Posted 11:54 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Neal Gabler on the cultural and political roots of the contemporary Republican Party.

Posted 10:56 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Sun Myung Moon blog
Click here.

Posted 8:53 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Jack Chick Tract
This is one of Chick's best in a long time: In "Somebody Angry?" Chick tells us that Hurricane Katrina was due to God's wrath for the the situation in the Gaza Strip.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted 2:29 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Moon Blog
click here

Posted 3:28 PM by Scoobie Davis

Alas, It Won't Be Hannity and Miller
In APJ, Steve Young suggests to Fox News chief Roger Ailes to replace departing co-host Alan Colmes of Hannity & Colmes with syndicated talk show host Stephanie Miller.

I don't think this is going to happen. The main reason is that Miller knows the score and a member of the left who knows the score is not what Roger Ailes is looking for. Salon's David Talbot pointed this out a few years ago:

Ailes was the king of cable and he was clearly reveling in his power. Alas, he couldn't squeeze us into the Fox News schedule, Ailes told us -- every show in his lineup was "kicking the competition's ass" and he was not about to mess with success by opening a hole for Salon. Though he didn't say it, there was also a clear implication that a regular dose of Salon might be too much for his audience, which Ailes described as age "55 to dead, like me" (he left out white and intolerant). Years earlier, when hunting for a liberal punching bag to pair with Sean Hannity, Ailes had tried out a tough Salon writer. He apparently punched back so effectively in his audition that Fox picked bespectacled milquetoast Alan Colmes instead. Fox likes its liberals soft and chewy, the better to eat them, my dear.

My guess: Kirsten Powers. She's (kinda) liberal; she's hot (something Ailes looks for); and she doesn't have a clue--the perfect Fox News Democrat. She's currently a Fox News Analyst and writes for Murdoch's crapsheet The New York Post (read her column denouncing the Obama campaign for throwing the Post reporter as well as the Moonie Times operative off the campaign plane).

Posted 11:08 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry on the media's asymmetry:

Despite Barack Obama’s election victory, this media asymmetry will not go away. Indeed, it is almost certain to limit his ability to bring about significant change and could tilt the country back in the direction of the Republicans in the not-too-distant future.

It is a pattern I have seen often since 1977 when I arrived in Washington as a reporter for the Associated Press.

During that time, while the American Left has been largely absent from the national media landscape, wealthy right-wingers (from foundations like Olin and Scaife to media moguls like Sun Myung Moon and Rupert Murdoch) have poured tens of billions of dollars into media.

Over those years, the Right built a towering – and vertically integrated – media structure reaching from newspapers, magazines and books to talk radio, cable TV and the Internet, an apparatus concentrated in the power centers of New York and Washington.

The Right also invested money in attack groups to go after mainstream journalists who dared dig up information that put right-wing policies or politicians in a negative light. Offending journalists were accused of “liberal bias” and often found themselves hounded from the national press corps.

Over time, this imbalance had a spillover effect. Many right-wing and neoconservative pundits landed prime spots on mainstream TV news shows and the Op-Ed pages of leading newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Even the most dangerous of right-wing ideas – such as free-market absolutism at home and neoconservative imperialism abroad – got respectful if not reverential treatment across the mainstream-to-right-wing media spectrum, the news outlets that most Americans read, heard and watched.

Posted 1:21 PM by Scoobie Davis

In Denial
El Rushbo uses U.S. county maps to argue that the U.S. is still conservative. It's too bad, that people, not gravel, vote.

For further reading: Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps.

Posted 1:05 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Brad Friedman on Wussy Dems:

The Democrats, as usual, have only themselves to blame. But we're still happy to help both them and the Republicans if it means the voters might see their votes counted and counted accurately, no matter who will ultimately be declared the winner of any election. You're welcome, Republicans (and Democrats).

After years of Democrats refusing to use the f-word (fraud) or discussing concerns about the s-word (stolen) for elections, for fear of being declared conspiracy theorists and sore-losers by the Republicans, we'll note that Republicans have no such fears. They never did. And they are happy to don enormous and shiny tin-foil hats any time to claim any conspiracy they need to, regardless of the actual evidence (or lack thereof) to support their theory.

They will claim --- even at the highest official levels of their party --- that "Democrats are stealing the election," "stuff[ing] new ballots into the ballot box" and all other manner of unsubstantiated allegations, if they believe it might help their candidate "win." The voters be damned.

Read the whole article.

Posted 11:42 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Inimitable Robert Greenwald on Joe Lieberman

Posted 7:06 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry give Barack Obama some valuable advice and hopes that Obama will learn the lessons of 1993:

Barack Obama seeks a new era of bipartisanship, but he should take heed of what happened to the last Democrat in the White House – Bill Clinton – in 1993 when he sought to appease Republicans by shelving pending investigations into Reagan-Bush-I-era wrongdoing and hoped for some reciprocity.

Instead the Republicans pocketed the Democratic concessions and pressed ahead with possibly the most partisan assault ever directed against a sitting President. The war on Clinton included attacks on his past life in Arkansas, on his wife Hillary, on personnel decisions at the White House, and on key members of his administration.

The Republicans also took the offensive against Clinton’s reformist agenda, denying him even one GOP vote for his first budget and then sabotaging Hillary Clinton’s plan for universal health insurance.

The desperately-seeking-bipartisanship Clinton allowed Republican loyalists to stay burrowed inside the government, and he bowed to the appointment of right-wing special prosecutors (appointed by a Republican-dominated judicial panel) to investigate him and his administration.

In the first two years of the Clinton presidency, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh emerged as a national phenomenon, regaling his huge audience with three hours a day of mocking attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton.

At one downtown Washington restaurant, Blackie’s House of Beef, a special area was set aside so Clinton haters could listen to Rush Limbaugh’s show while eating lunch. Limbaugh’s success inspired a new generation of radio talk show hosts who got rich dishing anti-Clinton dirt.

In February 1994, when I covered the annual Conservative Political Action Conference – a kind of trade show for the Right – I was stunned by the volume and variety of hate-Clinton paraphernalia. Never had I seen anything like this well-organized, well-funded determination to destroy a political figure.

In November 1994, a resurgent Republican Party – energized by its hatred of the Clintons – wrested control of Congress from the Democrats. But rather than sating the Right’s anti-Clinton obsession, the success only fed a desire for more.

Read the rest.

Posted 10:17 PM by Scoobie Davis

WTF!?
I was checking my Statcounter stats and found out that someone from Vancouver, Washington came to my Sun Myung Moon blog from a Google search of "sun myung moon nude photos"

Posted 6:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

You Gotta Read This
Michael Lind "Obama and the Dawn of the Fourth Republic" in Salon.

Blast from the Past: The first post on this blog referenced Lind's book Up From Conservatism: Why The Right Is Wrong For America.

Posted 12:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

A National Party No More
One of the best things about Tuesday's elections was that it was a repudiation of Zell Miller. Remember four years ago when Miller, a washed-up has-been who had been appointed to the Senate after Paul Coverdell died, became the darling of the right when he endorsed George W. Bush. Miler, a Democrat, proclaimed that the GOP was the wave of the future and that the Democrats were no longer a national party (I sure on the remainder tables of your local bookstore you can find a copy of Millers's 2003 manifesto A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat).

On Tuesday, Obama not only did well in the South, carrying Florida, Virgina, and North Carolina, but the last GOP member of the U.S. House, Christopher Shays, was defeated. What a difference four years makes.

Posted 11:38 AM by Scoobie Davis

Was That Great or What?
I just got back from the Crooks and Liars election night party. I'm exhausted.

I heard a little of Rush. To no surprise, Limbaugh spoke about stolen votes and socialism.

Posted 11:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Black Panthers in Philadelphia:The Right's Media is on it
There are initial reports that individuals claiming to be Black Panthers are standing outside Philadelphia polling places (some of whom were brandishing weapons). I heard about this on Rush Limbaugh's radio program and when I checked the Internet, the Fair and Balanced Channel and Drudge had it as its main story.

Are these real Black Panthers? That's for someone else to determine. A couple things I do know:
1) It is being used by the right's media as a GOTV tactic for the McCain campaign.
2) The alleged Black Panthers are helping the right's media with their preemptive narrative that an Obama victory will be illegitimate. That's at least how Rush is playing it--he's telling his listeners that it's an attempt to steal the election in Pennsylvania.

NOTE: I'm heading to Los Angeles for the Crooks and Liars Election Party and my laptop is dead so there will be light posting today.

Posted 11:29 AM by Scoobie Davis

I Voted Today
Yeah, I voted for Obama

Posted 9:56 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Paul Krugman "The Republican Rump"

Posted 2:22 PM by Scoobie Davis

My Election Predictions
Electoral votes: Obama 341; John McCain 197
Popular vote: Obama 53%, McCain 46% Everyone else (Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney, et al.) 1%
U.S. House 256 Democrats; 179 Republicans
U.S. Senate 58 Democrats, 40 Republicans, 2 Independents (Sanders and Lieberman)

Here are the predictions from the ABC News gang.

Posted 2:43 PM by Scoobie Davis

Post on the Expulsion of the Washington Times Operative from the Obama Press Plane
On the Sun Myung Moon blog.