Just how much of a liberal cocoon does New York Times political reporter Matt Bai live in? Apparently a mighty thick one judging by the fact that he thought he could repeat a provably false lie about an supposed example of Tea Party racism in his most recent article. Almost everybody with even a little bit of political savvy can already guess what example I am referring to but let us allow Bai to repeat the false charge:

The question of racism in the amorphous Tea Party movement is, of course, a serious one, since so much of the Republican Party seems to be in the thrall of its activists. There have been scattered reports around the country of racially charged rhetoric within the movement, most notably just before the vote on the new health care law last March, when Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, the legendary civil rights leader, was showered with hateful epithets outside the Capitol.

Most notably that charge of racially charged rhetoric has been disproven…unless Bai has some video proof that he can use to collect the $100,000 prize offered by Andrew Breitbart to demonstrate otherwise. We do know that Bai’s liberal bubble has caused him to recite other political fantasies such as the idea the the Republicans are facing big trouble in the November elections.

As for his latest fantasy about what happened at the March 20 Tea Party gathering in Washington, D.C., Bai has a lot of liberal company. Yesterday George Will had to correct Clarence Page on ABC’s "This Week" when the false charge was again repeated by the Chicago Tribune correspondent.

Unfortunately there is no comments section adjoining Bai’s article where readers could correct Bai’s false charge. However, Bai’s falsehood is being challenged in the blogosphere at such sites as American Power and  Powerline which concluded:

The real problem with Bai’s assertion is that it didn’t happen. It’s a big lie. A complete and utter crock. Thus the failure of any independent witness or journalist to vouch for the story, and the failure of any video to corroborate it and win Andrew Breitbart’s $100,000 reward. On the contrary, the video record decisively refutes the story. 

So unless Matt Bai has proof which will allow him to collect Andrew Breitbart’s money, we expect the New York Times to remove the false charge, along with a written correction, from Matt Bai’s erroneous article in 5… 4… 3… 2…

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Since neither of the likely Democrat nominees for the Senate from Florida appear to have a chance in hell of winning the general election, Newsweek has thrown its obvious support behind the conservative Republican in the race.

Just kidding!

The likelihood of that happening ranks right around zero which is why Newsweek is promoting Florida governor Charlie Crist, running in that race as an independent, as the best person to defeat conservative Republican Marco Rubio. In fact, Newsweek is plugging Crist to the extent that they have conveniently neglected to mention how he broke his promise not to run as an independent as well as his pledge to return campaign contributions by Republicans. Here are some tidbits from the Newsweek puff piece disguised as a news story:

Crist’s resurgence also stems in part from his shift back to where he’s always seemed most comfortable: the political center. That’s where he’s largely governed as the state’s chief executive—pursuing a Republican agenda of low taxes and limited government, but also collaborating with Democrats on environmental issues and judicial appointments. The approach made him one of the most popular governors in the country. 

Along with this blatant promotion of Crist is the Newsweek effort to paint Marco Rubio as the evil conservative anti-Crist:

While Crist has incurred the wrath of the far right—particularly the Tea Partiers—such opposition could work in his favor in some ways. Conservatives are galvanized and may well turn out in force. But the way they’ve commandeered the GOP has also yielded a candidate—Rubio—who may appear too far from the center for mainstream voters. (He backs a flat tax, questions whether climate change is man-made, and supports legislation requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds before administering abortions.) “Now that [Rubio] has painted himself into that conservative corner, he’s having difficulty getting out,” says Smith. Given Rubio’s need to keep the right wing riled up, he has so far avoided tacking toward the middle in preparation for the general election. Perhaps as a result, his candidacy appears to be provoking and solidifying an anyone-but-Rubio vote behind Crist—one that could grow if Meek fails to win his primary or never becomes a serious contender.

Of course, the "hard-right" term is invoked by Newsweek to describe Rubio and other conservative candidates as somehow being dangerous extremists:

Senate candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and Ken Buck in Colorado are mounting hard-right challenges, fueled by Tea Party fervor. Yet, like Rubio, they risk alienating middle-of-the-road voters and imperiling what should be dependable GOP gains in an election cycle that favors the opposition party.

Another thing missing in the Newsweek story is any mention of Crist’s most notorious supporter and campaign contributor, Scott Rothstein. However, it might be hard to get a direct quote from Rothstein since he is currently serving a 50 year stretch in the federal pen for his mini-Madoff Ponzi scheme.

p.s. Didn’t Newsweek also describe Ronald Reagan in 1980 as too "hard-right" to win the general election?

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There hasn’t been this much sick gloating at the Democratic Underground since Jerry Falwell passed away. The cause of the latest DUer outbreak of venom is the news about former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s heart problems. The DU administrator, David Allen, recently posted absurdly detailed rules about what one can say about Barack Obama but apparently it is open season to indulge in venomous hate there when it comes to conservatives such as Dick Cheney.

Here are just a few of the poison pen tidbits posted by DUers on the subject of the health of Dick Cheney:

The mother f—er should have his bones picked by Vultures.

I hope Dick is in pain and drowning in his own fluids.

don’t worry, he’ll shoot someone in the face and then steal their heart while they are writhing in pain from the buck shot. 

I hope he dies a slow death. The amount of pain due that man would be no where close to what he deserves.

It’s not really surprising that the DUers are posting about Cheney with an utter lack of class. They are just taking their cue from other leftwingers such as liberal radio talk show host Mike Malloy who recently had this to say about Dick Cheney:

… I’m not going to feel anything but intense gratitude that this miserable bastard has stepped off this earthly coil! Really! And I’m sure on a much lesser scale when I die, there will probably be some of you right-wing flip tops who will feel the same way - I frankly don’t give a damn!

But no - Cheney is responsible. Cheney is a murderer. He’s a killer. He’s a torturer. He is evil personified! He is a walking mass of horror and when he’s gone, this planet will be cleaner!

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Psst!

Two words that dare not escape the pen of Washington Post writer Krissah Thompson: "Coffee Party."

Yes, Ms Thompson writes yet another article about a "grassroots" liberal alternative to the Tea Party movement. If you have a feeling of "been there, done that," it is because Thompson’s hype about the "One Nation" movement sounds almost identical to all the PR the mainstream media gave to the faded Coffee Party a few months ago. And the reason why Thompson dare not mention the Coffee Party is that it has devolved into a laughable parody of itself with aimless group therapy sessions dominated by founder Annabel Park as you can see in this video with a grand total of 915 YouTube views as of this writing.

Meanwhile stifle your yawns as Thompson plugs yet another supposedly grassroots organization while carefully avoiding mention of you-know-what:

In an effort to replicate the tea party’s success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement’s political energy and influence. They promise to "counter the tea party narrative" and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.

The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed "One Nation," will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grassroots two years ago. In a repurposing of Barack Obama’s old campaign slogan, organizers are demanding "all the change" they voted for — a poke at the White House. 

Didn’t we already go down this path back in March, Krissah, with the COFFEE PARTY? There! I said it.

Despite the friction among liberal groups, the effort behind "One Nation" was born of a certain necessity: At one of the first meetings, Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, said, "Raise your hand if you can push your part of the agenda all by yourself." 

Raise your hand if you can spot "Coffee Party" in Thompson’s story. What? No hands? 

And now stand by to laugh as you read Thompson recite the "grassroots" organizations behind "One Nation."

The groups involved represent the core of the first-time voters who backed President Obama — including the National Council of La Raza, NAACP, AFL-CIO, SEIU and the United States Student Association. (The effort is separate from the Democratic Party’s plan to spend $50 million trying to reach those same voters.)

Okay, bear with your humble correspondent as he sounds off on a pet peeve of his involving La Raza which means "The Race" in English. Imagine the reaction if a white group called itself "The Race." Yet somehow La Raza is okay with liberals. However, perhaps even Thompson realizes something is not quite right with that name so she refers to it by the initials, NCLR, for the rest of her article hyping a recycled Coffee Party by another name:

"This is a way to create some intensity," said Eric Rodriguez, vice president of NCLR. "Month after month, we spend time pointing to these employment figures, and we’re still not breaking through on the disparities in a way that we think is important."

This week at their national conventions both NAACP and NCLR leaders will begin talking to their members about "One Nation," and they are seeking money from foundations for the effort. They hope it will be a show of force that will remind both Congress and the White House that they are out there.

Please ditch the innocuous sounding NCLR and called it what it is, Krissah. The Race. Got that? THE RACE!!! Yeah, it is embarrassing to read but that is the correct translation of the name into English. Live with it.

Meanwhile, drop me a line, Krissah, after "One Nation" falls into as much obscurity as the "Coffee Party" and you are back to plugging yet another leftwing "grassroots" Tea Party wannabee. How about we pick a name in advance? "Coffee Nation?" 

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Perry Cobama?

One of the great comedy bits from the classic SCTV show was a skit satirizing an ultra relaxed and disengaged Perry Como singing "Still Alive" in a most lackadaisical manner. And now we have MSNBC host Ed Schultz wondering aloud on his radio show if Barack Obama is "Still Alive." Here is a transcript of Schultz commenting on Obama’s detachment to the extent that Big Ed isn’t even sure he wants to run for president again:

Now it pains me, this is not a compliment, it is an observation, Bush just always kept coming at us. And as a liberal, every time I turned around this guy was coming at me. Bush was always uptempo and Bush was always enthusiastic and I did, I guess it is a compliment, I did somewhat say, you know, that guy, he keeps going after it, whether it’s conviction or show time or whatever it is, however you want to view it. But President Obama in this commercial that Boehner put out left me with the impression, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy decides on his own he doesn’t want to run again.

…I have a sense that he’s thinking, you know what, maybe this isn’t my gig. Maybe this is just a huge pain in the ass. Maybe, maybe I’m not the guy.

Maybe Obama is just coasting through the presidency, ignoring the Gulf oil crises in favor of golfing and attending fundraisers. His bizarre detachment from the actual duties of the presidency has reached such a level that even leftwingers as Ed Schultz are commenting on it.

And in case you’re wondering, the real life Perry Como loved the SCTV "Still Alive" parody.

H/T: The Radio Equalizer

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UPDATE: It turns out that the future is NOW. This Matthews video is running as a Marco Rubio campaign commercial as of yesterday.

Are you happy with the job that the Obama administration and the Democrats are doing? If so, then vote for Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate because Chris Matthews happily proclaimed that Crist is going to be the new star in the Democrat caucus. However, if you are dissatisfied with the direction this nation is going and want to change it, then Marco Rubio will be your choice which is why your humble correspondent won’t be a bit surprised to see this video of Matthews making his proclamation about Crist on Morning Joe end up as a Rubio campaign commercial. Here is a transcript of Matthews delivering his kiss of death product endorsement of Charlie Crist:

Charlie Crist is going to be the new star of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. He’s going to be a major player in the Democratic Party down the road. He’ll be a moderate Democrat somewhere in the middle. I think he’s very shrewd and nimble.

This sudden Matthews infatuation with Charlie Crist stands in sharp contrast with his attitude back in May when he was sharply critical of the Florida governor’s performance on Meet The Press where he played coy by avoiding a direct answer about which party he would caucus with and for whom he would vote for Majority Leader of the Senate as you can see in the video below:

Here is a transcript of Matthews’ disgust with Crist at that time:

…I used to sort of like Charlie Crist but he’s off-base on that. You have to join a party caucus before you can vote for leader. He can’t decide which leader he’s going to vote for because he’s not even voting. He must join a caucus then you get to vote for which person leads that caucus. That’s how it’s done. He doesn’t seem to know that or he rejects knowing it. What do you think? Is he just ignorant or is he playing a game here?

So what changed in the past couple of months to cause Matthews to move from disgust with Charlie Crist to developing a "strange new respect" for the Florida governor? Most likely it was the realization by Matthews and fellow liberals that the likely Democrat nominees, Kendrick Meek or billionaire Jeff Greene, have little or no chance of winning the general election in November. Therefore the best chance of promoting the liberal agenda in the Senate would be to back Charlie Crist running as an independent who was too liberal to win the Republican nomination.

And Marco Rubio should thank Matthews for that wonderful future campaign commercial clip reminding Florida voters (many of whom still mistakenly think of Crist as a Republican) that Charlie is a Democrat.

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He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. —Thomas Jefferson, The United States Declaration of Independence.

Oops! So what happened to all that discrimination and violation of civil rights that the Arizona immigration law was supposed to cause? Apparently the federal government decided it was so lacking that they didn’t include it in their lawsuit against the Arizona law. Jake Tapper of ABC News notes the distinct lack of a discrimination charge in the federal lawsuit:

As widely anticipated, Attorney General Eric Holder today filed a lawsuit against Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer over the state’s immigration law. The suit seeks a preliminary injunction to stop the law from being implemented.

The court filing states that Arizona law is pre-empted by federal law and therefore violates the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The filing makes no assertion that the law is discriminatory or risks being applied in a discriminatory fashion, as the president and other officials said they feared would be the case. Interestingly, this suit makes no civil rights charges against the Arizona law.

Huh? So what was all that liberal thunder about how discriminatory the Arizona immigration immigration law supposedly is? Apparently the U.S. Justice Department was unable to find such discrimination to use in its lawsuit. Instead, the federal government is taking the King George III approach when the states attempt to enforce laws neglected by the Crown, oops, I mean the Obama administration.

The Associated Press also notes the embarrassing lack of a discrimination charge in the federal lawsuit:

PHOENIX — The federal lawsuit against Arizona’s tough new immigration law focuses heavily on a question that has been in the spotlight repeatedly the past decade and dates back to the Founding Fathers: The right of the government to keep states from enacting laws that usurp federal authority. The lawsuit filed in Phoenix federal court on Tuesday sidestepped concerns about the potential for racial profiling and civil rights violations most often raised by immigration advocates. Experts said those are weaker arguments that don’t belong in a legal challenge brought by the White House to get the measure struck down.

Weaker arguments? You can bet that if discrimination could have been detected in the Arizona immigration law, it would have been front and center in the federal lawsuit.

So how are other MSM outlets handling the very notable lack of a discrimination charge in the federal lawsuit against Arizona? Very gingerly. The Washington Post article on this lawsuit is an example. The embarrassing absence of any discrimination charge is only mentioned towards the end of the story:

Although the lawsuit cites potential "detention and harassment" of U.S. citizens and immigrants who do not carry identification documents, it declines to make a legal argument that the law would lead to racial profiling. But a senior Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that if the law takes effect, "we will monitor it very, very closely, and if we become aware of any racial profiling or civil rights violations, that’s something that we would take action on.” 

Shh! Let’s not focus on the lack of a racial profiling charge in the federal lawsuit against Arizona.

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Artist Norman Rockwell’s thought crime seems to be that he wasn’t a kneejerk liberal. And for that, he has earned an angry leftwing rant from Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik who claimed that Rockwell lacked "courage" for not glorifying leftwing causes. Rockwell’s "Four Freedoms" series? It disgusts Gopnik because it "doesn’t invoke a communist printing his pamphlets or an atheist on a soapbox." So if Gopnik can’t stand the popular Norman Rockwell, just what kind of art does he like? You can find out below the fold but a warning: please be sure you are not consuming liquids while viewing an example of Gopnik art or you risk spewing it over your computer monitor when you burst out laughing.

However, before we take a look at Gopniks laughable taste in art, let us join him in mid-rant as he tells us how much he absolutely hates Norman Rockwell:

Norman Rockwell is often championed as the great painter of American virtues. Yet the one virtue most nearly absent from his work is courage. He doesn’t challenge any of us, or himself, to think new thoughts or try new acts or look with fresh eyes. From the docile realism of his style to the received ideas of his subjects, Rockwell reliably keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone. 

And here is more of Gopnik leaving the sanity zone:

Rockwell’s greatest sin as an artist is simple: His is an art of unending cliché. The reason we so easily "recognize ourselves" in his paintings is because they reflect the standard image we already know. His stories resonate so strongly because they are the stories we’ve told ourselves a thousand times. 

…America isn’t about Rockwell’s one-note image of it — or anyone else’s. This country is about a game-changing guarantee that equal room will be made for Latino socialists, disgruntled lesbian spinsters, foul-mouthed Jewish comics and even, dare I say it, for metrosexual half-Canadian art critics with a fondness for offal, spinets and kilts.

Speaking of offal, here is an example of the kind of art Gopnik likes:

 That’s right. A smudgy piece of ugly printing is considered great art by Gopnik. Of course, to Gopnik art is all about politics even to the extent of the need for affirmative action art. Here he is analyzing art quotas of works that appeared in the Obama White House:

They seem to redress past imbalances in the nation’s sense of its own art….But there are still only six works by women, vs. 41 by men. And there are no works at all by Latinos. (A work by the deceased Cuban American artist Félix González-Torres would have filled the gap perfectly, and added a nod to the country’s gay culture. The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum has one that could have been borrowed.)

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Perhaps it is frustration, as expressed by Anderson Cooper, with the new White House rules inhibiting reports about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that is now causing a big crack in the Mainstream Media wall which until recently mostly avoided direct criticism of the Obama administration response. However that crack has now turned into a flood of surprising criticism coming from formerly friendly outlets such as the Associated Press. Read this amazing AP report and keep in mind that it is no longer just conservative sources that are harsh in their criticisms of the Obama Gulf oil containment efforts:

NEW ORLEANS — BP and the Obama administration face mounting complaints that they are ignoring foreign offers of equipment and making little use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up what may now be the biggest spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Coast Guard said there have been 107 offers of help from 44 nations, ranging from technical advice to skimmer boats and booms. But many of those offers are weeks old, and only a small number have been accepted. The vast majority are still under review, according to a list kept by the State Department.

Ouch! But the criticism of the poor reponse of the Obama administration response to this crises becomes even more heated:

A report prepared by investigators with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., detailed one case in which the Dutch government offered April 30 to provide four oil skimmers that collectively could process more than 6 million gallons of oily water a day. It took seven weeks for the U.S. to approve the offer.

Even the credibility of the Coast Guard is being called into question:

Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana’s hard-hit Plaquemines Parish, said BP and the Coast Guard provided a map of the exact locations of 140 skimmers that were supposedly cleaning up the oil. But he said that after he repeatedly asked to be flown over the area so he could see them at work, officials told him only 31 skimmers were on the job.

Something seems to have shifted dramatically in the past few days in MSM coverage of this crises.  And was this the reason for the "transparent" Obama administration attempting to inhibit coverage of the Gulf oil spill?

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Former Washington Post writer David Weigel has attempted to explain away his Journolist e-mails attacking conservatives by claiming he was a trash-talking thoughtless jerk. If you think that self-damnation was bad, at least it was much better than admitting something even closer to the truth which would be that he deviously allowed people to think of him as a conservative. In fact, he is still lamely making that conservative claim in his Big Journalism article but first the jerk confession:

…I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at conservatives. Why did I want these people to like me so much? Why did I assume that I needed to crack wise and rant about people who, usually for no more than five minutes were getting on my nerves? Because I was stupid and arrogant, and needlessly mean…

Unfortunately, Weigel proved that he still remains a jerk by continuing to claim that he was somehow conservative:

I interned at the libertarian Center for Individual Rights in the summer of 2001. I supported the Iraq War and crashed an anti-war protest on my campus. I voted in Republican primaries in 2002 and 2004. (Since I was in Illinois, I voted in 2004 for Jack Ryan to get the GOP’s nomination for Senate, to oppose Barack Obama. I’m better off than one of those guys.)

Weigel still tries to convince us of his one-time conservative credentials despite the fact that in the three presidential elections since 2000 he voted for Nader, Kerry, and Obama. Gee! What a "conservative!"

Despite his pretend conservatism, Weigel just can’t seem to understand why people think he has misrepresented himself:

Still, this was hubris. It was the hubris of someone who rose — objectively speaking — a bit too fast, and someone who misunderstood a few things about his trade. It was also the hubris of someone who thought the best way to be annoyed about something was to do it publicly. This is the reason I’m surprised at commentary accusing me of misrepresenting myself.

Except that liberal Journolist was supposed to be private and Weigel wrote there in the expectation that it would remain so. Dave’s misrepresentation mode continues. 

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