When I read over John’s exchanges with Glenn Kessler, I wonder: what’s in it for someone like Kessler to do an honest job as “fact-checker”? And of course the answer is “nothing”. If Kessler believed he could be fired for what he’s doing — without recourse to Koch-whoredom — he’d change his tune in a heartbeat.
That’s the world we live in. In local media, with less on the line, there might be some incentive for a reporter to have journalistic principles. At the national level, where Drudge rules our world, and wingnut welfare is king, there is none. And for law-breaking CEOs who have U of Chicago Law and Economics “fiduciary responsibilities” to fuck the moocher and looters and thus enrich shareholders….
The sooner the left understands all of this, the better. In American politics, among the permanent government and it’s hanger-ons, there’s fear and greed and there’s not much else.
beltane
I think many of us have understood this for years but have been dismissed as kooks and cranks. We should all be grateful to Glenn Kessler for making the mendacity of the Village media so obvious than even the brain dead among us cannot fail to see it.
DougJ
@beltane:
Good point, you are correct.
Violet
Greed is fear expressed in a different way. They operate on nothing but fear. Bunch of wimps.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
Not so much different than my life then, as a working stiff and 401(k) investor. There’s fear and, well, fear. That’s about it.
Punchy
I think Kessler got in too deep, couldnt pull out in time, was surprised by the sudden spewing of invectives, and wound up impregnating his reputation.
Violet
@Punchy: His reputation’s going to have a baby? What would that look like?
DougJ
@Punchy:
What does Sully think about impregnation?
Modulo Myself
I’m not totally sure it’s all wingnut welfare that makes a common tool like Kessler operate. I mean, once you start taking apart the emptiness and greed of someone like Mitt Romney, where would one stop? Our system is built on selling ideas that are not worth doing. If someone like Romney is a worthless excuse of ambition, where does leave the rest of those at the ‘top’ of the corporate ladder?
The unique thing about Romney which can not be said, ever, is that for all of his 250 million, it’s not like there are tons of humans wishing to change places with him.
Richard
Glenn Kessler’s intellectual dishonesty is just astonishing to behold.
We should ignore Romney’s FEC filings because they were reported by a Democratic source, meanwhile, we are supposed to take Romney’s statements at face value. Here we have facts vs. unsupported statements, and Kessler wants us to believe the latter. Of course, we should take Kessler as being “unbiased” because sometimes he criticizes GOPers.
lol
The Obama campaign gets it too. That’s why, since the very beginning of his campaign, he’s focused on local news and publications instead of dancing to the tune of the beltway press. It’s why Obama stays popular with people despite the tidal wave of bad press nationally – the locals are reporting a different story than national news sources(Fox, MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WP, etc) that are less trusted.
Of course, that strategy runs into problems with the left because they only pay attention to beltway press and thus think Obama isn’t talking about this or that despite him talking about this or that in every single speech.
Face
@Violet: To show his non-partisanships and throw the Dems a bone, he’ll have it aborted.
mai naem
@Punchy: Will his reputation have to go through a trans-penile ultrasound if he decides to abort the invectives? Does he have to do it within 20 weeks? Is there a waiting period? Inquiring minds want to know.
jl
Usually some kind of loathing goes along with fear and greed. I guess that is where the ‘lesser people’ and ‘muppets’ come in.
So, fear and loathing, and greed. Now we’re talking prime bigshot.
General Stuck
It’s not the left that needs to realize this. It’s the mushy independents that these days decide our elections that need to tune in. They have lived the good life with all the plastic money they could buy there toys with, and pay later, so there hasn’t been much incentive to pay attention. Well, stuff and easy credit is dodgy now, at best, and the lack of plentiful jobs seems more and more like the new normal. The hard
whiteright is hopeless and fueled by things like race and class resentment delivered to them by hucksters who tell them what their fears want to hear.But you can’t eat resentment, and it does not pay the bills, or put a roof over your head. It is a sad state of affairs that deprivation is reciprocal in this country for a freeing of the mind to see things as they are. Karma seems to have brought us a GOP candidate that is doing his part to educate the rubes. We will see what happens next.
maya
@Violet
It doesn’t matter. Stericycle will dispose of the fetus before it is brought to full term.
Dork
Im reserving judgement on Kessler until Tim Tebow weighs in.
Calouste
As I mentioned in the previous post, Kessler’s great-grandfather was one of the founders of Royal Dutch Shell. His grandfather was one of the founders of the largest steel manufacturer in the Netherlands. His father was an executive with Procter-Gamble. I strongly suspect he does this to keep himself entertained rather then needing the money.
Violet
@Calouste: Why isn’t he disclosing that in every post, article, tweet, etc.? The Washington Post should have found someone who’s grandparents weren’t rich, just to be nonpartisan.
beltane
@Calouste: At least Kessler is not a traitor to his class like that dirty FDR.
Why can’t he go be a fact checker for a Dutch newspaper? Do they have less tolerance for trust-fund baby hobbyists over there?
The Dangerman
Speaking of Drudge, he’s reporting that Condi Rice might be the VP choice. I’m sure she will do wonders for the Woman and African American vote for Romney.
No one could have predicted her.
Valdivia
@Calouste:
so not a gentleman scholar of the old school but a plutocrat wanker instead? ;)
jl
Headline on Yahoo News right now re Romney:
” Romney brands his campaign ‘America’s Comeback Team’ ”
Could have been worse. Could have been ‘Amercia’ again.
I saw the Romney/GOP campaign symbol, which I cannot figure out. Looks like an eagle smelling its armpit.
Uh, oh. I think, its smelling its LEFT armpit. What kind of secret message is that? He’ll lose some wingnuts with that kind of sloppy junk. Or maybe, it IS on purpose.
No marketers on Romney’s team? Or maybe good marketers are among first to see it’s hopeless and are staying away.
Princess Leia
@The Dangerman: Do you think there is any real chance he’ll pick her?
jl
@Calouste: There goes my generous theory that Kessler is one of the nicer ones operating from ‘fear’ only. I tried to look on the bright side but I give up for tonight.
For some reason, this stuff depresses me today, even though it is good news that Mitt is continuing to grind himself into a confused smelly, maybe contaminated, hash.
Tomorrow’s Friday the 13th. Might be fun day for one and all, eh, Mitt?
amk
mitbot calls other rethugs as bedwetters.
Karma is such a sweet beeyotch.
cmorenc
Speaking of stubbornly mendacious journalism, David Gergen did an astonishing hack job on the Bain story tonight on the Bain Story, giving an analysis that could have come straight from the Romney campaign’s talking points, except Gergen is smoother at it than they are. Gergen said he was personally familiar with the folks at Bain in Boston, and vouched for their character, and maintained that no one had yet shown that Romney had any substantive ties with Bain after 1999, that Romney’s remaining involvement with Bain on paper was only just that, that it takes time to complete the formal unwinding of a business relationship like that. Gergen COMPLETELY failed to mention the FIVE companies Bain newly listed Romney as President/CEO etc. in 2002, and likewise completely failed to mention Romney’s citation of his remaining as President/CEO of Bain in 2002 before the Mass Electoral Commission as evidence that he remained a Mass resident despite living in Utah for three years to lead the Olympics, in order to prove his eligibility to run for Governor. Gergen then said that the burden of proof is completely on the Obama campaign to prove there’s any substance to these allegations of Romney’s continued involvement with Bain. The only potentially negative (to Romney) angle Cooper and Gergen explored was whether the purchase of a medical waste company in 1999 shortly before Romney allegedly left Bain (which included disposing of aborted fetuses) would turn into a substantial issue (how exactly would the Obama campaign use it: to advertise the fact on Christian radio stations to depress right-wing religious turnout? After some tut-tutting by Cooper and King about how rough the Obama campaign’s tactics were on Bain, the segment ended.
What a complete whore Gergen is. What a useless tool John King is. Neither he nor Cooper challenged any of the facts or omissions or obvious fond Bias Gergen had for the Romney campaign and good old folks over at Bain whose character and integrity Gergen had vouched for.
Nellcote
The WaPoo has no reputation left to trash but I used to think The Annenberg Project had more integrity.
Valdivia
@jl:
More fail there because his Bain work was supposed to be as a turn-around business man. But that ‘turn-around’ was always vultury in nature. Now the brand just reinforces the Bain story. You can see how they thought they would just use the Olympics (see I saved them, I can save America too!) as a big infomercial for him.
IrishGirl
@beltane: Well, there’s always the loathing but I’m still not clear on who’s side it pertains….
muddy
@cmorenc: But, but, he disclosed that he made some money from Bain in the past, so clearly everything he says is balanced.
beltane
@cmorenc: Well, if David Gergen personally vouches for Mitt Romney then I guess we should all just toss our critical thinking skills out the window and submit to the wisdom of our Village overlord.
Really, David Gergen is a courtesan extraordinaire, having been passed around the beds of the rich and powerful for as long as anyone can remember. He is like the Madame de Pompadour of Washington.
jl
@Valdivia:
I’m repeating a old comment, so forgive me, but I think Bain is really isin what used to be called the ‘leveraged buyout’ industry. That industry got such a stinky reputation it ran and hid under the ‘equity capital’ label which has venture and growth capital firms, which tend to produce more inspiring stories.
A stapler. All right! I will contact the bright young folks at the Romney HQ and suggest a stapler as the theme of the logo.
A Staples stapler, folded in the shape of an eagle, smelling its RIGHT armpit. Now we are talking some real marketing, IMHO, of course.
I’ll see if I can get SPaT to write up the pitch.
I see ‘sell’ written all over this idea.
Valdivia
@jl:
Thanks for that explanation because he sells himself as the turn around wizard when in reality he is something else entirely.
I like your idea for the staple. SPaT would give it pizzaz! (and gin)
ETA: thanks for the paper btw if I didn’t say yet? Crashing now but more on that tomorrow.
The Dangerman
@Princess Leia:
Pro-choice, “unmarried”, hasn’t run a business, tied to the Bush Administration…
…I’d think she would be at the bottom of the list.
Team Romney, however, is really undisciplined. Asking WaPo and the Globe for retractions and being told to pound sand makes me wonder about them.
hilts
More factcheckers for Romney
“New reporting cites strong evidence that Mitt Romney wasn’t actively managing Bain Capital while he was running the Olympics, despite what the Obama campaign (and some news reports) would have voters believe… FactCheck.org has also found numerous instances in which Romney has also strayed from the facts in accusations against Obama. He also claimed that he created 100,000 jobs at Bain Capital — a claim we found lacked support because it took credit for jobs added by companies long after Romney had left the Bain. But that’s no excuse for the Obama campaign trying to saddle Romney with responsibility for decisions Bain made while Romney was somewhere else.”
h/t http://factcheck.org/2012/07/romneys-bain-years-new-evidence-same-conclusion
beltane
@hilts: That’s an awful lot of editorializing for an organization that supposedly exists to check the facts. One could almost conclude that they have an agenda.
satanicpanic
John rocks, he’s challenging you DougJ as the chief media antagonizer around here +2
Valdivia
@hilts:
new reporting says opposite of what it actually says. and also, too we call Romney out all the time so there, we are balanced! idiots.
Walker
@hilts:
And what is this “strong evidence?”. They don’t say. That is why I gave up on factcheck.org a while ago.
General Stuck
Read it and weep
David Dreier R (planet of the apes)
Your republican health care plan.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Just wanna say, I can’t be the only one to think of Romney as
Schrödinger’s CEO (he’s both *not* in charge at Bain and simultaneously *in* charge until he opens mouth, but then it depends if he’s talking to voters or gov regulators), can I?
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: IIRC Madame de Pompadour was not passed around Versailles. She was Louis XV’s mistress for 19 or so years.
jl
@hilts:
We will see. Either more evidence will turn up that Mitt was signing off on stuff, and kibbitzing, or giving advice, or it won’t.
As I said before, seems to this IANAL that interpretation of one of the filings depends on squishy terms like ‘operational control’.
But any mess for Mitt is OK with me.
mainmati
@Violet: Greed is fundamentally an expression of deep insecurity so you are right because that is just another dimension of fear. But greed also goes beyond fear/insecurity and rises (or falls) to the level of sociopathic behaviour. This is especially clear in business/financial executives and other owners of capital like the rentier class.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cmorenc:
Dear God, I can’t read anymore. I will, I just can’t right now. This does lead to the point I wanted to make, to build on what DougJ said, there is something more than fear and greed. There’s smug self-congratulation and the thrill of being (they think) smarter than everyone else, to be an Insider, one who knows.. In my mind, mentioning smugness in political journalism instantly conjures Cokie Roberts like saying Bloody Mary into a mirror three times at midnight, but Gergen (not a journalist but courtier who now appears on TV, see also, Russert) is right up there, too. And the reference to personal acquaintance as a trump card in political debate. Barbara Boxer (whom I like) used it to excuse Joe Lieberman when she campaigned for him; Scott Simon (whom I utterly despise) used it to defend Juan Williams (ditto); David Broder (what’s ditto when you’re repeating yourself for the third time?) used it to defend the entire Bush presidency (quatro? fourtho?) on the basis of his (Broder’s) personal friendship with Andy Card. Post Iraq invasion, post-WMDs that weren’t there; post-Abu Grahib, post pretty much everything short of Katrina, Broder sniffed that all this silly talk of a radical out-of-control presidency was just absurd, because David Broder had known Andy Card for thirty years. Go ahead, argue with that.
beltane
@Omnes Omnibus: But if the Bourbon kings were limited to two four year terms she may have been compelled to be like David Gergen, who has been close to every administration but this one for far longer than 19 years.
Ash Can
I was at a neighborhood-level OfA team meeting tonight at the local saloon. There were more nice things said about Romney there than at all of the right-wing blogs tonight combined, I’d be willing to bet. The upshot: Romney the MA governor is respected, for Romneycare in particular and for his moderation in general. Romney the presidential candidate, on the other hand, is pitied, and dismissed as unserious.
The overwhelming majority of attendees this evening believe that Barack Obama will win re-election. Every attendee, however, intends to work on the campaign as though Obama were trailing in the polls.
Forty-first ward Chicago reporting in (and +4 since, after all, it was at a saloon).
Roger Moore
@Valdivia:
Well, he took successful businesses and turned them into piles of rubble. That’s a kind of turn around, isn’t it?
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: Interesting view. IMO she seems to have been a better, and smarter, person than Louis XV – not that this was a difficult task.
Redshift
@The Dangerman:
If they pick Condi, it will be a hail-mary, just like Palin. They’ll only do it if they think they don’t have any hope of winning without a big lucky break.
Or if they’re really stupid. Considering the level of political malpractice in the Romney campaign so far, I agree we can’t discount that possibility.
jl
Something uplifting for a change.
The Bidenator at the NAACP, full speech.
http://youtu.be/QtPWutzKCiw
beltane
@Ash Can: Where do you live, because Romney did not leave office respected by the people of Massachusetts. I think he holds the record of lowest approval rating for any MA governor in that state’s history.
mainmati
@beltane: Yes, the Dutch have a much more balanced political system: they have both strong capitalists and strong labor so his approach to fact-checking would get him laughed off the stage.
Ash Can
And PS to Glenn Kessler: Hey Glenn, you can stop digging, because the entire fucking world now knows you’re nothing but a partisan Romney hack.
…Or you can keep digging if you want, because we’re all having fun laughing at you.
Roger Moore
@General Stuck:
He’s actually (R-right across the street from Roger Moore). I can literally cross the street into his district. Fortunately, that will end with the next election, since he got redistricted into a district with another incumbent Republican and decided to retire.
Ash Can
@beltane: I indicated where I lived in my comment (there is no “Chicago” in Massachusetts — or anywhere else; trivia factoid). And hey, we were drinking, and getting mellow.
Seriously and more importantly, though, think of the fact that even people who don’t necessarily think that Romney himself is evil are so committed to keeping the Republicans out of office that they’re getting out there and volunteering for the Obama campaign. Even this early on. I’d like to think that everyone here is doing the same.
Violet
@The Dangerman:
Have to admit, I read this as “is there any real chance he’ll pick Princess Leia?” And I thought, now there’s an interesting choice.
Princess Leia
I thank you with all my heart. After all, we both have interesting underwear and a complicated relationship with our fathers!
Violet
@mainmati: I think fear is the emotion. Acting on it, in the form of being a greedy sociopath, is the behavior. Ultimately it’s fear of something, whether it’s not being good enough, not having enough, your dad not loving you (hello, Romney, McCain, Bush…) or whatever. That fear is what drives the “I don’t have enough” and creates the greed that manifests in so many ways. Greed for money, for women, for food, for land, whatever.
Living your life in fear, as so many Republicans do, is destructive, not just for them but for all of us.
Violet
@Princess Leia: I have confidence you’d be a much better VP than anyone else on the list.
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
@Violet: “I can see Alderaan from my hou—oh, not anymore!”
mainmati
@General Stuck: First of all, yes, so totally his constituency. Second, what kills me is you get bloviators like him making statements like “…millions and millions…” as in the above. The man is evidently incapable of embarrassment at his stupidity but then his district is apparently majority knuckle-draggers and has been for years since he’s been around a long time.
Ash Can
@Violet: “Will someone get this big walking
carpethairpiece out of my way?”Violet
@Ash Can:
“Help me, Obama-Wan Kenyanobi. You’re my only hope.”
Ash Can
@Violet: “You
came in that thingare running that candidate? You’re braver than I thought.”mainmati
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am quinto with what you said. However, I have two brothers that are solid journalists. The fact is that the big problem is with the kind of people you mentioned: political insiders who would never challenge the Washington Consensus, which is to say, center-right to conservatve.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@jl: @Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn: LOL, like seriously. Too bad about Alderaan, eh?
Cacti
Kessler the “fact checker” deliberately ignored the factual content of the story to attack the messenger.
Ad hominem is what passes for “fact checking” at the Kaplan Daily.
Princess Leia
@Violet: Classic!
pseudonymous in nc
Leaking bullshit to Drudge? How very 1997.
danielx
@beltane:
Now you’re getting it…Villager wisdom is ever superior, and if you can’t see that the source of the information is what matters over such details as who actually signed what and when, it merely shows that you have not yet grasped the superiority of that wisdom.
Shame on you.
danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Actually, I believe it’s Peggy Noonan (aka Our Lady of Stolichnaya) who says Bloody Mary into a mirror three times at midnight and clicks her heels three times, following which a minion hands her a Bloody Mary with a cocktail shrimp in it. To get the creative juices flowing, don’t you know.
honus
@cmorenc: I heard that too, and thought I must be hallucinating. The story must be false because Gergen knows some Bain people? And the Obama campaign is getting unspeakably rough because they used SEC filings to prove Romney’s statements were false? I guess everybody, including reporters and the Obama campaign should know that SEC filings really don’t mean what they say, it’s what Gergen’s friends tell him that is the best evidence.
Calouste
@beltane:
Well, we know that Kessler is very good at counting to two. So good in fact, that were he to have any other skills, his skill for counting to two would outshine them all. Unfortunately for him, the Dutch parliament has 12 or so parties, 5 of which form the current interim coalition, so he doesn’t really get that far by counting to two.
AA+ Bonds
I don’t think you’re peeved because the media is wishy-washy on whether Romney was running Bain in 2002.
I do think that you are genuinely pissed off that Romney hasn’t had his assets seized and redistributed, and been sent to jail to stare at a wall and think about all the lives he’s ruined.
Turn that over in your head. Work with it. What can you do to make that happen?
Because it just might be a more realistic goal than retaining the system where the second event can’t happen and somehow expecting the first event not to occur over, and over and over, in a million permutations, for a million rich grinning weasels, perpetually frustrating and mystifying you until you die.
In fact, since without the threat of the second event, the first event is a simple fact of life, it might just be a little insane to expect things to change in the minor, mediocre, completely insubstantial way you seem to be promoting.
AA+ Bonds
To break it down: people always want shit. Kessler wants shit, so he writes bullshit. If he starts writing, say, too much truth, a whole bunch of the shit he’s earned to date gets taken away.
That is because the people who control Kessler’s access to his shit-to-date are the people with the most shit, the shit they got by robbing all of us, like Mitt Romney. They are shit-filled little shitheads, and they decide what is fuzzy and what isn’t, with the understanding that it is easier for them to benefit personally if their club remains small, with certain rules of behavior.
If we all had shit and we had controls against people having more shit than they could safely have without endangering everyone else’s ability to have an appreciable baseline of their own shit, then Kessler’s motivation to write bullshit would diminish.
More importantly, people’s motivation to read it, much less believe it, would fall through the floor.
The liberal response to this idea is a sudden bout of absolute cynicism about what humans can achieve with complex systems, that only seems to overtake them when they have to consider that they have been wrong about something fundamental, and that they may actually have to fight hard and change things to get what they say they want.
kay
The Gergen part of this is amazing.
Let’s review. David Gergen seeks to verify a story about Bain.
He calls Bain executives (interested parties) people he knows personally and admires, and, incidentally, people he has accepted payment from.
He then presents a vigorous defense on television.
Who are we fucking kidding with this? NOT ONE word he said is either reliable or disinterested.
He’s wasting our time. The whole Anderson Cooper segment is completely discredited and can be dismissed.
Why bother, Anderson?
kay
Also, CNN has disappeared the clip, but watch John King’s body language and face when he reports that the health care law has been struck down.
Pure triumph. He’s thrilled.
I regret only that we didn’t see his face when he learns he’s wrong and it was upheld.
FlipYrWhig
@kay: John King is a toxin.
rikyrah
@lol:
great comment about POTUS and the local media.
Harry
@Valdivia:
Romney was a turn-around business man like Jerry Sandusky was a turn-around coach.