Blogoland

Today there is outrage over the Obama administration's firing of GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Justified anger! Incipient fascism! It's the end of capitalism, and I was reminded that these free-marketeers were equally outraged when the noted Marxist Bush also fired the CEOs of publicly traded American corporations:

The U.S. government has previously requested the replacement of chief executive officers at American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when they received aid.

Then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson replaced Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd and Freddie Mac’s Richard Syron when he put the two mortgage-finance companies into government conservatorship in September. AIG chief Robert Willumstad left after a government rescue the same month.

Oooh, remember? And yet, strangely, I am having a hard time finding right-wing garment-rending over these events. Why is that? 

Shorter Lengthier Perfesserman:

Because the widow of some dead TV producer -- who wouldncha knowit donated thousands to the political campaigns of Democrats like George H.W. Bush, Alfonse D'Amato, Alan Simpson and Arlen Specter -- is trying to sell the family home for $150 million, people should be outraged! Because! Wait, wait, lemme explain. See, this is a double standard for liberal Hollyweird, which everyone knows has taken huge amounts of taxpayer money in the infamous Brangelina Bailout of 200...Uhhhhh.. Oh, wait. Wait. I'm an idiot.

...LATER ON: Yahoo tells me

10 Winners in the Recession: No. 2 Hollywood

he number of subscribers to Netflix, the DVD delivery service, climbed 26 percent in the fourth quarter from the same time last year. That helped put the company's revenue up 19 percent from the previous year. And according to industry researcher Media by Numbers, 2009's box office sales are tracking 16.5 percent higher than the year before—at this rate, theaters will make $1.9 billion, versus last year's $1.6 billion—with attendance up nearly 15 percent.

Anger. Rising!

Lengthier InstaPundit & Co.

When the press starts reporting that the economy has begun to turn around, for God's sake don't believe them! What am I going to do with 5,000 Teabag protest signs in my basement?

Bonus comment:

No breadlines or Hoovervilles yet.

What planet these people are living on?

Bonus stupidity: We've gone from "Dude, Where's my Recession" to "Don't you dare believe the economy is turning around if it's reported by the press" in a mere seven months.

How can we be sure that Ann Althouse isn't manifesting racism by implying that Barack Obama is a lazy negro?

Some guy who blogs for a newspaper in Tennessee is very upset!

MSM comes to the Tea Party's 'handful of protests'

Handful? Let's count 'em: Cincinnati, Nebraska, Tampa, Lexington, Ridgefield, Conn., Raleigh, Orlando, D.C., Staten Island, Pasadena, Boston, Rochester, N.Y., Jacksonville, Minnesota, Cleveland, Columbus, Mo...

Zzzzz. Well anyway, ZING! But, no, wait, what's the opposite of zing? Oh, yes, context:

She is behind one of a handful of protests around the country that aim to bombard the White House with tea bags and protest notes in time for the nation's April 15 tax filing deadline.

I know this is subtle, but lemme explain. The writer is not talking about those people who gather outside to protest, but, rather a smaller subset who plan to -- idiotically -- send tea bags to the White House in time for tax day. Get it?

If I were the uncharitable sort, I'd wonder why such a very brief, albeit clear, one-sentence paragraph wasn't even included in Silence's original post.

Some noodlehead writes in to our favorite blogger about news coverage of an awesome Teabagger protest:

One of the local TV stations–WCPO– did a hatchet job on the Tea Party. The nerd said he had to leave the rally because a few people insulted him and spit at him due to media bias. The spitting, if it occurred, is of course out of bounds, but not unheard of in the Bush years, when the lefties had the saliva going. The station did a 30 second scan of the Square and then did its own internal Fairness Doctrine by highlighting the few Obama supporter signs and doing an interview with the local Dem Party chief. WCPO is a part of the soon to be Ch11 Scripps newspaper/TV empire. The WCPO website highlights the forthcoming second stimulus package and what people can get from it.

Hey, everyone likes to spit on one another! That wuss reporter should've stuck around and unleashed his own inner loogie. Or brought a gun.

In his dispatch, the reporter doesn't mention whether he was spat upon (I'm guessing he was trying to soft-pedal the incident by not mentioning specifics. In such cases, unfortunately, such good faith is usually reciprocated with idiocy).

Hilariously, most of the commenters at WCPO's site seem to think that the threats showered upon the news crews were somehow a mass delusion. "Are we to believe that three separate camera crews were threatened with physical harm to the point that they had to retreat to safety, and none of them recorded anything?" writes Joe Bayer. Uh-huh. I'm sure if such footage were aired, Mr. Bayer would not be the first to condemn such airing as a an out-of-context smear.

Such claims seem to be undercut a bit, since even the city's Fox station notes: "Television reporters and photographers left an area of the protest when a group of hostile people got in their faces..."

Readers should note that this type of behavior is nothing new.

LATER: From Channel 12

Several members of the media, including Local 12's reporter, had to seek police protection when a small group of people began harassing them. Several reporters and photographers were chased, spat on, and verbally harassed. No one was arrested.

I'm sure that reporter is just imagining it all. You can watch the video of her report here, in which the incident is mentioned at the very end, and the reporter takes pains to say that the protest was 'peaceful,' and goes so far to praise the organizer's PR person for coming to her aid.

LATER LATER: In comment section of this blog, we find a purported email from one of the organizers which claims the precipitating cause of the incident was a bunch of yahoos who were upset that the reporters had the temerity to attempt to interview an Obama supporter. "The true story is that they found the lone Obama supporter amidst a sea of 5000 and went to interview her. The crowd that was nearby noticed and was upset and let their displeasure be voiced, but were clearly peaceful." Of course, if you view all the news stations' reports, plenty of protesters were interviewed, and the Obama woman was given a mere second-or-two mention. Message-control achieved!

I blame Obama for this week's market results.

Shorter lesser Powerlineman:

This National Public Radio report -- which I was too lazy to look for -- almost certainly conveyed the overwhelming sentiments of Iraqis regarding the harsh prison sentence handed down to the guy who chucked his shoe at Bush and is, therefore, an obvious case of liberal bias.

Mahablog nails it:

Here's Glenn Reynolds four days ago:

 The conservative-leaning Internet startup Pajamas TV is the only outlet consistently covering the protests...

Michael Yon declares that Bush won the Iraq war, and Obama can only lose it:

Clearly, it was a good idea for Salon to send a person who had never watched CNBC to spend a whole day viewing the network. For instance, I learned that the markets now close a half-hour later than usual.

Wall Street's closing bell rings at 4:30

The political process started in late 2007. Since that time, the markets have been down 55 percent. Markets are forward-looking, not backward-looking. They saw what was coming in the election. They were anticipating what this guy would do, and they caused a slowdown.

Our favorite law professor posts a hilarious 'parody' from one of his readers. It's especially clever of this reader to depict our Secretary of State with sagging breasts and a large ass. Funny! I can't wait for the inevitable Carter-in-blackface attempts. Oh, wait. That already happened. To paraphrase Roy slightly: It's important to remember that -- despite all our differences  in worldview and politics, despite all the arguing and shouting -- these people are above all, scumbags. 

Ah, the perils of reporting in the go-go Internet age. This item was posted on the NYT's site just minutes prior to the close of the markets today, when it looked plausible that things would be negative for the day:

Jon Swift may be a lazier blogger than I, but when he delivers, the results are spectacular. Somehow, the guy got himself on Curtis Sliwa's buffoon radio program in New York to talk about Bobby Jin-DELL (Sliwa's hilarious pronunciation) and how he agreed with Sliwa, the casual racist, that the Louisiana governor was the real-life "Slumdog Millionare." Just read the whole post and make sure you click on the interview link. Remarkable.

This photo -- ostensibly depicting Hillary Clinton and the Russian foreign minister pressing the "reset button" on diplomatic relations -- will become a staple for rightwingers for years to come. The Obamites should really think these things through better.

Apparently, Sen. John McCain has learned to Twitter. And good for him! But one thing nags: weren't all those war injuries he suffered in Vietnam supposed to prevent him from "combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes." Wasn't that a big deal for certain doofuses because when Obama pointed out that McCain said he didn't use email it showed that Obama was "nasty and petty"? Did a miracle occur in the past few months? Did John McCain visit a faith healer? 

If you firmly believe that dressing yourself up in chicken costumes will lead your party back to glory, then who are we to stop you? 

As a service to our readers, we're updating the price per share of General Electric, a company that stock-picker (and GE employee) Jim Cramer said he was buying last week and was urging CNBC viewers to do same. Clearly we can retire on the mad profits we've reaped, no?

Price when Jim Cramer said he was buying GE (2/27/09): 

8.51

Price today (3/4/09):

6.69

Over at Althouse's place:

Now, of course, Carville, as usual, is crowing about the fabulous Democrats and mocking those dismal losers on the other side. But he must also secretly be scared of the Democrats' powerful, fearless, articulate critic [in Limbaugh]. Those Republicans in Congress were conveniently cowed, and the last thing that needed to be done was to ruin Rush. But Rush gets energy from the attention. If only those under 40 folks would actually listen to his radio show and find out what he's really saying. It's easy to hate him from afar, to regard him as poison, not to be touched at all. I felt that way myself. But if they were to overcome that barrier and actually listen — as I did — they might get hooked in — as I did.

[...]

In fact, with all this newfound power, Rush is likely to concentrate on explaining conservatism. He's not out of control, and it would be naive to think he's going to say outrageous things that can be used to hurt Republicans. He's more likely to throw stink bombs when he's notgetting enough attention. What he will do now, I think, is highlight things Democrats say and show you why those things are outrageous — and he is at his best and most entertaining when he does exactly that.

From a brilliant commenter over at Greg Sargent's place:

Limbaugh’s going to have to denounce himself for agreeing with Cantor who disagreed with Limbaugh.

Andrew Sullivan flagged this piece of grim CNBC video, which led me to find an interesting discussion from Nov. 2008, when predictions of Dow 6,000 seemed outlandishly apocalyptic. At the end of the segment, Jeff Macke, a former hedge fund manager and a panelist on the show "Fast Money," declared half-seriously:

It’s a bad market out there. Prepare for the age of hoboes. Teach your kids how to grift.

While the InstaPundit explores his exciting new interest in street organizing, let's keep in mind that this is a fellow who just a few years ago posted tirelessly about his skepticism regarding crowd turnout counts prior to the war in Iraq including, we kid you not, one instance in which he called a satellite imaging expert to inquire about taking pictures of crowds (which were clearly overinflated! Dammit!). One of those posts included this intriguing passage: