By Sahil Kapur
Monday, February 14th, 2011 -- 11:15 am
WASHINGTON – Two out of three Pakistani journalists view United States drone strikes in the region as acts of terrorism, according to a new study conducted by Washington State University and Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Sciences.
Only 27 percent of Pakistani journalists said the US drone attacks did not constitute acts of terrorism. Six percent did not know. The study surveyed 395 Pakistani journalists and was supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
That said, about one in five also didn't view the Mumbai attacks of 2008, or the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl, as acts of terrorism.
The figures still underscore the public relations debacle facing President Barack Obama as his administration oversees a continuing drone program in western Pakistan, in an effort to wipe out Islamic extremists spilling over to the eastern side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The unmanned drone strikes in the region began under the Bush administration and have continued unabated under the Obama administration. The volume and frequency of the attacks has intensified in recent years, according to collected reports.
Northwestern Pakistan is believed to be a hotbed for activity among Islamic extremist groups.
Although US officials say the drone attacks have killed high-ranking members of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, Pakistani and international media have reported that innocent civilians are also dying in the process.
Three-quarters of the Pakistani journalists viewed the American people are favorably, but a whopping 77 of them had a negative view of US foreign policy.
"Indeed, as the United States broadens its effort to win the hearts and minds of Muslims, it would do well to look into the heads of the journalists who shape opinions in those societies," wrote Lawrence Pintak of Washington State University and Syed Javed Nazir of Lahore University in the New York Times.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/14/67-of-pakistani-journalists-say-us-drones-attacks-are-acts-of-terrorism-survey/
Monday, February 14, 2011
Shirley Sherrod Sues Andrew Breitbart Over Video
Eric Lach | February 14, 2011, 10:36AM
Shirley Sherrod, who was fired from her USDA job last year after Andrew Breitbart posted online an edited video of her, has filed a lawsuit for libel and slander against Breitbart in D.C. Superior Court. The suit was filed on Friday, and Breitbart was served with it this weekend, while attending the Conservative Political Action Conference, according to The New York Times.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/shirley_sherrod_sues_andrew_breitbart_over_video.php?ref=fpblg
Shirley Sherrod, who was fired from her USDA job last year after Andrew Breitbart posted online an edited video of her, has filed a lawsuit for libel and slander against Breitbart in D.C. Superior Court. The suit was filed on Friday, and Breitbart was served with it this weekend, while attending the Conservative Political Action Conference, according to The New York Times.
Sherrod was the Georgia Director of Rural Development for the USDA until July, when Breitbart posted the edited video, in which she was shown telling the Coffee County, GA NAACP about a time she didn't help a farmer as much as she could have because he was white. The video made national news, and Sherrod was forced to resign shortly after its release. But when the NAACP released the full version of the video -- in which it was clear Sherrod was speaking about overcoming her own racial prejudices -- the story turned. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs offered Sherrod public apologies, and she was offered a new job at the USDA -- which she turned down.
A press release on Breitbart's website Big Government responds to the suit against Breitbart and Breitbart.tv head Larry O'Connor, but does not refer to Sherrod by name, and does not mention the edited video. Instead, the release titled "Andrew Breitbart on Pigford Lawsuit: 'Bring It On,'" focuses on the Pigford settlement, which paid black farmers who said they had been discriminated against by the USDA. Breitbart's statement alludes to Sherrod as "a central figure in the Pigford 'back-door' reparations case."
"I find it extremely telling that this lawsuit was brought almost seven months after the alleged incidents that caused a national media frenzy occurred," Breitbart said in the statement. "It is no coincidence that this lawsuit was filed one day after I held a press conference revealing audio proof of orchestrated and systemic Pigford fraud. I can promise you this: neither I, nor my journalistic websites, will or can be silenced by the institutional Left, which is obviously funding this lawsuit. I welcome the judicial discovery process, including finding out which groups are doing so."
The statement also says that Breitbart "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech and, to reiterate, looks forward to exercising his full and broad discovery rights."
Sherrod and her husband, a civil rights activist, received a multi-million-dollar settlement as part of the first Pigford settlement, resulting from discrimination the couple faced while running a collective farm in Georgia.
But when TPM reported last year that the release of the Sherrod video coincided with a Senate vote on Pigford II, Breitbart wrote us an email denying the connection.
"No. Seriously. On everything I hold dear," Breitbart wrote. Shortly before the video was released, the NAACP had passed a resolution condemning racist elements of the Tea Party movement, and Breitbart claimed the group was the video's real target.
"This was never about Sherrod. It was CLEARLY telegraphed at NAACP -- on Thursday when I, gulp, told Ben Jealous to 'go to hell' for spending week attacking racism with Tea Party. That the media and White House have turned this into me versus Sherrod is silly. My consistent angle is defending Tea Party from this predictable line of attack," Breitbart told TPM at the time.
Sherrod has hired a big-time lawyer to represent her: Thomas D. Yannucci. A partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Yannucci's bio boasts that he has been selected as "one of America's Leading Lawyers for Business in Litigation/General Commercial and in Media & Entertainment by Chambers USA every year since 2003." He also had a lead role in Chiquita Brands' claims against the Gannett Company Inc. and The Cincinnati Enquirer in the 1990s.
Back in July, Sherrod told CNN she would like to "get back at" Breitbart, and said she was considering suing.
TPM's attempts to contact Breitbart on Monday were not immediately successful.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/shirley_sherrod_sues_andrew_breitbart_over_video.php?ref=fpblg
Top Reagan DOJ official slams Scalia for ‘secretly’ meeting tea party members
By Sahil Kapur
February 14, 2011 @ 9:50 am
WASHINGTON – A top Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan tore into Justice Antonin Scalia for holding a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill with tea partyers.
"Justice Antonin Scalia galloped beyond the farthest boundaries of judicial propriety in secretly meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss the Constitution with Tea Party members of Congress saddled with a co-equal duty to assess the constitutionality of legislative action," Bruce Fein, Reagan's associate deputy attorney general, wrote in a published letter [1] to the New York Times.
"If there are better ways to destroy public confidence in judicial impartiality, they do not readily come to mind."
Scalia last week attended a private gathering with on Capitol Hill, ostensibly to discuss the Constitution, with a group of tea party lawmakers led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the leader of the House Tea Party Caucus.
Fein wrote that "[n]o justice has ever testified on the constitutionality of bills before Congress," and noted that former Justice Abe Fortas was forced to resign for privately advising President Lyndon Johnson.
"[J]ustices must be above suspicion," he added.
Scalia, 74, was nominated to the bench by Reagan in 1986, as has reliably voted on the conservative side of issues during his tenure.
His actions only fueled criticisms that members of the Supreme Court are evolving into partisan entities, more openly expressing political preferences and losing their stature as neutral arbiters of the Constitution.
Another recent target of the same misgivings has been conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni Thomas came under fire for openly cozying up with the tea party movement and involving herself with activism on its behalf.
URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/14/top-reagan-doj-official-slams-scalia-for-tea-party-meeting/
URLs in this post:
[1] letter: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/opinion/l11scalia.html?_r=3
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/14/top-reagan-doj-official-slams-scalia-for-tea-party-meeting/print/
February 14, 2011 @ 9:50 am
WASHINGTON – A top Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan tore into Justice Antonin Scalia for holding a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill with tea partyers.
"Justice Antonin Scalia galloped beyond the farthest boundaries of judicial propriety in secretly meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss the Constitution with Tea Party members of Congress saddled with a co-equal duty to assess the constitutionality of legislative action," Bruce Fein, Reagan's associate deputy attorney general, wrote in a published letter [1] to the New York Times.
"If there are better ways to destroy public confidence in judicial impartiality, they do not readily come to mind."
Scalia last week attended a private gathering with on Capitol Hill, ostensibly to discuss the Constitution, with a group of tea party lawmakers led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), the leader of the House Tea Party Caucus.
Fein wrote that "[n]o justice has ever testified on the constitutionality of bills before Congress," and noted that former Justice Abe Fortas was forced to resign for privately advising President Lyndon Johnson.
"[J]ustices must be above suspicion," he added.
Scalia, 74, was nominated to the bench by Reagan in 1986, as has reliably voted on the conservative side of issues during his tenure.
His actions only fueled criticisms that members of the Supreme Court are evolving into partisan entities, more openly expressing political preferences and losing their stature as neutral arbiters of the Constitution.
Another recent target of the same misgivings has been conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginni Thomas came under fire for openly cozying up with the tea party movement and involving herself with activism on its behalf.
URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/14/top-reagan-doj-official-slams-scalia-for-tea-party-meeting/
URLs in this post:
[1] letter: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/opinion/l11scalia.html?_r=3
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/14/top-reagan-doj-official-slams-scalia-for-tea-party-meeting/print/
Congressman Ron Paul booted from conservative group for anti-war views
By Eric W. Dolan
February 13, 2011 @ 3:08 pm
February 13, 2011 @ 3:08 pm
The conservative group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) announced Saturday that Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) would be expelled from the group's National Advisory Board because of his "delusional and disturbing alliance with the fringe Anti-War movement."
"It is a sad day in American history when a one-time conservative-libertarian stalwart has fallen more out of touch with America’s needs for national security than the current feeble and appeasing administration," YAF’s Senior National Director Jordan Marks said in a statement.
"Rep. Paul's refusal to support our nation's military and national security interests border on treason, aside from his failure to uphold his oath to the United States Constitution and defend our country and citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Marks continued.
According to the group's founding statement of principles, the Sharon Statement, "American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?"
Supporters of Ron Paul shouted down former Vice President Dick Cheney [1] at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Thursday, in a sign of a growing foreign policy rift on the American right.
Young Americans for Freedom helped to found the CPAC 38 years ago along with other conservative organizations, such as the American Conservative Union.
Cheney had appeared on the first day of the 2011 CPAC [2] to introduce Donald Rumsfeld, the former Bush-era defense secretary who was scheduled to receive [3] this year's "Defender of the Constitution Award."
That didn't sit well with "Team Paul," supporters of Rep. Ron Paul who have long called for an end to the US's foreign wars.
He drew thunderous applause [4] for bashing the Patriot Act, US aid to foreign nations, and US military bases overseas during his speech at CPAC on Friday.
"The United States is the world's leader - a beacon of light for the wretched and the oppressed," YAF National Chairman Michael Jones added. "God has blessed the United States with liberty and the strength and heart to spread that liberty to all of his children. Rep. Paul has abandoned this mission, abandoned the United States' citizens, and abandoned the citizens of the world in their quest for their God-given natural rights."
When asked about being expelled from the YAF Advisory Board, a position Rep. Paul has held for more than two decades, a spokesman for the congressman seemed less than concerned.
"I hadn't heard of YAF doing anything in years, I thought they were defunct," Ron Paul's political director Jesse Benton told Politco [5]. "Young Americans for Liberty is the group of the future."
URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/13/congressman-ron-paul-booted-from-conservative-group-for-anti-war-views/
URLs in this post:
[1] shouted down former Vice President Dick Cheney: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/10/paul-backers-crash-cheney-rumsfeld-reunion/
[2] 2011 CPAC: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=59717860748
[3] receive: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/rumsfeld-receive-defender-constitution-award-cpac/
[4] drew thunderous applause: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/11/ron-paul-encourages-revolution-conservative-conference/
[5] Politco: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49412.html#ixzz1Ds4j9znu
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/13/congressman-ron-paul-booted-from-conservative-group-for-anti-war-views/print/
Sunday, February 13, 2011
FOX NEWS INSIDER: “Stuff Is Just Made Up”
February 10, 2011 7:20 am ET by Eric Boehlert
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102100007
Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be
surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from
the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people
would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”
Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to
undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they
call themselves news.”
And that’s the word from inside Fox News.
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right.
Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news.
Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s
inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by
the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the
right and instead became an
open and active political
player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist,
depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on
fabrications and falsehoods.
“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,”
says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former
insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that
staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.
“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods
and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner
or later you’re going to get burned.”
The source explains:
“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content.
The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it
was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”
What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative
or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My
internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains.
“You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”
The source recalls how Fox News changed over time:
“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.
“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.
"When you first get in they tell you we’re a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media. So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.
“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.
“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”
It’s worth noting that Fox News employees, either current or former, rarely speak to the press, even anonymously. And it’s even rarer for Fox News sources to bad mouth Murdoch’s channel. That’s partly because of strict non-disclosure agreements that most exiting employees sign and which forbid them from discussing their former employer. But it also stems from a pervasive us-vs.-them attitude that permeates Fox News. It’s a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.
“It was a kick ass mentality too,” says the former Fox News insider. “It was relentless and it never went away. If one controversy faded, goddamn it they would find another one. They were in search of these points of friction real or imagined. And most of them were imagined or fabricated. You always have to seem to be under siege. You always have to seem like your values are under attack. The brain trust just knew instinctively which stories to do, like the War on Christmas.”
According to the insider, Ailes is obsessed with presenting a unified Fox News front to the outside world; an obsession that may explain Ailes’ refusal to publically criticize or even critique his own team regardless of how outlandish their on-air behavior. “There may be internal squabbles. But what [Ailes] continually preaches is never piss outside the tent,” says the source. “When he gets really crazy is when stuff leaks out the door. He goes mental on that. He can’t stand that. He says in a dynamic enterprise like a network newsroom there’s going to be in fighting and ego, but he says keep it in the house.”
It’s clear that Fox News has become a misleading, partisan outlet. But here’s what the source stresses: Fox News is designed to mislead its viewers and designed to engage in a purely political enterprise.
In 2010, all sorts of evidence tumbled out to confirm that fact, like the recently leaked emails from inside Fox News, in which a top editor instructed his newsroom staffers (not just the opinion show hosts) to slant the news when reporting on key stories such as climate change and health care reform.
Meanwhile, Media Matters revealed that during the 2009-2010 election cycle, dozens of Fox News personalities endorsed, raised money, or campaigned for Republican candidates or organizations in more than 600 instances. And in terms of free TV airtime that Fox News handed over to GOP hopefuls, Media Matters calculated the channel essentially donated $55 million worth of airtime to Republican presidential hopefuls last year who also collect Fox News paychecks.
And of course, that’s when Murdoch wasn’t writing $1 million checks in the hopes of electing more Republican politicians.
So, Fox News as a legitimate news outlet? The source laughs at the suggestion, and thinks much of the public, along with the Beltway press corps, has been duped by Murdoch’s marketing campaign over the years. “People assume you need a license to call yourself a news channel. You don’t. So because they call themselves Fox News, people probably give them a pass on a lot of things,” says the source.
The source continues: “I don’t think people understand that it’s an organization that’s built and functions by intimidation and bullying, and its goal is to prop up and support Republicans and the GOP and to knock down Democrats. People tend think that stuff that’s on TV is real, especially under the guise of news. You’d think that people would wise up, but they don’t.”
As for the press, the former Fox News employee gives reporters and pundits low grades for refusing, over the years, to call out Fox News for being the propaganda outlet that it so clearly is. The source suggests there are a variety of reasons for the newsroom timidity.
“They don’t have enough staff or enough balls or don’t have enough money or don’t have enough interest to spend the time it takes to expose Fox News. Or it’s not worth the trouble. If you take on Fox, they’ll kick you in the ass,” says the source. “I’m sure most [journalists] know that. It’s not worth being Swift Boated for your effort,” a reference to how Fox News traditionally attacks journalists who write, or are perceived to have written, anything negative things about the channel.
The former insider admits to being perplexed in late 2009 when the Obama White House called out Murdoch’s operation as not being a legitimate new source, only to have major Beltway media players rush to the aid of Fox News and admonish the White House for daring to criticize the cable channel.
“That blew me away,” says the source, who stresses the White House’s critique of Fox News “happens to be true.”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102100007
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Wadhams drops bid for re-election as Colorado GOP chairman Read more: Wadhams drops bid for re-election as Colorado GOP chairman
By Lynn Bartels
The Denver Post
Posted: 02/08/2011 01:00:00 AM MST
Dick Wadhams on Monday unexpectedly dropped his bid for re-election as chair of the Colorado Republican Party, warning GOP leaders that their chances in 2012 could be "severely undermined" by a strategy aimed solely at uniting conservatives.
Wadhams said he had the votes to land a third term but in the past few days got to thinking, "What happens after I win?"
"I have loved being chairman, but I'm tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party's role is," he said.
Wadhams last year was alternately accused of meddling in the governor's race and failing to get involved to ensure the right Republican would win.
Wadhams' decision stunned the Democrats he has targeted since taking over leadership of the state party in 2007.
"Speechless," tweeted former House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver.
Wadhams said he doesn't know what his next career move is.
His departure leaves state Sen. Ted Harvey of Highlands Ranch as the front-runner in the March 26 chairmanship race, although Republicans now expect other candidates to jump in. Harvey could not be reached for comment.
Wadhams referred to Harvey in his letter to the state Central Committee announcing he was dropping out of the race but did not mention the lawmaker by name.
"I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying 'uniting conservatives' is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state," Wadhams wrote.
In Harvey's announcement last week, he said he intended "to unite our base and return authentic conservative leadership to the party structure."
Democratic political strategist Laura Chapin said Wad hams fell victim to deep splits within his party that make it tough for a moderate to win a primary. The conservative then has to win the general election in a state where one-third of the electorate is unaffiliated.
Wadhams said as much in his letter, questioning the wisdom of the "authentic conservative leadership" strategy.
"The ability of Colorado Republicans to win and retain the votes of hundreds of thousands of unaffiliated swing voters in 2012 will be severely undermined," he said.
Wadhams on Monday added that Harvey "sees everything through the lens of a safe Republican district in Douglas County, and Colorado is more diverse than that."
It was unaffiliated voters who gave U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet a razor-thin victory over Republican challenger Ken Buck last year in a race the GOP expected to win.
Republicans early expected to win the governor's race, but it turned into a free-for-all in which political neophyte Dan Maes won the primary but received only 11 percent of the vote in the general election.
Maes blamed former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo for his poor showing. Tancredo ran for governor on a third-party ticket to try to stop Democrat John Hickenlooper.
Republicans did knock off the Democratic secretary of state and treasurer and two Democratic members of Congress, as well as pick up the majority in the state House.
Wadhams built his reputation running successful U.S. Senate campaigns in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota. He returned to Colorado in 2007 after George Allen's 2006 Senate campaign in Virginia crashed in the wake of comments by Allen deemed racially insensitive.
In 2008, Wadhams served as campaign manager to Bob Schaffer's Senate campaign while also serving as state party chairman. Under his leadership, the party paid off a debt of more than $700,000.
http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_17323833
The Denver Post
Posted: 02/08/2011 01:00:00 AM MST
Dick Wadhams on Monday unexpectedly dropped his bid for re-election as chair of the Colorado Republican Party, warning GOP leaders that their chances in 2012 could be "severely undermined" by a strategy aimed solely at uniting conservatives.
Wadhams said he had the votes to land a third term but in the past few days got to thinking, "What happens after I win?"
"I have loved being chairman, but I'm tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party's role is," he said.
Wadhams last year was alternately accused of meddling in the governor's race and failing to get involved to ensure the right Republican would win.
Wadhams' decision stunned the Democrats he has targeted since taking over leadership of the state party in 2007.
"Speechless," tweeted former House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver.
Wadhams said he doesn't know what his next career move is.
His departure leaves state Sen. Ted Harvey of Highlands Ranch as the front-runner in the March 26 chairmanship race, although Republicans now expect other candidates to jump in. Harvey could not be reached for comment.
Wadhams referred to Harvey in his letter to the state Central Committee announcing he was dropping out of the race but did not mention the lawmaker by name.
"I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying 'uniting conservatives' is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state," Wadhams wrote.
In Harvey's announcement last week, he said he intended "to unite our base and return authentic conservative leadership to the party structure."
Democratic political strategist Laura Chapin said Wad hams fell victim to deep splits within his party that make it tough for a moderate to win a primary. The conservative then has to win the general election in a state where one-third of the electorate is unaffiliated.
Wadhams said as much in his letter, questioning the wisdom of the "authentic conservative leadership" strategy.
"The ability of Colorado Republicans to win and retain the votes of hundreds of thousands of unaffiliated swing voters in 2012 will be severely undermined," he said.
Wadhams on Monday added that Harvey "sees everything through the lens of a safe Republican district in Douglas County, and Colorado is more diverse than that."
It was unaffiliated voters who gave U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet a razor-thin victory over Republican challenger Ken Buck last year in a race the GOP expected to win.
Republicans early expected to win the governor's race, but it turned into a free-for-all in which political neophyte Dan Maes won the primary but received only 11 percent of the vote in the general election.
Maes blamed former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo for his poor showing. Tancredo ran for governor on a third-party ticket to try to stop Democrat John Hickenlooper.
Republicans did knock off the Democratic secretary of state and treasurer and two Democratic members of Congress, as well as pick up the majority in the state House.
Wadhams built his reputation running successful U.S. Senate campaigns in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota. He returned to Colorado in 2007 after George Allen's 2006 Senate campaign in Virginia crashed in the wake of comments by Allen deemed racially insensitive.
In 2008, Wadhams served as campaign manager to Bob Schaffer's Senate campaign while also serving as state party chairman. Under his leadership, the party paid off a debt of more than $700,000.
http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_17323833
Frances Fox Piven: The Real Danger To Beck Isn't To Me, But To Democracy
February 08, 2011 10:30 am ET
- by Media Matters staff
For several weeks, Glenn Beck has relentlessly demonized CUNY Political Science professor Frances Fox Piven. His attacks have inspired death threats and been met with widespread condemnation. Below, Frances Fox Piven responds to Beck. His paranoid rants, she says, pose a greater danger to American democracy than to her personal safety.
From a February 8 column published on the website of The Guardian:
When the process of governing is incomprehensible, manipulation and propaganda thrives. The strange stories that Glenn Beck creates with his chalkboard gain traction with Americans, who are made anxious by the large changes that have overtaken the United States, including the election of a black president and the increasing racial diversity of the population, deindustrialisation and the decline of American power abroad, as well as cultural changes in sexual and family norms.
By telling simple fairy tales that trace these big and complex changes to the machinations of particular people, Beck makes the changes comprehensible in a way, and also makes the people who are presumably responsible the targets of his listeners' frustration and outrage. Partly because it is utterly irrational, and partly because it is an effort to bully and intimidate his political opponents, this is dangerous for democratic politics.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102080013
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
FOXLEAKS: Fox Caught Scripting Socialism Attack
February 03, 2011 10:00 am ET by Oliver Willis
"Isn't that what they do in socialist countries?"
Steve Doocy's question sounded like a spontaneous reaction to what he apparently saw as the threat Barack Obama would pose to freedom of the press.
It wasn't.
The Fox News host's inflammatory question had, in fact, been scripted the night before in an email sent by a Fox producer.
The incident, which occurred on the October 27, 2008, edition of Fox & Friends, came during what appears to have been a network-wide campaign to tie Obama to socialism in the month leading up to the presidential election. Internal Fox documents obtained by Media Matters and a review of the network's pre-election coverage show that Fox hosts, producers, and other journalists were involved in the effort.
October 27 was also the day that Fox's then-deputy managing editor Bill Sammon sent an internal email referencing what he described in the subject line as "Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists in his autobiography, 'Dreams from My Father.' " Sammon appeared on multiple Fox shows to discuss his "research" and also wrote a FoxNews.com piece about Obama's "affinity to Marxists."
The events leading up to Doocy's "socialist" question began four days earlier, when WFTV (ABC's Orlando affiliate) anchor Barbara West interviewed Joe Biden. During the interview, West suggested Obama's infamous exchange with "Joe the Plumber" -- in which Obama had advocated, "spread[ing] the wealth around" -- was a "potentially crushing political blunder."
West then asked: "You may recognize this famous quote: 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' That's from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"
"Are you joking?" asked a stunned Biden. "Is this a joke?"
"No," said West. "That's a question."
In response to West's interview, the Obama campaign reportedly cancelled a planned appearance by Jill Biden on WFTV and told the station, "This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."
On the evening of October 26, a Fox producer named Elizabeth Fanning emailed an outline of the next morning's Fox & Friends to numerous staffers at the network. The document, obtained by Media Matters, listed five separate segments about the WFTV interview that were scheduled for the October 27 show. For each segment, the document listed an identical series of questions, including: "Isn't this what happens in communist countries?"
And that's almost exactly what Doocy said on the air. Interviewing Fox contributor Michelle Malkin, Doocy asked, "Isn't that what they do in socialist countries?"
Here's how the document described the segment featuring Malkin [emphasis added]:
8:15 (B-BLOCK) - MICHELE MALKIN - CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST & FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR - OBAMA CAMPAIGN CUTS OFF TV STATION, AFTER BIDEN ANGERED BY QUESTIONS. IS THIS A PREVIEW OF THINGS TO COME? WILL THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS ROOM BE LIKE THIS? CAN YOU NOT ASK TOUGH QUESTIONS? WILL THEY SUPPRESS THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS? ISN'T THIS WHAT HAPPENS IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES? ((DENVER, CO)) ((STEVE AND GRETCHEN))
And here's Doocy's actual exchange with Malkin:
DOOCY: And after that line of tough questioning the Biden camp called the TV station in Orlando and said, "You are not getting any more interviews for the balance of the election cycle." Michelle Malkin is joining us right now. Of course, she is a conservative columnist and a Fox News contributor. She's out there in Denver right now. All right,Michelle, they pulled the plug on any future interviews because of that tough line of questioning. Your observations, please.
MALKIN: There's a chill wind blowing, and I think that this does signal what the future of the White House press corps would be under an Obama-Biden administration. How dare Barbara West of WFTV confront Joe Biden with some basic, simple questions that anyone who wasn't totally in the tank for Obama would feel comfortable asking? And --yes, so she's been blacklisted, and apparently the station has been bombarded by Obama cultists who are offended that she was so quote-unquote rude and quote-unquote combative to the increasingly erratic and super-gaffe-tastic Joe Biden.
[...]
DOOCY: Well, you know, Michelle, the whole thing is -- a couple weeks ago, a tough question was asked about "spreading the wealth around" by Joe The Plumber. What happens to him? He gets investigated. Now, Barbara --
GRETCHEN CARLSON (co-host): West.
DOOCY: -- West out in Orlando, she asks some hard questions, and the station gets shut down. You know, your comment about a chill is perhaps accurate because people will think twice before they ask something like that. But isn't that what they do in socialist countries where, you know, "I don't like that, you're done"?
MALKIN: Yeah, like I said, this is a preview of things to come. And I think it's particularly interesting timing, this Barbara West interview with Biden at the same time that now we have this 2001 tape, as you guys mentioned this morning, where Obama is musing about how best to redistribute wealth. It's not about whether it's a good thing or not, whether it's American or not, it's whether he should do it through the courts or legislatively.
But Fox wasn't done with the West-Biden interview. That night, West appeared on the October 27 O'Reilly Factor, where Bill O'Reilly noted that West had "used some buzz words like 'Marxism' " but declared that her "questions were fine":
WEST: I went into the interview with the mindset that we had some serious questions and serious issues in this country that need to be answered. And we're running out of time to getting the answers to those issues.
O'REILLY: But you used some buzz words like "Marxism." I thought your questions were fine. I don't know whether I would have phrased them quite that way because you gave him a little wiggle room to do a couple of things. There's no doubt that income redistribution is controversial. And I brought it up with Barack Obama myself. But he wanted to paint you as a far right person just by the tone of your questions. Do you see what he wanted to do?
WEST: Yes, indeed. I -- I think that he would like to still do that. But, I am not. I am a reporter who works for a television station that asks probing, penetrating, straightforward, challenging questions. That is our job.
"You did your job," said O'Reilly. "I didn't have any problem with it."
The following morning, West was back on Fox News, this time appearing on the October 28, 2008, Fox & Friends. Co-host Gretchen Carlson declared it her "favorite story of the day."
"You're completely professional," Carlson told West at the conclusion of the segment. "I know that you were labeled as 'unprofessional' by the Obama campaign after that interview. Very professional."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102030006
I helped cause the financial crisis, and I'm sorry.
Ken Kupchik
JANUARY 31, 2011 4:15PM
I was twenty-two years old when I decided to go into mortgage sales. I was finishing an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice and had decided that I didn't want to go to Law School as I had originally intended. I didn't have rich parents, and had never made any significant money, so I set out to find the highest paying job someone with my limited qualifications could find.
At the time, my girlfriend's best friend was dating a guy who worked in mortgages. He drove a BMW, had nice clothes and carried himself well. Over drinks one night, I kept quizzing him on his success, and he told me all I needed to do was read a book or two and have some sort of people skills and I could be making six figures. Hearing those words was like a dog whistle to a middle-class immigrant who had only worked restaurant and construction jobs until that point. As it turned out, the bar for entry into the mortgage world was even lower than reading a book or two.
I applied for several mortgage jobs on the internet, sat back and waited. Within a few weeks, I got called back for an interview at what is now known as one of the biggest culprits in the sub-prime mortgage collapse. The manager interviewing me was down to earth, and promised me that I'd be making over 100k a year if I just followed the sales process. It was a no-brainer for me, and within a month I was on a flight to Illinois for corporate training. Before I left for the airport, I got my first check in the mail; $950, the most money I had ever been paid at one time, and that was only for two weeks of pre-training office work.
The training was boring and disillusioning. The computer system they taught us made no sense to me, and the calculations even less so. This didn't really matter though. All you needed to do was learn the script. Everything else was unimportant. JUST LEARN THE SCRIPT. I distinctly remember our trainer, an energetic middle-aged woman telling us: "This is the only job where you will be able to help people, and make more money than you've ever made before in your life." At least the second part was true.
Once we got back from training, the selling started. We would take inbound phone calls from current customers patched in from a corporate call center. Many of them weren't even interested in refinancing, they had just called in to ask a question and were transferred to us. It was our job to get these people to "lower their monthly payments," or "consolidate their high-interest credit cards into a low monthly payment," mostly through sub-prime refinancing. We also had "port" leads; endless lists of existing customers that we would constantly call and offer to lower their mortgage payment. This was late 2006, the peak of the sub-prime boom. Years of bank deregulation had allowed commercial banks to become mortgage companies, taking on ungodly risk and leveraging it over and over again. Mortgage companies bundled sub-prime loans and sold them as mortgage backed derivatives on the secondary market. This meant that wall street was making a killing reselling the bad loans that we were selling to consumers.
The perception among the general public is that mortgage salespeople were sleazy, greedy and immoral. This was partly true. I worked with some people who would have sold their own mother to make a buck. I literally knew of drug dealers who had gone into mortgages because it was less risky and more profitable than selling cocaine. But there were plenty of decent people in the industry as well. The problems mostly came down from the top. Regional managers had a no-holds barred mentality. You had to do anything to make the sale, no excuses. This meant working late, lying to people, and committing fraud. I once walked into the copy room and saw someone cutting out a signature and copying it onto another document. Stories circulated about other branches staying up late and manufacturing fake asset documents to qualify borrowers for loans. On one of my loans, a regional manager turned a 2/28 year adjustable loan into a 6 month adjustable because it made $500 more for the company. I had to explain to the borrower that it was the best we could do. She signed on the loan because the needed the 15k cash out in equity for accumulating bills.
And the money came flowing in. There were some months when I would make close to $10,000. It wasn't unheard of for a loan rep with no college education to be pulling in close to $20k a month. I had money for the first time in my life. I bought all the clothes I wanted, bought my dream car, an Infiniti G35 coupe, and started helping my parents out with their bills. Affording things was no longer a problem. I should have been happier than ever before. But I wasn't. I was miserable. I hated what I was doing, and I hated going into work. I dreaded the office, I dreaded the people and I dreaded what we did. I figured out early on that we weren't "helping people," we were taking advantage of them. Did some loans put people in better situations? Yes, but more put people in worse ones.
I spent a total of nine months working for a subprime morgage company before I quit. I walked out as a 23 year-old making six figures a year. I left because I knew that we weren't helping people, and I hated feeling the way I did knowing what were truly a part of. I remember sitting in my manager's office with tears in my eyes trying to explain to him how I felt, and hearing him trying to rationalize what were doing: "We're helping people", "Someone else will do it if we don't." I quit the next day. I went back into the industry for under a year after subprime dissapeared in 2007, but only long enough to finally put the nail in the coffin of my mortgage career.
There are few things that I regret in my life. Among those regrets are a handful of loans that I should never have agreed to make. I would have lost my job, but it wasn't worth the money I made from them. I never committed fraud, but that's only because most of it was legal at the time. I don't regret the experience. It taught me about what kind of a person I didn't want to be, and what money can make you do. I helped cause the financial collapse, and I'm sorry. No one has apologized to you, and we all should. We hurt people who were much more honest and hardworking than we ever will be, only for money. I am truly sorry, and I will never hurt people for money again.
http://open.salon.com/blog/ken_k/2011/01/31/i_helped_cause_the_financial_crisis_and_im_sorry
JANUARY 31, 2011 4:15PM
I was twenty-two years old when I decided to go into mortgage sales. I was finishing an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice and had decided that I didn't want to go to Law School as I had originally intended. I didn't have rich parents, and had never made any significant money, so I set out to find the highest paying job someone with my limited qualifications could find.
At the time, my girlfriend's best friend was dating a guy who worked in mortgages. He drove a BMW, had nice clothes and carried himself well. Over drinks one night, I kept quizzing him on his success, and he told me all I needed to do was read a book or two and have some sort of people skills and I could be making six figures. Hearing those words was like a dog whistle to a middle-class immigrant who had only worked restaurant and construction jobs until that point. As it turned out, the bar for entry into the mortgage world was even lower than reading a book or two.
I applied for several mortgage jobs on the internet, sat back and waited. Within a few weeks, I got called back for an interview at what is now known as one of the biggest culprits in the sub-prime mortgage collapse. The manager interviewing me was down to earth, and promised me that I'd be making over 100k a year if I just followed the sales process. It was a no-brainer for me, and within a month I was on a flight to Illinois for corporate training. Before I left for the airport, I got my first check in the mail; $950, the most money I had ever been paid at one time, and that was only for two weeks of pre-training office work.
The training was boring and disillusioning. The computer system they taught us made no sense to me, and the calculations even less so. This didn't really matter though. All you needed to do was learn the script. Everything else was unimportant. JUST LEARN THE SCRIPT. I distinctly remember our trainer, an energetic middle-aged woman telling us: "This is the only job where you will be able to help people, and make more money than you've ever made before in your life." At least the second part was true.
Once we got back from training, the selling started. We would take inbound phone calls from current customers patched in from a corporate call center. Many of them weren't even interested in refinancing, they had just called in to ask a question and were transferred to us. It was our job to get these people to "lower their monthly payments," or "consolidate their high-interest credit cards into a low monthly payment," mostly through sub-prime refinancing. We also had "port" leads; endless lists of existing customers that we would constantly call and offer to lower their mortgage payment. This was late 2006, the peak of the sub-prime boom. Years of bank deregulation had allowed commercial banks to become mortgage companies, taking on ungodly risk and leveraging it over and over again. Mortgage companies bundled sub-prime loans and sold them as mortgage backed derivatives on the secondary market. This meant that wall street was making a killing reselling the bad loans that we were selling to consumers.
The perception among the general public is that mortgage salespeople were sleazy, greedy and immoral. This was partly true. I worked with some people who would have sold their own mother to make a buck. I literally knew of drug dealers who had gone into mortgages because it was less risky and more profitable than selling cocaine. But there were plenty of decent people in the industry as well. The problems mostly came down from the top. Regional managers had a no-holds barred mentality. You had to do anything to make the sale, no excuses. This meant working late, lying to people, and committing fraud. I once walked into the copy room and saw someone cutting out a signature and copying it onto another document. Stories circulated about other branches staying up late and manufacturing fake asset documents to qualify borrowers for loans. On one of my loans, a regional manager turned a 2/28 year adjustable loan into a 6 month adjustable because it made $500 more for the company. I had to explain to the borrower that it was the best we could do. She signed on the loan because the needed the 15k cash out in equity for accumulating bills.
And the money came flowing in. There were some months when I would make close to $10,000. It wasn't unheard of for a loan rep with no college education to be pulling in close to $20k a month. I had money for the first time in my life. I bought all the clothes I wanted, bought my dream car, an Infiniti G35 coupe, and started helping my parents out with their bills. Affording things was no longer a problem. I should have been happier than ever before. But I wasn't. I was miserable. I hated what I was doing, and I hated going into work. I dreaded the office, I dreaded the people and I dreaded what we did. I figured out early on that we weren't "helping people," we were taking advantage of them. Did some loans put people in better situations? Yes, but more put people in worse ones.
I spent a total of nine months working for a subprime morgage company before I quit. I walked out as a 23 year-old making six figures a year. I left because I knew that we weren't helping people, and I hated feeling the way I did knowing what were truly a part of. I remember sitting in my manager's office with tears in my eyes trying to explain to him how I felt, and hearing him trying to rationalize what were doing: "We're helping people", "Someone else will do it if we don't." I quit the next day. I went back into the industry for under a year after subprime dissapeared in 2007, but only long enough to finally put the nail in the coffin of my mortgage career.
There are few things that I regret in my life. Among those regrets are a handful of loans that I should never have agreed to make. I would have lost my job, but it wasn't worth the money I made from them. I never committed fraud, but that's only because most of it was legal at the time. I don't regret the experience. It taught me about what kind of a person I didn't want to be, and what money can make you do. I helped cause the financial collapse, and I'm sorry. No one has apologized to you, and we all should. We hurt people who were much more honest and hardworking than we ever will be, only for money. I am truly sorry, and I will never hurt people for money again.
http://open.salon.com/blog/ken_k/2011/01/31/i_helped_cause_the_financial_crisis_and_im_sorry
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