More on Mayor Pete

This was farther down in the same comment thread cited in the last post, and again shows what the media is not telling us and, even more so, what the "activists" being featured are ignoring:

.@CNN @BrookeBCNN Don’t let the malcontents sway you. I am twice @PeteButtigieg age and spent my entire life in South Bend and worked 40 years in media. He has done more to try and mend our community than anyone I remember. https://t.co/9Pul3tM8h1

— Maureen McFadden (@MMcFaddenTV) June 22, 2019

It's worth following that whole thread to see how much support Buttigieg actually has in South Bend.

It's worth noting that, in addition to the media focusing on click-bait stories, the professionally offended are generating their own slant on events by the simple expedient of ignoring facts that don't fit their agenda. (Sound familiar?)

Today's Must-Read: A Twofer

Two separate but related posts from Balloon juice, highlighting the ineptitude of those who spend too much time gazing into their own navels. First, from Betty Cracker, this:

Hillary Clinton gave this speech just a few days after the Comey letter dropped, an event that prompted The New York Times to publish an edition with this all-caps headline: “NEW EMAILS JOLT CLINTON CAMPAIGN IN RACE’S LAST DAYS”

The most prophetic 2 minutes and 44 seconds in American history is:@HillaryClinton warning us about @realDonaldTrump’s ties to Russia...

...8 days BEFORE the 2016 election.pic.twitter.com/0cfevk7Jtr

— Ryan Knight 🇺🇸 (@ProudResister) November 30, 2018

I hope Clinton gets some satisfaction from the knowledge that she was right about everything. I doubt it’s much comfort since Clinton doesn’t seem to be the sort of person who sees herself as the center of the universe.

Of course, Trump thinks the sun rises and sets in his pants, and we can see how disastrous it is to put someone like that in charge of a large, rich, diverse, heavily armed country. But less malevolent manifestations of the same pathology greased the skids toward our present catastrophe.

Comey is one example. Following boring old FBI protocol wasn’t good enough for a world-bestriding colossus such as Comey, so he inserted himself into the race, and disaster followed.

The front page of that infamous Times edition showcased another example of the “I am the cosmos” syndrome that was instrumental in bringing a once-great nation low: Clinton beat reporter Amy Chozick, whose byline appeared on an article entitled “With 11 Days to Go, Trump Says Revelation ‘Changes Everything.'”

Follow up with this post from Cheryl Rofer:

Given the new developments in what we know about Donald Trump’s interactions with Russia, some of us have been kicking around that “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia” story that the New York Times served up on October 31, 2016.

The post is mostly tweets and is almost impossible to excerpt, so click through.

And ask yourself again, how much did the press do to get Donald Trump elected?

Today's Must-Read: The Right's War on America

Specifically, the free press. This piece by Brian Beutler is a pretty damning analysis:

Republican Greg Gianforte defeated Democrat Rob Quist in a special election Thursday for Montana’s lone congressional seat, a six-point victory that should horrify you because he won with the full support of the GOP after body-slamming and punching an American reporter—and many of our political institutions, especially the media, are too paralyzed to impose a meaningful consequence on him or his enablers.

Gianforte, a true coward, didn’t admit any wrongdoing until his victory speech, at which point the risks of playacting decency pertained to his criminal case—the police have charged him with assault—rather than the election. “When you make a mistake, you have to own up to it,” Gianforte said. “That’s the Montana way.” I suspect some Montanans would object to the notion that you only apologize once it’s politically safe to do so.

For it was already beyond dispute on Wednesday night, thanks to audio of the attack and a witness account from a Fox News reporter, that Gianforte had attacked the Guardian’s Ben Jacobs. That’s when the process of public accountability began. In a healthier political culture, the condemnation would have been nearly unanimous, and the context of the incident would not have been a matter of controversy. What we witnessed instead was a political media — confronted with a one-sided assault on its most basic freedom — rendered by its own constructs largely incapable of identifying the threat with any precision.

That last sentence is particularly telling: the "free press" has been more than complicit in its own destruction. There are a number of contributing factors -- the corporate takeover of media outlets, leading to an emphasis on ratings rather than journalism (because in the corporate world, it's all about profits), the rise of Fox News (the propaganda arm of the Republican party), the transformation of the Republican party itself into the party of neo-fascist authoritarianism, the reluctance of reporters (or their editors) to offend those in power for fear of losing "access", the emphasis on "balance" and the resulting validation of bullshit by presenting advocates of positions that are, on analysis, grossly un-American as though they had legitimate arguments -- leading to the end result that we're seeing now: through its unwillingness to call out those such as Donald Trump (who called the press "an enemy of the American people" and got away with it), the press has rendered itself impotent, completely incapable (with a very few exceptions) of performing its essential and most basic function.

And so we wind up with something like Donald Trump in the White House, and candidates for public office winning elections after committing very public crimes.

Via Digby.

Addendum: From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, a take on why goons like Gianforte get away with it:

As this morning's headlines attest, Republican Greg Gianforte won yesterday's special congressional election in Montana. One of the noteworthy and little-noticed effects of his assault on Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was, according to NBC, Gianforte raised $100,000 overnight online. One supporter told CNN the assault charge against Gianforte left her only "more ready to support Greg."

That's your modern "conservative". Read the rest, and then pour yourself a good stiff drink.

So, Is This a Surprise? (Update)

You want the White House's real attitude toward a free and independent press? New York Times, via Joe.My.God.:

Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s chief White House strategist, laced into the American press during an interview on Wednesday evening, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by an election outcome few anticipated, and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration.

“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call. “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

Let me start off by noting that the press is supposed to be the opposition. If anyone doesn't understand this country, it's Trump and his advisors. Or, let me say it this way: it doesn't matter whether they understand it or not, because they have no respect and no sympathy for our basic principles and values.

And frankly, if the press were to really examine the way Trump became president, they'd have to admit their own complicity. Here's just one example:

I don't think we get to pretend anymore that there is a functioning media in this country. The nation's 'paper of record' is showing that they are fearful (not timid, damn it, but out-and-out cowardly) of publishing stories about our newly sworn-in president who entered office with a plethora of conflicts of interest and scandals, none of which the Times took all that seriously in their reporting prior to the election. But they will rationalize their inadequate reporting away as 'doing their job correctly' while democracy is being stolen from us by Putin.

Digby has a more detailed discussion.

This is interesting. It posits that in order to achieve Trump's foreign policy aims, the media and the intelligence community both have to be thoroughly discredited.  I'm guess that would be Bannon.

Her "this" is a very interesting article from The Atlantic on why Trump is taking on the press and the intelligence community. Worth a read.

Update: It's already started: journalists arrested for "felony rioting." And note the mainstream press' reaction:

While foreign and new media outlets such as The Guardian, Buzzfeed, City Lab, Daily Beast, and Huffington Post have reported specifically on the arrests of journalists (as has traditional outlet US News) most major media outlets in the United States have remained surprisingly silent. The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and MSNBC have not reported on the arrests at all. Washington Post’s report on the episode was framed in a decidedly pro-police terms–complete with an apocalyptic burning limo (that, it should be noted, was set on fire after the arrests in question) and the ominous, conspiratorial headline: “Protesters who destroyed property on Inauguration Day were part of well-organized group”

It was a nice country while it lasted.

The Link

Josh Marshall articulates something that's been in the back of my mind for a while but that I couldn't quite pin down:

Which gets me to the larger point about the mainstream media. Let me start by defining terms. We are talking about large news organizations which at least purport to be apolitical in their editorial outlook and are owned and controlled by large corporations. People have lots of different definitions of the "MSM". But I think this is the most valuable one for present purposes.

Two things to keep in mind: all of these organizations have business models which are based on appealing to people across the political spectrum. So for instance, CNN cannot afford in business terms to get too out of sync with Trump and his supporters. (This is one of the big points about the campaign. Trump harped continuously on CNN but it was in fact one of his most accommodating news organizations. It even hired a group of bespoke supporters as pundits for the duration of the campaign. He harped on them because he saw them correctly as the most vulnerable.) Second and just as important, every big media organization and especially every big diversified corporation that owns a media organization have lots and lots of business before the federal government all the time. Even for broadcast TV networks alone there are regulations about how many local stations they can own. Telecoms like Comcast, which owns NBC, have a long, long list of business before the government.

(Emphasis in original.)

The government and the business sector are so intertwined -- and not just in lobbying and the "revolving door" between the two, but also just in the normal course of each taking care of its business -- that it's inevitable that government -- being, in bare bones respects, the more powerful -- is going to influence the workings of the media. There's been a lot of bitching since the Reagan years about news organizations soft-pedaling their criticisms of the government for fear of losing access. And now various news organizations have become more partisan, also affecting their coverage and the impartiality of their reporting.

I suspect we're about to see a lot of more that.

Read Marshall's full piece.

"No Go" Zones in Paris?

You may have heard about the Fox News report on the "no go" zones for non-Muslims in Paris -- you know, where the neighborhood is completely under the control of Al Queda and the law is sharia. It must be true -- it was on Fox!

Well, here's the response from France's equivalent to The Daily Show:

I don't think I need to say more, except you don't want to tangle with a French satirist. ("Barbie and Ken"? I love it.)

Via The New Civil Rights Movement.

And While We're All Outraged About That Russian Dictator (Updated)

Look what's happening at home:

In December 2011, approximately five million e-mails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, an intelligence contractor, were hacked by Anonymous and posted on WikiLeaks. The files contained revelations about close and perhaps inappropriate ties between government security agencies and private contractors. In a chat room for Project PM, Mr. Brown posted a link to it.

Among the millions of Stratfor files were data containing credit cards and security codes, part of the vast trove of internal company documents. The credit card data was of no interest or use to Mr. Brown, but it was of great interest to the government. In December 2012 he was charged with 12 counts related to identity theft. Over all he faces 17 charges — including three related to the purported threat of the F.B.I. officer and two obstruction of justice counts — that carry a possible sentence of 105 years, and he awaits trial in a jail in Mansfield, Tex.

According to one of the indictments, by linking to the files, Mr. Brown “provided access to data stolen from company Stratfor Global Intelligence to include in excess of 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders’ identification information, and the authentication features for the credit cards.”

Because Mr. Brown has been closely aligned with Anonymous and various other online groups, some of whom view sowing mayhem as very much a part of their work, his version of journalism is tougher to pin down and, sometimes, tougher to defend.

But keep in mind that no one has accused Mr. Brown of playing a role in the actual stealing of the data, only of posting a link to the trove of documents.

(Emphasis added.)

Via Digby, who also inks to this article:

A professor in the computer science department at Johns Hopkins, a leading American university, had written a post on his blog, hosted on the university's servers, focused on his area of expertise, which is cryptography. The post was highly critical of the government, specifically the National Security Agency, whose reckless behavior in attacking online security astonished him.

Professor Matthew Green wrote on 5 September:

I was totally unprepared for today's bombshell revelations describing the NSA's efforts to defeat encryption. Not only does the worst possible hypothetical I discussed appear to be true, but it's true on a scale I couldn't even imagine.

The post was widely circulated online because it is about the sense of betrayal within a community of technical people who had often collaborated with the government. (I linked to it myself.)

On Monday, he gets a note from the acting dean of the engineering school asking him to take the post down and stop using the NSA logo as clip art in his posts. The email also informs him that if he resists he will need a lawyer. The professor runs two versions of the same site: one hosted on the university's servers, one on Google's blogger.com service. He tells the dean that he will take down the site mirrored on the university's system but not the one on blogger.com. He also removes the NSA logo from the post. Then, he takes to Twitter.

Do you see where this is going?

Now add this little tidbit:

The National Security Agency violated privacy protections between 2006 and 2009 when it collected phone records from millions of Americans by failing to meet court-ordered standards, U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday[.]

Want to bet all those phone records are classified? Along with any information relating to how they were acquired?

Hah! Just found this article:

Walton’s dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s handling of the surveillance program are contained in hundreds of pages of previously classified documents federal officials released Tuesday as part of a lawsuit by a civil liberties group.

The Obama administration has been facing mounting pressure to reveal more details about the government’s domestic surveillance program since a former intelligence contractor released documents showing massive National Security Agency trawling of domestic data.

The information included domestic telephone numbers, calling patterns and the agency’s collection of Americans’ Internet user names, IP addresses and other metadata swept up in surveillance of foreign terror suspects.

The documents released Tuesday came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They relate to a time in 2009 when U.S. spies went too far in collecting domestic phone data and then mislead the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about their activities.

(Emphasis added.)

Can I call 'em?

Update: It gets worse. Read the whole article -- it's fairly short.

Disgusting People: Fox News

There's no justification for this. From NBC:

Fox News on Thursday identified the author of the book, which is titled "No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden," as a 36-year-old former SEAL from Wrangell, Alaska. The Associated Press later said it had confirmed the author’s identity. (NBC News is not identifying the former SEAL.)

Penguin Group (USA)'s Dutton imprint, the publisher, asked news organizations Thursday to withhold his identity.

"Sharing the true story of his personal experience in 'No Easy Day' is a courageous act in the face of obvious risks to his personal security," Dutton spokeswoman Christine Ball said in a statement to the AP. "That personal security is the sole reason the book is being published under a pseudonym."

The book is a first-hand account of the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. You might guess that the reaction from al Qaeda has been -- well, not positive.

Users on several militant Islamic websites affiliated with al-Qaida have posted the name and photo of a former Navy SEAL identified as the author of an upcoming book on the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The posts called for his "destruction" in revenge for the al-Qaida founder’s killing.

"We pray to Allah for his destruction sooner rather than later," said one of the posts.

"Oh Allah, make an example of him for the whole world and give him dark days ahead," read another.

Among the website publishing the death threats was the "Al-Fidaa" web forum, which al-Qaida uses to distribute its media and public communications, said Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News consultant and a terrorism analyst at Flashpoint Partners, a global security firm.

This is the journalistic ethics of Rupert Murdoch and his whole organization. And there's no real purpose behind it -- there's nothing to be gained by revealing the man's name, although Chris in Paris at AmericaBlog has an interesting surmise (although it may be from John Aravosis -- the post isn't clear):

This time, Romney and the GOP are mocking the killing of Osama bin Laden and how President Obama handled it (apparently, killing OBL, a few years into office, when GWB couldn't pull it off (and basically gave up shortly after 9/11 - Bush actually called off the hunt for bin Laden only six months after September 11) is a "bad" thing).

Keep in mind that Mitt Romney, following in George Bush's footsteps, said he would have never ordered the successful raid against bin Laden in Pakistan.

The only problem? This Navy SEAL, who led the raid on bin Laden, was writing a book about the raid that most likely would have shown the world exactly how President Obama handled the raid (excellently, per the admiral who oversaw the operation). So the Navy SEAL, this American hero, had to be stopped at all costs, lest he undercut Mitt Romney's apparently embarrassment over the US - over President Obama - having killed bin Laden when Romney said he would have let bin Laden go.

So what happens next? Fox "magically" gets the name of the SEAL and leaks it, knowing full well that Al Qaeda would threaten to kill this man and his family. And voila, only 24 hours later, Al Qaeda has now threatened him.

Do I think that's a credible supposition? Not really: the book is going to come out, unless the Pentagon holds it up for some reason, and there's nothing to be gained by revealing the real name of the author. (Unless Fox is counting on the DoD quashing the book, although they could have done that without knowing the author's real name if there are security breaches in the text.)

I think it's just Fox, the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, doing what Fox does best -- being disgusting.

The guy should sue, for billions.

(There's an assumption in the comments at the AmericaBlog post that the author wrote the book to be critical of Obama. I don't know one way or the other on that score. And one commenter reminded us that the right has a history of outing covert operatives for political gain -- remember Valerie Plame?)

"Hate Groups"

Dana Milbank wrote a column at WaPo that has to be seen to be believed. (Well, if you're one of the Villagers, I suppose it makes perfect sense.) It's nothing more than a white-wash of FRC and a call for everyone to "be nice" and stop labeling hate groups as hate groups. It starts off badly and goes downhill from there:

Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, posted an alert on its blog Tuesday: “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference.”

The “hate group” that the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate would be addressing? The Family Research Council, a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

FRC is not mainstream. It is an extremist political organization using the Bible as a weapon.

Other bloggers, when commenting on this post, always start off by claiming that they respect Milbank. I have to confess I don't read him regularly, and if this is an example of his commentary, I don't really see any need to. He quite obviously has not done any research on FRC, he quite obviously has not read the SPLC's statement in which it details the reasons for declaring FRC a hate group -- or any of the numerous statements issued thereafter -- nor, apparently, has be bothered to inform himself what the issue really is. It's just another out-of-touch Beltway condemnation of anything that might be construed as "the left." Oh, and both sides do it.

Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.

"Policy shop"? You've got to be kidding me.

Here's the cherry on top:

Those who support gay rights will gain nothing by sticking inflammatory labels on their opponents, many of whom are driven by deeply held religious beliefs.

Yes, and sincerely held religious beliefs gave us the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Thirty Years' War, the drive to exterminate American Indians, slavery, genocide, and gods know what other glories of Western civilization. And ultimately, so what? Believe what you like, and base the law on reason.

(I actually spent a couple of hours last evening scrolling through the comments and leaving a couple of my own. As one commenter pointed out, there is a group of repeaters, obviously hard-core right-wingers who are impervious to logic and fact, and there there are a number of unique commenters who actually do document their statements with links and quotes. Most of those are strongly against Milbank's column, probably because they know what they're talking about.)

Pam Spaulding wrote a good, solid analysis of the column on Friday.

My assumption is that Mr. Milbank doesn’t read or see any news reports of the continuing struggle in much of the U.S. for LGBTs to have even the most basic of civil rights he takes for granted — equal accommodation, the right not be fired for sexual orientation or gender identity — oh, and not to be killed or maimed for simply existing. His overall message is the inaccurate, pathetic, lazy zero-sum argument that, in his mind, the LGBT community has not suffered as much violence or deprivation of civil rights as, say, blacks. Please. Like I said, he doesn’t bother to even bone up on recent incidents of horrid violence[.]

Apparently, Milbank feels that it isn't legitimate to label FRC a hate group until they start burning gay men on their front lawns.

John Aravosis also did a piece on the column -- or at least, sparked by the column -- that lays it all out, beginning with the header: "Why the Family Research Council is a hate group."

Because they lie.

And they know they lie.

And they don't care.

And they've been doing it for twenty years.

And when I say "lie," I dont' mean the standard Washington, DC version of a "lie," which is basically calling a lie anything you disagree with (aka, your facts hurt me so I'm simply going to call you a liar). I mean, an organization that decided early on that "the gay menace" was such a threat to American life that if it had to deceive the American people in order to convince them that gays were the anti-Christ, then so be it.

And for any journalist, like the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who claims otherwise, suggesting that the Family Research Council is simply a "mainstream conservative" group, I'd ask them to do some original research on the anti-gay literature that the Family Research Council publishes, and the anti-gay pseudo-science that FRC "cites" on TV, before weighing in on a topic about which they know very little.

Aravosis'post is exhaustive and worth reading. There's also a good discussion in the comments.

For reference, here's the page on FRC from SPLC's Intelligence Files. (Note to Dana Milbank: it wasn't that hard to find. All you have to do is google "Southern Poverty Law Center" to get to the site, and go on from there. It's pretty user-friendly.)

One final thought on this: it was Peter LaBarbera who brought up the idea that the shooting was staged. I don't really believe it, but given the methods and tactics of the FRC, and that fact that as they lose ground they get more extreme, it starts to sound credible.

This By You Is Journalism?

Granted, it's an "opinion" piece, but once upon a time even opinion pieces had to have some grounding in reality. This piece by Dennis Byrne for the Chicago Tribune is notable not only for its blatant one-sidedness, but for the inflammatory language Byrne uses.

First, a gross exaggeration of the study's substance:

This is a debate-changing study, especially because it challenges more recent court findings in which judges cite the "no difference evidence" as a reason for overturning laws that define marriage as between a man and a woman.

No, it's not that at all. One key factor that Byrne conveniently forgets to mention is that the internal audit by Social Science Research, the journal that published the study, found that the peer-review process was badly flawed, marked by numerous conflicts of interest, and that the study itself is so bereft of scientific integrity that it never should have been published.

[Daniel E.] Sherkat was given access to all the reviews and correspondence connected with the paper, and was told the identities of the reviewers. According to Sherkat, Regnerus’s paper should never have been published. His assessment of it, in an interview, was concise: “It’s bullshit,” he said.

I find it hard to believe that Byrne was unaware of this, since it's been widely publicized -- but judging from his post, he limits his reading to The Weekly Standard and NOM's blog.

As for the rest of his post, it's pretty bad -- playing the victim card on Regnerus' behalf, lambasting those who have quite legitimate concerns about the closed circle of funders, consultants, and advocates (one notable link is Prof. Robert E. George, a major opponent of marriage equality and a co-founder of NOM), not to mention Regnerus' own statements that his religious beliefs "inform" his research, and dismissing the challenges to Regenerus' methodology, which are quite germane.

Another reason why I seldom read the Trib.

This is exciting

This post from Pressthink strikes me as right on top what a lot of other commentators are missing: OWS is the first American protest of the Internet age.

I’ve been glued to media coverage of #Occupy, and I saw something this week that I thought you’d be interested in.

Tim Pool.

Something very special is happening here.

Basically he’s a protester-turned-reporter with a cell phone who is doing some very uniquely awesome things with his streaming ustream coverage. He’s been doing 20-hour live reporting marathons, but what’s extremely powerful is the feedback loop that he has with his viewers (numbering in the 15k+ live, 100k+ daily).

There’s a unique symbiosis happening. Being a livestream he acts as “eyes and ears” for the viewers. Literally. People will tell him to move the camera somewhere and he’ll do it. They’ll ask for interviews with someone, and Tim will go over and do so (taking extensive feedback, questions, and commentary from the channel viewers). The viewers will ask him questions and he won’t rest until he gets them their answers. There is no delay or time to press. It’s instant. And it’s awesome.

It's interesting to note that the first ones to grab on to the political possibilities of social media and cell phones were the Egyptians. Of course, the repression they were facing was much more overt than what we're subjected to by the 1% and their almost-wholly-owned subsidiaries, the American press and the American government.

Speaking of the corporate press, read this exchange from WaPo's chat as reported by Digby. (I can't follow the link, thanks to Google.)

Q. (IM)MORAL EQUIVALENCE

Paul, I'm guessing you won't be sympathetic to the following point, but I'll put it out there anyway. Most reporting on the supercommittee--like most reporting on the deficit--reflects an acceptance of a basic fallacy. Whenever there is an impasse, there seems to be a desire to blame both sides equally, on the theory that if only Democrats would concede more, Republicans would reciprocate (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). Yes, Democrats have drawn lines in the sand, but as Greg Sargent and other commentators have documented, when you compare the specifics, there is no factual basis for blaming both parties equally. So my question is, why does the Post's coverage do so anyway, either explicitly or implicitly?
– November 21, 2011 11:48 AM

A. PAUL KANE:

Yeah, you're right. I think this point is just absurd and ridiculous. This is a big thing among folks calling it "moral equivalence" (Fallows, Ornstein) and others calling it the "cult of balance" (Krugman).

It's just stupid. If you want someone to tell you that Republicans stink, read opinion pages. Read blogs. Also, the underlying sentiment on the left is that this is the real reason why things went wrong in 2010: That the mainstream media is to blame. Sorry, I think that's the sorta head-in-sand outlook that leads to longer term problems for a movement.

Greg is a fine writer. He's an opinion writer, in the opinion section of the web site. I encourage you to keep reading him. And I encourage you to keep reading the news coverage, which should always strive to present both sides of the story. If you really don't want to hear anything about the other side of the story, I really do encourage you to stop reading the news section.

– November 21, 2011 11:58 AM

Kane misses the point, to put it mildly. And he obviously has no idea what journalism is. Makes you sort of wonder who's paying him.

Tim Pool is an example of what we need to do, I think -- take reporting out of the hands of news organizations.