Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Tuesday, February 2, 2010

THE SCOTUS, FOX NEWS, AND SARAH PALIN

From E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, re President Obama's remarks in the SOTU address on conservative judicial activism and Judge Alito's reaction to it:

"There is ample precedent for Obama’s firm but respectful rebuke of the court. I know of no one on the right who protested when President Ronald Reagan, in a 1983 article in the Human Life Review, took on the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision of 10 years earlier.


“Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution,” Reagan wrote. “No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the court’s result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. ... Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a ‘right’ so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born.”


Reagan cited Justice Byron White’s description of Roe as an act of “raw judicial power,” which is actually an excellent description of the court’s ruling on corporate money in the Citizens United case.


Reagan had every right to say what he did. But why do conservatives deny the same right to Obama? Alternatively, why do they think it’s persuasive to argue, as Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett did in The Wall Street Journal, that it’s fine for a president to take issue with the court, except in a State of the Union speech? Isn’t it more honorable to criticize the justices to their faces? Are these jurists so sensitive that they can’t take it? Do they expect everyone to submit quietly to whatever they do? "



Paul Krugman calls out Roger Ailes for deliberately misinforming his millions of FOX viewers, exposing the cable news station as nothing more than the propaganda outlet that it most assuredly is:

"In an interview Sunday, New York Times economist Paul Krugman hammered conservative talk show host Glenn Beck for spreading blatantly false information about the Democrats' health care bill -- and put the blame squarely on Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.

"Glenn Beck doesn't, you know," Krugman began, "what bothers me is the fact that people are not getting informed, that we are going through major debates on crucial policy issues; the public is not learning about them. And you know, you can say, well, they can read the New York Times, which will tell them what they need to know, but you know, most people don't. They don't read it thoroughly.... People did not know what was in the plan, and some of that was just poor reporting, some of it was deliberate misinformation. I have here in front of me when President Obama said, you know, why -- he said rhetorically, why aren't we going to do a health care plan like the Europeans have, with a government-run program, and then proceeds to explain why he's different. On Fox News, what appeared was a clipped quote, "why don't we have a European-style health care plan?" Right, deliberate misinformation."


Fox News CEO Roger Ailes interjects: "Wait a minute, wait a minute..."


And Krugman replies, "I can show you the clip, and you can..."


"The American people are not stupid," Ailes says.

"No, they're not stupid," he said, delivering a tacit blow to the Fox News chief. "They are uninformed.


Later, Krugman adds, "People, again, this was a plan that is -- it's actually a Republican plan. It's Mitt Romney's health care plan. People were led to believe that it was socialism. That's -- and that was deliberate. That wasn't just poor reporting."



And finally, this coming weekend will feature the Tea Party Nation shindig, where conservative bigwigs will come together to bash President Obama and everthing he has done since his birth in Kenya, and where they'll pretend the gathering is a grassroots uprising.  Except maybe not:

— By Stephanie Mencimer, Mother Jones Magazine

Will Sarah Palin's Tea Party dinner be a bust?


Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips likely assumed that scoring a dinner speech by the former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate would guarantee a huge turnout for his National Tea Party Convention, scheduled to start Feb. 4 at Nashville's Gaylord Opryland Hotel. But according to Tea Party insiders, the tickets for the Palin banquet aren't selling—and some conservative activists who have already paid to attend are now demanding refunds. With the controversial event shaping up to be a potential flop, some Tea Partiers are urging Palin to cancel her speech to avoid a humiliating public relations disaster.


The problems began after news broke that Phillips intended to profit from the convention—which costs $549 a person for access to both the conference and Palin’s banquet, or $349 for a ticket to the dinner alone. With one prominent conservative blogger charging that the event seemed "scammy," several key sponsors yanked their support, including the National Precinct Alliance, the American Liberty Alliance, American Majority, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform. As the rash of bad press continued, this week Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), announced that she’s considering pulling out as a convention speaker. And some Tea Party activists think Palin should join her. According to internal convention planning documents obtained by Mother Jones, Palin will be paid $115,000 to address the attendees—as they dine on steak or lobster. To some Tea Partiers, this lavish affair sounds suspiciously like an exclusive GOP fundraiser and a betrayal of their grassroots movement. (In mid-January, Palin told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that she will not profit from her appearance at the convention, suggesting she would donate her speaking fee to Republican candidates. But she has not provided any details on that, and a Palin spokesperson did not respond to requests for clarification.)


Phillips has bragged publicly that the tickets covering both the convention and the speech have sold out. Yet Tea Party insiders say that's not the whole story. Anthony Shreeve is an activist in Dandridge, Tenn. who quit the convention organizing committee over the expensive ticket prices. He says he has it on good authority that most of the approximately 500 speech-only tickets have not been sold. Shreeve adds that Phillips "isn't going to sell any more," and says other would-be attendees have been demanding—and receiving—refunds. Late on Tuesday afternoon, I tested his claim by attempting to buy 10 tickets to the dinner. If I’d been prepared to shell out $3,587.10, that would apparently have been no problem. "I really hope that Sarah Palin doesn’t come to this event because it's going to be really embarrassing for her to walk into a half-empty room," says Shreeve.

21 comments:

BB-Idaho said...

Walk into a half empty room? The lady is lucky (oh, the irony) that she doesn't enter a room full of
vitriolic signs and be rudely shouted down before she can even open her mouth!

The Chronicles of a Conservative said...

Here we go again, the old song about Sarah Palin. are we going to hear this old crap over and over every time the dems get their ass's beat? Brown won MA because he had the right message and the democratic candidate’s campaign was completely inept. I hope your side continues to misread public opinion.

Did the people of MA vote for Brown because he promised to get rid of government-mandated universal health care in their state? I don’t think so. Whatever the people of MA voted for, they did not vote on health care, the issue having been resolved in their state, in favor of government-mandated universal health care. OK, So He looks hot naked. Was that all you saw? Was that all that you could have blogged about when he kicked the living crap out of Martha Coakle the democratic candidate?
The midterms will be decided by the economic factors over the next eight or nine months. If economic markers dive over the next few months, the GOP will win seats, but won’t win control of either chamber.
And Bela Pelosi is not any help to Obama these days is she!
Your side is bad news.

Anonymous said...
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Shaw Kenawe said...

To The Chronicles...

You are hilariously hypocritical. You come here and scold me for blogging about Palin (1/3 of my subject post, BTW)? Really.

A quick look at your blog shows that SEVEN out of your recent EIGHT posts bash President Obama!

You people are crazy, you know that.


I live in Massachusetts and know that Scott Brown SUPPORTED UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE in this state. He voted for it.

As for public opinion, here's what the lastest public opinion polls have to say:

President Barack Obama’s job approval rating is 50% in Gallup Daily tracking from Jan. 29-31. This follows 11 straight days of Gallup reporting in which Obama’s approval rating was below the 50% mark.

Party ID: Despite GOP Gains, Most States Remain Blue



If Scott Brown wants to keep his job, he'll have to be a more liberal kind of Republican--y'know like continue to support a woman's right to abortion and vote, as he did in the Mass. Legislature, for universal health care. The people of Mass. will be watching his voting record very closely. He won the election with a lot of Democrats' votes. Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters 3 to 1 in this state. He won't get re-elected if he votes like a Palinist.

Source

As for your ridiculous complaints about what I blog on, you need to examine your own blog, which is devoted to publishing "old crap" on President Obama.

Question: Are there ANY non-hypocrital conservatives out there? Any??????

A Friend from SoCal said...

shaw,

your visiting scold, The Chronicles of Conservative has this posted on his blog:

"Travel by an American first lady typically includes the military passenger jet that carries her and the children, Secret Service personnel to provide security, and a separate And I wonder if when he takes Michelle on vacation with him, does she need 2 seats. I'm sure she couldn't get her fat Butt into one seat!"

he's a racist pos. jst read his blog. your post reports and links a news sstories, his blog is full of whining from an insecure out of power conseervative hypocrite.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker wrote this, re: Scott Brown and health care reform in the Atlantic Journal-Constitution:

"Scott Brown voted for universal health care
11:23 am January 20, 2010, by ctucker

Republicans are awfully good at telling a story to voters, even if it has nothing to do with reality. Brown’s campaign against Obama’s planned health care reform plan helped him win a Massachusets Senate seat that had been held by a Democrat for decades.

But a GOP governor, Mitt Romney, pushed through a universal health care bill in Massachusetts, and Brown voted for it. Now, both men are vehemently opposed to the universal health care plan Democrats are trying to pass through Congress, even though the Senate bill is very similar to the Massachusetts plan.

Mr. Brown, as a state senator, voted in favor of the Massachusetts universal health care law in 2006, when the state became the first in the nation to pass a far-reaching overhaul guaranteeing coverage for nearly every state resident and requiring everyone in Massachusetts to obtain insurance.

Mr. Brown, in campaigning against the health care legislation emerging in Washington, has sought to portray it as fundamentally different from the Massachusetts plan. But Massachusetts was actually an important model for what Congress has developed, arguably the model for what Congress envisions.

The federal law, like the one in Massachusetts, is built around a system of government-subsidized, private insurance coverage with subsidies on a sliding-scale based on income. The federal law, however, also includes a number national steps aimed at controlling health care costs, and new taxes and fees aimed at paying for the legislation. Massachusetts has continued to struggle with its costs.

The health care program in Massachusetts is quite popular among its voters, by the way. According to a September poll, 59 percent of Mass. voters are satisfied with their universal health care program."

The Griper said...

Shaw,
there are a couple of very big and significant differences in what Reagan did and what Obama did in regards to their remarks about the SCotUS.

Shaw Kenawe said...

In your opinion, what are the differences?

Shaw Kenawe said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Shaw Kenawe said...

here are a couple other examples of Republican presidents publicly disagreeing with SCOTUS rulings:

"President George W. Bush, for instance, did not hesitate to criticize a 2008 ruling recognizing the rights of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — but he did it at a news conference in Rome. President Richard M. Nixon said he was disappointed with a 1974 decision ordering him to turn over the tapes that would help end his presidency — in a statement read by his lawyer."

Source

Imagine the outcry and the calling for Mr. Obama's head on a pike and impeachment if he had dared to criticize a Supreme Court decision while in a foreign country!

I wonder why there was so much tolerance for these sorts of things with our previous presidents but when Mr. Obama does the same sort of things the Right loses its mind. Whether it's talking to children and telling them to do well in school, or publicly disagreeing with a SCOTUS decision, the Right seems to be in the throes of a syndrome that compels them to be in a continual state of outrage even when Mr. Obama proposes policies, like tax cuts, that are fiscally conservative.

I suspect there is more going on here than mere disagreement.

dmarks said...

Sorry, I shrug at it. President Obama did not toss away his First Amendment rights when he was elected, and he has every right to scold the Supreme Court. Doing so is not the end of the world, and is not a crisis in the separation of powers.

I'm much less interested in words than I am about actions that are being suggested in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling. David Broder has a good column on it. I really don't mind the suggestions listed, as they add information to campaign adds, and don't censor. And I don't have any problem with the government adding no-lobby no-campaign strings to government contracts.

Arthurstone said...

Shaw wondered:

"In your opinion, what are the differences?"

I can't help myself.

I have to answer that.

The difference was Ronald Wilson Reagan was a 'real American' fighting to defend our beliefs, ideals and core values against the insidious rulings of a
leftist, activist judiciary.

President Obama on the other hand is a socialist pal of terrorists who is doing everything he can to grease the slide of this once great nation into collectivization.

Got it?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Arthurstone said...

A Guy typed:

'How come you never blogged about your president's right hand man
Rahm Emanuelsaying Fu*king retarded when he was talking about republicans!. '


Ouch.

It had to hurt giving birth to that 'thought'.

Bye the bye "Guy From..."

Rahm was talking about Democrats.

You're welcome.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Arthurstone,

You can't talk sense to these people.

Here's what Guy from Brooklyn has posted on his blog:

A Guy From Brooklyn
Gender: Male
Location: Deer Park, Long Island : New York : United States
About Me

I have NO tolerance for crime, pedophiles, pimps, hustlers, stupidity, ignorance, thieves, swaggers, braggers, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, pick pockets, bounty hunters, desperados, dumb mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, bushwhackers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and especially ..... LIBERALS.

And then he comes here--to a Liberal's blog--to complain about Rahm Emmanuel's potty mouth?

I deleted his comment because it had nothing to do with my post.

Maybe he reposted his rant over at his own blog where he has no tolerance for Liberals.

Anonymous said...
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The Griper said...

thyere is a saying that there is a time and place for everything, Shaw.

the differences be that Reagan made his remarks 10 years after the decision made by the Supreme Court, time enough to see the effects that resulted from that decision. Obama criticized the decision made by the Supreme Court of today and they were sitting there in front of them.

Obama criticized the decision made in a SOU address. Reasgan's criticism was made in answer to an interview by a magazine.

the issue Obama addressed (free speech)is clearly in the Constitution therefore clearly a issue for the Supreme Court to make a decision on.

the issue Reagan addressed (abortion) is not clearly an issue and debate still goes today on whether or not it should have been an issue for the Supreme Court to decide on. a issue that has divided this nation into two groups and an issue that is always brought up in the Senate in regards to a new Justice.

So, to me, it is not an issue of whether or not Obama has the right to criticize decisions of the Supreme Court but an issue of whether or not it was the right time and place for it.

Arthurstone said...

Personally I can't think of a better place for the President to comment on a wretched Supreme Court decision then when he has our attention. For me reminding the great American people of unpleasant truths is a necessary job for the President.

The Griper said...

Arthurstone,
Shaw's post was about comparisons of the criticisms not about whether or not his criticism was justified.

i just addressed what the post was doing, nothing else.

so if you or anyone else considers his criticisms justified that is fine with me but it says nothing in regards to what Shaw was writing about nor does it rebut anything i said.

Arthurstone said...

Sorry griper. I know how important it is to provide instruction for us mis-guided liberals but you should read your own posts.

You wrote about ' a time and a place for everything' then went on to explain how RR got it right a & Obama got it wrong.

I wrote that the State of the Union address was the perfect opportunity for criticism of a ruling the President profoundly disagreed with. He had the attention of the entire nation and, in my view, his view and the view of a great many Americans an obligation to speak out. It was definitely the right place for his remarks on the court's ruling.

Eileen for Freedom/Liberty said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.