Welcome to today's RedState Morning Briefing Summary (RMBS FAQ). Also see the "talking points summary" at the bottom. I try to summarize the major wingnut talking point and provide counterpoints.
As promised, Erick has started his book club. The first book is, apparently, the ridiculous Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. In the last item, Erick explains what idiocy Goldberg has in chapter 2. So, Erick is reading that book so I don't have to and I'm summarizing Erick's stupidity so you don't have to read that.
It's the great food chain of stupid.
White House attacks worry moderate Democrats
Erick:
The White House’s attacks on Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, etc. are making Democrats on Capitol Hill nervous. In particular, the Democrats who sit in districts John McCain won are incredibly nervous about these attacks. Jonathan Allen has an article today on it. This is perfect timing.
Several of us were thinking it’d be fun to get these Democrats on record with their thoughts. Who wants to help?
Below is a list of Congressmen and their phone numbers. Call and ask:
1. Does the Congressman agree with the President’s attacks on Fox News and the Chamber of Commerce?
2. Will the Congressman adhere to MoveOn.org’s call to boycott Fox News?
Yes or no is all they have to say. You just make the calls and leave the answers in the comments section here. If the President wants to stir up trouble for Fox and the Chamber of Commerce, let’s make it as painful as possible for his own team.
This little game only makes sense in a world where everyone loves Fox News and hates Moveon.org. This is certainly the world that Erick and his peanut gallery live in, but not too many more. Erick lists a bunch of Representatives and asks people to call and report the answers in comments. Since Friday, he's gotten 8 comments representing about as many calls (one guy in PA called four people, most people were just jabbering). I'm sure they made an impression with calls like this:
Called Perriello's office and was on hold for a while, must be other Redstaters calling also. Staffer said that she had no idea how Perriello felt about Obamas attack on Fox news. She said they haven’t discussed it. Asked if he supports MoveOns call to boycott Fox, and, she replied that she was sure he would not support that, because he doesn’t agree with that sort of thing. I replied, Gee that’s funny, as George Soros, and all of his family members were big donors to his 2008 campaign. Thank you, have a great day! He had Van Jones come to Charlottesville in June to help him celebrate the greening of some poor person’s house. The greening they did- they plugged the cracks from around the windows, and installed a new tankless water heater. Cash for Cracks-Charlottesville Style.
No crazy here, no siree.
Forget Fox: White House vs Treasury Department
So, you might remember from Friday that Fox News broke a story about how the White House had been mean to it. No other network ran the story and it turns out that the reason is that Fox News made it up. Talking Points Memo did a little research and discovered that the story about Fox News being shunned was a total fabrication. Caleb Howe recaps this:
Pushback on the story was immediate. The contrary narrative was that in no way was Fox ever deliberately excluded from anything, and by no means did the "real" networks ever defend Fox. From Talking Points Memo:
The network pool crew noticed Fox wasn’t on the list, was told that they hadn’t asked and the crew said they needed to be included. Treasury called the White House and asked top Obama adviser Anita Dunn. Dunn said yes and Fox’s Major Garrett was among the correspondents to interview Feinberg last night.
The story included a statement from the Treasury department that said there was "no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing."
Now RedState is claiming that TPM's version of the story is false. How do they know? Fox News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente told the Huffington Post:
Today Fox News provided more details on the sequence of events to the Huffington Post.
"Of course we requested an interview," Fox News Senior Vice President Michael Clemente told the Huffington Post.
This directly contradicts reports by the Associated Press and Talking Points Memo, both of which reported that the White House had excluded Fox News because it did not request an interview.
It certainly does. Although as HuffPo points out, this shouldn’t matter anyway, as it was a pool interview so all pool members are to be included. Interestingly, Clemente indicated to HuffPo that not only was Fox explicitly excluded, but they were to be replaced by Bloomberg News.
Once again, Fox News is the only source this story. One has to wonder if there are any limits to RedStaters' credulity. Of course, they keep citing the Huffington Post because then it sorta sounds like the Huffington Post is the source, and not a self-serving Fox VP.
The real kicker, though, is the following:
Clemente added that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged to Fox News’ White House Correspondent Major Garrett that a low level Treasury staffer made a mistake in attempting to exclude Fox from the pool interviews.
Yeah, um, that's not true either.
Scozzafava Declares Herself Part of Abramoff Wing of GOP: Funnels Campaign Cash to Family
This rather elaborate post spirals in on this mysterious transaction:
Dede Scozzafava’s campaign has paid $3750.00 in disclosed expenses to Pearl Han Productions, LLC for "Strategic Consulting," the most bland of descriptions.
Scozzafava has raised several hundred thousand dollars and this is the malfeasance they dug up? This is what they compare to Ambramoff?
C'mon, Erick, let's get this over with already — there's only a week left before the election. Do the Nazi comparison.
One Trillion, Four Hundred Twenty Billion Dollars
Congressman Frank Lucas joins us this morning with an important message. "Who?" you ask.
Lucas is the long-serving Representative for Oklahoma's 3rd district. If you look at his voting record, you'll see that he's supported every tax cut that made it to the House floor. He's also supported spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and opposed any effort to bring that debacle to a close. As the chairman of the Agriculture committee (2003-2005), he saw to it that the U.S. government handed out $14.2 billion in farm subsidies — $422 million just to his district.
The only time Frank Lucas has ever voted to lower the deficit was when he voted against students and poor children.
So… what does Rep. Lucas have for us this morning?
It is also our country’s federal budget deficit for 2009. That means that in the fiscal year 2009, which runs from October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009, the federal government spent $1.42 trillion more than it took in. To put this in perspective, last year’s deficit was $459 billion – still an astounding number, but less than half the deficit for this year.
Oh, so after helping to demolish our economy, he's complaining about the deficits. What a complete douche.
Carbon Credits for Condoms
NYT Environment Reporter Floats Idea: Give Carbon Credits to Couples That Limit Themselves to One Child
Washington (CNSNews.com) – Andrew Revkin, who reports on environmental issues for The New York Times, floated an idea last week for combating global warming: Give carbon credits to couples that limit themselves to having one child.
Revkin later told CNSNews.com that he was not endorsing the idea, just trying to provoke some thinking on the topic.
Revkin calls it a "thought experiment".
Admittedly, it's a radical idea. Maybe it has some merit — it would certainly be controversial.
Of course, to idiots who see Nazis and Maoists hiding in every darkened corner, it's nothing more than a plot to kill babies:
I’ve warned in these pagesof the dangers of carbon credits as new "funny money" — off-balance-sheet financing for whatever hare-brained idea strikes the Congress’s fancy.
This proposal would let them play the role of the Chinese Politburo. Since it’s only a "thought experiment", wouldn’t the most efficient use of those valuable carbon credits would be to pay for the, um, negating of children who’ve already been conceived ... or to pay for voluntary sterilizations ... hmmm?
The term "unhinged" seems to lack the descriptive force needed here — I'm going to have to go with "batshit crazy."
You, Me, and New York 23
Someone in a real publication mentioned Erick, so he has to let everyone know.
Over at the Atlantic, Max Fisher writes about my involvement in New York 23.
I’m happy to serve as a proxy for you guys, but we need to be honest — you guys did this, not me. I’m sure the Hoffman campaign appreciates your efforts. I very much appreciate your efforts.
At the vanguard of the grassroots campaign has been Erick Erickson, blogger and editor of RedState.
For weeks, Erickson has been claiming that Hoffman can win NY-23 if he just had enough support. Now that Sarah Palin has thrown he endorsement (and some cash) to Hoffman, no one can claim he didn't get that support. Of course, with the election a week away, Erickson is subtly changing his tune.
In another NY-23 piece, Erickson says:
The gates are opening as a flood of conservatives and Republicans now race to Hoffman with more and more polls showing Scozzafava out of the running.
Erick has been saying that Scozzafava is in 3rd place, but here he just says she's "out of the running." That's because all the polls show her in 2nd place with the Democrat Owens in 1st place. I'm sure Erick wants his mentally-challenged followers to think that "Scozzafava out of the running" means that Hoffman has a shot at winning, but what it really means is that Owens is ahead of her — and way ahead of Hoffman.
In fact, now that he's gotten so much attention for his cheerleading of Hoffman, he now says he'd be happy with 2nd place:
I have said all along, the effort here is, in the best outcome a Hoffman victory, but as long as Scozzafava loses, I’m happy.
Note to Erick: Please continue spending capital (real and political) fighting for 2nd place. Personally, I can't think of any better use of Republican and conservative resources.
News Flash: Obama Sucks At His Job
RedState front-pager haystack:
Via Drudge, the Telegraph is reporting that Obama’s Poll numbers have dropped farther and faster than any President on record over the last 50 years. Apparently, people think he’s doing a lousy job.
Oh noes! How many people?
Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from the 62 per cent he recorded from April.
Oh, so less than half the country.
Yeah, nice effort, haystack.
Liberal Fascism: Chapter 2
The RedState book club is humming along. Apparently, they decided to read Jonah Goldberg's masterpiece of self-parody, "Liberal Fascism."
Here are some of Erick's thoughts on Chapter 2:
According to Jonah Goldberg, the Nazi Party was "in favor of universal education, guaranteed employment, increased entitlements for the aged, the expropriation of land without compensation, the nationalization of industry, the abolition of market-based lending . . ., the expansion of health services, and the abolition of child labor." Which party platform does that remind you of.
Really? So, if you're against child labor, you're a Nazi? If you support public education, you're a Nazi? (Poor Thomas Jefferson! A Nazi and he never knew it!) Seriously, they think it's clever to call people Nazis because they support jobs, education and protecting children? How do you respond to that?
Erick notes that, "That, perhaps, more than anything is the take away from Chapter 2 of Liberal Fascism. Hitler stood for nothing except hatred of the Jews." That isn't even true. The Jews were merely the most prominent aspect of Nazi "Racial Science." They served as a conveniently traditional target for public hatred that the Nazis used to rally people. Still, they were not the only target of Nazi "racial science."
An estimated 11 million people were exterminated by the Nazis; famously, 6 million were Jews but that still leaves a whopping 5 million people who were considered racially impure because they were gypsies or homosexuals or slavs or Jehovah's Witnesses or actual socialists.
The Nazis were obsessed with the percentages of someone's racial background. If you want to find that, you need to look at Conservative Fascists, like those found at Free Republic:
Obama is only 1/16 black. He’s 1/2 white and 7/16 Arab. But I doubt whether Wright knows about the Arab bit. Or maybe he does, who knows?
I kind of wonder about Wright, actually. He looks whiter than Obama.
Oh, but don't call them racist.
Talking Point Roundup
Here are the big topics they are trying to push today. The "score" is the count of Morning Briefings on which the talking point has appeared. The higher the score, the more desperately they are pushing the talking point.
Score | Talking Point | Counterpoint |
---|
7 | NY-23 | Only one more week! Now Erick is posturing that he wanted Hoffman to come in second the whole time. Owens is going to win. |
4 | White House vs. Fox | More invented stories from Fox. More pathetic attempts to depict this as something that's hurting Democrats (it's so sweet that they care).
Talking Point memo on more lies from Fox |
2 | The Deficit is Huge | This is Bush's budget suffering from Bush's recession. The Republicans slashed taxes while ramping up spending. Obama is working the other way, but he just started. |
1+ | Obama's numbers are tanking | This worn-out trope makes a renewed appearance.
The numbers are not tanking
Republican numbers are much worse |