Michael Arria, who writes for Vice’s Motherboard TV and Counterpunch, is the author of Medium Blue: The Poltics of MSNBC.
Martha Rosenberg: Your recent book takes MSNBC to task for many reporting and moral failures. One of the book’s most scathing chapters is its analysis of MSNBC’s coverage of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
All the Blue America bloggers have been agitating for Pelosi to refuse to legitimize the Benghazi clown show and to instead appoint just one Democrat-- Alan Grayson, who is bound to make the Republicans wish they were not the party of sedition and obstruction. Yesterday, Grayson told Brett Logiurato at Business Insider that the Republicans are "scandalmongers without a scandal.
We never asked Alan Grayson how he feels about a Hillary Clinton presidency-- although he's getting a lot of pressure to run in the primary against her. But we do know how the Republican Party feels about her perspective run: they are terrified. They know she can beat any of their horribly flawed candidates-- think Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee-- in a landslide the scope of which is likely to jeopardize the political careers of dozens of senators, congressmembers and local Republican officials.
When a tiny handful of slime ball conservaDems like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Patrick Murphy (FL) and John Barrow (GA) conspired with the House Republicans to ramp up the politically and financially-motivated Benghazi witch hunt last week, I floated the idea of Pelosi doing the one thing better than boycotting it: just appointing a single Democrat to call out the GOP on their ugly partisan attacks. And who better than Oralndo truth teller Alan Grayson? Answer: no one.
Yes, Texas extremist Ted Cruz looks a lot like ugly, dead, alcoholic neo-fascist Joe McCarthy. But the superficial similarities are hardly the reason why people have dubbed Cruz "the new McCarthy." One of the most reviled villains in American history-- right up there with Benedict Arnold, John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, Herbert Hoover, Sam Giancana and Nathan Bedford Forrest-- McCarthy could be an icon for today's Republican Party.
Several Beltway trade magazines referred to the 7 reactionary Democrats who voted with the Republicans Thursday for their deranged Benghazi witch hunt as "moderates." I assume they are using the term "moderate," as they always do, to connote "not progressive" and as a substitute for "conservative." "Moderate" actually is the opposite of "extremist," not the opposite of "liberal." In fact, the 7 pro-witch hunters all among the most conservative Democrats in Congress.
And the Borowitz Report has shocking newsEarlier this week Dana Milbank devoted a Washington Post column, "Meet the chief prosecutor in the GOP's Benghazi show trial," to Rep.
Any chance the lying right-wing liars will stop lying about Benghazi?"Is there any accountability in American politics for being completely wrong? Is there any cost to those who say things that turn out not to be true and then, when their fabrications or false predictions are exposed, calmly move on to concocting new claims as if they had never made the old ones?"-- E. J.
"As The New York Times stated, the Benghazi incident has been billed as "the most significant attack on United States property in 11 years, since Sept. 11, 2001," an event that launched the much-ballyhooed war on terror. But as with that attack 11 years earlier, the perps turned out to be people the U.S. secret agencies had once trusted. . .
You may have noticed that the latest polls show have completely turned around from October when voters were furious at Republicans for shutting down the government and were reporting 50-42% that they planned to back Democrats in 2014. Republicans have now opened a 49-44% lead over Democrats in this generic polling.
