Conflict of Interest Kurtz Strikes Again

The ash burns on Howie Kurtz's ass are getting more noticable by the minute.

Update: Erik Wemple keeps his speculation clean.

Libertarian Old Police Blotter: Joe Gone to Prison Edition

I can't find anything to tie Joe Francis to the Republican Party, although he shares many of the G.O.P.'s views on women.  So I'll make this a "Libertarian Old Police Blotter."

Anyway, here's the good news:

Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame has been accused of hitting girls in the past. But this time the charges stuck.

The L.A. City Attorney's office triumphantly stated that Francis was convicted by a jury today of "three counts of false imprisonment, one count of dissuading a witness from reporting, and one count of assault causing great bodily injury":

Prosecutors say the 40-year-old enticed three women into his limo outside Hollywood's Supperclub. Two of the women thought they were simply being driven to a parked car nearby. But no, the City Attorney's office says:

 Instead Francis took them to his place and got into a physical altercation with two of the women as he tried to separate them from their companion.

If there's any justice, Joe will spend the next five years in prison. Congratulations to the prosecutors for their outstanding work.

As One Hack Falls, One Hundred Hacks Rise Up to Take His Place

Coverage of Howard Kurtz's sacking by The Daily Beast pays tribute to Kurtz by being just as hacktacular as Kurtz himself. A choice nugget:

The question of Kurtz’s future, in terms of both reputation and relevance, now turns to CNN.

It took two people to write that.

It's all there in the PoliticHo article -- worthless anonymous quotes which insult but don't inform, "seems" and "it is unclear"s as hedges for ass-pulled speculation, Twitter reprints.  It's almost as if Kurtz wrote it himself.

Dylan Byers is either laboring under the misimpression that his crap is superior to Kurtz's, or he knows his crap is just as bad and that his employer doesn't care.

Howard Kurtz's Conflicts of Interest Reduced By Nine Percent

So what does a right-wing hack do after failing downward from a Washington Post Co. property and a virtual joke (NewsBeast)?

He can follow his fellow hack, Mickey Kaus, and write bitter anti-immigrant screeds at the Daily Choler. 

Don't worry, folks.  Howie has several other jobs he can do poorly.  I mean, what are the odds that CNN will wise up?

The Washington Post reports the story by defining irony down:

People familiar with both sides — media people ironically speaking anonymously about other media people — agree that there was mutual antagonism and tension for several months.

And then there's Maude:

Kurtz has expressed dissatisfaction with deep cutbacks and in his bureau site’s increased emphasis on liberal commentary, including the addition of two former Obama administration officials as columnists.

Yet not a peep out of him about the hiring of Megan McArdle or "The Royalist."

But I repeat myself. 

Fright or Flight

Eric Alterman makes a persuasive case for the worthlessness of Maureen Dowd.

Maureen Dowd herself makes the same case every time she is published:

"BARBARA BUSH is a word that rhymes with fright."

Blight?
Parasite?
Anti-semite?

My vote: Shite.

If You See Something, Say Something

You've probably seen reports that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was so radicalized and bloodthirsty that he disrupted a worship service by shouting because the imam was praising a religious pacifist:

Here's one account:

About three years ago, I saw Krauthammer flip out in synagogue on Yom Kippur. The rabbi had offered some timid endorsement of peace — peace essentially on Israel’s terms — but peace anyway. Krauthammer went nuts. He actually started bellowing at the rabbi, from his wheel chair in the aisle. People tried to “shush” him. It was, after all, the holiest day of the year. But Krauthammer kept howling until the rabbi apologized. The man is as arrogant as he is thuggish. Who screams at the rabbi at services? For advocating peace?

Elsewhere, the man had frequently cheered the slaughter of innocents through bombing.

The mosque kicked Tsarnaev out of its congregation.   

An Art Lover Inquires

How much do you think it would cost to commission a Jon McNaughton painting of Ben Carson battling Kermit Gosnell in the skies over Jerusalem, and call it "Undercard of The Armageddon"?

Plato and Bacon

The Man of Virtue sings of Bowdoin and the NAS:

[In his Forward to What Does Bowdoin Teach?, Bill] Bennett begins by asserting that “Plato… remarked that the two most important questions in society are ‘Who teaches the children?’ and ’What do they teach them?’” Unfortunately, Plato “remarks” no such thing, at least in any of the works known to me (I invite readers to correct me if I’m wrong). I suppose that the phrase could be a reasonable, if rather simplistic summary of Plato’s thought about education. But the actual source appears to be a Michelle Malkin column. The phrase also appears, without a specific citation, on a number of cut-and-paste quote sites. Misquotation happens all the time, of course. But it’s a bad start for a defense of traditional education–particularly one that claims that Bowdoin students aren’t learning enough about Greek philosophy.

Here's something else Plato didn't say:

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

And Plato wasn't talking about Butterbean Bennett when he didn't say it, though if the quote fits, wear it.

Anyway, had Plato answered the questions he didn't ask, his preferred answers would not have been "homeschoolers" and "wingnuttery."  If one wanted to stoop to conquer, one could argue that Plato was Melissa Harris-Perry back in the day.

In the same two-page Forward, at page 10, Butterbean also uses a fake Lincoln quote.

Many institutions frown on this sort of thing.

But we shouldn't be too hard on Big Bill.  When you pay someone minimum wage to bloviate under your name, you're bound to get inferior work product.

(link via Dr. Berube)

Shattered Ass

Ta-Nehisi Coates has an excellent post-mortem on the excremental Michael Kelly, 
who wasn't so much a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq but a pitbull, rabidly slavering his militaristic fantasies on anyone with spitting distance.

His apologists will claim he was only wrong in hindsight, but that's not true.  As the excepts quoted by Coates illustrate, Kelly wasn't reporting facts, he was seeking to make things true by wishing them to be true (and doing so in a truly obnoxious manner).  

Kelly was wretched.  He was vile.  He was contemptible.

And he was one of a rare breed to whom the phrase "hoist with his own petard" applies literally. 

Ayn Rand Barbie Speaks

"Of course, predictions are hard, especially about the future."

No doubt McArdle will claim she's making a funny, but her whole column is chock full o'  such boneheaded drivel.

At this point, it's just a matter of time. In some sense, the sexual revolution is over . . . and the forces of bourgeois repression have won.

That's right, I said it: this is a landmark victory for the forces of staid, bourgeois sexual morality. Once gays can marry, they'll be expected to marry. And to buy sensible, boring cars that are good for car seats. I believe we're witnessing the high water mark for "People should be able to do whatever they want, and it's none of my business." You thought the fifties were conformist? Wait until all those fabulous "confirmed bachelors" and maiden schoolteachers are expected to ditch their cute little one-bedrooms and join the rest of America in whining about crab grass, HOA restrictions, and the outrageous fees that schools want to charge for overnight soccer trips.

Either McArdle thinks the "sexual revolution" was a gays-only phenomenon or she thinks that the availability of marriage cannot coexist with the choices not to marry and to fuck without a wedding ring.  And she's apparently never considered that equality of rights is a good thing independent of any desire to exercise such rights.  

What McArdle actually thinks is that marriage is all about the accumulation of wealth and saying "screw you" to losers who are unlike her. 

That's why McArdle has never supported marriage equality, and still does not.  (She concedes the inevitability of marriage equality, but never the immorality of inequality.)  And why she's hopeful that unmarried sluts and their bastards will once again suffer public prejudice and shame.  Because the more people she can say "screw you" to, the happier she is.

(via alicublog)

The Tuckerho Chronicles

The sordid tale of Tucker Carlson and his relations with prostitutes gets even more interesting:

[Dominican district attorney Jose Antonio] Polanco said that [Melanio] Figueroa gave police an account describing his involvement in the taping, starting in October. He said he was approached by Carlos about the idea in the fall, and they met in a small bar in a Santo Domingo shopping center to discuss the details, according to Polanco. Figueroa said the foreign man gave him a $2,000 “advance” to make the arrangements for the interview, Polanco said.

In comments reported by Univision, Polanco said that Figueroa stated he has been contacted by four media outlets — Telemundo, Univision, CNN en Español and the Daily Caller — that were interested in interviewing the women. But Figueroa told police it was only “Carlos,” who identified himself as working for the Daily Caller, who came to the Dominican Republic and paid him to arrange the recorded interviews, according to an interview with Polanco.

Tucker Carlson and The Daily Choler deny that any money changed hands between "the Daily Caller and any sources or individuals connected with this investigation, nor did anyone named Carlos travel to the Dominican Republic on behalf of The Daily Caller." 

The most obvious explanation is that "Carlos" is Robert "Mickey" Kaus, whose name is not Carlos, and that Carlson told Kaus he'd pay him back the $2,000, but never did.

Penii For The Fjords

The lineup for the August 2013 National Review Cruise in Norway has just been announced, and it's even more of a sausage fest than usual.  Every one of the "guest speakers" on the cruise, from Jonah Goldberg to Dick Morris to John Podhoretz, is a genetic male.  Not a single lady, or Maggie Gallagher, among them.  I suppose this makes sense if your target customers are elderly widows and confirmed bachelors of a certain age.  

Though National Review has already reduced the price at least once, "convservative cruisers" will still enjoy all of the following:

Scintillating seminars with NR editors and guest speakers, along with plenty of passenger Q&A.

Plenty of chances to meet, schmooze and enjoy personal interaction with our special guest speakers.

Exclusive Parties and Dining with our special guest speakers. You will dine with your fellow National Review attendees, so that you have the chance to meet many of your fellow conservative cruisers.

Intimate dining on two evenings with a guest speaker or editor.

Three revelrous cocktail receptions.

One late-night "smoker" featuring world-class H. Upmann cigars.

And should the thinkable, but nevertheless tragic, happen, cruisers will get to see Paul Johnson or John O'Sullivan sent to his eternal reward atop an authentic Norse funeral pyre.

The Paul Movement

Our boy Brian Do'herty is off his meds:

"This was a very big deal. In 36 hours, the Republican Party has completely changed," said Brian Doherty, a senior editor at Reason [sic] magazine who has been covering the Paul movement for two decades.

"You literally saw the shift happen over the course of the day," Doherty said. "It started with Rand Paul, and then it was just [Sens.] Mike Lee and Ted Cruz. And then you had people like Marco Rubio and Saxby Chambliss joining in. And by the end of it, [Republican Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell was on the floor saying he was going to block [CIA Director John] Brennan's confirmation, and [RNC Chairman] Reince Priebus was tweeting that Senators should go join Rand Paul."

And then, by the end of that, Brennan was confirmed. 

Yes, before Rand Paul blathered, Republican politicians never sought to take advantage of free publicity or to obstruct a Democratic president's agenda.  It's Year One ... in spades!

One paragraph later, and Brian is already hedging his bets:

"Who knows, maybe in two years, the filibuster won't seem like a big deal," he added. "But today, it feels like everything has changed. Today, it feels like the Republican Party is different." 

Feelings, whoa, whoa, whoa.... feelings.

Brian, you should know better.  When you see a Paul movement, you don't cover it.  You just flush.

How Can You Tell When Tucker Carlson Is Lying?

His website is publishing.

2013 - 2008 ≠ 8

The 20th century has arrived in California:

By a nearly two-to-one margin (61% to 32%), California voters approve of allowing same-sex couples to marry. This represents a complete reversal in views about the issue from 1977, when The Field Poll conducted its first survey on this topic, and is the highest level of support ever measured by the poll.

Approval of allowing marriage between two people of the same gender includes majorities of men and women, voters in all racial and ethnic groups, and Californians living in each of the major regions of the state. The only subgroups where majorities remain opposed are registered Republicans and voters who classify themselves as conservative in politics.

The icing on the cake would be if Prop. 8 backfired so horribly that it is declared to be in violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of bigots.

Geller Skelter

You know when you accuse someone of sucking donkey dicks and that person inexplicably disinvites you from his or her wedding?  Seems our Pam Geller Oshry has had a a similar experience with the Conservative Political Action Comic-Con.

And after all she's done for CPAC:

Pamela Geller, the most vocal of the activists opposed to the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” to be built two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center, said Friday that the Conservative Political Action Conference she was speaking at had itself been “corrupted” and “compromised by Muslim Brotherhood activists.”

Speaking at a non-official CPAC event on Friday afternoon [in February 2011], Geller said that many members of the board of the American Conservative Union had to go because they were allowing the event to be infiltrated by Muslim Brotherhood activists.

“If you look at the agenda of CPAC, look at all of the panels and then look at your daily news headlines, they’re either clueless or complicit,” Geller said. “And I’m telling you that before you throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are 12,000 people that come to this event that don’t know they’ve been completely sold out by CPAC leadership. We have to take CPAC back, you can’t create this again.”

Seems CPAC is still wary of a Tea Hall Putzch, and has once again not invited Geller to participate as a speaker, lest she lead the unwashed masses in a revolution to take back that which they didn't build.

The Joan Rivers of anti-Islamists is claiming that "for the first time in five years, I won't be at CPAC."  (No direct link to the loon.)  However, the TPM article makes its sound like she hasn't been invited to speak at an official conference event since at least 2011, so apparently this time she isn't content with showing up and paying for a ticket like all the other schmucks.

I'm just glad Andrew Breitbart isn't alive to see this.

Kathleen Parker, the O'Doul's version of Peggy Noonan, chimes in on the Gene Sperling vs. Bob Woodward Battle Royale with Cheese.  

Again, Woodward’s kneecaps are probably safe, but the challenge to his facts, and therefore to his character, was unusual, given Woodward’s stature. And, how, by the way, might Woodward come to regret it? Sperling’s words, though measured, could be read as: “You’ll never set foot in this White House again.”

When reporters lose access to the White House, it isn’t about being invited to the annual holiday party. It’s about having access to the most powerful people on the planet as they execute the nation’s business.

But Woodward made himself a household name without access to the White House.  He was a metro reporter when he was assigned to the Watergate break-in.  He wasn't a White House reporter, or a political reporter, nor did he have access to the most powerful people in the Nixon White House as they executed the nation's business.

In contrast, what did Woodward do when he got unparalleled access to the most powerful people people on the planet?  He transcribed their justifications for the invasion of Iraq without ever reporting that their claimed cause for war was a lie.  And said nothing as the Bush Adminstration executed women and children and other Iraqi non-combatants based on that lie.

Time For Another Bloggers' Ethics Panel

Josh "SuperHacks" Trevino made nearly 400K (gross) over three years shilling for the Malaysian government, without disclosing his payoffs and his paymasters to the rubes who hired him and his beards.

The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers.

...

Trevino's subcontractors included conservative writer Ben Domenech, who made $36,000 from the arrangement, and Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the American Center for Democracy, who made $30,000. Seth Mandel, an editor at Commentary, made $5,500 (his byline is attached to the National Review item linked to above). Brad Jackson, writing at the time for RedState, made $24,700. Overall, 10 writers were part of the arrangement.

"It was actually a fairly standard PR operation," Trevino told BuzzFeed Friday. "To be blunt with you, and I think the filing is clear about this, it was a lot looser than a typical PR operation. I wanted to respect these guys' independence and not have them be placement machines."

That Box Turtle Ben was a recipient of Malayasian largesse should also surprise no one.  The Malaysian government probably wrote his pieces too.

Given that nobody takes Trevino seriously, it seems the Malaysian government overpaid by roughly  $389,724.40. 

Is It Low T?

Rejoice! TBogg is not hanging up his snark.

Hopefully he will not have to resort to "The He Hormone" to keep blogging, like Sully and me.

Rubbin Your Nose In It

Over at the Neocon Post, Jennifer "J-Rubb" Rubbin is blasting Sen. John McCain and Lindsay Graham for ignoring AIPAC's sovreignity over their manhoods.  In the course of that tedious argument, Rubbin posits that the Hagel nomination is the equivalent of the Harriet Miers nomination, and that the abortion of the Harriet Miers nomination is proof of the G.O.P.'s moral superiority.  You seen, the Miers nomination proved that the G.O.P. faithful wouldn't just go along with whatever Bush dictated -- the rank and file demanded competence.

In reality, Miers was torpedoed not because she was an idiot, but because she was unreliable idiot.  The religious right wasn't confident she'd destroy precedent and reinstate theocracy.    They wanted a sure thing ideologically, and would have accepted any ideologically sure thing, regardless of low i.q. or perverted moral character.  (Exhibit A: Clarence Thomas.)  "Souter in a skirt" was not a reference to intellectual ability. Of course, almost all of the right-wing pundits, bloggers and parasites criticizing Miers were even stupider that she is, so the game was up as soon as it started.

Once again, Rubbin is lying.  Not just about Hagel, although she's lying about him too. Rubin is either angling for a judicial nomination by the next Republican president, or for Marshall Wittmann's job.