After the fall of the Soviet Union, most Leftists in the US at least had the decency to mourn quietly over the demise of the Evil Empire. Being sympathetic to murderous communists became somewhat of a joke manifested in “CCCP” t-shirts worn ironically, for the most part. Slowly a real nostalgia started cropping up and now, as evidenced by the Occupy Movement, there are people who are wondering out loud whether the world is a better place post-USSR. There’s a serious anti-capitalist mood in the Left’s echo-chamber.

The Nation magazine is about to publish – in print, a couple of the articles are available online here and here – three articles where the authors ponder whether the world is safer, etc. without Soviet Russia. Here’s how The Nation’s editorial board introduces the series:

Virtually all American commentary about the end of the Soviet Union extols what the West is believed to have gained from that historic event. On this twentieth anniversary of the breakup, The Nation presents three writers who focus instead on what may have been lost. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last leader and first constitutional president, argues that a chance for a more secure and just world order was missed. Stephen F. Cohen, a historian and longtime Nation contributor, reminds readers of the political, economic and social costs to Russians themselves. And Vadim Nikitin, a US-educated Russian journalist, presents a new interpretation of pro-Soviet nostalgia. —The Editors

Yeah. Now go read the magazine’s “founding prospect.”

The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred.

That was written in 1865 when the magazine was founded. Let’s just say they’ve come a long way–and considering that they’re clearly feeling the absence of the Soviet Union, one of the most violent and deceitful regimes in history, the irony is thick. (more…)

Here we go with dog whistle again.

The Nation’s Lizzy Ratner surmises that it’s racist to acknowledge that a record number of Americans are on the government dole.

The deep racism at the heart of conservative food stamp critiques offers at least one clue as to why the Obama administration has been unable or unwilling to champion SNAP as a valuable recession antidote: as the nation’s first African-American president, Obama is vulnerable to racist innuendo, which his opponents are only too happy to exploit. Just two months after Gingrich made his “food stamp president” comment, another would-be president, Rick Santorum, picked up the theme, accusing Obama, absurdly, of “pushing more people on food stamps.”

Lloyd Marcus illustration

Is the below “deep racism?”

The CBO predicted that the US economy will be unsustainable by 2037 on its current path.

The IMF declared two weeks ago that the age of America will end in a decade.

One in six Americans now receive government help. USA Today says more Americans are receiving federal aid than ever. Investors’ Insight says more Americans than ever before are on the government dole.

Lastly, according to our own government statistics, more white Americans receive federal aid than blackAmericans, shattering the stereotype that led Walsh to immediately think “black people” when she heard the words “food stamps.”

Did Ratner bother to actually research welfare statistics before assuming that the critics were “racist” because she stereotypically believes that the majority of welfare recipients are black? Because the majority of welfare recipients are white.

So which is actually racist?

a) Criticizing dependance upon government for personal sustainability or;

b) assuming that all those who are dependent upon government are black?

This is a trend with progressives, this prejudiced association of welfare and black Americans.

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As we’ve highlighted before, tax exempt Media Matters’ mission isn’t to correct misinformation in the conservative media. Their job is to promote narratives which will then be picked up by friendly outlets, like MSNBC, and seep out into the public consciousness. Their real purpose is to act as guardians at the gates of the Left’s ideological iron curtain and keep progressives from thinking for themselves. When you couple this narrative-shaping with the “mainstream” media’s ingrained left-leaning bias, you get, for example, polls showing the level of misinformation in the general public.

A recent NBC/WSJ poll (pdf) provides a classic example of how the left-leaning media takes a poll and uses it to shape and promote a narrative. Note first that this poll is a general opinion poll measuring public sentiment on a broad range of issues related to politics and the economy. Keep in mind that the Left has been in full damage control for the Occupy movement because a) Democrats have voiced support of it and b) the violence, vandalism, drug overdoses and reports of sexual assaults/rapes are beginning to get bad coverage – finally. The spin doctors are desperate for anything that can lend legitimacy to a solidly Leftist movement which is spiraling into chaos.

The Washington Post’s resident DNC talking point parrot (I know there are several), Greg Sargent, cites some findings of the new poll. The poll results are 27 pages long, but Sargent cherry-picks the stuff that can be spun into “positive” news for Occupy Wall Street.

A new NBC/WSJ poll finds very broad support for Occupy Wall Street’s critique of inequality, with more than three quarters agreeing with this statement: “The current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country. America needs to reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency. The government should not provide financial aid to corporations and should not provide tax breaks to the rich.” Eighty-four percent of working class whites agree with that statement, too.

To his credit, Sargent also notes that the poll finds a majority of the people are against raising taxes on anyone, but he questions the wording of that particular question. So he only gets half-credit because he didn’t question the wording of another finding that I’ll address in a bit. Actually make that 1/4 credit because he claims the critique in question is an “Occupy Wall Street” thing when this sentiment is shared by the Tea Party which has obviously been around longer. To sum it up, 53% either strongly agreed or mildly agreed with this statement:

The national debt must be cut significantly by reducing spending and the size of government, including eliminating some federal agencies and programs. Regulations on business by the federal government should be reduced and instead, the private sector and individuals should have greater control. The government should not raise taxes on anyone.

Sargent makes you go and look for this part of the poll. Chances are most people won’t. Let’s move on.

Greg Mitchell from the conservative bastion (that’s sarcasm), The Nation, picks up the cues from Sargent and tries to milk the poll to provide some much needed image nourishment to the Occupy Wall Street movement he’s been blogging – read cheerleading – about. Linking to Sargent, he writes:

7:00  Wash Post:  New NBC/WSJ poll–84% pf working-class whites say rich unfairly get breaks,  and also need more control of corporations… 71% say Obama did not go far enough in regulating banks….

Then, after scouring the poll results he does some more Occupy Wall Street cheerleading / tea party bashing:

7:20  More from new NBC/WSJ poll just out:  Occupy gets 32% positive number, 35% negative,  Tea Party 27% positive, 44% negative….  Occupy also “wins” in another question, with 25% saying it is a “good thing” for the country with 16% saying no, while Tea Party gets 31% good thing and 27% bad…. Finally 28% call themselves supporters of Occupy, with 25% backing Tea Party.  Also:  70% blame Bush and bankers for economic woes, only 21% name Obama…. 71% back total Iraq pullout…. and despite focus on jobs job jobs, concerns about health still nudge it as prime concern for most,  by 33% to 32%.

Notice how he doesn’t address the finding showing that a majority don’t think we should raise taxes on anyone – a core Occupy Wall Street demand. It doesn’t fit the narrative. The Occupy movement has “wins” he wants to highlight and The Nation readers are predisposed to Leftist “wins.” They won’t bother looking much further. The narrative is strengthened: “Hey! Did you hear about that poll showing OWS is winning?” So now, within the Leftist echo-chamber, the word is that recent polling is good for Occupy Wall Street and most have no idea that a central policy position isn’t “winning.”

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It’s like listening to a subscriber of Teen Beat.

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He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)

Lou Dobbs committed the ultimate sin—he made a stand on principle.

For years Dobbs has fought against illegal immigration. He did it on CNN, he does it on his radio show.

Now, the most leftist magazine out there, The Nation has attacked Dobbs because they say a contractor that he used to run his property might have hired illegals. Dobbs makes is clear that he expects this kind of treatment from the libs at The Nation, but he is a little surprise that the activist old (mainstream) media has joined their chorus. Certainly he can’t be all that surprised.

The charges made by The Nation may be accurate on the surface, but they are without context. With illegal immigration as rampant as it is, to think that anybody who stands on principle against illegal immigration must check two, three or four sources removed to make sure that people hired by somebody hired who somebody hired might be here illegally is absolutely preposterous and the activist old media should say that, but, of course, they do not. (more…)

In a widely read and discussed piece at the Daily Beast, Reihan Salan asks:

Has a shadowy gang of left-wing journalists and intellectuals been plotting to manipulate the news cycle…

His answer is, yes, perhaps so, but they’d be doing it with or without JournoList. Salan is more right than he probably knows.

The list of those identified as former members of the group is now up to more than 150 names, out of 400 in all. Nearly a quarter of those individuals were connected with another media organization called the Media Consortium. The Consortium is an organization of progressive media outlets formed in 2005, a full two years before JournoList. Its dues paying member organizations include The Nation, Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect, Ms., Democracy Now! and many more (a complete list is here). The purpose of the group was explicit and can be found on their website:

Our mission is to amplify independent media’s voice, increase our collective clout, leverage our current audience and reach new ones. We believe it is possible and necessary to seize the current moment and change the debate in this country. We will accomplish this mission by fulfilling our five strategic principles: (more…)

JournoList: How do you explain why members of the media, led by an employee of the Washington Post named Ezra Klein, put their political beliefs above their jobs, their careers and even their country? They are liberals first.

Ezra Klein, JournoList founder

The group now exposed is part of the JournoList, Obama’s little secret warriors during the last campaign, made it very clear, they are liberals first.

Why did Chris Hayes of The Nation urge his colleagues to ignore Reverend Wright’s tirades against America? Real reporters love this provocative, juicy stuff. Ask Mel Gibson. Instead, Hayes wrote this, ripping the Bush administration so that it would somehow make Obama/Wright look better:

Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor.

Chris Hayes, JournoList member

I think the “disappears” people is a reference to rendition. The act of capturing a prisoner, putting him on a plane, taking him to a foreign country where he would presumably be subject to torture during interrogation. If memory serves, President Bill Clinton was the one who started that plan and Obama continues it to this day. Chris—how do you feel about that issue with Obama being the perp? You okay with that? Liberals first. (more…)

…an insulated space where the lure of a smart, ongoing conversation would encourage journalists, policy experts and assorted other observers to share their insights with one another. The eventual irony of the list was that it came to be viewed as a secretive conspiracy…

That’s founder Ezra Klein’s description of JournoList, what it was and what people thought it to be. Turns out the real irony here is that people who viewed it as a “secretive conspiracy” were right.

More archives of the now-defunct JournoList have surfaced at the Daily Caller. All of the leaks focus on the aftermath of a debate in mid-2008 where the specter of Jeremiah Wright threatened to damage Obama’s image. The leaks show exactly what you’d expect a secretive group of liberal journalists to be doing, i.e. plotting how to work the refs for their guy. Here’s a sample: (more…)

JournoList scandal is back and prepare for it to be a driving force in the news for quite some time. The Daily Caller published an article tonight indicating they’ve obtained emails from the JournoList and the initial details are as damning as we expected when the list-serv, founded by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein in 2007, surfaced with the Dave Weigel kerfuffle last month.

Snippets from the article below, but make sure to read the whole thing at the Daily Caller and return to Big Journalism early and often as we unpack the details that emerge and track the fallout from this seminal event in the history of left-wing media bias.  It’s unclear exactly what the Daily Caller has, but there’s certainly no indication from this article they’ve already laid all their cards out on the table.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.” (more…)

Or something like that. That headline certainly makes as much sense as this deranged PC-rant from National Progressive Radio by way of the ancient leftist publication The Nation: “Why the Far Right Hates Soccer,” by Dave Zirin. Just when you think the lunatic fringe can’t get any nuttier, along comes this:

Every World Cup, it arrives like clockwork. As sure as the ultimate soccer spectacle brings guaranteed adrenaline and agony to fans across the United States, it also drives the right-wing noise machine utterly insane.

“It doesn’t matter how you try to sell it to us,” yipped the Prom King of new right, Glenn Beck. “It doesn’t matter how many celebrities you get, it doesn’t matter how many bars open early, it doesn’t matter how many beer commercials they run, we don’t want the World Cup, we don’t like the World Cup, we don’t like soccer, we want nothing to do with it.”

That darn right-wing noise machine, upset over a little thing like lethal soccer riots! But you know — you just know — it goes deeper than that, and we all have a sense of where this is heading, don’t we: (more…)

Not surprisingly, the country’s oldest continuously published magazine, The Nation, is turning a jaundiced eye toward Brad Thor’s explosive scoop that the notorious Mullah Omar has been captured. Originally an abolitionist broadsheet, The Nation has evolved into the most radical leftist publication in the U.S.; among its more notable moments was the publication in 1966 of the Cloward-Piven strategy for social destabilization.

In that light, consider Jeremy Scahill’s recent screed, “(Not) Much Ado About Mullah Omar.” While Scahill might think it’s good journalism to bury the lead, we don’t.  So let’s get right to it, shall we?

In his rush to criticize Brad Thor’s reporting that Mullah Omar has been captured, he waits until the middle of his piece before admitting:

I wouldn’t even be bothering to look into this now if I had not heard some parallel buzz about these rumors from military sources I actually trust.

But before Scahill gets to this nugget, he engages in some traditional liberal nihilism.  Unable to attack the message, which he admits he has heard “parallel buzz” on, he attacks the messengers, saying: (more…)

Heaven help Richard Kim. That’s not my wish, it’s his—expressed in a piece entitled “Loose Tea” he wrote for the venerable left-wing magazine, The Nation. Honoring the liberal playbook by attacking the Tea Party on everything except substance, Kim starts out by criticizing the symbolic venue chosen for the recent tax day assembly of the D.C. Tea Party.

When tea party organizers chose the Washington Ellipse as the setting for their Tax Day protest, they were undoubtedly thinking of its theatrical potential. Behind looms the Washington Monument, an obelisk to the hero of American Revolution and Constitution and a fitting symbol of the tea party’s esprit de corps. In front stands the White House, whose occupant, according to protesters’ signs, is busy plotting more taxes, more communism and the end of America. Those who took the podium borrowed from the surrounding majesty to endow their struggle with an epic righteousness: “We are going to keep faith with every generation since 1776 that has successfully passed the baton of freedom to the next generation. We will not allow that…chain of freedom to be broken on our watch,” declared Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. But beyond the rhetoric and amid the crowd of a few thousand, the concerns were on a smaller scale–like about incandescent light bulbs.

Apparently when Tea Party people use symbolism, it’s a “kaleidoscope of kookiness,” but when then-candidate Obama erected $140,000 worth of fake Hellenic columns at Invesco Field for his 2008 acceptance speech, it was different.  At the time, L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne wrote a paean to Obama’s use of styrofoam that the great Pindar himself would have killed to have penned: (more…)

It’s quite a stretch to call The Nation’s Max Blumenthal a journalist.

A real journalist is free to have an opinion and even to express it, but he doesn’t fabricate things to make his subject look bad. A real journalist tries to understand his subject and help his audience understand it instead of just subjecting it to abject ridicule.

Blumenthal, who leaped to conclusions in his since-corrected Salon.com article to slander Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, is an ethically challenged agitprop creator and self-indulgent performance artist. His slurring of O’Keefe, who helped to expose the criminal inclinations of ACORN, as a racist is the same thing that ACORN does when it’s attacked. If you disagree, you’re a racist. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!

This left-wing extremist, who wrote the book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, is so consumed by his hatred of the other side that he can’t think straight. His work is littered with factual errors, non sequiturs, selective use of evidence, glittering generalities, and hyperbole.

Blumenthal hates the Christian right, evangelicals, supporters of Israel, tea party activists, conservatives, and Republicans. This is not an exhaustive list. To him, conservatives are a “movement that’s filled with people who can’t handle individual freedom and the pressures of democracy.” Conservatives also are needy losers seeking redemption, according to Blumenthal: (more…)