Roger Nicholson's Confrontation with Info Wars Conspiracy Reporter Dan Bidondi. #BostonStrong

I'm not a fan of Alex Jones, so...of course...I found this video endlessly entertaining:



Once again, the people are left in the position of standing up to the charlatans in media.

@RuthMarcus, Villagers and the evolution of media bull@#$%...

My distaste for Ruth Marcus goes back a while. So I guess I shouldn't have been completely surprised when yet again decided to act as the Chief Villager for a Newspaper run by nothing but Villagers when she wrote her latest (cough-cough) column.

After listing through some of the nasty comments House GOPers were tweeting as the President was speaking to them about reaching a Budget Deal, she quoted the President calmly assessing the situation with George Stephanopoulos:

Obama: “You know — I think whatever I’m for, it’s very hard for a Republican to also be for. I think they always have to be a little bit — you know, maintain some distance.”

One would think after all the Filibustering and insults (some of them actually racist) that have been hurled at this President from the start of his administration, a columnist might react with shock and surprise that the sitting President managed to keep his cool.

Instead, Ruth Marcus offered this:

The president has made this point before, and maybe he’s right. Yet this analysis leaves him in a distinctly unpresidential posture — not leaning in, but holding back.

Excuse me, but...I did not think it was anatomically possible for one's head to get that far up one's...--never mind.

I don't know how to tell Journalists this, because...I really thought they would have covered it in Journalism school, but...it's not your job to balance the argument.

I know you think that's your job. But let's be clear about what your job really is.

Your job is to present both sides of a story...

Your job is not necessarily to lend them equal weight, particularly when they don't deserve it.

Again, you don't elevate both sides into equality.  We don't need you to do that.  In fact, it's a really bad idea if you do do that.

If you're a columnist, as Ruth Marcus is, this is even more tricky.  Why?  Because, a columnist offers nothing but opinion.  They don't do any actual reporting.  They don't go digging around for facts anymore...they've been excused from that particular activity.  In fact, they are paid a substantial salary to say only what they think.  Even if what they think has no basis in reality, as Ruth Marcus clearly demonstrated today.

One would think that some measure of journalistic integrity would matter in a circumstance like this, but again...you'd be wrong.  The Washington Post is more than capable of publishing utter complete bull@#$% so long as it fills column inches.  After all they employ Jennifer Rubin, Marc Thiessen, Robert Samuelson, Richard Cohen...and Ruth Marcus.

(Hey, at least Ezra Klein -- and I know me some Liberals who hate him for some reason -- no idea why -- does actual work to preparing his pieces.)

One would think it would matter to the folks at the Washington Post that their own readers can smell this line of crap a mile off, but we don't matter of the folks at the Washington Post.  Ruth Marcus has proved...once again...that the Villagers are talking only to other Villagers.

Which could explain why most newspapers are in trouble.

We need Newspapers and Magazines and Media in general, advocating for their audience, and not entertaining their damn selves.

For example...if someone...say like the President...presents something that is backed in fact, and his opposition presents something that is cloaked in bull@#$%...we kinda need Media to call out the bull@#$%.

But they're not.

They used to.  But they're not.

I mean it happens...sometimes, but it sure as hell didn't happen today with Ruth Marcus.

Let me quote something a columnist said not too long ago:

Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?

That was from August 10, 2010. My goodness who wrote such a prescient piece?

C'mon, this is easy. This was Ruth Marcus...in a piece backing Robert Gibbs when he called out the Professional Left.

So what happened?

Apparently, Ruth Marcus...still employed by the Washington Post...has lost the ability...to count.

Ruth Marcus got lazy.  She and the paper needed column inches to fill, and bull@#$% magically transpired.

When you say the President isn't showing leadership after showing in just a few short paragraphs that there's no one who's willing to be lead, we do wonder why the President is to blame, and not the Congress.  And if you can't make that elementary of a call, it calls into question your ability to observe things...or any thing, for that matter.

I mean, I don't meant to tell Ruth Marcus in particular how to do her job, but I figured someone ought to.

Watch in amazement as @ABC News commits Journalistic malpractice right before your very eyes (VIDEO)

This is one of those stories that seems designed and destined to produce mixed feelings in me.  In the end, though, you'll see my feelings are not that mixed.

On the one hand, it's freakin' Ashley Judd.  Big time, actual Movie Star, talking about how she schleps it, like the rest of us Volunteers, hoofing it from door to door on behalf the President in freaking Tennessee!  For that alone, she deserves major, big-time kudos.

But she's the only one who deserves kudos.  ABC News, on the other hand...

Honest to God, WTF??  There is a speech is being made by Former Governor Ted Strickland, and he's absolutely KILLING IT.  This is what would be called, you know...actual news...something usually covered by something called a News Organization, or in the case of ABC News, an Organization with "News" in its name.  But no, ABC News elects to skip actual news, and talk to the Movie Star.

Epic...freakin'...fail.

What amuses me so much, is that Journalists seem to get really, really peeved when they see how much (at times) the public truly hates them.  What they never seem to understand is that this is the stuff that makes us hate them.

Robert Samuelson...stopped clock.

It should come as no surprise that I can't stand the Washington Post's (cough-cough) Economics Columnist, Robert Samuelson...mostly because I don't think he knows much about Economics.

Let's see here's me blasting him (however briefly) for saying the Stimulus wouldn't work. Here's me saying outright Krugman's smarter than he is (no surprise, only one of them has a Nobel Prize).  Here's me saying that as long as Samuelson continues to work there, the Washington Post will remain a substandard newspaper.

But you know what they say, a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Thus, I present to you...Robert Samuelson...stopped clock:

There seems to be a Democratic mole inside Mitt Romney’s campaign. Could it be Romney himself? Well, of course not. But considering the campaign’s behavior, it might just as well be. President Obama and his allies have cast Romney as a wealthy fat cat who’s out of touch with everyday Americans and who would use his presidency to enrich the already rich. To counter this damning image, the last thing you’d expect Romney to do is embrace a tax plan favoring the super-rich.

Which is exactly what he has done.

After examining Romney’s proposal, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that households with incomes exceeding $200,000 would receive tax cuts; meanwhile, taxes would rise for the other 95 percent of the population. Taxpayers making more than $1 million would receive an average cut of $87,000; those making less than $200,000 would pay an average of $500 more. Romney denies that he would raise taxes on the middle class but has provided no evidence that the Tax Policy Center’s analysis is wrong.

What can he be thinking?

Let's get one thing straight, I still think Samuelson's an idiot, and I'd still fire him yesterday for being fundamentally antithetical to his job description (a writer about the Economy who knows nothing about the economy)...

...but when someone as idiotic, biased and right-winged as Samuelson thinks Mitt Romney is out of touch, boy o' boy...Mitt Romney is out of touch.

I do believe this is Sec. Timothy Geithner calling out the Huffington Post... (VIDEO)

Because I know of no Media organization more dedicated to this lie, that HuffPo:

The Story behind the Bain Story...or how depending on @factcheckdotorg or @GlennKesslerWP for facts can burn you.

Okay, so it turns out Mitt Romney lied (to a possibly criminal degree) about when he left Bain. No surprise there, these are his core ethics at work: do whatever you have to do, say whatever you have to say to close the deal, i.e: win the Presidency.

But the story behind the story is equally as interesting, if not more disturbing, and continues to call into question the quality of so-called "Factchecker" websites like Factcheck.org and Glenn Kessler's column at the Washington Post.

Okay, basically the story is this. The President's Campaign team put out an ad saying that Mitt Romney was responsible for the layoffs perpetrated by Bain Capital. The Annenberg Center's Factcheck.org labeled the attack unfair. The President's team pushed back, putting out a six page letter doubling down on the claim. Factcheck remained unconvinced.

Then, David Corn, he of Mother Jones and MSNBC (soon to be NBC News), picked up the ball and ripped out a really strong piece on his investment in Stericycle, a company that made money disposing of medical waste and aborted fetuses. Here's the key bit from that piece:

In 2001 and 2002, Romney filed Massachusetts state disclosure forms noting he was the 100 percent owner of Bain Capital NY, Inc.—a Bain outfit that was incorporated in Delaware on April 13, 1999—two months after Romney's supposed retirement from the firm. A May 2001 filing with the SEC identified Romney as "a member of the Management Committee" of two Bain entities. And in 2007, the Washington Post reported that R. Bradford Malt, a Bain lawyer, said Romney took a "leave of absence" when he assumed the Olympics post and retained sole ownership of the firm for two more years.

Okay, do we get that? Even though Romney has been saying over and over again that he left Bain in 1999, and has nothing to do, whatsoever with whatever bad stuff they did after that...a Massachusetts state disclosure form and a SEC Filing say otherwise.

And Factcheck and Glenn Kessler's reaction? To stand by their previous, lazy ass reporting.

Thus, David Corn decided to punch back...again:

Romney's actual departure date is significant. If he did fully leave Bain in February 1999, he is better able to argue that he cannot be held responsible for the firm's actions afterward—though he maintained his ownership interest in Bain and its various entities for years and, consequently, benefited from these deals. This past week, the Obama campaign has been tussling over this issue with FactCheck.org, the independent fact-checking organization created by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. After the Obama campaign launched an ad blasting Romney as a "corporate raider" who "shipped jobs to China and Mexico," FactCheck.org called the ad false, partly because Romney had exited Bain in February 1999, prior to the deals in question. In reply, the Obama campaign sent a six-page letter to the group, challenging its determination regarding Romney's departure. But FactCheck.org reaffirmed its initial conclusion and told the Obama-ites their complaint was "all wet." Meanwhile, Dan Primack, a senior editor at Fortune, took issue with my article for noting that the SEC documents undercut the claim that Romney had no participation in any Bain decisions after February 1999.

Both Primack and FactCheck.org were unimpressed by the fact that the Boston Herald reported on February 12, 1999, that Romney was not resigning but taking a leave, during which he would provide Bain "input on investment and key personnel decisions." FactCheck.org pointed out that this story also noted Romney would "leave running day-to-day operations to Bain's executive committee," and the group cited an April 4, 1999, Associated Press story reporting that Romney was overwhelmed by his Olympian task and had no time for Bain. Primack insisted that the Herald story and a July 19, 1999, Bain press release referring to Romney as "currently on a part-time leave of absence" and quoting him speaking for Bain Capital were not all that telling, because when Romney left for Salt Lake City he probably "assumed that he'd still be involved in [Bain] decision-making, albeit from a distance," but ended up not doing that, due to his workload in Utah. Primack said he has "numerous sources," including many who were with Bain, who have told him that Romney did not make any investment-related decisions after February 1999.

What about the various SEC documents—some of which Romney signed—that identify him as controlling assorted Bain entities and large blocs of shares in firms in which Bain invested after February 1999? The Obama campaign letter cited at least 63 SEC filings after March 1, 1999, that describe Bain entities as "wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney." Both Primack and FactCheck.org contended that these documents prove only that Romney continued on as an owner of Bain, not as a decision maker.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo also jumped on the bandwagon.

The gist of the disagreement comes down to this: There’s no question that numerous public filings and some contemporaneous press references say Romney was still running things at Bain after 1999. But his campaign insists that whatever securities filings may have said, in practice, he was so busy running the 2002 Winter Olympics that he actually had no role at Bain after early 1999. That’s possible in theory. But there’s no evidence for it besides self-interested claims by Romney. And there’s plenty of documentary evidence to the contrary. After all, what you tell the SEC is really supposed to be true.

But here’s the thing. I’ve found yet more instances where Romney made declarations to the SEC that he was still involved in running Bain after February 1999. To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet noted these.

The documents go into different aspects of Romney’s ownership of various Bain and Bain related assets. But in both Romney had to say what he currently did for a living.

And finally, one of my faves, Steve Benen worked it (providing, by the way, a lot of the timeline for this piece):

What Josh highlighted were two SEC filings from July 2000 and February 2001 in which Romney listed his "principal occupation" as "Managing Director of Bain Capital, Inc." At the risk of putting too fine a point on this, one cannot be gone from Bain in February 1999 and also be the managing director of Bain in February 2001.

Now, you might be thinking, "Does this really matter? What difference does it make exactly when Romney left Bain?" It matters quite a bit, actually.

For one thing, call me old fashioned, but Romney is supposed to tell the truth, both to the public and to the Securities and Exchange Commission. At this point, Romney's claims don't add up, and it's not unreasonable to ask for an explanation.

On a related note, it also matters whether or not Romney told the truth on his official financial disclosure forms.

And then, of course, there's the whole point of why Romney wants people to believe he left Bain earlier than the apparent date. The Republican candidate probably doesn't want to be on the hook for a series of controversial Bain investments -- again, see Corn's reporting -- and layoffs, which would help explain his competing explanations.

FactCheck.org's editors appear to have accepted Romney's claims at face value, but the documentary evidence now appears to point in the opposite direction. Here's hoping they, and others in media, give this another look.

I guess its easy for Factcheck.org and Glenn Kessler to take on Liberal Writers for a Liberal Magazine and Blogs. After all, let's call this game what it is: Factcheck and Kessler are more interested in their reputations as "impartial artibers of truth" rather than doing...you know...their job in getting the truth out there.

So what do they got to say now that the Boston Globe has gotten involved?

Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time.

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.

Contradictions concerning the length of Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital add to the uncertainty and questions about his finances. Bain is the primary source of Romney’s wealth, which is estimated to be more than $250 million. But how his wealth has been invested, especially in a variety of Bain partnerships and other investment vehicles, remains difficult to decipher because of a lack of transparency.

Whoops.

Also, it should be noted (as it was by Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall), that The Boston Globe totally skunked David Corn and didn't mention his work at all the story. Stay classy, Boston Globe!

Meanwhile, Kessler and Factcheck.org? Staying with their original line.

Josh Marshall's reaction? (just as a highlight):

Meanwhile, Glenn Kessler seems to be sticking with his earlier claims that Romney actually did end his roll at Bain in 1999, hanging his hat on the fact that the former SEC official the Globe asked about documents had given money to Democrats. This strikes me as the feeblest crutch of contemporary journalism. The issue is the filings — not the person you found to give a quote about them.

Yeah, no hope of them staying classy there.

Folks, putting your total trust in any single one of these yahoos is asking for trouble. You cannot rely on a single arbiter to be your judge and jury over what is and isn't the truth. If you want to get the facts, then like Democracy itself, it's going to make you work at it. You've got to read multiple stories, and you've got to form that picture for yourself. Don't let the folks who claim to have "Fact" in their name do that work for you. As this an other instances have proven, you can't trust 'em.

What proof? Here's another instance.  (Granted this one's about Politifact, but the the claim remains the same):

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Meanwhile, what has David Corn done now? He's done what a good Reporter should do. He's moved on:

EXCLUSIVE: Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing

The GOP candidate decries China poaching US jobs. But at Bain he held a large stake in a Chinese company that did just that. 

Last month, Mitt Romney's campaign got into a dustup with the Washington Post after the newspaper reported that Bain Capital, the private equity firm the GOP presidential candidate founded, invested in several US companies that outsourced jobs to China and India. The campaign indignantly demanded a retraction, claiming that these businesses did not send jobs overseas while Romney was running Bain, and the Post stood by its investigation. Yet there is another aspect to the Romney-as-outsourcer controversy. According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.

Lemme quote Josh one more time:

Read [David's new story] now before it appears as someone else’s exclusive.

For the record, @msnbc, you're not paying @tamronhall NEARLY enough (VIDEO)

Give her a raise, now.  Just for this:

Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) blasts the Beltway Culture (VIDEO)

Wow.



Traffic? Seriously, dude? Have you been to L.A.??

Also, as a Native D.C.er, as in born and raised in D.C., I have to admit, I've ALWAYS called it a Subway. "Hey, Malcolm...what's the Metro?" "Well, that's our Subway System." I don't know what else you'd call it.

The President's Barnburner of a speech in front of the Associated Press Editors (VIDEO)

Too bad the Associated Press, apparently, declined to listen to any part of it (via TPM):

One of the key moments of President Obama’s Tuesday speech before an Associated Press luncheon came at the end, when he urged reporters not to cast partisan disagreements about the key issues of the day — health care, the environment, the role of the federal government — as a product of equal intransigence on both sides. Republicans, he noted, have abandoned their previous support for Obama initiatives — from transportation funding, to cap and trade, to the health care reforms that comprise ‘Obamacare’ — many of which emerged as conservative alternatives to more liberal policies.

His hosts weren’t listening — and as a result they’ve made Obama’s points about Republicans and the media for him.

“[I]f Republicans have moved to the right on health care, it’s also true that Obama has moved to the left,” reads an AP wrap on the Obama speech. “He strenuously opposed a mandate forcing people to obtain health insurance until he won office and changed his mind.”

It’s true that Obama campaigned against an individual mandate in 2008, only to embrace it — however reluctantly — after he became president. But to say that constitutes a move to the left betrays a lack of understanding about the origins and purpose of the individual mandate, and of Obama’s broader evolution on health care reform.

In the early aughts, as a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama strongly supported a single-payer health care system.

Over the years, that position became more tempered by political realities, and by the 2008 Democratic primary, he had embraced the basic framework of what eventually became “Obamacare,” with two glaring exceptions: He supported a public option, and he opposed an individual mandate — the latter of which was crucial to the success of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts.

Obama was criticized by a mix of liberal and conservative technocrats and industry stakeholders for opposing the mandate. By embracing it as president, while dropping the public option, he was arguably moving further right still from his past support for single-payer. As Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — then the top Republican on the committee that drafted the health care law — said before health care reform turned toxic on the right, “I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.”

As Obama lurched toward Massachusetts’ plan as a potential framework for bipartisan consensus, Republicans quickly abandoned the pretense of supporting the principle of universal health care of any kind.

@Lawrence O'Donnell commits an act of Journalism LIVE on air (VIDEO)

For viewing over and over and over again. This is how it's done:

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Umm, is there a way @MSNBC can force Chris Matthews to watch his own Network and learn somethin'? (VIDEO)

First Chris Matthews had on E.J. Dionne and Susan Milligan, and barely let Susan get in a word in edgewise:

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And then Lawrence O'Donnell had Mark Shields on to pontificate just a little bit more:

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And yes, despite Lawrence's admonition, Mark Shields went on and on.

Unanswered was the question, in both segments was this: Why should the Catholic Church be able to enforce Catholic Dogma on it's employees who work for Catholic Organization who are not Catholic.

Instead all we heard was the alleged oppression being put upon the Church, which...if you remember history, is just a damn joke.

Another way to ask the question is: Why should the Catholic Church control the sex lives of Non-Catholic, or anyone else for that matter?


Or how about this one: Mad as I am about the Catholic Sex Scandal, I don't want to pay for Father Donovan's Heart Medication.  Can I have a exemption, too?  Or is it more important that we have a Civilization here, and pay for each other's stuff...even if we don't use it?

But finally buried in the din...was Rachel Maddow...and Rachel sounding uber-reasonable, and quiet, underhandedly scolding her journalistic colleages (namely Shields and Matthews).

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And she did it again, the next night:

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And Lawrence had an actual lawyer on (the legendary David Boies) to explain why the contretemps over the Birth Control issue was total bullshit:

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Basically, I want two things from Chris Matthews...but expect only one.

It'd be really nice if stop hawking his book on Jack Kennedy every ten seconds, but hey a fella can dream, can't he?

But what I really expect is for Chris Matthews to stop using MSNBC as a personal platform to provide cover for the Church, of which he and I are members. He has not provided an impartial platform and instead used the network to flog and issue that is 110% bullshit.

Ethics, Chris. I thought they were important to Catholics. Maybe that's just lip service.

(Actually, as a Catholic, and knowing our history...yeah, it's lip service.)

Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog kick the #$@% out of Fox News (VIDEO)

Great catch by Think Progress:

Rachel Maddow explains to you why Politifact sucks at what it does... (VIDEO)

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I respect the heck out of @chucktodd, he needs to understand why we trust The Daily Show more than Cable News... (VIDEO)

Is it just possible that after the Bush years, after watching the media be willing accomplices in the march to war, after watching Editorial decisions being made with the stockholders more in mind than the audience, after watching how a Reporters access matters more to them than the story they're trying to tell me, is it any wonder why we trust the Daily Show more than we do most reporters?

I wish Chuck Todd got it, because this is some weak-ass sauce:



Chuck, it's simple. It's a matter of trust, and a lot of your colleagues (especially your colleagues at Fox News) have made it very hard to trust Journalism. We see too much manipulation of journalists, and journalist who are too-willing-to-be manipulated.

I am learning more from the Daily Show and the Colbert Report than I am from the Nightly News. I am getting more actual NEWS CONTENT from them. They're not wasting my time. They're not just giving me a giggle. They are educating me, and they're doing a better job than Free Broadcast TV News, and they're doing a HELL of a lot better than Cable News.

P.R. in Action! Jodi Kantor gives the exact same interview on two different shows! (VIDEO)

Watch, gentle reader, with amazement as Jodi Kantor goes onto two different shows, with two different tempraments, and two different hosts...only to give the exact same interview:

First Lawrence O'Donnell:

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And then Jon Stewart:

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Remember, in the end, both shows are right.  Ms. Kantor never called the First Lady and Angry Black woman in her book.  That is important to clear up.  Of course, that the first stories to leak out from the book were about arguments did not help.

But my main problem with the book, isn't the reporting, but the fact that Kantor in some parts of the book she used a third person, novelistic, inner monologue to have the First Lady describe her actions and thoughts, when she (ahem) hadn't interviewed the First Lady. That, in my book, is more than a little bullshitty.  If Kantor had stuck to straight reporting, and just told what she learn from Aides and people close to Michelle, I would have zero problems with this book.

Then again, there would be zero controversy for her P.R. people to market, and thus zero reason to go on with Lawrence and Stew-Beef!

Huffington Post. Still the scum of the Journalistic Earth...

Finally, since I figured out how to use screen capture, you get to see what I mean.

So I saw this this evening:

Don't worry, the actual story is just as bad.

Oddly enough, I was familiar with Biden story before seeing this headline. Familiar enough to know that Huffington Post's take (or at least the headline's take) was 100% bullshit.

If you wanna know what the Vice President actually said, you might have to go to an actual newspaper like the Washington Post:

“Even though 50-some percent of the American people think the economy tanked because of the last administration, that’s not relevant,” said the vice president. “What’s relevant is we’re in charge.”... 

Biden said it is “totally legitimate” for the 2012 presidential election to be “a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature and state of the economy.” He said Americans will need to make a choice between what the Obama administration is offering to address the problem and what is being offered by the eventual Republican nominee.

Greg Sargent put it like this:

You can see why conservatives would jump on this — it gives them something to undercut the idea that Bush continues to deserve more of the blame for our current mess than Obama does. What Biden’s quotes really reflect, I think, is the tricky political spot the White House is in when it comes to the former President. White House advisers are aware that the public does still blame Bush more than Obama for our current predicament — this is confirmed in poll after poll, though that may be changing — but they also think voters probably don’t want to hear Obama telling them they should continue to blame Bush more than himself.

Conservatives constantly claim that Obama does try to fob off blame for the economy on to Bush, in order to dodge blame himself. But by and large, the real political argument Obama is making when he invokes the problems he inherited is one about the scale of the challenges we face, and how long they were in the making. It’s not finger pointing. It’s a plea for patience.

By the way, conservatives are right: Obama probably does “own” the economy in political terms right now. Indeed, it’s possible for the two following things to be simultaneously true: First, the public continues to blame Bush for originally tanking the economy; and second, this may be mostly irrelevant in 2012. The American people know Bush made an absolutely hideous mess of things. They hired Obama to clean up that hideous mess. They will judge Obama in 2012 on his progress towards completing that chore — whether the public will factor in GOP efforts to block Obama’s solutions remains to be seen — and will decide whether they think his GOP opponent would manage it any better. Obama will argue that his GOP foe plans to revive the ideas that tanked the economy under Bush in the first place. But that will ultimately be an argument over how to proceed in the future, not a relitigation of the past.

Bush broke it. Obama now owns it. Americans will judge his efforts to fix it — and will pick whichever candidate and party they think would best complete that job. Okay?

So Greg's right about Conservatives spinning the story this way...

...so why is Huffington Post doing the same thing?

Yes, Fox News is racist...and Christianist. All Jon Stewart last night did was document it. (VIDEO)

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You want a definition of Christianist, and example can be found here, via Andrew Sullivan.

I'm still...mesmerized at the outrage over every single Terrorist incident where the perpetrator is Muslim, yet in instances of violence (Terrorist and non-Terrorist alike)...like for example: the Norway Shooter, Timothy McVeigh, the Atlanta Olympic Park Bomber, Jared Loughner, Tim Proffit, the guy who tried to ask Eric Cantor a question at a local event, the Tea Party's constant use of racial imagery and threats, the guy who posted former Rep. Perriello's address on the interwebs, all the HCR Town Hall nonsense (which Fox frequently justified), Pastor Steven Anderson...an actual Pastor!!, the Idaho GOP, Teabaggers showing up with Guns at Obama appearances, the guy who shot the head of the Local Democratic Party in Arkansas, the man who shot up a Unitarian Church in Tennessee, the who shot Dr. Tiller?

(Things ain't perfect on this side of the aisle.  I will point out that things like the Sparkman case turned out to be B.S. and the thing with Rep. Bobby Rush's niece which also turned out to be wrong.)

You see there's a healthy list of quote-unquote white-slash-supposedly-Christian Domestic Terrorists out there, that Fox does not make their audience hyperventilate over.

Stephen Colbert: When in doubt, go with Muslim (VIDEO)

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Lawrence O'Donnell spikes the football... (VIDEO)

Still think he should've named names...

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Rachel Maddow sez "People who take Paul Ryan seriously, shouldn't be taken seriously..." (VIDEO)

Seriously, stop with the Smoochy-Smoochy.

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Yeah, sure. She blew it on the GITMO story, but she's right here.