From NJ to Maine, Big Rat Bastard Gummers of a feather flock together: Part 2, Our old pal, the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ

Yes, it's not one but two Big Rat Bastard Gummers, last week in Becky's Diner in Portland, Maine, where the Pine State's gummer endorsed the gummer of the Garden State for president.

by Ken

In yesterday's Part 1, we focused on the twice-elected "Idiot Thug Running Maine," a figure who to an almost unique degree combines rolling-in-the-aisles buffoonery with the ability to strike terror in the hearts of citizen students of American government and American society. A man who might be the fraternal twin of the original Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ.

The original Big Rat Bastard Gummer is now devoting time -- precious time he could be spending corrupting, influence-peddling, and browbeating terrorizing people who disrespect him (e.g., by speaking the truth) -- to waiting for an apology from "the liberal media." On Monday Erik Wemple chronicled this startling development on washingtonpost.com's Erik Wemple Blog, in a post called "Chris Christie asks media to apologize for bridge coverage. Journalists say no way":

In a Fox News interview yesterday, Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a recently declared presidential candidate, called on the media to apologize for its coverage of the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. Speaking to Fox News Sunday substitute host Shannon Bream, Christie said, “And you know what happens when the media, Shannon, gets crazy over a story, like they got crazy over Bridgegate and were convicting me the day afterwards of heinous acts. Now, when they realize that there’s no truth to what they said, now they say, ‘Oh, he didn’t do anything, but he created an atmosphere,'” said Christie. “Well, you know, that’s what the liberal media does when rather than saying ‘I’m sorry,’ which is what they should say.”

"Journalists," Erik wrote, "are not saying anything of the sort," and he's got the quotes to prove it:

• "Steve Kornacki, the MSNBC host who has provided extensive coverage of the scandal says: 'From my standpoint, I have nothing to apologize for.' "

• "Martin Gottlieb, editor of The Record of North Jersey (formerly known as the Bergen Record), says: 'We've never reported anything without reporting it fairly and exhaustively. I'm very, very proud of the way we've done this.' "

• "Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, writes in an e-mail: 'I think our coverage of the governor has been fair. So can't imagine a reason for an apology, but happy to hear if he has a complaint.' "


THERE'S A REASON WHY NONE OF THESE
GENTLEMEN IS IN A RUSH TO APOLOGIZE

They and their organziations haven't done anything that calls for an apology. On the contrary, they've been doing their job.

As usual -- as in most every time the Big Rat Bastard Gummer opens hs big rat bastard mouth -- the Krispyman is lying his stinking guts out in that little Fox Noise vignette with Shannon Bream. No one with a working brain has suggested anything that could be remotely construed to mean that "he didn't do anything." There just isn't yet direct evidence of a link between the boss and all the appointees of his who have been implicated by those amazing e-mails in the scheme to shut down the Fort Lee approach to the George Washington Bridge, to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for declining to endorse the Big Rat Bastard Gummer's reelection campaign.

As MSNBC's Steve Kornacki pointed out to Erik Wemple:

In the weeks leading up to the explosive e-mail revelations, notes Kornacki, Christie was dismissive of reporters who pried into the alleged wrongdoing. He even joked about his role in the matter. “Unbeknownst to everybody, I was actually the guy out there — I was in overalls and a hat — but I actually was the guy working the cones out there,” he riffed. Media organizations, however, stayed on the trail. “There was something to this story and Chris Christie had insisted there wasn’t,” says Kornacki, who calls Christie’s fixation with his own non-involvement a “straw man.”

The fact is, the degree of Krispy administration involvement in Bridgegate which can already be demonstrated via the e-mails is simply staggering. These are all people who were appointed by him, were close to him, and were presumably doing the jobs he put them in their positions to do -- far-right governance via intimidation and brazen disregard for ethics or law.

The Bi Rat Bastard Gummer conveniently forgot to mention on TV that he had already thrown a turdload of KrispyKrats under the bus, and that already two of them have been indicted and another has pled guilty in Bridgegate-related charges. (Maybe the reason he's so confident that none of them can successfully throw him under a bus is that the bus hasn't been built that he can be thrown under, not to mention the number of people who would have to be involved in such a throw-under.)


FAR FROM BEING COMPLETED, THE SCOPE
OF KRISPY INVESTIGATIONS IS GROWING

Covering not just Bridgegate but such Krispy horrors as his administration's threat to withhold Sandy relief funding for Hoboken (from the federal government, not even state money) if Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer didn't go along with one of his multimillion-dollar influence-peddling schemes, his systematic transformation of the already far from pure Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a traditional politcal patronage dumping ground, into both a funder and an enforcer of his agenda to promote white-collar crime (well, the right kind of white-collar crime, the kind that benefits KrispyKronies and rich people he'd like to make KrispyKronies). That's just to name some of the high points.

The Record's Martin Gottlieb touched on this in his conversation with Erik Wemple.

When asked about the thrust of the Christie reporting, Gottlieb noted that his paper has tracked the allegations into all kinds of fertile tributaries, including this piece from last weekend about how the Port Authority is under siege from investigators: “More than 15 officials — including three in-house attorneys — have lawyered up amid an escalating investigation into the Port Authority’s decision to redirect $1.8 billion in toll money from its Hudson River crossings to fix roads in New Jersey.”

“The story keeps moving,” adds Gottlieb. “What he’s doing now doesn’t seem very exceptional in terms of blaming the press,” he continues, “but I think the facts are what they are.”

And this worthless pile of putridity, the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ, has the effrontery to claim that he's owed an apology? In what demented and degraded universe is he living?

And the Rat Bastard has the pure gall to go on Fox Noise to accuse "the liberal media" of slandering honest folk and then refusing to apologize? I'm sorry, he's just not that stupid. He must know perfectly well that "liberal media" apologize all the time when they get stories wrong. It's his pals in the far-right-wing media, notably the Fox Noisemakers, who make it their goal to destroy political enemies by whatever means necessary, not giving a damn when they cross into blatant fictionalizing (aka "lying").

Instead of demanding an apology, not to mention mounting a campaign for the presidency, this grotesque buffoon should be going on TV to announce his resignation owing to his intolerable corruption and unremitting assault on decent New Jerseyans. That's what he needs to say, but an apology wouldn't be unwelcome.


NEWS FROM THE KRISPY KAMPAIGN

Washingtonpost.com's Alexandra Petri shared these "Rejected Chris Christie slogans," explaining: "Through some acts of imagination and a variety of derring-do, I got a look at what might have become his slogans. I think he picked the strongest one." This is how you can tell it's satire: why, the very idea of the Big Rat Bastard Gummer going with the truth -- ha ha ha!

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Disgraced NYT media whore Judy Miller is back, and she's mad about being singled out for being wrong about Iraq

Feel free to watch if you like. I don't want to, and thanks to Erik Wemple's vigilance, I don't have to.

"If that consensus was wrong, I think you can’t blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong."

-- former NYT dimwit Judith Miller, in her book

by Ken

There's ample reason to feel general gratitude to washingtonpost.com's Erik Wemple for the watchful eye the Erik Wemple Blog keeps on the hamsters who turn the wheels in their cages to power the infotainment noozemedia. But there are times when I have to positively bless the man. Like now, when it means he's got his eye on the likes of former NYT noozemonger Judy Miller, meaning I don't have to.

You'd have to have achieved an even higher level of obliviousness that I've managed in order to not be aware that our Judy is Out There, just this close to being Among Us -- so close, she's almost within spitting range. But of course she's too smart to get that close, even now when she has to pretend to care what we think because at the moment she has, in case you hadn't guessed, a book to flog.

We'll come back to the Erik Wemple Blog report in a moment. First let's quickly dispose of the preposterous argument embodied in the the line I've put at the top of this post: "If that consensus was wrong, I think you can’t blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong." As we'll see in a moment, our Judy places great stock in That Consensus (I'm surprised she isn't capping the phrase herself); it seems to be what grounds her reality.

Which is why she's crap as a reporter, because a serious reporter, especially of the elite kind our Judy pretended to be, is supposed to be interested, not in That Consensus but in The Reality. Contrary to the claims we're about to hear her make, That Consensus, far from having never been wrong, has probably hardly ever been right if you take the trouble to look closely enough. The only difference in the case of the mess that That Consensus made of "Come Invade Me" Iraq is that That Consensus was so hugely and visibly and disastrously wrong.

We can chatter a bit more afterward, but now let's turn the floor over to EW (lotsa links onsite):

Judith Miller tells Bill Maher she ‘couldn’t have been more skeptical’ in pre-Iraq war coverage

By Erik Wemple

As HBO comedian Bill Maher noted on his program Friday night [see the YouTube clip up top], former New York Times reporter Judith Miller has served as the spokeswoman for all the various journalists who screwed up the WMD coverage prior to the 2003 launch of the Iraq war against Saddam Hussein. “I take your point when you say you were singled out,” said Maher in an interview with Miller.

That said, Miller has trouble renouncing the credulous pieces that bore her byline in the run-up to the war. Asked by Maher whether she would have been more skeptical about the claims from the Bush administration and others, Miller insisted: “I couldn’t have been more skeptical. I was more skeptical. Every time I got information that contradicted something that we had reported, I went back and did a second story, sometimes a third story.” Miller left the Times in 2005 after her bizarre involvement in the I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby case.

Why is Miller talking with Maher about WMD 12 years after the fact? To promote her new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, in which the reporter lashes back at her many critics. “Relying on the conclusions of American and foreign intelligence analysts and other experts I trusted, I, too, got WMD in Iraq wrong. But not because I lacked skepticism or because senior officials spoon-fed me a line,” Miller writes.

Maher’s program, Real Time With Bill Maher, proved somewhat hospitable to Miller’s self-rehab project. “The New York Times was not alone. Almost every paper in the country was reporting this,” Miller said to Maher. “But beyond that, this information was coming from the men and women who had gotten Osama bin Laden right, who understood that the country was vulnerable to a biological weapons attack. I was relying on those same sources. They had never lied to me, they were usually right, we had lots of qualifiers in the story.”

Another point: There was a consensus behind the intelligence, said Miller. “If that consensus was wrong, I think you can’t blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong,” said Miller in the interview. “Though, I wanted to go back and say, ‘How did this happen?’ That’s why I wrote the book — how did this happen, how did they get it so wrong?”

The pages of The Story betray any such motivation. Far from reading like an attempt to inquire how the prewar Iraq intelligence was off, the book’s thrust takes on the narrower imperative of contextualizing and defending its author’s role in the whole mess.

Speaking of which, Miller’s discussion of an intelligence “consensus” omits her own role in cementing it. On Dec. 20, 2001, for example, Miller wrote about the claims of Iraqi defector Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who said that “he had personally visited at least 20 different sites that he believed to have been associated with Iraq’s chemical or biological weapons programs.” A number of other incriminating details about Hussein’s WMD programs spill from the story.

What happened to this Miller exclusive? It got footnoted in a version of a White House background report on WMD, titled “A Decade of Deception and Defiance.”

When you write for the New York Times, you can never shrink from your role in bringing about a “consensus.”

JUST A FEW THINGS --

About our Judy being "singled out"

No, this isn't going to fly. You can't go around with your nose sniffing the heavens and your feet resolutely refusing to touch the ground in consequence of your journalistic divinity as an elite sage of the NYT, privileged with a galaxy of "inside" sources, only to shrink back to "Gosh, I'm just one little reporter" when the you-know-what hits the fan. For example, how many of those other reporters who got it wrong were helped in getting it wrong by editors who kept beating them over the head with our Judy's NYT reports? The fact is, those other reporters have taken some heat for getting it wrong. Not as much as they should have, but our Judy's got no beef for taking something closer to the amount of heat she deserved.

In fact, there were reporters who got it right

Again, they haven't gotten anything like the credit they deserved for getting it right, but unlike our Judy, those braver and more competent reporters didn't go along with That Consensus, and were generally reviled for it. They may not have accounted for a large percentage of the infotainment noozers, but they were hardly insignificant in number. I get the impression that our Judy isn't paying any more attention to those people now than she did back when they, unlike her, were ferchrissakes doing their effing job. I mean, how smart did you have to be to know that every word that came from everyone connected to, or merely in agreement with, the likes of "Big Dick" Cheney and "Chimpy the Prez" Bush was lying, or at least likely to be woefully misinformed. Let me say once again: There were plenty of people at the time screaming that we werre being lied to.

Is any of this included in our Judy's book supposedly exploring how That Consensus got it so miserably, diastrously wrong? From what Erik says, I'm guessing no way, Jose.

Say what?

Our Judy one more time, slower:

"If that consensus was wrong, I think you can't blame either reporters for reporting what the consensus was or the intelligence analysts who got it wrong."

What? Forget the reporters for a moment; of course we can blame them. (By the way, did they ever mention to their readers and viewers that they weren't "reporting" reality but That Consensus?) She can't possibly have meant to say that we can't blame the intelligence analysts who got it wrong, can she?

What am I missing here? Isn't blaming the intelligence analysts who got it wrong -- or at least taking a mighty close look at their work -- one of the first things we should have been doing? (Of course there were also plenty of intelligence analysts who didn't get it wrong but were bullied into silence by thugs like Big Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, busily hammering their consensus into submission. But then, even now our Judy doesn't seem to know anything about this.)

Say, doesn't our Judy's worship of That Consensus
have a familiar ring?

Anytime That Consensus is put to the test, doesn't it come up smelling really bad? Just a couple of examples:

• Wasn't there a That Consensus about our involvement in Vietnam -- both our reasons for being there and the glorious job our forces and our stalwart South Vietnamese allies were doing?

• And when our Judy yammers about the unimpeachable wisdom of That Consensus, isn't this just the sort of thing that a couple of young metro reporters named Woodward and Bernstein heard from the wise old hands above them at the Washington Post all through their Watergate coverage?

After Woodward and Bernstein cracked the case, it was abundantly clear that the job could only have been done by reporters who had no stake in That Consensus, who didn't get any rewards from it and didn't owe it anything. Of course that young Woodward fellow went on to become a pillar of That Consensus, establishing a brand as manufacturer of his very own version of it. But that's another story.

Or is it maybe the same story?

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Shucks, our latest Hoosier hero, former Rep. Dan Burton, is just a plain ol' Hoosier Azerbaijani patriot-for-hire

A crucial piece of information was left out of the Daily Caller's presentation to readers of former Congressman Dan Burton as the right-wing whoring dirtbag used its space to pimp for the fascist thugs of Azerbaijan.

by Ken

There's a good chance that if you're denounced as "a gossip monger" by a certified right-wing whoring dirtbag, it can be taken as a badge of honor. And today's gold star goes to washingtonpost.com's Erik Wemple Blog.

It was mere hours ago that we were commiserating with the proud bigots of Hoosier country who are in mourning for the damage to their great state's reputation ("Oh no! Has Indiana's reputation for 'Hoosier hospitality' been tarnished?") caused by the orgy of organized homophobia represented by the state's pioneering Gotta Hate Them Homos Act, so proudly signed into homo-hating law by right-wing whoring dirtbag Gov. Mikey Pants and his proud circle of homo-haters -- before, to their great amazement, all heck broke loose.

Poor Hoosiers! Of course, one important question had to be asked regarding the alleged hit to the Hoosier State's reputation: What reputation? There are, after all, good reasons why the state's other popular nickname is the Right-Wing Whoring Dirtbag State. And tonight we're gathered to pay tribute to yet another proud Hoosier right-wing whoring dirtbag, former Congressman Dan Burton.

"A couple of months back," the proprietor of the EWB reported the other day, "the Washington Times ran an opinion piece from Dan Burton titled 'Why Azerbaijan is important to America and the free world.' " The EWB noted a problem, however.

As initially published, the Washington Times disclosed that Burton was a former Republican congressman from Indiana. But not his other, more relevant title: current chairman of the Azerbaijan America Alliance, which in its own words strives to be the “premier organization dedicated to promoting a lasting partnership between Azerbaijan and America.” Burton’s piece appeared in the same edition of the Washington Times as a special section titled, “Azerbaijan: A Quarter Century Since Restoring Independence, A Thriving U.S. Ally.”

After the Erik Wemple Blog alerted the newspaper to Burton’s nonexistent disclaimer, it added in his chairmanship of the Azerbaijan America Alliance.

THE SAME BOUT OF AMNESIA AFFLICTS ANOTHER
ORGAN OF RIGHT-WING WHORING DIRTBAGGERY

Can you believe that the very same omission was made by the Daily Caller, edited by celebrated bow-tied right-wing whoring dirtbag Tucker Carlson? Back to the EWB:

Witness a Burton-penned March 12 piece in the Daily Caller titled, “Is Armenia America’s Ally Or Iran’s?” What follows the headline is an out-and-out hit piece on Armenia. This passage represents the tone pretty capably:

Further evidence of Armenian/Iranian friendship is plentiful. Both Tehran and Yerevan have pushed hard for progress on the construction of the Southern Armenia Railway, which will more closely link the two countries. Meanwhile, in May 2014, Iran and Armenia increased weekly flights between the two countries from three to 50. That’s not tourism. That’s business.

Elsewhere, Burton writes that Russian President Vladimir Putin is vested in promoting “the burgeoning Armenian/Iranian partnership. And we have everything to lose.” Those words sound like just the sort of thing you’d expect from the chairman of the Azerbaijan America Alliance. After all, Azerbaijan and Armenia have become “perilously close to open war,” as the New York Times put it in late January. There have been recent reports of clashes between the two.

"So how," the EWB asks, "does the Daily Caller present Burton to its readers?" There was, first the sunny graphic I've popped atop this post. And then there was "a tagline at the bottom of the piece":

Dan Burton is a former Member of Congress representing Indiana’s 5th Congressional District. He served in Congress from 1983 until 2013 notably serving on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Note: "An inquiry to Tucker Carlson, the Daily Caller's top editor, went unanswered." Color me surprised.


SO THE EWB TRIED THE AZERBAIJAN AMERICA ALLIANCE

And the result was "not much luck."

The Erik Wemple Blog sent an interview request to the organization yesterday and didn’t hear back by this morning, at which point we presented ourselves at the Pennsylvania Avenue address listed on the group’s Web site. After a short wait, a woman appeared to hear our request. She said that the questions I had were properly directed to Burton. When we asked for assistance in contacting Burton, she declined to provide any.

FINALLY, STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

Yes, finally the Erik Wemple Blog establishes direct contact!

In a short phone chat with Burton, the advocacy group chairman asked, “Are you the one who’s been calling everyone about my op-eds?” Yes, responded the Erik Wemple Blog. “I don’t really want to talk to you,” said Burton. Why not? “Because you’re a scandal monger and I don’t want to talk to you. I have no desire to talk to you,” he said. A plea to hear out the Erik Wemple Blog fetched no response.

Th-th-th-that's all, folks!

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Red Sea, Dead Sea -- it's all pretty much the same thing, no? (Or, a new version of the Passover story from Davy Brooks and the NYT)

The yellow ring on this Google Earth shows the location of a proposed canal that for some reason would link the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba, which is a gosh-for-real arm of the Red Sea, and which would sort of make the Dead Sea, you know, connected to the Red Sea. Still kind of off-track for the Exodus, though, if what you're trying to do is get out of Egypt.

by Ken

It's Sunday night, and it's late, and the first of the final new episodes of Mad Men has already started. So I say we confine ourselves to a single item from washingtonpost.com's Erik Wemple Blog, whose head is almost as long as the item:

Historic New York Times correction addresses mistake over parting of the 'Dead Sea'

By Erik Wemple

Like the very best corrections in journalism history, this one, appended to a column by David Brooks of the New York Times, needs no explanation, annotation or elaboration:

Correction: April 3, 2015

An earlier version of this column misidentified the sea that God parted in the Book of Exodus. It is the Red Sea, not the Dead Sea.

I don't want to rag too hard on Davy Brooks. [Sound of with-difficulty-suppressed guffaws.] 'Cause goodness knows, I've perpetrated my share of howlers. But say, doesn't the New York Times still employ editors? The place used to be crawling with 'em.

Just two points, for the record.

• For what it's worth, the Davy B column in question, a bold rehashing of the Exodus story, is called "On Conquering Fear." Sample:

The normal version of this episode is that God parts the Red Sea, the Israelites cross, the Egyptians are engulfed and then the Israelites sing in celebration. But the alternate version is that the Israelites are singing at the moment of crossing. They are not singing in celebration. They are singing in defiance of terror. . . .

Eventually, the Israelites are able to cope with fear. This makes them capable of loving and being loved. The image of fire plays a role in this transformation. At first, fire -- even in the burning bush -- is just scary. But eventually fire is semicontrolled as candlelight at the center of the meal, intimacy and home.

• A tiny technical matter: If you go to the link for the column (at least as of Sunday afternoon), what you'll see is slightly different from the version Erik W chronicles. It now reads:

Correction: April 4, 2015
David Brooks’s column on Friday misidentified the sea that God parted in the Book of Exodus. It is the Red Sea, not the Dead Sea.

At least we've got the correction right now, I hope. Note: no sea change, though.

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And speaking of Governor Booby: Having established that he's a boob, is he trying now to show that he's thuggier than Fox Noise?

Fox Noise has backed off the "no-go zones," but not our Booby.

by Ken

Boy, all of today's stories seem to just tie together! Earlier today we were talking about the, er, distinguished roster of orators who have made their name in the Village by delivering responses to the president's State of the Union address, especially in the Age of Obama -- a list that will now and forever be headed by the biggest boob of them all, Louisiana Gov. Booby Jindal. Who can forget the shock of discovery that night in 2009 when most of us got our first glimpse of this latest GOP rising star, the policy genius?

Well, for better or worse, Governor Booby hasn't gone away. And perhaps sensing that this moment on the calendar is "his" time, he's plunged himself into the news, telling Britain and Europe generally about their "no-go zones," where non-Muslims fear to tread and police stay away.

For a while after the Charlie Hebdo murders the "no-go zones" were apparently part of the Right-Wing Talking Points Packet, and got a lot of play on Fox Noise (where else?). But then a funny thing happened. Fox Noise not only backtracked but started apologizing. I'd still love to know why, of all the made-up stuff the Fox Noisemakers spew 24/7 into the mediasphere, this produced such a response chez Roger Ailes. I mean, if the Noisers actually cared about the factual record, they'd probably have to start a separate Fox Noise Apology channel.

But there we had it: the Noisers apologizing for stuff they said without factual basis. But there too was Governor Booby, standing by his story! Leaving us with another question: Just as puzzling as why Fox Noise backed off the "story" is why our Booby didn't.

Luckily, washingtonpost.com Fix-master Chris Cillizza is on the case. And when it comes to explicating life forms particular to the Village like right-wing oh-so-slowly-rising stars, Chris C is the man, am I right? The gist seems to be, if I may paraphrase, that Booby is now timing his rise to coincide with the 2016 GOP presidential nominating derby, and while he's amply demonstrated his credentials as a genuine right-wing boob (the "Rick Perry factor"), for harder-core right-wing constituencies he still needs to establish his thug potential -- i.e., can he show that he's as tough as, say, Willard Romney?

Take it away, Chris! (Links onsite.)

The Fix
Bobby Jindal won’t back down on ‘no go’ zones. Why?

By Chris Cillizza

In a speech Monday in London, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who is running for president in 2016 (this is a decidedly relevant piece of information) said there were places in Europe in which Islamic law was enforced and where non-Muslims were afraid to go. He called these places, appropriately, "no-go zones," and insisted that a willingness to allow communities like these to exist within countries was at part of the world's problem with Islamist extremists.

While Jindal's comments drew criticism, he was unbowed, insisting in an interview with CNN that he was speaking truth to power.

That interview shows what Jindal's underlying motives here may well be. In the space of 74 seconds, Jindal makes two references to "the left" -- despite the fact that the interviewer isn't asking questions about "no-go zones" in the context of politics. "The radical left wants to pretend like this problem isn't here," Jindal says at one point. "I know the left wants to make this an attack on religion ... and that's not what this is," he says at another.

Here's what Jindal is up to: He is struggling for political oxygen in a Republican field that includes (or might include) the likes of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. So, how do you solve that problem? Throw red meat to the Republican base while simultaneously trolling the left.

It worked.

Conservatives leaped to Jindal's defense. Erick Erickson at Red State pointed out that CNN had done a report on these so-called "no-go zones." And, when Arsalan Iftikhar said on MSNBC that Jindal's comments amounted to him "trying to rub some of the brown off his skin" (Jindal is Indian American), the right responded with fury. (MSNBC said it would not have Iftikhar on as a guest again.)

Disgusting --> MSNBC Guest: Bobby Jindal ‘Trying to Scrub Some of the Brown Off His Skin’ http://t.co/OKbcSlm6Y3 pic.twitter.com/sw5PaQ1RHT
— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) January 19, 2015

"It's embarrassing for MSNBC to give voice to such shallow foolishness," Jindal told the conservative Washington Examiner on Tuesday. "Much like Michael Moore denigrating our military servicemen, these comments deserve no comment." Curt Anderson, a consultant to Jindal, was more blunt in an e-mail to me: "Liberals hate to hear what Jindal is saying. They cannot in public argue the main points of what he is saying, so they are trying to make hay out of noting the obvious -- that 'no-go zones' are not official or part of the law. Duh."

Regardless of Jindal's motives, here's what he's accomplished: In the eyes of the random Republican activist, he's gone from the guy they vaguely remember giving a widely panned State of the Union response to the guy who is willing to stand up not only to radical Islam but also to the political left.

Thanks, Chris, and shesh! When the Right-Wing Bullies 'n' Noisemakers start slinging muck at one another, it's wisest to just jump back and try to stay out of the line of fire.


FURTHER NOTE: DID CNN "LIE"
ABOUT THE "NO-GO ZONES"?

Among the right-wing fans of European "no-go zones," there has been righteous indignation directed at CNN for hounding Governor Booby when, they say, a 2013 report on CNN itself established their existence. But washingtonpost.com's Erik Wemple Blog looked at the claim yesterday ("Bobby Jindal remarks: Does two-year-old CNN report prove existence of 'no-go zones'?") and came away, er, unpersuaded:

Commentators Erick Erickson on Red State and John Nolte on Breitbart cite a February 2013 report by CNN correspondent Dan Rivers as evidence that the network is questioning a phenomenon that it already knows to be true. “JINDAL NONTROVERSY: CNN CAUGHT LYING ABOUT MUSLIM ‘NO GO ZONES,” notes the headline on Notle’s piece.

The CNN report in question, by correspondent Dan Rivers, provides a profile of … well, here’s how it was described in a teaser: “Sharia law in the heart of London, details of Muslim vigilantes harassing women, gays, people just out for a drink.” Rivers walked the streets of Whitechapel with the so-called Muslim patrol — yes, vigilantes who were out to harass people and make them follow their rules. “You cannot dress like that in Muslim area,” said one of the patrolmen to a woman dressed in a skirt.

Evidence, indeed, of Jindal’s comment that there are some Muslims trying “to carry out as much of Sharia law as they can…”

Yet the 2013 CNN report also deflates this whole “no-go” thing. First of all, Rivers reports that “only a handful of men are involved in the self-styled patrols.” Second, Rivers reports that five people had been arrested “on suspicion of harassment.” Third, Rivers reports that the “vast majority of Muslim people living in this part of East London want nothing to do with vigilantes whatsoever.” Fourth, Rivers reports that “police patrols have been stepped up as the authorities take a tough line.” Arrests, heightened police presence — not exactly the hallmarks of what we’ve come to know in recent weeks as a “no-go zone.”

You have to especially love the Nolte "CNN CAUGHT LYING" headline. It's fun when people who wouldn't or maybe just couldn't tell the truth about anything if their lives depended on it call other people liars.

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Looks like NJ's Imperial Thieving Fat Bastard isn't going to be toiling on a chain gang anytime soon

"Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go." You'd think by now NJ's Imperial Thieving Fat Bastard governor would be packing his toothbrush for a decade or two in the slammer, but it isn't looking that way. And "Scummy Joe" Scarborough will tell us why.

by Ken

For now, anyway, the last word apparently goes to "Scummy Joe" Scarborough, who now seems to have officially set himself up as apologist of and coddler of right-wing Imperial Thieving Fat Bastards.

MediaMatters took the trouble to document ("STUDY: New Investigation Into Gov. Christie Adminstration Virtually Ignored By Major Networks") that essentially no TV network news attention was paid, except by MSNBC, to the New York Times's carefully researched and documented story earlier in the week ("2nd Bridge Inquiry Said to Be Linked to Christie," by Matt Flegenheimer, William K. Rashbaum, and Kate Zernike) about multiple dimensions of illegality under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney and the Securities and Exchange Commission to the way New Jersey's Imperial Thieving Fat Bastard of a governor swindled a couple of billion dollars out of his favorite patsy, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. (Okay, that's my characterization of the ITFB's alleged crimes.)

As Erik Wemple subsequently noted on his washingtonpost.com blog, "No surprises in that data set. MSNBC, after all, has provided extensive coverage of all things related to Christie and Jersey infrastructure ever since the George Washington Bridge scandal exploded in January."

However, Erik also notes:

Some of that MSNBC coverage, however, wasn’t terribly complimentary of the New York Times scoop. On his June 24 program, “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough ripped the story and its placement on page A1: “This is garbage,” he said, adding that it’s a “joke of a story to put on the front page.”

Apparently Scummy Joe has higher standards when it comes to possible illegalities imputed to Republican thieving bastards. Stealing a couple of billion dollars? "A joke of a story to put on the front page."


COME ON, WHAT'S THE BEEF? YOU PROBABLY
JUST DON'T LIKE HIS POLITICS, RIGHT?

Well, no, I don't like his politics, but I don't think the people who elected him governor twice don't know much about the politics being practiced in their name.

The money in question is money that -- and I don't think there's any question about this -- the Imperial Thieving Fat Bastard extorted out of the PANYNJ for use to do repairs to the Pulaski Skyway. It's money that magically became "available" after the ITFB unilaterally canceled the long-planned trans-Hudson tunnel, in a fog of obfuscations and outright lies (as the man ever told the truth about anything in public? ever?), despite its substantial and obvious value to large numbers of New Jerseyans, and then magically became available. Like for pilfering ITFBs.

Okay, let's have some facts. MediaMatters quotes two chunks from the NYT report:

The inquiries into securities law violations focus on a period of 2010 and 2011 when Gov. Chris Christie's administration pressed the Port Authority to pay for extensive repairs to the Skyway and related road projects, diverting money that was to be used on a new Hudson River rail tunnel that Mr. Christie canceled in October 2010.

Again and again, Port Authority lawyers warned against the move: The Pulaski Skyway, they noted, is owned and operated by the state, putting it outside the agency's purview, according to dozens of memos and emails reviewed by investigators and obtained by The New York Times.

But the Christie administration relentlessly lobbied to use the money for the Skyway, with Mr. Christie announcing publicly that the state planned to rely on Port Authority funds even before an agreement was reached. Eventually, the authority justified the Skyway repairs by casting the bridge as an access road to the Lincoln Tunnel, even though they are not directly connected.

Hmm, "Again and again, Port Authority lawyers warned against the move," eh? "Not directly connected," eh, the skyway and the tunnel? Well, and this is just an Imperial Thieving Fat Bastard brainstorming, what if we were to make up some cover name?

In bond documents describing the Skyway reconstruction and other repairs, the Port Authority has called the projects "Lincoln Tunnel Access Infrastructure Improvements."

The accuracy of this characterization is now a major focus of the investigations, according to several people briefed on the matter. Under a New York State law known as the Martin Act, prosecutors can bring felony charges for intentionally deceiving bond holders, without having to prove any intent to defraud or even establish that any fraud occurred.

BEFORE WE GO ON, SORRY, BUT THE "FAT" IN
"IMPERIAL THIEVING FAT BASTARD" MATTERS

I know I will be castigated for referring mockingly to the Imperial Thieving Fat Bastard's all-adulthood grotesque obesity. I'm sorry, though, it's who he is -- a loathsome, greedy, self-absorbed beast of limitless ravenous appetites who has flaunted his loathsomeness, greed, self-absorption, and limitless ravenous appetites. I think he want anyone who deals with him to know that he is an imperial thieving fat bastard. Play ball with him (and you remember how, when he was trying to separate himself from the crackpot-thug high school crony David Wildstein whom he planted at the PANYNJ, he depicted is old pal as a solitary high school wacko and himself as "an athlete"), and you'll be rewarded; fuck with him and, well, you risk suffering the wrath of an Imperial Thieving Fat Bastard.

You know, sort of the way Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer revealed the ITFB administration had threatened her city's Sandy recovery money if she didn't play ball with one of his high-stakes development scams. Does anyone really believe Mayor Zimmer made this up? It fits perfectly with the ITFB adminsitration's pattern of carrot-and-stick intimidation and thuggery. And again, I don't think the ITFB's "people" were all that shy about it. Intimidation doesn't work if the people you want to keep in line don't know they're under threat. It's just that nobody dares go public, for fear of, well, incurring the consequences. And the ITFB had a near-ironclad defense: You can't prove nuttin', coppers. And he should know, having been the kind of U.S. attorney Karl Rove loved, the kind who knew which criminals to sit on and which to send on their way with a friendly athlete's pat on the rump.


HEY, BUT AREN'T NEW JERSEYANS GETTING
A LOVELY REHABILITATED PULASKI SKYWAY?

Well, lucky for them. Their ITFB did a little something for them. At the same time, of course, he was bribing labor unions to whom chunks of that money would be flowing into playing ball with him. And who knows how many other ITFB cronies and seduction targets got their cuts? We do know about the merriment with which once-respected former NJ AG David Sansom, installed by the ITFB as his personal stooge-chariman of the PANYNJ, approved deals for which he got his cut as attorney for the lucky recipients.

But gosh, you say, the Pulaski Skyway needed rebuilding, and the state of New Jersey couldn't afford to do it.

Well, boo-hoo. Did you notice just recently that when the state of New Jersey couldn't afford to honor its legal obligations, and the ITFB decided that meant he could slash $904M from the state's contribution to its retirees' benefits (and another $1.57B next year!), and a bunch of unions sued, just this week --

A New Jersey judge on Wednesday refused to force Governor Chris Christie to restore almost a billion dollars in funds that he cut from the state's 2014 pension contribution.

The state's fiscal crisis trumped public workers' contractual rights, granted under the state's 2011 pension reform law, to the full contribution, according to Judge Mary Jacobson's ruling.
Public sector unions sued the Christie administration after he slashed $904 million from this year's pension contribution and directed the legislature to cut $1.57 billion from next year's budget, too.

Golly gee, wasn't it just this past fall that the state was a picture of financial health thanks to its ITFB governor's bold fiscal prudence? And now, gosh sucks, there's just no money for retired state workers. Apparently when it comes to state workers, as opposed to private-sector unions he's trying to bribe or connected cronies he's trying to enrich, boo-hoo, Your Honor, there's just no money to be found.

"Scummy Joe" Scarborough doesn't see anything wrong here. After all, he's just being a forceful leader for the people of his state. Well, no, he's being a forceful enforcer and enricher for the rich of his state, or else he wouldn't be doing it in secret through intimidation, extortion, and embezzlement. I guess "Scummy Joe" understands that the reason we have government is to help the rich become richer, and the reason we have elections is so the people can decide who they want deciding which rich people should get how much richer.

In the case of the canceled trans-Hudson tunnel, I think we can conclude that

These are, after all, economically troubled times -- after the ITFB's reelection win, that is. State government can't fill the pockets of every overprivileged supplicant.

#

Prob'ly the NYT's Pinch Sulzberger thinks it's none of our goddam beeswax why he shitcanned Exec Ed Jill Abramson (with UPDATE)

NYT caption: "Dean Baquet addressing the Times staff in the newsroom Wednesday afternoon after he was named as the new executive editor."

by Ken

Are you wondering why Jill Abramson was summarily fired after three years as the top editor of the New York Times? The New Yorker's Ken Auletta has gathered together everything he could find out ("Why Jill Abramson Was Fired"), and while it's all extremely interesting, it sure doesn't seem to me to add up to a convulsive move like this very public, very unapologetic, and yet totally unexplained shitcanning. I'm relieved to find that it doesn't seem so to washingtonpost.com media maven Erik Wemple either ("New York Times publisher Sulzberger fights back, weakly")

One point we have to take for granted is the NYT publisher "Pinch" Sulzberger (aka the Juniorest Arthur Sulzberger) had to have been prepared for a firestorm. A change of bottoms in the paper's executive-editor chair is always a huge deal, even when it comes about through age-mandated retirement of the incumbent. When it comes to a firing like this, after a mere three years on the job, well, the guy would have to be a moron not to be prepared to have the entire media universe converge on him expecting, you know, some explanation.


POSSIBILITY: PINCH REALLY IS A MORON?

Remember, he became publisher of the paper at 41 in 1992, and in the 22 years since, he has, well, grown 22 years older. Maybe he's the George W. Bush of the Sulzberger dynasty?

As to the unexpectedness and in-plain-sight, execution-style brutality of the firing, just listen to Ken Auletta:

At the annual City University Journalism School dinner, on Monday, Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the New York Times, was seated with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper’s publisher. At the time, I did not give a moment’s thought to why Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, was not at their table. Then, at 2:36 P.M. on Wednesday, an announcement from the Times hit my e-mail, saying that Baquet would replace Abramson, less than three years after she was appointed the first woman in the top job. Baquet will be the first African-American to lead the Times.

Fellow-journalists and others scrambled to find out what had happened. Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …” Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.

POSSIBILITY: WAS THERE A MONEY GAP?

Auletta reported yesterday:

Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson, who spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, had been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, which accounted for some of the pension disparity. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said that Jill Abramson’s total compensation as executive editor “was directly comparable to Bill Keller’s”—though it was not actually the same. I was also told by another friend of Abramson’s that the pay gap with Keller was only closed after she complained. But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy. A third associate told me, “She found out that a former deputy managing editor”—a man—“made more money than she did” while she was managing editor. “She had a lawyer make polite inquiries about the pay and pension disparities, which set them off.”

Today Pinch pushed back harder on the pay-gap issue, in a staff memo that was reproduced in full by Capital New York:

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to you because I am concerned about the misinformation that has been widely circulating in the media since I announced Jill Abramson’s departure yesterday. I particularly want to set the record straight about Jill’s pay as Executive Editor of The Times.

Pinch -- no moron he, right?

It is simply not true that Jill’s compensation was significantly less than her predecessors. Her pay is comparable to that of earlier executive editors. In fact, in 2013, her last full year in the role, her total compensation package was more than 10% higher than that of her predecessor, Bill Keller, in his last full year as Executive Editor, which was 2010. It was also higher than his total compensation in any previous year.

Comparisons between the pensions of different executive editors are difficult for several reasons. Pensions are based upon years of service with the Company. Jill’s years of service were significantly fewer than those of many of her predecessors. Secondly, as you may know, pension plans for all managers at The New York Times were frozen in 2009. But this and all other pension changes at the Company have been applied without any gender bias and Jill was not singled out or differentially disadvantaged in any way.

Compensation played no part whatsoever in my decision that Jill could not remain as executive editor. Nor did any discussion about compensation. The reason – the only reason – for that decision was concerns I had about some aspects of Jill’s management of our newsroom, which I had previously made clear to her, both face-to-face and in my annual assessment.

This Company is fully committed to equal treatment of all its employees, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation or any other characteristic. We are working hard to live up to that principle in every part of our organization. I am satisfied that we fully lived up to that commitment with regard to Jill.

Arthur

Since Abramson so far isn't talking, we don't have confirmation of what seems likely from Auletta's reporting: that she sure as hell thought there was a pay gender gap.

If we want a clue as to why Abramson was shitcanned, Pinch gives us this:

"The reason – the only reason – for that decision was concerns I had about some aspects of Jill’s management of our newsroom, which I had previously made clear to her, both face-to-face and in my annual assessment."

"Some aspects of Jill's management of our newsroom." Which of course he's not at liberty to discuss. Since, again, we aren't hearing from Abramson, we don't have her view of what Pinch may have "previously made clear to her, both face-to-face and in my annual assessment."

This sounds deeply fishy to me, but let's go back to what Auletta reported.


TROUBLE WITH NYT CO. CEO MARK THOMPSON?

Sulzberger’s frustration with Abramson was growing. She had already clashed with the company’s C.E.O., Mark Thompson, over native advertising and the perceived intrusion of the business side into the newsroom. Publicly, Thompson and Abramson denied that there was any tension between them, as Sulzberger today declared that there was no church-state—that is, business-editorial—conflict at the Times. A politician who made such implausible claims might merit a front-page story in the Times. The two men and Abramson clearly did not get along.

TROUBLE WITH THEN-MANAGING EDITOR
(NOW EXECUTIVE EDITOR) DEAN BAQUET?

Not much seems to have filtered out to the outside world about what Auletta now describes as "the fractious relationship" between Abramson and her No. 2, Managing Editor Dean Baquet, who now occupies her old chair, but we're getting indications that on the inside this was well-known, and not exactly subtle. It's worth noting that Baquet was one of the people who didn't get the exec ed job back when Abramson did.

A third issue surfaced, too: Abramson was pushing to hire a deputy managing editor to oversee the digital side of the Times. She believed that she had the support of Sulzberger and Thompson to recruit this deputy, and her supporters say that the plan was for the person in this position to report to Baquet. Baquet is a popular and respected figure in the newsroom, and he had appeared, for the most part, to get along with Abramson. (I was told, however, that, at a recent dinner with Sulzberger, Baquet said he found her hard to work with.) He is also someone whom Sulzberger passed over when he chose Abramson. But Baquet apparently felt that he hadn’t been consulted, and, according to two sources, expressed his concerns to Sulzberger. He had also reportedly been approached by Bloomberg about a job there. (Baquet has not yet responded to a request for comment; neither has Abramson.)

In a reflection of the fractious relationship that Baquet and others had with Abramson, the Times reported that Baquet, speaking to the newsroom after his appointment, “praised Ms. Abramson for teaching him ‘the value of great ambition’ and then added that John Carroll, whom he worked for at The Los Angeles Times, ‘told me that great editors can also be humane editors.’ ”

THEN THERE'S ABRAMSON'S "BRUSQUENESS"

We always hear, of course, about how Jill A can be "brusque." Back to Auletta:

The reason Sulzberger originally hesitated to appoint Abramson as executive editor was a worry about her sometimes brusque manner. As I wrote in my Profile of Abramson, others in the newsroom, including some women, had the same concern. But, although there are always complaints about the Times’ supposed “liberal” bias, or its preoccupation with certain stories, Abramson got high marks for the investigative stories that she championed. At a time when Bloomberg News pulled the plug on an investigation of corruption and the princelings in China, Abramson pushed the Times to do more, even after her reporters came under pressure in China. Even though she thought she was politely asking about the pay discrepancy and about the role of the business side, and that she had a green light from management to hire a deputy to Baquet, the decision to terminate her was made. Sulzberger met with her last Friday, and reportedly told her that it was time to make “a change.”

Now it doesn't seem impossible to me that "brusqueness" might be held against a male top editor. It just seems likelier that it might be a near-to-hanging offense against a female top editor.


NOW IF YOU'RE GOING TO TELL ME . . .

. . . that you see grounds here for a firing, well, you're seeing something I don't. And I'm pretty astonished that Pinch didn't seem to think he had any need to be ready with a public explanation -- or, for that matter, even an explanation for his own staff -- beyond this mysterious business of "some aspects of Jill's management of our newsroom."

All I get here is that Pinch didn't like Jill, and Mark Thompson and Dean Baquet didn't like Jill, and Baquet -- who has supposedly been approached by Bloomberg -- has been telling Pinch that Jill is difficult to work with. Is there something there? Of the "either she goes or I go" variety?


AS I MENTIONED, ERIK WEMPLE IS STUMPED TOO

"As any crisis communications consultant will note," Erik begins his piece today, "a company is in a crisis when it’s forced to publicly compare the compensation levels of key departed executives." Then he sketches the background, takes note of Pinch's Memo today, and has no more luck than I do extracting from it any sense of what's really going on in Pinch's head.

Here we go again with the management-aspects line. In his address to staffers yesterday, Sulzberger said, “I choose to appoint a new leader for our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects of the management of the newsroom.” So that’s the default explanation, language that the Times is using as a catch-all response to the question: Why?

It’s not good enough, either. Though Abramson by many accounts irritated people and wasn’t always the most cuddly manager, listen to what Sulzberger said yesterday about how the Times performed under her watch:

It is not about the quality of our journalism, which in my mind has never been better.

Jill did an outstanding job in preserving and extending the level of excellence of our news report during her time as executive editor and, before that, as managing editor and Washington bureau chief. She’s an accomplished journalist who contributed mightily to our reputation as the world’s most important news provider.

A chasm hangs between that evaluation of Abramson’s central mission and the treatment accorded to her yesterday — a ruthless and shocking discarding, that is. Though Sulzberger has stated that he won’t go into detail about the specifics of his decision, despite the memo on pay, a good question might be this: How did Abramson’s deficiencies in “some aspects” of newsroom management compromise the news product?

And Erik concludes with this tweet:



To be continued, I imagine.


UPDATE: MORE ON THE STORY

Ken Auletta has already brought forth a follow-up, "Jill Abramson and the Times: What Went Wrong?," which notably amplifies and focuses all of the above themes without, as far as I can see, explaining anything. (One interesting tidbit: Apparently Jill A was so persuaded that she was on the wrong side of a gender pay gap -- clearly she wasn't persuaded by the arguments put forth by the NYT's damage-control flack and by Pinch himself) that she hired a lawyer to pursue the matter. On the side of the NYT high command, this seems to have been part of a "pattern" of behavior she established, presumably of non-team-playerness?)

Also, The New Yorker's excellent reporter Ben McGrath has rounded up some inside tales for a post, "Times Talk." Very interesting stuff, but still, it seems to me, no actual explanation.

#

Criminal crackpot Cliven Bundy is lambasted for failing to use established GOP code words for his racist slurs

Oops, wrong Bundy. This isn't famous criminal crackpot "Cliven" Bundy, it's famous shoe salesman Al Bundy -- no relation, as far as I can tell. Never mind.

"The reason [Bundy] was embraced by so many on the right is that he was their kind of people, One of Us. . . .

"When conservatives looked at Bundy, they saw not just a white guy, but also a cowboy, and that particular brand of character who waves an American flag while fighting the American government (in his case by stealing public property). And they saw lots of guns, which also told them he was their kind of people. Everything about him told them he was their kind of guy."

-- Paul Waldman, in his "Plum Line" post yesterday,
"Cliven Bundy and the perils of identity politics"

by Ken

Last night I promised that I would keep thinking to see if I had anything to say about criminal crackpot Cliven Bundy, who at least for this week is serving as Sean Hannity's No. 1 Favorite Criminal Crackpot. Of course the story may have lost some of its, er, edge now that, as noted on today's Washington Post "Headlines" e-mails:

(The story is here. For the record, already last night I chronicled the headline: "Rand Paul and other Republican leaders back away from Bundy." OMG, Rand Paul is a Republican "leader"?)

Still, some of the most important questions remain not only unanswered but unasked. Most important, of course, is the question no one dares to ask: What the hell kind of name is "Cliven"?

Then there's the question of whether "Cliven" is related to famous Cold Warrior brothers McGeorge and William Bundy, or to famous serial killer Ted Bundy, or to famous shoe salesman Al Bundy. I'm afraid ya got me. (However, a connection to Atlantic Canada's famous Bay of Fundy, with its famous monster tides, seems highly unlikely.)

Finally there's the question of what "Cliven" did that was really so wrong. Fortunately the Borowitz Report is all over this one:

April 24, 2014
REPUBLICANS BLAST NEVADA RANCHER FOR FAILING TO USE COMMONLY ACCEPTED RACIAL CODE WORDS
Posted by ANDY BOROWITZ


WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — Republican politicians blasted the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy on Thursday for making flagrantly racist remarks instead of employing the subtler racial code words the G.O.P. has been using for decades.

“We Republicans have worked long and hard to develop insidious racial code words like ‘entitlement society’ and ‘personal responsibility,’ ” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). “There is no excuse for offensive racist comments like the ones Cliven Bundy made when there are so many subtler ways of making the exact same point.”

Fox News also blasted the rancher, saying in a statement, “Cliven Bundy’s outrageous racist remarks undermine decades of progress in our effort to come up with cleverer ways of saying the same thing.”

WELL, THERE IS ANOTHER QUESTION
THAT'S WORTH ASKING ABOUT "CLIVEN"

And in fact, as I pointed out last night, that worthy young sage Alexandra Petri asked it in a washingtonpost.com post of hers yesterday, "Cliven Bundy’s awful views should not be news":

You know that it is a slow week for news when the big story is that a man who thinks he should be allowed to let his cattle graze harmoniously for free on protected federal lands might have some racist opinions. What? Why do we care about his thoughts on race? Why, for that matter, were we listening to him in the first place?

In an even moderately sane world, I would say thank you, Alexandra, that really says it all, next case. After all, this is a man who initially became a celebrity for knowing less than nothing about: state and federal law, the Constitution, and land use, and by breaking the law both by abusing protected land and stealing the grass his cattle grazed. I would not just hope but expect that the appropriate authorities would apply the appropriate remedies, and if the criminal wacko were to try to use violence to prevent the application of the law, then if there were no other way of resolving the situation, his stinking, worthless carcass should have been blown to kingdom come -- along with those of any conspirators in this criminal violence.

Say, do you remember the days when right-wingers at least pretended to be the bedrock upholders of law 'n' order? Now it seems that as long as your mind and heart are made up of pure right-wing scummery, you have a champion in Sean Hannity and the other reptilian scum of his ilk.

But if for no other reason than the reach and influence of because of that reptilian ilk, I'm afraid we can't calim to live in a society of even minimal sanity. And since this is a society where there are media hooligans who can be counted on to make a celebrity of a pile of psychotic filth like "Cliven," there doesn't seem to me any way he can be simply ignored.

As Amy Davidson notes in a newyorker.com post today, "Cliven Bundy's Slavery Delusion," in which -- God bless her -- she takes on the filthy task of actually answering the truly evil as well as psychotic filth "Cliven" has spewed in his racial rants (as reported, crucially, by NYT pro Adam Nagourney):

Bundy is not just a fringe character: he has had the support of Greg Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor in Texas, and Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky. Too many conservatives have been charmed by the notion of a cowboy singing the anthem on horseback and threatening to turn guns on bureaucrats. They can’t just proclaim themselves stunned here.

And no, as Amy notes parenthetically, the whackjob politicos can't just take it back -- not without owning up to their wrongdoing in jumping on the criminal-crackpot bandwagon.


SORRY, BUT NO, THE RIGHT-WING POLS 'N' NOISE
MACHINISTS CAN'T SIMPLY "NEVER MIND" IT

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank has a great post up this afternoon, "Bundy saga reveals the risk of cozying up to extremists," in which he charts some of those GOP "never mind"s (links onsite)

[C]onservative figures who had celebrated [Bundy's] cause rushed to distance themselves from him.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had condemned the federal government’s attempt to enforce court orders against Bundy: “Offensive.”

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who had declared Bundy’s followers “patriots”: “Appalling and racist.”

And Sean Hannity, who had led a Fox News campaign that made a hero of Bundy: “Beyond repugnant.”

"Bundy boosters are right to be appalled," Dana goes on, "but they should not be shocked."

The anti-government strain of thought that Bundy advanced has been intertwined with racist and anti-Semitic views over several decades. Not all people who resist the authority of the federal government are motivated by race, of course, and not all racists are anti-government. But there is a long symbiosis between the two.

Dana does some useful surveying of some of the more notorious cases in point of that long symbiosis, stretching all too actively into the here and now. Toward the end of his piece he reminds us that "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) on Tuesday said the federal government was “using the jackboot of authoritarianism to come against the citizens.”

By Thursday, Cruz’s office was calling Bundy’s racism “completely unacceptable.”

And yet completely unsurprising.

ONE OBSERVATION THAT REALLY RESONATES WITH ME . . .

. . . was made yesterday by Paul Waldman in a "Plum Line' post, "Cliven Bundy and the perils of identity politics." It grew out of a question Paul posed, "Why on earth did any Republicans get behind [Bundy]?"

You could say it was reflexive anti-government sentiment; anybody who’s fighting the feds is OK with them. But that’s not really it. As a number of people pointed out [links onsite], if Cliven Bundy were black, he wouldn’t have become a right-wing hero, with all the loving coverage on Fox News and hundreds of gun-toting government-haters traveling hundreds of miles to brandish their weapons at his side. The reason he was embraced by so many on the right is that he was their kind of people, One of Us. And it shows the perils of identity politics.

Race is a part of that, but not all of it. When conservatives looked at Bundy, they saw not just a white guy, but also a cowboy, and that particular brand of character who waves an American flag while fighting the American government (in his case by stealing public property). And they saw lots of guns, which also told them he was their kind of people. Everything about him told them he was their kind of guy. And I’m sure if liberals had thought about it, they would have said, “I’ll bet this guy has some colorful ideas about race.” Conservatives would have protested that that’s a vicious and unfair stereotype. But in this case it turned out to be true, and how.

NOW, ALAS, WE HAVE TO TAKE A QUICK DIP
INTO (EGAD!) THE "MIND" OF SEAN HANNITY

And so, as washingtonpost.com media blogger Erik Wemple puts it in a post today: "No, Sean Hannity, you can't distance yourself from Cliven Bundy." Not, Erik says, if you don't make "the next logical move," which --

would have been to repudiate his own coverage of Bundy. But that was too far a walk for Hannity. Instead, he got into the hair-splitting business, attempting to keep alive the larger theme of his coverage, despite the unseemly comments about race from his ranching hero."

The "hair-splitting" included this assertion from our Sean:

The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy. At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control.

Sure enough, our Sean eventually evoked Waco, another situation of which our boy has less-than-zero understanding, which seems to be a prerequisite for all of his "news" coverage, very likely because the way he has mistrained his brain excludes any possibility of actual information-processing and thought.

Erik, however, isn't accepting a "Cliven-Bundy-a-la-carte option."

Either you embrace Cliven Bundy in toto or you reject him.

Despite Hannity’s protestations, this is all about a man named Cliven Bundy. How many other Western ranching freeloaders are there who have stiffed the government for two decades with specious arguments and then rally with gun-toting protesters when the feds move in to round up his cattle?

Erik suggests that possibly our Sean "could be excused for embracing this guy, if only the signs of the rancher's unhingedness had been shrouded before this latest encounter." But this is "no sale" too. Our Sean, after all, is bragging about having been on this story for ages, long before anybody else had the courage to see this case of a Little Guy standing up to the out-of-control, overreaching federal government -- "a government gone wild today in America!"

Which means at some point he or one of his people should have done just the tiniest bit of research, made an absolutely minimal effort to discover the facts. But of course this is Fox Noise, where they puke on facts.

Still, Erik says,

All Hannity’s producers needed to do was check a certain document in the 1998 case United States of America v. Cliven Bundy. Here’s how it abridges Bundy’s stance in the case:

Bundy appears to argue in his Motion to Dismiss…that the Complaint…should be dismissed because this Court lacks jurisdiction since Article IV of the Constitution cannot be imposed upon him. Bundy claims that he is a citizen of Nevada and not a citizen of a territory of the United States, and he also quotes religious texts.

If you’re Fox News, that’s all the information you need to reach a simple conclusion: Perhaps this is a local story.

But for Fox News in general and our Sean in particular, "local story" has no more meaning than "federal case." All our Sean has to work from is a psychotically delusional image of the universe imprinted in his nonfucntioning brain by some agent of evil, and the determination to dredge up, cut up, if necessary make up, and then  eassemble any words and images he can scare up that fit his psychotic delusions.

I'm going to guess that once upon a time when Little Sean was asked what he wanted to do if he grew up, he said, "Cowboy."

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