Give McClatchy credit. While other national news services were burying Jim DeMint’s hold on Erroll Southers to become head of the TSA, McClatchy is covering the GOoPer obstructionist politics that have visibly weakened our nation.
But absent any mediawide attention, Republicans continue to behave badly.
Meanwhile, Florida Republican Rep. John Mica said in a statement that the TSA had grown lost and bloated in bureaucracy and called for a review.
Mica also said Congress “must change the process by which TSA administrators serve. There has been no TSA administrator for nearly a year and the next one will be the fifth in eight years. Running a security agency with a revolving door is a recipe for failure.”
TSA is rudderless thanks to people who think that transforming yourself into a legislative buttplug is somehow patriotic. Democrats have been blocked from appointing their first TSA administrator, yet Floridian blowhard Mica wants Congress to step in because Bush couldn’t keep anyone in the job (they kept leaving to cash in with a private sector gig).
Another emerging GOoPer talking point is that Obama waited 243 days before nominating Southers, but forgets to mention that that’s because of the backlog of nominees who’ve been held up in the Senate. Why rush to nominate someone to stand at the back of a very long line?
There is no defense for what the Republicans are doing, so expect them to just start yammering more loudly while their accomplices in the corporate media continue to bury the real news on page 18-B. The Daily Beast slyly tells the real story:
Note how the lead story comes from a real newspaper, while the RNC talking point is being flogged by Politico (Drudge Lite). And almost no one is talking about how the Republicans have repeated voted against TSA funding measures over the last year.
Meanwhile, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is laying in a hospital bed trying to figure out how his scorched nuts have advanced his cause while others are wondering why the Bush administration released the Detroit plotters in 2007 to the custody of a Saudi art therapy program.
[more on Bush era counter-terrorism efforts]
[questions the media's not asking but should be]
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The 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals continues to be the only high court in the land that respects precedent or the Constitution. They’ve just ruled that tasers clearly constitute excessive force when police encounter non-violent suspects.
It’s being called a landmark decision.
Not shooting traffic violators full of electricity is now considered a breakthrough in American justice.
Thomas Jefferson wept.
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Another McClatchy story worth noting, this one their coverage of the Bristol Palin-Levi Johnston custody case. Nothing much to add but the judge unsealing the court records is bound to have consequences.
Like maybe we’ll finally find out what Tripp’s real birthday is. And maybe Levi’s attorney can ask Bristol under oath how many children she has.
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Zionists keep pressing to have Jonathan Pollard released from American prison where he’s serving a life sentence for treason, yet they keep persecuting Mordechai Vanunu, the low level nuclear plant technician who leaked to the UK press proof that Israel was the world’s sixth largest nuclear power.
Vanunu served an 18-year sentence, and is still forbidden to talk to foreigners.
Leaking proof of what everyone already knows to the press is not spying. Spying is when you give top secret information to foreign powers, like Pollard did.
Israel still refuses to acknowledge they have nuclear weapons, weapons they developed in concert with South Africa back in the ’60s. Back when the population of Gaza wasn’t most refugees and the descendants of refugees. Back when Israel could still claim to have a soul.
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Tim Russert isn’t befouling the set of Meet the Press anymore, but the show is permanently tainted by General Electric’s politics. Care to guess who holds the record for most MTP appearances in 2009?
Try Newt fucking Gingrich, the disgraced former Speaker of the House who hasn’t held public office for eleven years, and who has no formal position in the Republican party.
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Reading an otherwise dull and uninteresting piece on intelligence, I just learned that brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand will increase your will and focus.
So I just tried brushing my teeth left-handed. I am now 100% focused on the spots where I bruised my gums.
Who says junk science doesn’t work?
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Latest document showing Iran nuclear progress is being called a forgery by U.S. intelligence.
I guess the whiteout over Saddam’s name was a giveaway.
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Latest Orly Taitz sighting may help teabaggers with their spelling skills but be warned that eventually she will break your heart.
In other news, Ted Nugent says Obama = Mao, and the Nugester just wants to “throw up.”
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Guess who’s first on Mother Jones’ list of Capitol Hill’s Most Unhinged Republicans. Even Michele Bachmann can’t top folks like Louie Gohmert and Steve King.
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Dow 4000, a much longer than usual Clusterfuck Nation post.
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Al Giordano’s been blogging ten years now.
There are worse people you could give your money to.
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Howie the Whore made a list. Reality didn’t intrude on it in the slightest. Juan Cole also made a list, and packed more truth into his Top Ten Middle East Crises 2009 than Howie could pull out of an entire decade.
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In other media news, APSE just honored the top newspaper sports web sites. The Strib so highly values their sports coverage, they recently put their Vikings’ coverage behind a paywall.
So how did the Strib rank for sports coverage?
Not in the Top 10. Not in the Honorable Mention list either.
And none of the winners found it necessary to bleed their readers for extra revenue beyond what the advertisers paid.
But maybe APSE just hates whiners, and after last night’s OT loss to the Bears, the local sports writers are whining up a storm.
Over at Romenesko, Alan Mutter says more succinctly what I’ve been saying all along about the death of newspapers:
“One of the problems is newspapers fired so many journalists and turned them loose to start so many blogs,” says Alan Mutter. “They should have executed them. They wouldn’t have had competition. But they foolishly let them out alive.”
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