Rachel Maddow responds to Olbermann suspension

For my part I feel a bit of schadenfreude at seeing Keith off the air; he's as insufferable to watch as anyone on Fox News.

Yet as Rachel argues, MSNBC generally isn't quite so badly behaved. They have a foot planted somewhat further into the news business, periodically airing something informative or beneficially thought-provoking.

Fox, as we know, is almost wholly devoted to pandering its viewers' bias and stupidity. One might snicker that this is true of TV news in general, but clearly Fox takes it a mile further.

Opinion and openness in broadcast

Pulling from the Dish again...

TNC admires Maddow's interviewing chops:

That interview would have gone a lot better for Rand Paul if Maddow had have just thrown her notes in the air and accused him of being a bigot, and a covert member of the Klan. That's what they want. And I don't simply mean conservatives--I mean people you disagree with. I know I've won a debate when my adversary says, "What the fuck type of name is Ta-Nuh-hah-see, anyway?" It translates to "I've got nothing." Much scarier is the opponent who takes your argument, with whatever nuances it may or may not possess, and politely disagrees with the argument as it is.

I try to do this in writing, with some success. Much more difficult, for me, is to do it in person. I'm always impressed by broadcast journalists who can, without getting angry, grab the point of contention and drive at it in a manner that is as civil as it is relentless. This is the art of killing softy, of quietly twisting the knife.

It's also, in my view, the answer to the cable news dilemma. Instead of going to FNC propaganda route, or the CNN fake "neutrality" route, you have a host who has a point of view but is open to other points of view, and can keep his or her cool under fire. Yesterday was a good day for cable news in that respect. Maddow offered a glimpse of a more useful future.

You know, Jon Stewart's been offering that glimpse for awhile now.

Here's the actual interview below...



Rand's position on the Civil Rights Act was not expressed eloquently here. It's pretty easy to tell that he's not a career politician--and I acknowledge that his position would be politically unpopular anyway. But it is the correct and principled one, and corresponds to my own.

Quote of the day

"You really think this kid can‘t be convicted? You really think we don‘t have enough evidence beyond the—beyond the, I don‘t know, 300 or so eyewitnesses who were on the plane? The fact that we have the weapon that he tried to use? The fact that he confessed? You think that‘s not enough to get this kid convicted? You have that little faith in our criminal justice system? That little faith in the rule of law? You don‘t believe that a supermax federal American prison is capable of holding this kid?

You think it might be cool, instead, to martyr this kid as some impressive soldier, instead of some idiot confused rich kid who couldn‘t even handle blowing up his own junk with a bomb that was secreted in his own underpants? We‘re supposed to take national security advice from you guys? Really?" —Rachel Maddow

(via the Dish)

Public option ignorance

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is typical of the uninformed left:

[..] ultimately, if the president decides that he's going to go with a reform effort that doesn't include a public option, what he will have done is spent a ton of political capital, riled up an incredibly angry right wing base who's been told that this is a plot to kill grandma, grandma, and he will have achieved something that doesn't change health care very much and that doesn't save us very much money and won't do very much for the American people. It's not a very good thing to spend a lot of political capital on.

Ezra Klein knows his stuff:

The public option is not now, and has not ever, been the core of the argument for heath-care reform. It is the core of the fight in Washington, D.C. It is an important policy experiment. But it was not in Howard Dean or John Kerry or Dick Gephardt's plans, and reformers supported those. It was not in Bill Clinton's proposal, and most lament the death of that. It is not what politicians were using in their speeches five years ago. It is a recent addition to the debate, and a good one. But it is not the reason were are having this debate.

Of course Ezra thinks the public option is a good idea because, like so many on the progressive left, he supports single-payer and anything that moves us in that direction.

But at least he's cognizant that other aspects of reform are much more important than this "policy experiment".

Heir to the revolution?

Yoda voice: Sigh. Told you, I did. Senior citizen is he. Now matters are worse.

Obi-Wan: That geezer was our last hope.

Yoda: No. There is another.

Dr. Ron Paul's son, Dr. Rand Paul, 46, may run for Senate in Kentucky...



Polling numbers... we need polling numbers!  If it takes off, I pledge to follow this race with only a moderate degree of obsession.

Because, well, seriously, it's exactly what the GOP needs... something to get more young people excited and interested in shaping the party's direction again.

Ron Paul discusses GOP on Maddow's show

[ Pssst: Welcome, The Moderate Voice readers. I'm an avid reader--got 55 posts tagged TMV in 3 months. Feel free to look around more, you're certainly welcome here. ]

Link blag

Libertarian dogma led the Fed astray?

Olympia Snowe opines in the Times: We Didn't Have to Lose Arlen Specter.

publius explains why Club for Growth Republicans are so counterproductive compared to the leftroots.

In analyzing Specter's move, Maddow is hypocritical.

Stephen Walt has a long but interesting post up on Israel and the "treason of the hawks".

Not-so-breaking-news: There is a negative relationship between high state+local taxes and economic growth.

Maddow interviews Philip Zelikow

Following up on his post...



Part 2 here

Monday night link blag

Andrew:

Mexico's ambassador urges the decriminalization of marijuana as a way to weaken the cartels. Domestic production is way up. Mexico's Congress is considering decriminalization. Cultural mainstreaming, especially in the thirteen states that allow for medical use, is gaining pace. Any day now, sanity threatens to break out.

A TMV columnist likes Rachel Maddow.

Another gathers reactions to Captain Phillips' rescue from Somali pirates.

Another gathers even more reactions. (Hey, they're useful summaries of what people are thinking.)

Politico: Obama boosts anti-abortion efforts, but not the way you think.

The Post: Rahm Emanuel knows how to deal.

Civil liberty watchdogs are pissed at Obama's continuation of Bush policies.

Wikipedia is voting to migrate from the clunky GNU Free Documentation License to a Creative Commons license. Yay!

John McCain's daughter wants a gayer GOP.

Some geezers talk about their work at Area 51 during the 60's.

China has really bad air quality.

Various politicians seek to promote software piracy protect the children by taxing violent videogames. No word yet on whether they'll invest the resulting revenue in abstinence-only miseducation.

Rachel Maddow explains teabagging

Andrew calls the tea parties tea tantrums and found a particularly dumb transcript:

Woman: [Shouts] “Burn the books!” [applause]

Man: “I don’t think you were serious about that, were you?”

Woman: “I am too.”

Man: “Burn all the books?!”

Woman: “The ones in college, those, those brainwashing books.”

Man: “[laughs] Brainwashing books?”

Woman: “Yes.”

Man: “Which ones are those?”

Woman: “Like, the evolution crap, and, yeah...”

Dealing with the neocon mess

Via Yglesias:



An example of neocon foreign policy insight:

"What has happened in Afghanistan is nothing short of a miracle. Who is responsible for it? The New York Times gives the major credit to ``the Afghan people'' with their ``courage and commitment.'' Courage and commitment there was, but that courage and commitment was curiously imperceptible until this administration conceived a radical war plan, executed it brilliantly, liberated the country and created from scratch the structures of democracy ... Against all expectations, Afghanistan is the first graduate of the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy in rather hostile places. We should take a moment to celebrate a remarkable success that had long seemed so improbable," —Charles Krauthammer, December 10, 2004.

Aha, so for five years Afghanistan has been busy celebrating the "miracle" of our "remarkable success."

I'd hate to see what an unmiraculous and unremarkable failure looks like.

John McCain's bad week

Rachel Maddow has some fun: