Muslims period with terrorism. Williams is not observing and airing the irrational fear of Muslims who put their Muslim identity first and foremost, airing a fact, he is saying it is justified given the extremist Muslim origin of recent terrorism. He is conflating the extreme with the general. This is what bigotry is. It is unfairly tarring the vast majority of innocent members of a group with the acts of a tiny few of 1.3 billion people.”

Is Williams a bigot?  I don’t know but I’m guessing he’s not.  Was the thought he expressed bigoted?  Absolutely.  Should he have been fired over his statement?  I’m thinking not but whether it was justified or not, Williams comes out ahead with a three year/$2 million contract with Fox.

What we know now is that CNN and NPR take bigotry seriously and that Fox actually rewards its employees for making bigoted remarks.

Yep.

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And here is why.

…you’ll never have a liberal equivalent to Fox News that has anything like the same level of success. Conservatives believe that the mainstream news is fundamentally corrupt and untrustworthy. They want a fully closed information ecosystem in which every piece of data they consume is filtered through the perspective of the conservative movement. Very, very few liberals want that. They want their liberal opinion, but they also want straight news, or at the very least news that isn’t overtly propagandistic like on Fox. MSNBC has slightly right-of-center programming in the morning with Joe Scarborough, straight news throughout the day, then liberal opinion at night.

Will that work? Sherman implicitly suggests it won’t. The beauty of Fox News is that the “straight” news seamlessly meshes with the straight opinion ranters. The daytime shows endlessly pump up the Black Panther intimidation story, and then the opinion hosts flog the story more. The whole product works together.

Gabe Sherman explains how.

Fox’s secret is that viewers stay. That’s because Fox’s rightward flanking maneuver, capturing a disenfranchised part of the audience, was only part of its strategy. The news, especially political news, wasn’t something that happened. It was something that you shaped out of the raw data, brought out of the clay of zhlubby, boring politics, reborn with heroes and villains, triumphs and reverses, never-ending story lines—what TV executives call “flow.” And the beauty of it was that the viewers—the voters—were the protagonists, victims of evil Kenyan socialist overlords, or rebels, coming to take the government back. There was none of the on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand relativity crossfire that mirrors the journalism-school ideal of objectivity. All the fire went one way. The viewers, on their couches, were flattered as the most important participants, the foot soldiers in Fox’s army; some of them even voted.

There never will be a Fox equivalent on the liberal side because most liberals would never tolerate being lied to on a daily basis.  For all the criticism MSNBC gets from the right claiming it is no different than Fox, they’re wrong.  Olbermann is not O’Reilly and Maddow is not Hannity.  Not even close.  You can disagree with the liberal views of Olbermann and Maddow, but you would be hard-pressed to call them liars.  And when they do error, they readily admit it.

Can the same be said of O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck and the rest of the Fox crew – all chronic and documented liars of the first order?

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