The Commentariat -- March 2

Jason Linkins has a terrific piece on the "error-ridden" reporting of young Arthur G. Sulzberger, the family scion & cub reporter at the New York Times. Although the Times had a real labor reporter -- Steven Greenhouse -- in Wisconsin, they sent young A.G. to do a story on reactions to the union protests, wherein A.G. quoted "Rich Hahan..., a union man from a union town" who said he opposed public sector unions "because of what he sees as lavish benefits and endless negotiations...." Trouble is, Hahan -- whose name is actually spelled "Hahn" (but who care about details?) has never been a member of a union. Whoops! Wisconsin Gov. Scott "I don't normally tell people to read the New York Times" Walker liked the story so much he boasted about it to Fake Koch. And, BTW, when Li'l A.G. reported on Walker's prank call, also of course, in the aforesaid NYT, he did not bother to mention that Walker was citing a phony story that he himself -- A.G., that is -- had written. The Times did print a bland correction to the original story (nothing on Sulzberger's story about the prank call, as far as I know), but of course, who the fuck reads corrections?

"Where's Obama?" Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "... Barack Obama can be a strangely passive president. There are a startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action -- unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issue of the moment. He is, too often, more reactive than inspirational, more cautious than forceful.... He didn't want to get mired in legislative details during the health-care debate.... He doesn't want to go first on proposing entitlement reform.... He didn't want to say anything too tough about Libya.... He didn't want to weigh in on the labor battle in Wisconsin.... Where ... is the president on the verge of a potential government shutdown...?" Marcus, BTW, describes herself as "someone who generally shares the president's ideological perspective...."

Issa Gets Results. Fast. New York Times: "Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, dismissed his chief spokesman, Kurt Bardella, on Tuesday after concluding that Mr. Bardella had secretly and regularly shared e-mail exchanges he had with journalists with a reporter for The New York Times writing a book about Washington’s political culture." See yesterday's Commentariat for the backstory. ...

... Keach Hagey of Politico: "... a debate played across the media and on Twitter between those who were shocked at Bardella’s behavior and those who saw it as business-as-usual in Washington’s backstabbing, gossip-obsessed political culture."

CW: I didn't link to David Brooks' column yesterday (a) because I never do, unless it's to post one of my Times-discarded comments, & (b) because Brooks never says anything worthwhile. BUT Driftglass gives Brooks his due, with a little help from Gemli & me. P.S. Gemli, if you read this, write to me! ...

David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "There is no good case that government pay is a major cause of the budget problems now facing states.... The real problem with most union contracts for public workers is not the money — it’s almost everything else." Leonhardt blames government leaders for kicking the can down the road by way of deferred payments; i.e., pensions. He faults health insurance plans with low or no co-pay. And he blames unions for government workers' "sub-par performance"; they protect their worst workers. ...

... Bold Progressives is running this ad in support of Wisconsin's public unions. You can chip in here to help pay for air time:

Bill Keller, in a New York Times Magazine preview, writes that dictators about to be deposed could learn how to go gracefully from the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev & South Africa's F. W. de Klerk. Nonetheless, coming from Keller, who is the executive editor of the Times, a remark like this seems laughable:

The regimes that have sent their thugs against the press and tried to unplug the Internet are right to fear the media.

The U.S. "regime" has little to fear from the New York Times, which is always playing Lapdog for Access. Their hypocrisy in the WikiLeaks tapes is classic: the Times published the cables only after State Department approval. When the editors & reporters had had their way with Julian Assange, they dissed him in a long "profile," of which Keller was one of the authors. In an even more recent affront to journalism, the Times went along with the State Department charade that CIA operative & former Blackwater operative Raymond Davis, accused of shooting dead two men in Pakistan, was a U.S. diplomat entitled to diplomatic immunity. Not only did the Times knowingly misinform their readers, they trotted out their ombudsman/public editor Arthur Brisbane to "defend" them. "Fear the media"? Well, maybe the alternative media, but not the Times. -- Constant Weader

Right Wing World -- the Presidential Candidate Edition

Big Far Liar No. 2:

We have people pull up at the pharmacy window in a BMW and say they can't afford their co-payment. -- Gov. Haley Barbour,  (R-Miss.), on Medicaid recipients ...

... Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's fact-checker, gives this one Four Pinocchios, the worst rating. Kessler could find no evidence of Barbour's claim. Plus, in a House hearing Tuesday, "Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.) asked Barbour about the BMW statement, but two witnesses said he did not provide an explanation.... The failure of Barbour's aides to provide any documentation for this claim is rather suspicious."

Big Fat Liar No. 1:

Mau-Mau Revolution. Eric Hananoki of Media Matters: "During a radio appearance [Monday], Mike Huckabee repeatedly falsely claimed that President Obama grew up in Kenya.... Huckabee [is] a Fox News host and potential presidential candidate.... Contrary to Huckabee's claims, Obama did not grow up in Kenya. Obama spends significant portions of his book Dreams From My Father describing his first visit to Kenya in the late 1980s." Listen to the whole tape & read the transcript at the link. CW: here's part of Huck's "analysis":

... his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British are a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

... So then, Huckabee's spokesman Hogan Gidley tells Ben Smith:

Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya.’ The Governor meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia.

... So then Andrew Sullivan asks,

Well, how do you get a view of the Mau Mau revolution in Indonesia? So I don't buy the mis-spoke explanation. And Obama did not 'grow up with' a Kenyan father and grandfather. Huckabee always seems a pleasant fellow. But then you hear him on gays or on Israel/Palestine or on this kind of issue, and you realize just how extreme this affable man actually is.

... "Huckabee Knows Less than Nothing." Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in:

Not Presidential, but Foxidental. Digby digs up a Bill O'Reilly clip of the "violent Wisconsin protests." In the clip above by Bold Progressive, you'll notice the "violent Wisconsin protesters" are protesting in the snow & are dressed for the weather. But in O'Reilly's clip, the "violent Wisconsin protesters" are protesting in shirtsleeves & there are palm trees in the background. It's a Fucking Fox Miracle: 

But, hey, Fox "News" has ethics, all right! Brian Stelter of the New York Times: "The Fox News Channel said Wednesday that it had suspended the contracts of two employees, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who are considering running for president.... Three other possible Republican candidates for president — Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and John Bolton — are also employed by Fox, an arrangement that other television executives say is unprecedented." Video:

News Ledes

AP: "In an early victory for Republicans, the Democratic Senate is voting to send President Barack Obama a GOP-drafted measure that cuts $4 billion in spending as the price for keeping the government open for an additional two weeks."

AP: "The bargaining rights of public workers in Ohio would be dramatically reduced and strikes would be banned under a bill narrowly passed by the Ohio Senate on Wednesday. The GOP-backed measure that would restrict the collective bargaining rights of roughly 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees squeaked through the state Senate on a 17-16 vote. Six Republicans sided with Democrats against the measure."

Wisconsin State Journal: State "Senate Republicans ... voted to impose a $100 per day fee for any senator who is absent without leave for two or more session days. Republicans remaining in the Senate approved the daily fine resolution with none of the Democrats present." ...

... Huffington Post: "The Wisconsin Democratic Party has launched a fundraising campaign to recall state Senate Republicans who have supported the budget bill by Gov. Scott Walker (R) that would strip collective bargaining rights from the state's public employee unions."

New York Times: "The First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in an 8-1 decision." You can read Chief Justice Roberts' majority ruling, Justice Breyer's concurring opinion & Justice Alito's dissent here (pdf).

AP: "Rebel forces routed troops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi in a fierce battle over an oil port Wednesday, scrambling over the dunes of a Mediterranean beach through shelling and an airstrike to corner their attackers. While they thwarted the regime's first counteroffensive in eastern Libya, opposition leaders still pleaded for outside airstrikes to help them oust the longtime leader." ...

... Washington Post: "Some [Libyan] opposition leaders are calling for international military intervention to help topple Gaddafi, saying they believe that people power alone may not be enough to dislodge the dictator from his last remaining strongholds. The leaders say they do not want ground forces, but are increasingly coming round to the view that help in the form of a no fly zone, as well as supplies of weaponry and air strikes will be necessary if Gaddafi is to fall."

Washington Post: Shahbaz Bhatti, "Pakistan's federal minorities minister, a Christian, was gunned down in this capital city Wednesday in the second killing this year of a senior government official who had spoken out against the nation's stringent blasphemy laws."

Bloomberg: "Employment increased by 217,000 last month after a revised 189,000 gain in January, according to figures from ADP Employer Services. The median estimate in the Bloomberg News survey called for a 180,000 gain last month."

Technical Difficulties Solved (I Hope)

Readers appear to have found a fix for a problem some of you who were having seeing the whole width of the Reality Chex page:

Change the zoom. If you change the zoom from 100 percent to something else, then change it back to 100 percent, the page reads properly. Some of you have browsers that allow you to do this from the lower right-hand corner; others may have to go to "View" on the tool bar & click on "Zoom." Doug R. wrote, "I can click and drag the bottom right corner of any page and expand or contract it." Different readers have used different steps, but they all manipulated the zoom.

I still don't know what's causing the problem because I can't replicate it here, so I can't test for it, but I suspect there's something in my embedded content that's throwing off the zoom.

Many thanks to the readers who wrote to tell me about the problem and to all of you who told me how you fixed it. -- Constant Weader

What Happens when a Whole State Turns into
Right Wing World

Steven Elbow of the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times looks into what else the state's Republican legislators have been up to: "Bills have been coming down the pike that would add to union woes, make it harder to vote at the polls and allow charter schools to proliferate. And Republicans haven’t even gotten to the social issues yet." Elbow provides a partial list:

Requiring voters to produce photo IDs from the state DOT at polling places "Critics say [this] will stifle tens of thousands of votes, mostly those of Democratic-leaning groups like students, the elderly and the poor."

Scaling back the state’s family and medical leave law, signed in 1998 by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson

Preventing municipalities from adopting their own leave laws

Rescinding laws the help prevent racial profiling

Rescinding laws that mandate clean drinking water (because rich people drink Evian)

Rescinding a law that allows university faculty and academic staff to join unions

Allowing universities to assign staff to nonclassified positions so they can’t organize

Allowing the state to mandate charter schools & eliminating caps on funds the state can take from general school aid to fund charter schools. "Critics see the move as a giant step toward privatizing education in the state."

Eliminating the state’s farmland preservation program

Repealing 2009 legislation that authorized the creation of regional transit authorities (because rich people don't ride the bus)

See Elbow's article for more details.