RADAMISTO

NIXONLAND TIDBITS

2009-11-21T05:36:00.002-07:00

This isn't as interesting to me as Perlstein's Before the Storm but it does provide some details that I wasn't aware of or have forgotten. For example, I didn't know that G. Gordon Liddy lost his job at the FBI because his supervisor said he was a "wildman" and a "superklutz." I also didn't know that Antonin Scalia worked as the general counsel for the WH Office of Telecommunications Policy for Nixon.

HANNITY & LEVIN OFTEN PLAY THIS AUDIO CLIP

2009-11-20T05:26:00.003-07:00

(h/t Bob Somerby)

On it, Ronald Reagan says this:

"one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."

Reagan is talking AGAINST the passage of LBJ's Medicare Act of 1965. He also described a hysterical fear of what else could happen:

First you [the government] decide that the doctor can have so many patients. ... So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town, and the government has to say to him, "You can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors, you have to go live somewhere else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go. Pretty soon your son won't decide when he's in school where he will go or what he will do for a living, but will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do. ...

Why can't we use this glaringly false prediction against the wingers?

BLANKFEIN A BIT BETTER THAN DIMON

2009-11-20T04:06:00.002-07:00

Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan admitted that investments banks did "some really stupid things" but didn't aknowledge any moral issues. After claiming that he does "God's work," Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein showed a bit more repentance:

Goldman's chief executive apologizes for part in fiscal crisis
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009

However, he [Blankfein] said, "there's also people who feel — and are right — that there's some meaningful things where we may have — not may have, certainly our industry is responsible for things. And we're a leader in our industry, and we participated in things that were clearly wrong, and we have reasons to regret and apologize for."

When he was asked what lessons he and the company have learned, he said: "Listen, there was a lot of negligent behavior, improper, bad behavior, behavior that has to be fixed and sorted through. There's no doubt about it, and everybody succumbed to it, some more or less. We don't take ourselves out of that. I include ourselves in that."

MORE IGNORANCE FROM FATS LIMBAUGH

2009-11-20T03:09:00.002-07:00

(h/t Zachary Pleat at Media Matters)

Fats was pushing his great myth of Individualism in response to a caller who was upset because Fats thinks unemployment benefits promote unemployment. Here'san example he used to make his point:

Remember all the stories we've had over the years, folks? There was a business off the coast of North Carolina that took people out to feed some kind of exotic fish (I don't know what's out there) and the fish, whatever it was, after not too long a time became totally dependent on those tourist boats coming out and dropping the chum overboard. They stopped learning how to fend for themselves, because it wasn't necessary.

Mammal nature, human nature, whatever. It's what it is.

Fish aren't mammals, Pigboy, and would you be willing to claim that sharks forgot how to fend for themselves because of the slave trade?

JUST AVERAGE AMERICANS?

2009-11-20T01:31:00.003-07:00

Not so much, really. An article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about a company that sells a "survival seed kit" has this quote from the owner:

"My customers are not survivalist, gun-toting hicks," Heid said. "They are just average, flag-waving Americans."

If you go to the Solutions From Science website, you'll find this video clip ad for BlacklistedGear,

Let's recall that Glenn Beck and Mark Levin have called Pres. Obama a Marxist.

If you go to Survival Seeds, another advertiser from the Solutions From Science page, you'll find this text in their sales copy:

WorldNet Daily cites strong evidence that some government agencies are stockpiling huge amounts of canned food.

The final bit of evidence is from another SFS advertiser, FoodShortageUSA. It's sale copy includes this video clip:

THIS IS A PALIN SUPPORTER?

2009-11-19T22:52:00.003-07:00

Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard has been seen as Palinite but he certainly didn't seem to be one when he appeared on PBS's Newhour on Nov. 18th:

MATTHEW CONTINETTI, author, "The Persecution of Sarah Palin": I think she wants to continue to have a career in politics as someone who is influencing politics.

Whether that is something that she does from within a political office, I'm not even sure Sarah Palin knows at this point. Sarah Palin is an instinctual politician. She is extremely impulsive, at times appear reckless. And it also makes her very hard to pin down as a political figure. She can go from one political persona to the other.

This isn't the kind of person we can tolerate being "a heartbeat away" from the Presidency.

THIS IS A GREAT TESTIMONIAL TO THE RULE OF LAW IN AMERICA

2009-11-19T22:27:00.002-07:00

I stopped keeping track of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial before it was finished, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across this report by the AP.

First US trial of 9/11 case was full of surprises
By MATTHEW BARAKAT and MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writers – Tue Nov 17, 9:50 pm ET

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Zacarias Moussaoui was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, according to his old al-Qaida boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks — never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.

No one was more surprised than Moussaoui himself: At the end he concluded an al-Qaida member like him could get a fair trial in a U.S. court.

"I had thought that I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on Sept. 11," Moussaoui said in an appeal deposition taken after he was sentenced to life in prison. "(B)ut after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence ... I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial."

It's hard to imagine a more powerful endorsement of our system.

WINGERS ARE DIVIDED

2009-11-19T21:38:00.002-07:00

This is really just schadenfreude on my part but I can't help it because the more divided the wingers are, the better off America is. First, the would-be Raygun successor Lazy Freddie Thompson declares that the Afghanistan War is LOST and causes great dismay at NRO, Red State and Hot Air. Second, racist & elitist Charles Murray declares that Glenn Beck can't be trusted:

But Beck uses tactics that include tiny snippets of film as proof of a person’s worldview, guilt by association, insinuation, and occasionally outright goofs like the fake quote. To put it another way, I as a viewer have no way to judge whether Beck is right. I have to trust that the snippets are not taken out of context, that the dubious association between A and B actually has evidence to support it, and that his numbers are accurate. It is impossible to have that trust.

THIS IS GREAT!

2009-11-19T21:17:00.004-07:00

Not only did FAUX News apologize for using the wrong video for its coverage of Palin's book tour, it also made the "most e-mailed" list on Yahoo News:

If we can get the mainstream media to cover more stories about FAUX being wrong, this should help further discredit it and its hosts.

BECK GETS AN UNLIKELY ALLY

2009-11-19T21:07:00.002-07:00

Mark Levin has been hostile to Glenn Beck and his message in part because Levin thinks Beck is leading people to form a third party and that would be very bad news for the Republican party. Tonight, Levin jumped on board on of Beck's conspiracy theories, the idea that the liberals are out to destroy society in order to remake it according to their views. Levin didn't mention Beck but he did mention the two Columbia University professors who came up with the strategy back in the 60s, Cloward and Piven. Levin attributes this "discovery" to an article by Nancy Coppock in The American Thinker and provided a link to it on his site.

THE WINGERS AND THE BIBLE

2009-11-18T22:05:00.002-07:00

Some of the wingers used to quote Romans 13:1-2 (here and here) to justify complete allegiance to Pres. Bush but now that passage won't do. Instead, they found something that fits their childish ideological needs,
Psalm 109:8 -

"May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership."

DOUG HOFFMAN IS A TAD SLOW

2009-11-18T21:56:00.001-07:00

He's only now claiming that ACORN and the unions stole the NY-23 election.

WILL FAUX NEWS APOLOGIZE?

2009-11-18T20:41:00.004-07:00

UPDATE: Politico reports that FAUX News will apologize tomorrow on Happening Now.

Hannity apologized for showing the wrong video clips of Bachmann's DC foolishness and now FAUX News has been caught by Media Matters and Think Progress using old 2008 campaign footage to give the impression that there are HUGE crowds at Palin's book tour stops.

WHO ARE THE GASBAGS REALLY TALKING TO?

2009-11-18T19:52:00.003-07:00

A commenter on a POLITICO thread thought efforts by the radio wingers to demonize people like Reid and Pelosi were futile because so few people knew who they were. At the time, I wondered what the real numbers were and Matt Yglesias found a recent poll that provides some information: only 49% named Pelosi as the current Speaker of the House. Considering that she's the 1st woman to be Speaker, that percentage is a little disappointing and is another indication of the unacceptable level of political ignorance in America. On the other hand, that means that a lot of the people who listen to the gasbags are relatively unaffected by these attacks.

THIS IS NOT IN THE PUBLIC'S INTEREST

2009-11-18T19:41:00.002-07:00

KNST, one of the local wingnut radio stations, will have Jerome Corsi on its morning show tomorrow and I think this grounds to take a hard look at its broadcast license.

ANOTHER LOSS FOR A BARBARIAN

2009-11-18T04:22:00.002-07:00

Inhofe is probably the leading troglodyte in the U.S. Senate and yesterday one of his reactionary amendments was slapped down yesterday.

Senate Defeats Inhofe Amendment On Gitmo Detainee Transfer
Christina Bellantoni | November 17, 2009, 3:29PM
TPMDC

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) had tried to attach an amendment to the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act that would have blocked money for building or modifying prisons to hold Gitmo detainees.

The Senate killed the Inhofe amendment in a 57-43 vote hailed by the ACLU. All 40 Republicans were joined by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, both Democrats from Arkansas.

WHAT'S REALLY DISTURBING ABOUT PALIN

2009-11-18T03:54:00.002-07:00

Lying can be done for a number of reasons that can make it seem forgivable or at least comprehensible but when it's not done for any discernible reason, it becomes pathological and many of her lies, like the one about her family voting on whether or not she should run, don't seem to have a purpose.

A NEW GROUP OF EXTREMISTS

2009-11-18T02:57:00.002-07:00

(h/t Dave Neiwert at Crooks & Liars)

The Anti-Defamation League has just come out with a report on anti-government rage in America and found a group I hadn't heard of before.

The Three Percenters

The Three Percenters are a loosely organized movement that apparently formed in late 2008, centered around an obscure and not particularly accurate Revolutionary War “statistic” that suggested that only 3% of the American population during the Revolutionary War participated as combatants in the war (the actual figure was nearly twice that). Three Percenters claim that they are a modern counterpart to that mythical 3% of American Revolutionary-era patriots.

One of the active proponents of the Three Percenters is the Alabama-based Mike Vanderboegh, who in the past has been involved with the militia movement and the anti-immigration border vigilante movement.

It's not surprising that these clowns have a poor knowledge of history.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY WAS A CRANKY OLD MAN

2009-11-18T01:14:00.005-07:00

before he became old. In 1964, at the age of 39, he wrote that the Beatles were a terrible group and a few years later, he decided to make a show of his "higher" morality by attacking a young coed at Barnard College for the inexcusable crime of living with her boyfriend.

Here's the gist of the coed story:

Students: Linda the Light Housekeeper
Friday, Apr. 26, 1968
TIME Magazine

Pert, lank-haired Linda LeClair, 20, from Hudson, N.H., enrolled as a freshman at Manhattan's Barnard College in 1965. Soon afterward, she met Peter Behr, a Columbia University freshman from New York City, at a dormitory dinner. Romance blossomed, and when Linda became ill and had to drop out of school a few months later, the couple moved into a West Side apartment together. Last year, still living off-campus with Peter, Linda resumed her studies.

Plenty of other student couples share co-ed flats—so many, in fact, that the New York Times last month decided to run a story on students' light-housekeeping arrangements. To a reporter for the paper, Peter and Linda freely explained that they began living together because they regarded marriage as "too serious a step." As for Barnard's strict housing regulations, which require that noncommuting students under 21 live in supervised housing unless they have live-in jobs, Linda explained that she had simply given the college a false address where, she told the school, she was employed as a maid.

That neat little lie was too much for Barnard. Although the Times did not use Linda's real name in its story, the school had no trouble identifying her, and promptly charged her with violating the residence regulations.

Buckley decided this was worth an editorial:

"Linda's Crusade", National Review 20, no. 2, (May 21, 1968), p. 518¹
Dozens upon dozens of Miss LeClair's classmates stepped forward to admit that their living arrangements were similarly loose-minded,...

Mr. Behr, who is a draft evader, is apparently unable to take up the slack; so that perhaps the indomitable Miss LeClair will list herself as an unemployed concubine and apply for relief from the City,...

There isn't anyone around who seems prepared to say to Miss LeClair: Look, it is wrong to do what you have done. Wrong because sexual promiscuity is an assault on an institution that is central to the survival of the hardiest Western ideal: the family. In an age in which the Playboy philosophy is taken seriously, as a windy testimonial to the sovereign right of all human appetites, it isn't surprising that the LeClairs of this world should multiply like rabbits, whose morals they imitate.

LeClair was a member of SDS and did not subscribe to Playboy's "philosophy." She merely wanted, as many other young women did, the same sexual rights as men. There is no evidence that she was promiscuous or "loose."

¹America in the sixties--right, left, and center : a documentary history
Author: Peter B Levy
Publisher: Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1998.
Pages 176-78

THE GREAT PALIN SHOW

2009-11-17T22:43:00.002-07:00

In addition to Fats' show, she'll be on with Mark Levin tomorrow and I suspect Hannity can't be far behind. She also gave interviews to Erick at Red State, David Patten at Newsmax, Palin apologist Mathew Continetti at the Weekly Standard and Rick Lowry at the NRO.

I DISAGREE WITH ATRIOS, DIGBY AND MEDIA MATTERS

2009-11-17T21:40:00.003-07:00

They all think Newsweek's Palin cover is inappropriate and bemoan the sexist treatment Palin gets in the press. To which I say: Wink several times at the VP debate, expect blowback.

MARK LEVIN WAS ON CUE AGAIN

2009-11-17T21:36:00.002-07:00

He took Monday off, so he couldn't strike back at David Brooks then but he did today in the 3rd hour of his radio show. He made his typical ad hominem attacks and tried to cast Brooks as an elitist.

FATS & CARIBOU

2009-11-17T21:28:00.002-07:00

Rush Limbaugh interviewed Sarah Palin today and that's a sign that she's extremely important to the radio conservatives. The transcript is here but you really should listen to her so you can understand that she really is an airhead.

ECONOMICAL WITH THE TRUTH

2009-11-17T04:55:00.002-07:00

In the London Times, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, states that Goldman became a holding company because that would give people the impression that it was under adequate supervision:

Blankfein says Goldman changed status not for the money, but because it had become clear, following the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman, that the market had lost faith in the ability of the US Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate investment banks. Being regulated by the central bank, the Federal Reserve, would help to restore confidence in the financial system as a whole.

In the official announcement carried by the Business Wire, Blankfein mentioned an additional motive:

“When Goldman Sachs was a private partnership, we made the decision to become a public company, recognizing the need for permanent capital to meet the demands of scale. While accelerated by market sentiment, our decision to be regulated by the Federal Reserve is based on the recognition that such regulation provides its members with full prudential supervision and access to permanent liquidity and funding,” said Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.

I CAN UNDERSTAND THE FILIBUSTER RULE...

2009-11-17T04:32:00.003-07:00

because I think that's a good way to protect the minority but I can't see the logic behind a hold, which allows a single senator to block a nomination or a bill. There doesn't seem to be a constitutional or historical justification for this procedure, according to the Senate's website:

The practice of "holds" (requests by Senators to party leaders to delay floor consideration of legislation or nominations), which is nowhere recognized in Senate rules or precedents and about which little is known with respect to its origins, has become a prominent feature of today's Senate.