Right-Wing Media’s Human Capital Problem
I was observing the other day that the big problem conservatives are facing in the new media climate is that despite a plethora of outlets they don’t have the skills to generate original information and research products in nearly the same volume that generally progressive outlets manage. And to clarify, the issue here is a human capital deficit rather than a financial one. There are a great many people employed in conservative media, and thus conservative media could easily support the salaries of a number of crackerjack reporters. But the reporters just don’t seem to be out there.
Michelle Malkin thinks she’s refuting my point but this example actually illustrates it:
Internet journalist/blogger and Little Green Footballs regular Zombie (not “conservative” per se, but rather anti-sharia/anti-jihad/anti-anti-American/anti-extremist Left) did extraordinary work digging up documents related to Barack Obama and left-wing terrorist Bill Ayer’s relationship — most notably, unearthing the Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire and Obama’s review of Ayer’s book on the juvenile court system.
As I said in my original post on this issue what you have on the right is “a lot of wild conspiracy theories and a lot of commentary.” This fits into the former category.
As Dave Weigel observes at his new home at The Washington Independent “I don’t know many conservatives who’d argue, in hindsight, that more citizen journalism about Bill Ayers (whose Weather Underground days were so mysterious that you can Netflix an Oscar-nominated documentary about them) was what the Right needed in 2008.” Right. Also Dave Weigel’s new home is at The Washington Independent. His previous job was at Reason magazine, part of the broad family of the right. And he’s one of the very best young political reporters in the business. But now he’s working for the Windy, part of the broad family of the left. In part that’s for reasons that have to do with his own proclivities and inclinations, but in part it’s because of a different mentality among editors of progressive new media outlets and of conservative media outlets in terms of which skills you’re looking for in your employees.
75 Responses to “Right-Wing Media’s Human Capital Problem”
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January 5th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Three cheers for Dave Weigel.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:00 am
That is a really gross picture. I don’t like having to look at it.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Also, the right wing in general opposes the principles behind journalism itself. They’re simply not interested in the ideal, honored tho’ it may be more in the breach, the right wing in this country is simply not in favor of discovering the truth, about anything, and letting the consequences fall where they may. To them, journalism is simply another avenue of propaganda, and when stories come out against their interests, that in itself is evidence of liberal bias.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:11 am
According to Malkin’s link, they also exposed some “unhinged rants” by somebody named Randi Rhodes and Roseanne Barr.
Why hasn’t Matthew Yglesias reported on and exposed the unhinged rants of Roseanne Barr?
January 5th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Seriously, that picture is troubling. Please no more.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Wow. Talk about adding insult to injury. This is a devastating post.
I put it in the same category with Krugman’s “Bigger than Bush” column the other day. The meta-message in both cases is, “Yeah, we won. But that’s not the point. You know why we won? Because you guys really, really, really, really suck.”
January 5th, 2009 at 11:26 am
“not “conservative” per se, but rather anti-sharia/anti-jihad/anti-anti-American/anti-extremist Left”
This should get a nod about a year from now when the 2009 nominees for Unintentional Comedy are announced.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:35 am
There are plenty of hard bitting conservative journalists out there, Mr. Yglesias. The problem is the far left media won’t hire them. Thank God for talk radio, Michelle Malkin, Townhall.com, and other right thinking media outlets, otherwise Barack Hussein Obama would have made himself POTUS for life and unleashed jihad against America, and probably with Iranian aid. Since that did not happpen, we can watch his administration bungle everything (Blago, Richardson), but that’s hardly a blessing.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:40 am
That’s President Barack Magic Negro Hussein Muhammad Ali John Henry Badasssss Obama X to you, Lord Basil.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Part of why conservative media is so shitty is because Lord Basil is perfectly representative of CM’s audience…I don’t really think Lord Basil is concerned a corrupted justice department, sketchy legal opinions that resulted in a torture regime, etc…he’s concerned most with the leebral media…whatever that is…
January 5th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Gaaaahhhh… WTF is up with that picture?
January 5th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Hi – I am an acquaintance of the artist who created the zombie tutorial image which is featured on the top of this entry. Are you going to credit my friend, or remove the picture?
Many thanks.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
No Al, the Ayers stuff is conspiracy theorist crap because it posited that Obama was linked with a terrorist which simply wasn’t true. Hell, it was premised on the notion that Ayers is a terrorist (was is not the same as is – Ayers is now a guy who wins awards for citizenship). You may not like it, but them’s the facts. The nitwit right, as exemplified by this clown, were once again trafficking in conspiracy theories.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Why don’t you address the rest of her detailed post? You’re ignoring 99% of it.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Al: Depends what you mean about “the stuff about Ayers.” That he existed, that he and Obama were in the same room once or twice—true, but uninteresting. To right-wing bloggers, and Fox News, and even the McCain campaign, “the stuff about Ayers” was that he and Obama had deep, vital links. That turned out to be obviously false, and every attempt to deepen the connection just looked more and more silly, but right-wing “journalists” kept trying anyway, in defiance of the facts. That’s the human capital problem Matt’s talking about.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Part of the problem is that conservatism is inherently less interesting as a motivating factor for political journalism than liberalism, precisely because it believes in a limited public sphere vs. an expansive private sphere, and political journalism covers the public sphere pretty much by definition. So the dynamic in conservative political journalism is necessarily tedious, except when it comes to foreign/military policy–the only area, not coincidentally, where modern American conservatism broadly favors a big role for government.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I am with El Cid on this one Conservatives can not handle the truth. It interferes with their world view. This is the reason that Colbert’s truthyness is so funny. Because its true.
There is no conservative media outlet that is going to do the environmental reporting that Think Progress(maybe you heard of them) or Gristmill is doing. Conservatives want to hide that information.Which conservative media outlet is interested in getting the truth out there? Especially if it embarrassed the movement. There is a market for the truth and that market is only online. The mainstream media is not interested.
As El Cid said to conservatives journalism is a form of propaganda.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
scott, Lord Basil was joking.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Wait, I thought Weigel was at the Economist now?
And people said software engineers were job-jumping sluts. I can’t keep track of you kids
January 5th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Jon H – I’m still there, too. Multitasking!
January 5th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Fox News is the perfect example of this problem. If they were what they claimed to be, a news organization with a conservative viewpoint, they would actually contribute something useful. But instead they are an arm of the conservative movement. Why aren’t conservatives up in arms about how Fox was constantly intervening in the Republican primary race? Not just against Paul, but against anyone not named Giuliani and Thompson. It was a disgrace.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Matthew, dear,
I read the Malkin post to which you link (and even spent a half hour reading the articles at HER links until I had to take a break). She linked to dozens upon dozens of examples of investigative reporting by right-wing bloggers, and you’re patting yourself on the back for pointing out the ONE that is conspiratorial? In legal circles, we refer to this as “the exception that proves the rule.” Please, quit while you’re ahead. There’s nothing more depressing than to see you (unwittingly) proving Michelle Malkin’s point.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I read the Malkin post to which you link (and even spent a half hour reading the articles at HER links until I had to take a break). She linked to dozens upon dozens of examples of investigative reporting by right-wing bloggers, and you’re patting yourself on the back for pointing out the ONE that is conspiratorial?
Maybe so, but Zombie’s infamous poll conspiracy post had enough concentrated stupid to outweigh the reporting of dozens of other right-wing bloggers. It really was a masterpiece of crazy.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
“Jon H – I’m still there, too. Multitasking!”
Yay! Someday the American innovation called the ‘by-line’ will make its way across the pond, and we’ll all be better off.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
“I am with El Cid on this one Conservatives can not handle the truth…”
“There is no conservative media outlet that is going to do the environmental reporting that Think Progress(maybe you heard of them) or Gristmill is doing.”
Hmmm, speaking of the truth, I admit don’t read Think Progress all that often, but does their truthy environmental reporting openly question the bogus science and claims supporting on global warming?
Even the Huffington Post is finally posting articles calling Gore, among others, on their scam. How has ThinkProgress, and the left as a whole, dealt with that “truthiness”? Seems like they have their sacred cows they don’t wish slaughtered, and plenty of them.
BTW, I echo a previous poster. Malkin supplied you with a dizzying list of example that directly refutes your claim, and you nit pick one example and claim vindication. How about doing some of that nifty reporting and debunk 10 of them and establish some sort of real point?
January 5th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
a lot truth in comedy
January 5th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Lame. Fitting for propagandists that are neither progressive nor liberal in spite of their repeated tantrums.
el dummy, Your messiah has not taken the oath of office and therefore is not President. That you are incapable of making that distinction is indicative of your inability to deal with reality.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
KellyJ,
It’s worse than that. Yglesias quotes Malkin saying that the stuff about Ayres is the Prairie Fire manifesto and Obamas review of Ayres book. Yglesias doesn’t allege that either of those is a conspiracy theory, because both are factual. So what is Matt’s claim? Apparently, that Malkin wrote something about Ayres, and that there are some other unspecified conspiracy theories out there somewhere. He doesn’t even allege that Malkin or her quoted investigator said anything innaccurate.
Evil Twin says it is false that Ayres is a terrorist. Huh? He admits he WAS a terrorist. When exactly do you claim that being a terrorist runs out? Ayres has refused to say he won’t do it again. You are being ridiculously semantic. I guess you think Osama isn’t a terrorist because it has been YEARS since 9/11.
Tomemos says it is false because conservatives claim that Ayres and Obama had “deep vital links.” Well, what do you call it when someone has a party for you in their living room? When someone recruits you to be in charge of an organization and gets you, what, 50 million to handle for him? You think those links aren’t deep and vital? What links would you count as deep and vital? Sheesh.
Moreover, anyone who read Dreams from My Father knows it is no accident that Obama was friends with Ayres. He wasn’t drawn to Ayres despite his terrorist past, but precisely because of it. in Dreams, Obama talks about carefully choosing his friends in college to get the most radical ones with the msot extreme ideologies, to try to prove what a wild guy he was. Wright and Ayres show that he didn’t stop after college.
January 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
This is awesome. I think these comments show why conservative media should immediately hire some of these bright minds here to lecture the public on how Al Gore is a big fat liar and Barack Obama ain’t really Preznit yet nyah nyah nyah. Yeah, I can smell a new Woodward and Bernstein here.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
So, I think it’s safe to say many of the responses on this thread illustrate Matt’s point far better than he did. Particularly #29. You get deducted points for not working in a Vince Foster reference though.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
The phrase “the exception that proves the rule” does not mean “the counterexample to my hypothesis which proves that my hypothesis is correct,” which is self-evidently ridiculous.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
@Adam – 31
You snark but make no actual points.
John – 29 at least attempted to make an argument and deserves a valid rebuttal. If you think his points were wrong, then help him and the rest of us understand why.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I would disagree that reason magazine is part of the broad family of the right. Liberals need to embrace some libertarian ideas (but not it’s orthodoxies). Authoritarian conservatives are a bigger danger to freedom than Communitarian liberals. I think libertarians understand this, although they might be loath to admit it because I think they find liberals more personally annoying.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Let’s cut the fucking crap — the right wing blogosphere has been a pack of whores supporting George W Bush’s lies for the the past 8 years — and the American electorate knows it.
Bin Laden gave several interviews to US TV networks in 1997-1998 in which he stated 3 reasons why Al Qaeda was declaring war on the US Government: the death of 600,000 children in Iraq due to sanctions, the decades long protection of the Saudi dictatorship by the US government in order to loot the Saudi peoples’ oil reservoir, and the support by the US government of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians.
Those interviews were widely available in the news archives and on the Internet. The right wing blogosphere never mentioned them — instead, they overwhelming supported Bush’s Big Lie –”they hate us for our freedom”. Plus a bunch of racist bullshit re the nature of Arabs, the “Caliphate” etc cooked up by David Horowitz and his crew.
In my opinion, the right wing blogosphere has spent most of the last 8 years lying to America for the sake of special interests and part of the lying has been about how much damage right wing propagandists brought down on America while they waved the flag. 3000 dead on Sept 11. 4000 more in Iraq. $6.2 Trillion in additional federal debt in just 8 years and an economy collapsing into another Great Depression.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Michelle Malkin can tell us which of the right wing’s “journalists” have discovered where Saddam Hussein’s nukes are hidden.
Also, fiscal conservative George Bush told us in his Feb 2001 Budget that the federal debt in 2009 would only be around $6 Trillion. Any right wing “journalists” covering whether George W Bush’s accounting is on track?
January 5th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
“John – 29 at least attempted to make an argument and deserves a valid rebuttal. If you think his points were wrong, then help him and the rest of us understand why.”
No, he doesn’t deserve a valid rebuttal. For a good nine months now those arguments have been debunked with numerous valid rebuttals and everyone who doesn’t watch Fox realized a long time ago there was nothing but smoke. If you don’t understand why those arguments are laughable by now, I’m going to conclude that you are either incapable or unwilling to undergo rational, logical thought. Which I suppose would explain why Republicans think this approach could possibly have any chance of working again in the future.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Maybe so, but Zombie’s infamous poll conspiracy post had enough concentrated stupid to outweigh the reporting of dozens of other right-wing bloggers, but my home is http://www.makkale.blogcu.com It really was a masterpiece of crazy.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Wear-g says
Now w-g does not read Think Progress so he does not know what he talks about. But I was referring more to things like the recent coal ash spill, oil spills, fractured gas polluting ground water and things of that nature. As for global warming any scientist that says it is not happening is not to be taken seriously. They(deniers) are no different than the tobacco scientists and doctors from the past. Bought and sold by their corporate masters.
BTW who let the malkinites out?
January 5th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
The sturm und drang among progressives about the “Right Wing” media and its pundits has always amused me, not because I am particularly amused by a good debate, but because, as a product of an era when there was absolutely no concern with the right, much less with the oxymoronic “rightwing” intellectuals, I have never quite bought into the idea that there is anything intellectually to worry about. The exponents of most of the “thought” wafting from their fetid publications and broadcasts bring little weight to bear on the true questions at hand, and it is now surprise that there is a lack of “Human capital”. I figured that out early on, as a 16 year old Young Republican for Goldwater. The right is the beneficiary of a world view that is the first conclusion reached by a reasonably intelligent human being. Then real thought shuts down. That’s really not a problem for us in the long run, so why are we so concerned with “right wing” media? Does anyone really think the likes of Ann Coulter will ever carry the day? And, except for a multi-syllabic faux-eloquence, the same went for Bill Buckley.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
One will note that MattY is raising a supposed issue with one of several dozen links. That’s what we call a LogicalFallacy, something MattY specializes in. For instance, Malkin also links to this from me; perhaps MattY would care to entertain us with a discussion.
If MattY would really like to fail – and I know he does – he could discuss this other example of my reporting. If he responds, and if we filter out intellectual dishonesty and LogicalFallacies from MattY’s response, there wouldn’t be anything left.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
1) For example, here is the work product of the right wing’s top journalist, Bill O’Reilly. Issued just before the invasion of Iraq:
“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it’s clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?”
Ref: http://www.oreilly-sucks.com/clock.htm
2) The right wing’s REAL complaint against liberals is that we’re not as fucking stupid as they are.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I wouldn’t go lumping Reason magazine and its blog in with the wingnutosphere. Yeah, they run Ron Bailey’s “science” pieces, but look at Radley Balko or Matt Welsh. Those are real journalists, and nobody’s hack.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
@24AheadDotCom
The bogus donations “investigations” were stupider than the birth certificate ones.
1. Regarding “donations possibly from foreign currency” – a huge number of donors, for various reasons, tack on varying amounts of change onto their donations. Anyone could find this out after a minute Googling before writing an article for Newsmax.
2. Political donations require a level of scrutiny well beyond the security checks in place to detect credit card fraud. It simply doesn’t make economic sense to pay for a credit card verification system and then do the rigorous accounting necessary to follow elections law after the fact.
3. The sheer number of conservative investigators (Mark Steyn, etc) who committed demonstrable election fraud and could have their case referred to the FEC by the Obama campaign for donating as Hitler or Mickey Mouse or Tom Brady or whatever is mind-boggling. Was there really any need to keep doing this after the point was made?
January 5th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Malkin also links to this from me; perhaps MattY would care to entertain us with a discussion.
Perhaps KellyHo would care to get a fucking life.
January 5th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
You’ll notice that most conservative pundits didn’t even read Obama’s 1995 autobiography, or weren’t smart enough to understand it. Matt finally did, realized that it was political dynamite, didn’t say anything about it for months, then finally posted a bland little item saying it was “well-written.”
January 5th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Beyond the conspiracy-theory nature of the accusations, it’s laughable to pretend that the unearthing the Prairie Fire manifesto required some kind of investigative reporting. It’s well-known, and has been for years; IIRC there’s a lengthy discussion as far back as Kirkpatrick Sale’s SDS, a good history which was written in the early ’70s.
January 5th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Hey John, when did an American city give any award to Osama bin Laden for his civic work? What? No awards? Ever? Really?
Your argument is, like that of all conservatives, just too fucking stupid for words. Once we get beyond the first layer of stupid there is a crunchy candy center of really fucking stupid. Were I to spend time refuting the stupid it would merely be confronted with more stupid. So I will leave you to stew in your heaping helping of…well the best word I guess is Stupid (I have others, but why waste vocabulary on idiots who still can’t get past the fact that America voted for a moderate).
January 5th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Some decades ago, when the current crop of senior conservative journa-pundits was cutting its teeth, I noticed that damn few of them came up from the ranks of actual reporters, who got out of their offices, or worked the phones, and, you know, found out about stuff, especially when compared to their liberal colleagues. They were always opinion-mongers, and came up either through the ditorial page or through political work. I haven’t bothered to look systematically since, but my vague impression is that this is still true.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Weigel is awesome. I’m glad to see him at a place that’s letting him do the kind of journalism he wants to do.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Evil Twin,
Chicago did indeed give Ayres an award. I’m not sure why you think that means Ayres is not a terrorist. He planted bombs, designed to kill civilians. If that is cool with the politicians in Chicago, then that doesn’t say something about Ayres, it says something about politicians in Chicago.
As to your second paragraph…whatever, dude. Hope it made you feel better.
Don Williams has noticed that sometimes Bush says things that don’t turn out to be true. Congrats. Perhaps he should also ask himself whether this could be true of Osama as well. Maybe when Osama says “my motivation is X” he has political reasons for misrepresenting. I’m just saying that maybe it is possible.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I accidentally “unearth the Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire” by purchasing a book at my local idependent book store. Where do I pick up my prize?
January 5th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
John, actually, the Weather Underground’s bombs, as well as most of the rest of the radical left through the 80’s, were never meant to harm civilians or any other person. They intended property damage, no more.
Not saying it is a good idea, and you play with explosives, eventually people will die, as most of the Weather Underground discovered for themselves.
But the intention was always just property damage. these debates started to really gain steam in 1968. Especially after Chicago. Read Sale’s SDS to at least get an understanding of where the Weather Underground came from.
January 5th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Re John’s comment “Don Williams has noticed that sometimes Bush says things that don’t turn out to be true. Congrats”
—————–
No — what I said was that George W Bush lied to this country on the most major issues to face this country in the past 8 years. He did that because he is a whore for wealthy men and he exploited Sept 11 to promote the interests of those wealthy men.
Only fucking morons –incapable to applying reason to obvious evidence — would have failed to realize that. That — and those people whose intellectual inquiries have been limited to figuring out which rich man’s dick they should suck.
The right wing blogosphere is damm lucky it isn’t being hung from the damm lampposts by the parents of 4000 dead soldiers. The idea that we should pretend to respect what I consider some of the most dishonest whores on the planet is hilarious.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Some of the commenters have touched on this, but not hit it head on. The real problem with the right is that they love trivial issues. (Some on the left do too, but not nearly as many as who love them on the right.)
Think about the 1988 campaign. What did they attack Dukakis on? Sure, they said a bit about taxes, and how the “Massachusetts Miracle” wasn’t all that it cracked up to be.
But most of the campaign was spent on three issues: (1) Dukakis’ veto of a mandatory flag salute law; (2) a prison furlough program; and (3) Dukakis’ unwillingness to describe himself as a “liberal”.
This is the perfect paradigm of a conservative campaign. Few ideas. Few issues. Just a lot of trivia and alleged symbolism.
And that’s why they aren’t into investigative reporting. I can think of lots of valid substantive arguments right-wingers might make about an Obama presidency. But they don’t have to do with Rezko, Wright, or Ayers, they aren’t based on his birth nationality, and they aren’t based on his middle name or whether he’s a Muslim.
The American Right, for the most part, is looking for some magic bullet symbolic issue to win the election. They are looking for the Swift Boat every time. They don’t like to argue on substance, they aren’t comfortable making substantive arguments, and it isn’t what interests them. And that’s why investigative reporting isn’t something that carries a lot of interest on the right.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Joshua Gold Says: the Weather Underground’s bombs, as well as most of the rest of the radical left through the 80’s, were never meant to harm civilians or any other person. They intended property damage, no more.
Oops, looks like Joshua Gold is wrong.
See also the bit about acid-throwing here; you might have heard of the source.
Also, make sure to click the Weigel link in the post for the comment at the link where I point out how much of a “reporter” he is. He can’t even make a simple phone call, he’s that much of a “reporter”.
January 5th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Josh G,
I know Ayres said that in his piece. Good for him that now he knows killing people is wrong. But he did design the bomb that killed his buddies, and it was an anti-personnel bomb meant for killing soldiers and their dates at a dance.
And, the Weather Underground did some bank robberies, and people got killed at those.
And charmingly, Ayres current wife said at a rally that the Manson family’s killing of pregnant Sharon Tate and mutilating her body was “groovy.”
And Ayres was asked if he regretted those things, he said “no.” Asked if he would be a terrorist again, and he said something like “you never know.”
Dilan Esper has a reasonable point: why even talk about all this? The conversation started with Yglesias’ poorly supported claim that conservatives don’t do facts. Which he supported by closing his eyes to a lot of inconvenient facts about Ayres.
I do think Ayres is worth talking about though, and not to defeat Obama, that ship has sailed. And anyway, Obama is turning out much better than I expected.
I would like to increase the social pressure against Ayres to establish the norm that using violence against fellow citizens is unacceptable. Ayres’ acceptance into Chicago’s corrupt and venal political world because of his fathers’ wealth and connections damages that norm. I think he should be shunned for the traitorous terrorist he is, and people who associate with him should pay a price.
Obama doesn’t seem to be associating with him or Wright any more. Good for him. Keep it up.
Don Williams has this sort of Turner Diary fantasy about lynching the people with different foreign policy ideas than him. Just like Ayres wanted to murder those who disagreed with him. Lots of people have bloody fantasies like that. Don thinks his bloodlust is really impressive. Yawn. What’s really crazy, Don, is that you imagine that military families are going to be on your side if that ever happened. Go ahead and ask some. My brother is in Qatar now, and he and his buddies won’t be lining up with you, idiot.
January 6th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Not to mention the paucity of fresh ideas from the right… and to think that wingnuts actually believed we were entering a golden age of conservatism.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:00 am
Ha ha ha. Malkin approvingly cites Ed Morrisey’s work as bringing down the Martin government in Canada. Riiight. That alone shows she has no idea.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Re John’s comment “Don Williams has this sort of Turner Diary fantasy about lynching the people with different foreign policy ideas than him. ”
—————
I hardly think that killing 4000 US soldiers — and crippling thousands more for life with terrible wounds and burns — in an unnecessary war to seize Iraq’s oil for Houston qualifies as a minor foreign policy dispute. Which illustrates another problem the right wing has in journalism and substantive debate: it penchant, in my opinion, for two faced deceit.
I never said I wanted to lynch those who have lied to us for the past 8 years. I said that I would not , if serving on a jury, convict an parent who sought justice for the loss of their sons in Iraq. My son has had to register for the draft but he has not yet been sent off to die for a lie.
Under a policy of deceit — a bogus argument of protecting privacy — the Bush administration did all it could to cover up the death toll of Iraq. Now he and Cheney will go off to a lavish retirement paid for by the taxpayers. Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are millions richer from their propaganda. But the military families are still left with their loss. As they discover how Bush lied to them –as the facts come out — I suspect their “support” will be a lot less than you think.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Or, as Stephen Colbert puts it so succinctly “facts have a well-known liberal bias”.
February 27th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Dammit Matt, STOP GIVING THEM HELPFUL ADVICE!!!
Although slight, there’s a chance they might actually listen – and an even slighter chance that they’ll understand and adjust.
THIS IS A CHANCE WE CANNOT AFFORD TO TAKE!
February 27th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Everybody ready for the Malkin biopic?
February 27th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
An entire post and thread on the right wing junior detectives, and nobody’s brought this little debacle up yet?
Countertops, bitches!
February 27th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Pfffffhhahahahah…
Ayers…
Hussein…
Birth certificates…
I just love how in response to a post about the lameness of the wingnuts conspiracies theories, they response with…
Oh jeez, it’s just gotten so freaking predictable now, hasn’t it?
Can at least one of the wingnuts out there reading this thread post something coherent and, dare I say, original?
It’ll at least give us libruls something clever to respond to.
Making fun of you guys isn’t nearly as much fun as it used to be. More and more it’s starting to feel like we’re just beating up the retarded kid. It’s getting depressing, even for us…
February 28th, 2009 at 2:49 am
That reminds me, where is Osama bin Laden, anyway? If something blows up in Bill Ayers’ neighborhood, we know where to find him, but your boy Bush not only let Osama get away, he didn’t really care where he was.
And now we have major trouble on the Pakistan border in the area where bin Laden was thought to be hiding. Giving up on trying to find him sure worked out well for everyone, didn’t it?
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