CapitalistImperialistPig

The assassin who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen other people today will doubtless be portrayed as a lone wacko, but I predict that the bloody footprints will lead back to the imams of Fox News and purveyors of political hate on right-wing talk radio. Sarah Palin's website has reputedly just taken down the bullseye they had painted on Congresswoman Gifford's district - but let's not forget who stirred up this and other recent incidents of terrorism. If, as I expect, the murderer was inspired in whole or in part by professional hate mongers, they should be treated just like other terrorists. UPDATE: Josh Marshall reminds us of the huge role the Tea Party has played in the "assassinate your local Congressperson" movement : Arizona has been ground zero for the guns and threats agitation from the right over the last two years. And as an example of the atmosphere in the state of late, back this summer her Tea Party opponent Jesse Kelly held a "Ta...

Many have asked what The New York Times could be thinking in hiring Bill Kristol. The Times has a somewhat exaggerated reputation as a liberal paper and Kristol is pure right-wing meth, a hardcore neocon famous for his Iraq war cheerleading and absurdly wrong war predictions. Kristol despises the NYT and most of its readers return the contempt with interest. So why did they make a move so clearly likely to offend a majority of their readers? I have a two part theory. First, the Times sees itself as locked in a death match with Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal , and its infamously wing-nut editorial page. Second, even though New York is one of the more liberal American cities, it is also the most Jewish city in the world, and many otherwise liberal American Jews don't believe that you can be radical enough in your support of right-wing Israeli politics. The two pillars of Neocon politics are a devotion to the interests of the Israeli right and the American rich, an...

I never would have believed it myself. I seem to recall that Ann Coulter once wished for the destruction of the New York Times building, presumably with the staff inside. Now, it seems, I can no longer in good conscience disagree. It's time to retire the Gray Lady, time to realize that print is, or by all that's holy, ought to be, dead. Word is that ... I can't bear to say it... Sob. And SOB. And other imprecations too vile for a family flog.

There is a small cadre of Americans who, despite ample evidence of Karl Rove's general incompetence, despicable character and disastrous effect on the nation and the Republican Party, still worship him. The most visible element of that cadre consists mainly of the Washington punditocracy. That tale is the theme of Glenn Greenwald's riff on Gloria Borger's assession to the Faux News liar's club - AKA their Sunday news panel. I suspect that he may not be a fan: Gloria Borger of U.S. News and World Report is perfectly representative of the establishment media pundit. She possesses in great abundance the most common attribute which defines them -- namely, there is never an original thought that comes out of her mouth. Instead, she never does anything other than recite Beltway conventional wisdom and GOP talking points (typically the same thing) with complete fealty. For that reason, Borger last week made her exciting debut as a panelist on Fox News' Sunday Show. Also w...

I admit joining with those who mourned the WSJ in advance of Murdoch's takeover. Fortunately, we can always count on the WSJ editorial board to do something to prove that there isn't really all that much to lose. Many in the blogosphere have been having fun with the following ludicrously misinterpreted graph. The supposed point is a Laffer curve - showing that revenues decline with increasing tax rate beyond a certain point. The curve drawn is an absurd misfit to the data even with the odd outlier of Norway included. Brad DeLong points out the reason why the Norway outlier looks so odd: One more point, with respect to "omitting Norway": Personally I see no need to omit Norway. I do see a need to plot the Norway point on the graph correctly. The revenues plotted on the vertical scale include oil excise taxes levied on corporations. The tax rates plotted on the horizontal scale do not--hence the Norway "tax rate" of 28% rather than the correct 52%. Move Nor...

Didn't like your tax bill last year? You were probably just too dumb to figure out how to avoid it. Rupert wasn't. This Huffpost story says News Corporation paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show, the News Corporation's domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion. Huffpost links to the NYT series cited below. Good work if you can get it.

... is not, so far as I know, the name of a new Fox reality show, but if I had to vote, I would definitely pick Rupert Murdoch. A new New York Times series profiles the remarkably successful Australian (and naturalized American citizen) purveyor of soft porn and softer trash news. Murdoch's wealth and media empire gives him tremendous power to buy politicians and influence people. Murdoch’s sprawling media empire was in jeopardy. Congress was on the verge of limiting any company from owning local television stations that reached more than 35 percent of American homes. Mr. Murdoch’s Fox stations reached nearly 39 percent, meaning he would have to sell some. A strike force of Mr. Murdoch’s lobbyists joined other media companies in working on the issue. The White House backed the industry, and in a late-night meeting just before Thanksgiving, Congressional leaders agreed to raise the limit — to 39 percent. One leader of the Congressional movement to limit ownership was Senator Tren...

Matt Drudge was the first of the big time internet news aggregators, and is still probably the biggest. His mixture of news, sleaze, right-wing nutbaggery, and oddements from all over has made him a major player in the right-wing media and a frequent recipient of Republican rumors and slanders. His site has become too tedious to retain much amusement value for me, and there are plenty of other news aggregators around, but I still read him to find out what the RW slime machine is up to. This morning features stories of (gasp!) cold weather in Britain, Canada, and North Dakota. To an old Montanan who remembers snow in May, June, and even July, this is about as shocking tits on a man, but I suppose these stories feed some sort of need for Exxon Mobile and its denialist army.

Arun, in a comment to the article below, links to this story about e-spapience, a company with a business plan reportedly based on buying reporters, scholars and others to spread misinformation on behalf of its clients. The companies principles reputedly include top people at the University of Chicago Law School and MIT's Dean of the Sloan School of Management. Reporters have reputedly been bought at the NYT and the Wall Street Journal. If true, what is the appropriate discipline for a dean, professor, or reporter who sells his opinions to the highest bidder? I think career termination ought to be strongly considered.

Brad DeLong calls Mickey Kaus: ...one of the Four Horsemen of the Stupidoclypse unleashed upon the world by Marty Peretz and Michael Kinsley in that dreadful laboratory "accident." Damn that's good! Why can't I write stuff like that? Especially about Mickey Kaus.

Chris Kelley on The Huffington Post : Actually, the full title of the DeLay book - which came out Wednesday -- is No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight. Yes, it's a story so bellicose, even the subtitle is scrappy. And he's earned the right to talk tough, too. Not just because of his own student deferments, but also by the student deferments of Rush Limbaugh (who wrote the forward) and the "other priorities" of Sean Hannity (who wrote the preface) and the book's co-author, Stephen Mansfield. Four fightin' Americans. Zero seconds in uniform. $25.95 at bookstores everywhere. No retreat. No surrender. No shame. Of course I really hate these draft dodging Republican SOBs.

I'm no Romney fan, but why exactly is the number of wives his great-grandfather, or great-great-grandfather relevant? Slightly more relevant, I should think, is the number of wives Rudy Giuliani has had, or Newt Gingrich.