Bill Maher
Host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"
Posted: September 11, 2009 06:48 PM
The Huffington Post

New Rule: Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole. And no, I'm not being gratuitously crude when I say that. I refer to the case of Van Jones, and I'm sure you know who Van Jones is. At least I hope you do, because I haven't a clue, or at least I didn't until this week, when I found out he was the man the Obama administration hired to find jobs for Americans in the new green industries. Seems like a smart thing to do in a recession, but Van Jones got fired because he became the Scary Negro of the Week on Fox News, where, let's be honest, they still feel threatened by Harry Belafonte.

Now, I know that right now, I'm supposed to be all re-injected with yes-we-can fever after the big health care speech, and it was a great speech -- when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here's the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face.

What got Van Jones fired was they caught him on tape saying that Republicans are assholes. And they call it "news." And Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like we dropped "end of life counseling" from health care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page.

[ continued ]

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

Yesterday, Meet the Press hosted a panel discussion to debate two primary issues:  (1) foreign policy -- specifically, the war in Afghanistan, and (2) health care.  The panel:  Rudy Giuliani, Tom Friedman, Harold Ford, Jr., and Tom Brokaw (as Jay Rosen often notes, Meet the Press is doing a fantastic job of fulfilling its pledge to present "fresh voices" in its discussions).

With regard to Afghanistan, there is a major debate currently taking place about whether we should stay in that country.  A majority of Americans now opposes the war.  But there was not a single participant there who shares that view.  All of them believe that it is imperative we remain, and put on their little General hats to exchange deeply Serious analyses of how we need to adjust our strategy and tactics for greater mission success.  Of course, all of three of those whose views were known about Iraq -- Friedman, Ford and Giuliani -- were vehement supporters of the invasion.  As always, not only does support for that war not produce shame or even impair one's credibility and Seriousness, but the opposite is true:  having supported it is a prerequisite for being considered credible and Serious, which is why those are the only people -- still -- from whom we hear when it's time to convene Serious discussions of foreign policy.  What an odd filtering standard for The Liberal Media to use.

On health care, the same dynamic repeated itself.  The prime controversy in that debate is over the inclusion of a "public option," with large numbers of Americans supporting it.  Yet once again, not a single member of the panel advocated it (though David Axelrod was interviewed before the panel and paid lip service to the public option on his way to clearly signaling it would not be part of the ultimate plan).  Guiliani warned there would be no health care with a public option; Ford told his "liberal friends in Congress" that they will have to be disappointed by the outcome; Friedman insisted that Obama adopt the proposals of Mitt Romney and John McCain and ensure he has the support of centrist Republicans (Brokaw offered some mild pushback against the attempt to demonize the public option).   The words "single payer" were never spoken. 

continued

Published by Kenneth Quinnell on 2 December 2007
at Florida Progressive Coalition Blog

I don’t know much about Bob Moser, but if this article from The Nation
is any measure of his journalistic skills, I don’t have much to say for
him. (The article was posted on Alternet on 11/30 and appears in the
12/17 issue). I won’t go after it line-by-line, although I could, but
will focus on some of the more outrageous parts of the article.

> read more