The Creation of the Clinton vs the Progressives Narrative

The Creation of the Clinton vs the Progressives Narrative

26 Comments
It is fascinating to watch and of course Mark Halperin would be at the tip of the spear of this bullshit. According to him and his interlocutor here, Hillary Clinton is "terrified of the left". Setting up this narrative of Clinton vs "The Left" is all about demonizing "The Left" and its ideas in a way that Halperin would never do for the Tea Party -- who are demonstrably dangerous. Which might be why he feels that he can do this -- there's no downside to him for taking sides against "The Left". He won't be the only one, of course, but this is the first I've seen of this narrative in the wild this cycle.

If Progressives Show Up to Protest, Will Anyone Hear About It?

1 Comment
This past Sunday, 80K - 100K people from all over the US took to the streets in Raleigh, NC to protest the draconian policies that the GOP are implementing there. The protest, called the Moral March on Raleigh, was kick off of this year's long Moral Mondays marches in Raleigh -- marches that resulted in arrests of non-violent protesters last year.
The “Moral March on Raleigh,” organized by Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) and the North Carolina NAACP, marched from Shaw University to the state capitol to push back against the “immoral and unconstitutional policies” of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory during the 2013 NC General Assembly session. Since North Carolina Republicans took over both legislative chambers in 2010, legislators have eliminated a host of programs and raised taxes on the bottom 80 percent, repealed a tax credit for 900,000 working families, enforced voter suppression efforts, blocked Medicaid coverage, cut pre-Kindergarten funding, cut federal unemployment benefits, and gave itself the authority to intervene in abortion lawsuits.

POTUS As Press Critic

3 Comments
This is an article close to my news junkie heart: President Obama is an Avid Reader, and Critic, of the News. This is worth reading for the whole (short) thing, but I was intrigued that he read his news mostly via iPad (where you really could read all of the newspapers -- take that Sarah Palin!) and that he watches very little TV news. And I admit intrigued because this is largely how I get my news -- I can wade through the information, get a sense of the narratives out there without having to sit through the dumbed down shoutfests. But that's just me. And the President.

Late Night Video — Emergency Default Crisis Rally

The American Dream Movement called for supporters to rally at the Congress last Thursday, that resulted in a few hundred folks who showed up to send a message to Congress asking for a debt deal that was fair for ordinary Americans -- no cuts fo Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I noted in a comment recently that this rally was held on the same day that the teajadis also rallied -- with far fewer people (most accounts note that there was more press than ralliers), yet wall to wall coverage in the MSM.

In Which We Find the Media as Broken as the Republican Party

10 Comments
I wish I could stop being stunned at how badly our MSM can be in telling the public about the issues of the day. But I'm seeing more and more criticism of the coverage of this issue that I wonder if we aren't looking at a point somewhere in the next weeks or months where our media does some of the sheepish navel gazing that followed when it became really plain that the Iraq War was done on a very large bed of lies that the media did little (except for the McClatchy organization) to try to check up on.