Not Quite

To be precise, I don't think Billo is endorsing the public option in this clip. In fact, he up and says that the public option "is done... it's not going to happen" right at the beginning. What O'Reilly is actually endorsing here is the exchanges, and the coverage subsidies that would allow people to buy insurance on the exchange. He's endorsing the architecture of the Obama health care plan. On the right that is seen as a government takeover, so if you judge it by their take, he endorsed a public option. But he didn't.

I'll take the endorsement of the exchanges, however. And I'm not surprised. It's fundamentally a Republican, free-market idea.

Been A Long Time

Since I was told that I hate America. I have to admit I missed it.



Actually I thought this was a fairly strange "expose" of Netroots Nation, whereupon O'Reilly allowed smart, liberal Americans to actually express their views on his show without interruption, perhaps for the first time ever on his show. More exposes please!

Countdown To Telling The Truth

You've probably been following the very strange deal between Fox and GE to silence a feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann that threatened to sully the two corporate parents.

At an off-the-record summit meeting for chief executives sponsored by Microsoft in mid-May, the PBS interviewer Charlie Rose asked Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of G.E., and his counterpart at the News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, about the feud.

Both moguls expressed regret over the venomous culture between the networks and the increasingly personal nature of the barbs. Days later, even though the feud had increased the audience of both programs, their lieutenants arranged a cease-fire, according to four people who work at the companies and have direct knowledge of the deal.

In early June, the combat stopped, and MSNBC and Fox, for the most part, found other targets for their verbal missiles (Hello, CNN).

Glenn Greenwald has been following this issue with the depth it deserves, noting it as part of the larger danger about corporate control of the media, and how certain subjects get denied coverage because it would bother those corporate benefactors. It's a serious issue.

Therefore, I was a bit dismayed by Olbermann's non-denial denial about any "deal":

On his show last night, Keith Olbermann essentially issued a non-denial denial about the GE-MSNBC-Fox story, saying that he himself was "party to no deal" - exactly what he said in the original New York Times article. There's no reason to doubt Olbermann - however, as journalism prof Dan Kennedy suggests (h/t Glenn Greenwald & Jay Rosen), Olbermann's own personal lack of involvement in a "deal" is far less important than the simple fact that GE started trying to give blatant news-content orders to MSNBC's newsroom - orders that may have been followed in places well beyond Olbermann's control.
Certainly, the fact that Olbermann resisted those orders is good news - but again, as I said in my original post, this story wasn't an indictment of Olbermann - it was an indictment of the entire corporate-news structure of the networks in question.

Indeed, in Olbermann's non-denial denial last night, he didn't refute the quotes from General Electric management, he didn't refute that MSNBC execs told its producers that they "wanted the channel's other programs [to] restrain from criticizing Fox directly," and he didn't refute this report from TV Newser saying that the parent companies for Fox and MSNBC have been in negotiations for months.

It was a weird segment last night, with Olbermann hitting O'Reilly on a ticky-tack maneuver, noting the coincidental timing of the George Tiller death as the reason he temporarily "retired" his O'Reilly character, and hitting Brian Stelter, the writer, without disagreeing with a word written in the piece.

It is very good that Olbermann has apparently stopped using Richard Wolff. But his dodgy statements last night about the provenance of any "deal" between GE and Fox leave me fairly cold. He claims that he was party to no deal and yet praises Greenwald's coverage of the story, which asserts that there, in fact, was a deal.

Olbermann has now made two contradictory statements about his role in the affair:

He confirms what Glenn Greenwald wrote, which is that he stopped covering O'Reilly because he was told to do so by his bosses at GE

He says that his decision to stop covering O'Reilly was purely a response to O'Reilly's role in the Tiller incident, and that any assertion to the contrary is a blackmail attempt by Roger Ailes

It is clear that there was a deal between GE and News Corp, because both are confirming it. So Olbermann is, at best, guilty of obfuscation by claiming that he was not "party" to any deal.

I'm mildly a fan of Olbermann, and his willingness to tell the truth about health care and the money drowning the process is significant and vital. But his cloying behavior in this episode thus far has damaged his reputation to an extent.

And A Hearty F-You, Billo

Via S,N!



I'm really starting to hate the kind of unthinking American exceptionalism that has destroyed our ability to advance as a society. Does anyone seriously think that this is the best we can do?

FBI Comes In To Investigate The Tiller Murder

The FBI has taken on an investigation into the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

A federal investigation has been launched in connection with the fatal shooting of George Tiller, the U.S. Department of Justice announced today.

The department's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for Kansas are investigating the case [...]

"The federal probe will consist of a thorough review of the evidence and an assessment of any potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) or other federal statutes," according to a news release issued today by the Justice Department.

The FACE Act was enacted by Congress in 1994 to establish federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for violent, obstructionist or damaging conduct affecting reproductive health care providers and recipients.

Making this a federal crime just ups the ante, and increases the penalties, I believe. Plus it's a good symbolic show of support for the FACE Act. Maybe they can investigate incitement as part of that damaging conduct affecting reproductive health. Those who would put forward false equivalences need to understand the words of Mary Alice Carr:

O'Reilly is being incredibly disingenuous when he claims that he bears no responsibility for others' actions in the killing of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday. When you tell an audience of millions over and over again that someone is an executioner, you cannot feign surprise when someone executes that person.

You cannot claim to hold no responsibility for what other people do when you call for people to besiege Tiller's clinic, as O'Reilly did in January 2008. And this was after Tiller had been shot in both arms and after his clinic had been bombed.

O'Reilly knew that people wanted Tiller dead, and he knew full well that many of those people were avid viewers of his show. Still, he fanned the flames. Every time I appeared on his show, I received vitriolic and hate-filled e-mails. And if I received those messages directly, I can only imagine what type of feedback O'Reilly receives. He knows that his words incite violence.

That is why I made a personal pledge to no longer sit across from him after he called for people to converge on Tiller's clinic. I realized that appearing on the show with him would only legitimize his speech and that no good would come of my efforts.

And I'm glad that, in the wake of this tragedy, people are coming out with stories of how Dr. Tiller helped them. A sample.

To the Tiller family;
When I was 6, my mom was pregnant with a child she really wanted. The doctors told her, abut 4 or 5 months in, that if she carried the child to term, she had a 90 percent chance of not surviving. She of course, got an abortion, and I got my mom for an extra 14 years. Mom died when I was 20, and I have such gratitude for doctors like your husband who gave me my mom for those 14 extra, precious years. My heart goes out to you. May you find healing and may his memory live on in those that he loved and those that he saved.

And:

In 2002 I found out I was carrying triplets. My husband did not want me to have them. The day of my appointment I was scared and not sure this was the right decision. They took me back and did an ultrasound. I asked if they all had heartbeats and the nurse said yes. I asked if I would have the chance to talk to the doctor and right away she went and got Dr Tiller. He came in and looked at my babies on the screen. Then he looked at me and said “God gave you these babies, it’s not my job to take them away.” He asked if I agreed and I immediately said yes. He told the nurse to take me to the counter and have them give me my money. You know that day was a turning point for me. I ended up having a great pregnancy and three healthy baby girls. I can never thank Dr. Tiller enough for sending me away that day.

Late-term abortions are 1% of all abortions total. But the examples here, the personal stories, build a picture of what those medical actions are all about. They're about medical necessity.

Patriot Store

I flagged this when it happened but never wrote about it because I wanted more information. Tula Connell from the AFL-CIO got it.

We heard Bill O'Reilly is having trouble finding American-made T-shirts to sell in his Patriot Store. We know he's heartbroken because, after all, what good is a Patriot Store if its products are made in El Salvador or Haiti? (Especially if you're selling red, white and blue "American Patriot" T-shirts, like the one on the left.)

We heard he can't find made-in-the-USA T-shirts because O'Reilly said so himself (h/t to D-Day). In his "Mailbag" segment on May 22, O'Reilly took the following question from Stewart Hollins in Rio Rancho, N.M.:

Mr. O, great looking mugs. Terrific bold and fresh shirts. Where are the items made?

And O' Reilly responded:

Mugs are made in the USA, Stewart. The shirts in Central America. We cannot get the volume of shirts we need made in America, sadly.

Yes, he's selling Central American shirts in his Patriot Store.

It's going to take a while to find out the conditions at the factory where these shirts are being made, but I hope they do. As Connell notes, plenty of manufacturers in America can handle Mr. Patriot Store's volume. There's no question that this is a cost issue, and the workers get left holding the bag on that.

The Work Goes On

Bill O'Reilly spent an entire hour last night assuming that the murder of George Tiller was actually an attack on him. He brushed past his rote one-line expression of sorrow, claimed that everything he ever said about Tiller was true and based on facts, and then played the "who's attacking me now" game for the rest of the program. It looked to me like his only regret at Tiller's murder was that he wasn't on vacation at the time.

O'Reilly hosted a couple far-right lawyers who have been active in trying to get Tiller's perfectly legal clinic shut down, using some of those "facts" that are actually vicious lies that show their bias. But Scott Roeder and the fascist movement also dedicated to this goal did not succeed. The clinic will stay open.

The slaying Sunday of one of the nation's most prominent abortion providers has left a local colleague outraged but with a renewed resolve. Dr. LeRoy Carhart of Bellevue is preparing to temporarily take the helm at his slain friend's clinic in Wichita, Kan.

"Harm one of us, it won't do anything to harm the movement," said Carhart, head of the Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska.

Carhart described himself as a close friend of Dr. George Tiller's. Tiller was shot and killed Sunday morning in the lobby of the Lutheran church he attends in Wichita, Kan. He was serving as an usher [...]

After Sunday's fatal shooting, Tiller's chief nurse called Carhart. Carhart made arrangements to keep his Bellevue clinic open while he is gone. When contacted Sunday, he said he was en route to Wichita to run Tiller's clinic for at least the next week.

That's key. Intimidation and extremism have helped deny access to women's health services across the country. But brave men and women are stepping up, and refusing to be cowed.

By the way, it's important to understand what Tiller provided, legal services that have been demonized by the right.

I know most of my readers are pro-choice but I still think it worth considering what it means to ask a woman to carry a pregnancy to term when she knows that the baby will have one of the following conditions:
Anencephaly
Trisomy 13
Trisomy 18
Trisomy 21
Polycystic kidney disease
Spina bifida
Hydrocephalus
Potter's syndrome
Lethal dwarfism
Holoprosencephaly
Anterior and posterior encephalocele
Non-immune hydrops

The cached version of Dr. Tiller's admission criteria shows the following:

Admission Criteria
In order to offer you an appointment, we require that a physician refer you to our center. In addition, we need your genetic counselor or doctor to provide us with gestational and diagnostic information regarding your pregnancy. Over the past twenty-five years, we have had experience with pregnancy terminations in such situations as anencephaly, Trisomy 13, 18, and 21, polycystic kidney disease, spina bifida, hydrocephalus, Potter's syndrome, lethal dwarfism, holoprosencephaly, anterior and posterior encephalocele, non-immune hydrops, and a variety of other very significant abnormalities.

Amanda Marcotte has a great video about this as well.

RH Reality Check: Late Term Abortions from RH Reality Check on Vimeo.

Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines

Not hard to picture the reaction of an unbalanced person to this daily drumbeat.



Apparently, Billo will "address" the subject on his program tonight. But only tonight, I suspect. Then he'll find another enemy to demonize. And then feign shock when that person gets gunned down, too.

White Man's Burden

The old crazy uncles that the GOP would rather keep in the basement have all burst to the surface, and the craziest of the crazy if Tom Tancredo. His assertion that the National Council of La Raza is "the Latino KKK" not only offends that organization and all Hispanics, but members of the GOP who have appeared at NCLR events and accepted their awards. We truly are seeing the crackup of the white male conservatives.

African-American and Hispanic conservatives who have questioned her judicial philosophy also note the historic nature of the appointment and praise her triumph over economic hardship. White conservatives, on the other hand, have been far more personal and aggressive in their attacks on Sotomayor's record, repeatedly accusing her of "reverse racism" and questioning her intelligence.

White male conservatives, despite polling showing both the public and GOP insiders disagree, are maintaining that Sotomayor is an unqualified bigot.

Pat Buchanan described Sotomayor in a column Friday as an "anti-white liberal judicial activist" as well as a "lightweight" who "covers up her intellectual inadequacy by bullying from the bench."

John Derbyshire, at National Review Online, took admiration for Sotomayor's life story as an intentional insult to him and all other white people:

I get mighty annoyed by the unspoken implication in a lot of commentary that anyone not a member of a Protected Minority must have grown up in a twelve-bedroom lakeside mansion and been chauffered off to prep school with a silver spoon in his mouth. Judge Sotomayor was raised in public housing? So was I. Her mother was a nurse working late shifts? So was mine. When did white working poor people disappear off the face of the earth? Where are the eager listeners to their "compelling stories"?

There's lots more at the link, including Billo chiming in with how "the left sees the white man as a problem." As a white man, I can say pretty directly that I don't. No, but what does seem to be the case is that the right, in particular the white male conservative right, can't stand that their coded attacks aren't working anymore. They have used this playbook for decades, mostly with success, and now the country has changed, gotten more diverse, more interconnected, more tolerant, and they don't know what the hell to do.

Some people, mainly the ones in charge of electing Republicans, have recognized this. But the loudest members of the party, the media hounds, haven't, and they still think they can call Sotomayor a "reverse racist" or a "twofer" and reap the rewards. And when it falls flat, now that the worm has turned, they figure, this all must be because everyone hates whitey.

Funny, several years ago the Democrats rejecting Miguel Estrada as a circuit court judge was supposed to ruin their relationship with Hispanic voters. But there's a difference between rejecting a conservative judge who happens to be Hispanic and rejecting a Hispanic woman who happens to be a judge. They've foregrounded the race and gender attacks, and this side of the GOP is simply ugly to watch.

The Cognitive Dissonance, It Burns

Here are just three unrelated, and yet somehow related, stories, that make me wonder how any Republican can keep all these ideas in their head without it exploding.

• The fiscally responsible House GOP, always railing against how President Obama is spending "the people's money," is funding their re-branding effort with taxpayer dollars by using Eric Cantor's House account.

• Bill O'Reilly, who has made a cottage industry out of ambushing liberals by directing reporters to accost them on the street, actually recorded a video where he decries the loss of privacy from public figures. Really.



• And in the most insane example, Rush Limbaugh tries to explain the "quest for power" by a group other than him, in this case the Democratic Party, by referring to his own drug addiction, assuming of course that every single person in the party has exactly the same obsessions as, well, him.



I really don't even know what to say about that one.

They're Reframing Torture

Greg Sargent is right - the media has managed to find a "he said, she said" entryway into the torture debate by focusing on the irrelevant data point of whether or not torture works. It doesn't - ask Bush's FBI Director - but turning this into a debate humanizes the tactic, turning it into some option that's open to reasonable disagreement instead of a universally rejected, illegal action. We don't have a debate over whether stealing from rich investors through a Ponzi scheme "worked." It's illegal and that's the end of the story. Here's Sargent:

This is precisely what Cheney and other Bushies want the debate to be about: Whether torture has stopped terror attacks, as opposed to whether it’s moral, or detrimental to America’s global image, or a boon to Al Qaeda recruitment, or whether the architects of the policy broke the law and should be prosecuted.

The Bushies want this question — “did torture stave off terror attacks and save lives?” — hovering in the air. There’s plenty of evidence that torture hasn’t worked at all and has done more harm than good. Even some former Bush administration officials have conceded it hasn’t done anything to stop terror attacks.

But it’s easy for the Cheney camp to muddy the waters and turn this into a matter of debate by citing unspecified classified info that supposedly supports the claim that it has saved lives — info that we’ll never see. Having the debate focused this way also lays the groundwork for the Cheney camp to say “I told you so” in the event of another terror attack.

And not only do sadists like Bill O'Reilly enable this misdirected debate, but useful idiots like Andrea Mitchell.

The law never asks if what the lawbreakers have done "worked." The law follows the law to its conclusion. A debate about the efficacy of torturing human beings debases everyone who participates in it. It mainstreams these vile actions. Eric Holder has this exactly right.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that he would "follow the law" as he weighed potential prosecutions of Bush administration officials who authorized controversial harsh interrogation techniques [...]

"We are going to follow the evidence, follow the law and take that where it leads. No one is above the law," Holder said at an Earth Day event.

...I can't believe I'm saying this, but what Shepard Smith said.

On FoxNews.com's online show The Strategy Room, Smith took his opposition to a whole other level. "We are America!" he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. "I don't give a rat's ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!"

...I should add that the NYT also ran a powerful op-ed today from Ali Soufan, an FBI special agent who interrogated Abu Zubaydah before the CIA decided to take the gloves off, who avers that "there was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics." I still say it's a false debate.

Also, He'll Never Send A Million Dollars To The ACLU Unless They "Lighten Up"

Bill O'Reilly has laid down the marker. Under no circumstances will he ever, ever, visit Spain.



O'REILLY: Finally, unless this action is condemned by the Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, then I am not going to that country.

In a related development, Spain asked to get that in writing. I don't know if this extends to Billo's poolboy Jesse Walters, who could have a field day on a 6-night tour of the Costa del Sur ambushing random Spanish girls.

Meanwhile, Dennis Miller chi-chis that the Spanish "folded like a balsa wood chair after a Cat 5" after the Madrid train bombing. But they haven't had a terrorist attack on their soil since, and because that's the only marker on which we're supposed to judge President Bush, clearly Zapatero is a strong, powerful leader. Wait, their arguments have no internal logic? Stop.

(By the way, I'd love to see Miller playing the Waziristan Chuckle Hut and backpedaling furiously, "Hey, you cats are solid, America has been asking for it like a terminal cancer patient by a Kevorkian machine! Can I keep my testicles?")

End Harassment Now

Amanda Terkel sat down with Keith Olbermann last night to discuss how Bill O'Reilly's lapdog of a producer stalked her for two hours across state lines to harass her with an interview as "payback" for daring to criticize the Papa Bear in a blog post.

I think enough is enough and it's time to fight back.

On Saturday, March 21, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly sent one of his producers to stalk, harass, and ambush ThinkProgress.org’s managing editor Amanda Terkel. Upset over a ThinkProgress report that noted O’Reilly’s insensitivity to rape, O’Reilly sent two men to track Amanda in a car for two hours, and then confronted her with hostile questions while she was on vacation.

Sadly, Amanda is just one of at least 40 different victims of O’Reilly’s Harassment Machine. O’Reilly has hired producers whose job is to track, harass, and intimidate anyone whom O’Reilly perceives as an opponent. That’s not “journalism” — that’s a mafia-style operation. And we need to put an end to it.

Tell O’Reilly’s advertisers that you want them to issue a clear statement explaining their opposition to O’Reilly’s “ambush journalism.” Fill out the form below to tell O’Reilly’s corporate advertisers to stop supporting the O’Reilly Harassment Machine.

Clearly, an ego like Billo's will not be shamed out of doing this. He may understand if his minders tell them the ambushes specifically hurt his bottom line. The line has been crossed and he needs to stop.

Sign the form.

Let's Chip In And Fund Amanda Terkel's Harrassment Lawsuit

This is some creepy business by Bill O'Reilly's goons, which Papa Bear somehow sees appropriate because the subject holds separate views than he does, although I think the authorities would beg to differ. This looks actionable to me.

• The Stalking: Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours. Looking back, my friend and I remember seeing their tan SUV following us for much of the trip.

• The Ambush: Shortly after checking into our lodgings, we emerged and immediately saw two men walking toward us calling out my name. Watters said he was from Fox News, but never said his or his companion’s name, nor did he say he was with The O’Reilly Factor.

• The Surprise Attack: Watters immediately began asking me why I was causing “pain and suffering” to the Alexa Foundation. He never gave me the context for his questions. Confused, I repeatedly asked him what he was talking about and whether he could refresh my memory, but he just continued shouting his question.

• The Evasion: I said that it was inappropriate for O’Reilly to imply that just because a woman may be drunk and/or dressed in a certain way, she should expect to be raped. Watters asked me whether I had listened to the interview (which I had) and claimed that O’Reilly had made the comments in the context of a commentary on Mel Gibson/drunkenness. When I tried to ascertain why he was attacking ThinkProgress in particular — even though other sites had also covered the story — he said that we were part of the “smear pipeline,” which also included the “Soros-funded” Media Matters. He ignored my comments when I asked if Fox News also smears people.

• Setting A Guilt Trap: Watters ended the charade by demanding that I look into the camera and apologize to the Alexa Foundation and rape victims. I told them that I don’t speak through Fox News and if someone from the Alexa Foundation would like to personally call me, I’d be happy to speak with that person.

• More Stalking: The camera man then continued to film me as I walked down the block. After a few minutes while I waited at the light to cross the street, Watters called him back and they left.

Somehow O'Reilly considers himself a defender of privacy despite all this. And KO released a primer last year on how to deal with this: the key words are Mackris, Loofahs and Malmedy.



You never know when this will come in handy.

"Has Someone Ever Criticized Your Tie And You Just Want To Slice Open Their Throat?"

I think Glenn Beck is delivering way too much information about himself in this clip:

BECK: So, the shooting in Alabama. Did you hear how they described this guy? I mean it was the typical, "He was a loner, he was quiet," oh really? But what they really described, when they really got down into it, what they said was, here's a guy who felt that he had been wronged. He didn't feel comfortable talking to anybody, he was disgruntled and everything else and then he went out and shot a bunch of people. As they were describing him and they said, you gotta go, now more than ever, you gotta start talking to people, you have to start connecting with people, because we're going into hard times, yada yada yada. As I'm listening to the description, first of all this guy's a psycho, clearly he's a psycho. But as I'm listening to him, I'm thinking about the American people that feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like no one is hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you on both sides. If you're a conservative, you're called a racist, you want to starve children. Yada yada yada. And every time they do speak out, they’re shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into that guy?

O’REILLY: Well, look, nobody, even if they’re frustrated, is going to hurt another human being unless they’re mentally ill. I think.

BECK: I think pushed to the wall, you don’t think people get pushed to the wall?

O’REILLY: Nah, I don’t believe in this snap thing. I think that that kind of violence is inside you and it’s a personality disorder.

This is not an unfortunate attempt at a causal connection. This is Glenn Beck trying to justify himself to himself, with Bill O'Reilly (!) as the voice of reason. Since he's been put in his proper ideological box at Fox News, he has spiraled downward into this militia mentality ever faster. Today, he's doing his show from something called the Doom Room for a special called "You Are Not Alone."



Beck speaks to a small, strange, resentful movement at the far, far right of the spectrum that is emotionally unstable. There's clearly an audience for it, and increasingly the conservative movement is embodying it - note "the real problem is bisexuality, not mass murder" articulated by Rod Dreher - but it's notably dangerous. Beck is going to be leading a group out to the woods in Idaho and trying to secede within a month, I'm thinking.

Bill O'Reilly v. Jessica Alba

And Alba wins. Big.

Alba and Fox TV show host Bill O’Reilly traded punches last week after the presidential inauguration. After Alba told a Fox reporter that O’Reilly was “kind of an a-hole;” he retaliated by calling her a “pinhead” for telling a reporter to “be Sweden about it,” assuming she meant Switzerland.

“I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately,” Alba blogged on MySpace Celebrity. “Last week, Mr. Bill O'Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people... it's so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland.”

Although Switzerland is more frequently cited as an example of neutrality, Sweden did indeed follow a policy of neutrality during World War II. History point to Alba.

Of course, O'Reilly thinks that our soldiers killed unarmed Germans in cold blood at Malmedy when the opposite was true, so he's not what I would call a WWII scholar. Or a scholar. Or smart.

Capacity for Shame Non-Existent

This is a small point, but Bill O'Reilly, who spends November 1-December 25 every year filling air time on his show fighting the War on Christmas, had a section in Parade Magazine this weekend called the Great American Holiday Quiz.

It's different, though, because Parade paid him money to use the term "holidays," whereas...

Hugging The Panda

This Bill O'Reilly interview on Jon Stewart last night wasn't necessarily significant for Billo's typical dross about how Stewart would be "stoned to death" if he ever visited Alabama (because, as you know, Bill does his show four nights a week from Tuscaloosa) or how this is a center-right nation based on traditionalism (though Stewart's retort about how the tradition of America is the pursuit of individual freedom and gay marriage is the next logical step was pretty good) and how "we're the noble nation" (submitted without comment). No, the best, most revealing part came at the end. Stewart kicked off the segment by showing a bunch of quotes about how nervous and scared Billo is with the prospect of an Obama Presidency, and then he pulled out the cocoa and marshmallows and a snuggly teddy bear and tried to make him feel more comfortable. Late in the interview, a propos of nothing, O'Reilly starts talking about the bear. I'm putting this moment on the couch. It starts around 5:30.

O'REILLY: As long as I can have the panda, I'm fine.

STEWART: That's not a panda!

O'REILLY: Sure it is! This is a panda! What do you think it is?

STEWART: You've gotta get out of your "luxury Long Island life" and get around and start seeing animals.

It's really not that he got the name of the animal wrong. It's that he was so sure of it, and immediately when told he was wrong, he clung to it. That's not only his knee-jerk reaction, but the entire conservative movement. Their version of what's right is whatever their opponents say is wrong. Facts are tangential.

I didn't think we'd ever get such a clear "2+2=5" moment, on national television no less. Maybe I shouldn't make so much out of it, but I'm instituting this feature into my writing: any time a conservative delivers obvious misinformation, they will be heretofore described as "hugging the panda." And when you're in an argument with one of them, over whether this is a center-right nation or whether tax cuts increase revenue or whether the social safety net hurts poor people, remember that these are the kind of people who not only think a teddy bear is a panda, but who insist it even when they are told they are wrong.

I'm a tree-hugger? You're a panda-hugger.

The Slide On Foreign Policy

Barack Obama's assertion to Bill O'Reilly that the surge has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams is being simplified and ripped from context, but it remains a stupid thing to say. Obama was trying to express that the security gains when viewed in a vacuum were positive, but the political situation remains deadlocked, and until Iraqis are allowed the freedom to handle their own affairs, that will never change. Indeed, withdrawal is the only way to break the deadlock instead of enabling a growing Shiite strongman in Maliki. In other words, the surge was a strategic failure. But the problem with the statement is that you know it would be distilled to that one soundbite, which provides fodder to your opponents while giving you nothing in return. Sarah Palin already used this line on the campaign trail yesterday.

During the primary election, Obama was willing to argue for a new mindset for our foreign policy. Now he's buying in to some pretty reprehensible right-wing frames in order to squeeze out a few independent and Republican votes.

He also proclaimed his "absolute" belief in the "War on Terror," and pledged, once again, "never to take a military option off the table" (not even the nuclear option) against the "major threat" of Iran.

In short, he continued his relentless campaign to purge himself of any of that weak-sister "anti-war" taint that got attached to him in the early days of his campaign -- which was, of course, responsible for his phenomenal rise in the first place [...]

Obama also emphasized the obscene and morally depraved position that has become the Democrat's standard line on Iraq: that the lazy, no-good Iraqis "still haven't taken responsibility" for running "their own country." The arrogance and inhumanity of this position is staggering, almost indescribable. The United States of America invaded Iraq, destroyed its society, slaughtered its citizens, drove millions from their homes, occupied the country and made itself the ultimate master and arbiter of the conquered land -- but still the Iraqis are condemned for "not taking responsibility for their own country."

Not a single Iraqi attacked America. Not one. America's action has killed more than a million Iraqis. But it is the Iraqis who are now "responsible."

Let me add to Floyd's complaint the sustained belief that we have to go into Afghanistan to fight "the real war on terror." This position is not out of step with the emerging Pentagon consensus and even the Bush Administration, which wants to affirm a "continuing war on terror" with what amounts to a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force. These are reactionary positions that fail to anticipate the continuing evolution of the situation on the ground. The criminal occupation of Iraq should be abandoned because it makes strategic as well as moral sense; but moving those forces into Afghanistan now, after years and years of continuous airstrikes have rapidly turned the population against the US would be foolhardy.

The bearded, turbaned men gather beneath a large, leafy tree in rural eastern Nangarhar province. When Malik Mohammed speaks on their behalf, his voice is soft but his words are harsh.

Mohammed makes it clear that the tribal chiefs have lost all faith in both their own government and the foreign soldiers in their country. Such disillusionment is widespread in Afghanistan, feeding an insurgency that has killed 195 foreign soldiers so far this year, 105 of them Americans.

"This is our land. We are afraid to send our sons out the door for fear the American troops will pick them up," says Mohammed, who was chosen by the others to represent them. "Daily we have headaches from the troops. We are fed up. Our government is weak and corrupt and the American soldiers have learned nothing."

A strong sense of frustration echoed through dozens of interviews by The Associated Press with Afghan villagers, police, government officials, tribal elders and Taliban who left and rejoined the religious movement. The interviews ranged from the capital, Kabul, to the rural regions near the border with Pakistan.

The overwhelming result: Ordinary Afghans are deeply bitter about American and NATO forces because of errant bombs, heavy-handed searches and seizures and a sense that the foreigners do not understand their culture. They are equally fed up with what they see as seven years of corruption and incompetence in a U.S.-backed government that has largely failed to deliver on development.

This is not Afghanistan circa 2002, which was happy to be rid of the Taliban and grateful for any measure of security and normalcy. This is 2008 and these people want us gone.

Biden's presence on the ticket means that these guys are not afraid to intervene for humanitarian reasons or even that ill-defined "vital national interests." We cannot allow fundamentalists to run around on the Afghan-Pakistan border but the way to dismantle terror networks is through local law enforcement and lifting up societies with anti-poverty measures that will choke off recruitment. I'm really worried that we've ceded far too much ground on foreign policy, robbing Obama of the uniqueness that has defined his campaign. He's welcome to prove me wrong. Immediately.

Proving Their Point

So let me get this straight: a woman writes an op-ed piece criticizing right-wing eliminationism for spawning violence. The reaction from the right is to stake her out at her home and intimidate her.

And this is supposed to prove that elements of the right-wing DON'T bully their opponents?