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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Friday, November 13, 2009

Playing The Rubes 

...there has been a lot of commentary today about the revelation that the Republican National Committee has, for the better part of the last two decades, offered its employees a health care plan that included coverage for elective abortions, even though the RNC has opposed this particular concept since just after God made dirt. What all of the winger outrage and the wild flailing of RNC Chairman Michael Steele's efforts at damage control, one fact simply refuses to disappear...

The Republican National Committee knew - or should have known - what was covered by the insurance plan that it contracted with CIGNA to provide. It is simply impossible to believe that the RNC has been such a slipshod organization over the last two decades that it wasn't capable of engaging in the simplest act of actually reading up on the terms and conditions of the employee health care plan that it was paying for. The last eight Bushco years clearly demonstrated that the people who had their hands on the wheel of the Republican party weren't interested in doing much more than paying lip service to the concerns of the Republican "base", and it may even go deeper than that. What we know is that this elective abortion coverage goes as far back as the administration of George H. W. Bush; what we don't know is how much farther back the coverage extends...


For any social conservative who understands the presentation of health care plans and who can do the math, this has to be a really bad day. At the very least, today's revelation says that the Republican leadership is insufficiently sophisticated and informed about health care issues to be trusted with making the big decisions that actually matter; at the worst, today's revelation demonstrates that the RNC has been playing its base for rubes for the last 18 years by making all sorts of anti-choice noise while at the same time offering its own employees the sort of health benefit that only liberals - and the majority of Americans - could love....

Based on the rhetorical history alone, it is impossible to contemplate a Republican party leadership that doesn't know exactly what is in the health care plan for its National Committee employees. That's what makes this such a great story; they knew. They've always known, even back in 1991. From then until now, the reality-based branch of the Republican party has been reflected in the health care plan offered to RNC employees and it is only now that the wingnut Tea-Bagger branch that has recently decided that it is destined to be the salvation of the Grand Old Party has discovered the truth about the national committee...

They're all rubes....
Posted by: Jack K. / 9:27 PM 0 comments

DARN That Librul Media! 

...any whining you may have heard in the past from Moose Hunt Barbie about the vicious partisan attacks launched against her by that left wing harpy Katie Couric or the supercilious dismissiveness of the well-known Commie fellow traveler Charlie "In What Way" Gibson is about to be joined by a new round of whining about this mean-spirited partisan hatchet job just administered by those Socialist lackey fact-checkers at the Associated Press...

The notion that Palin might take the opportunity in her new ghost-written autobiography (or manifesto or fantasy tome or quasi-historical novel or whatever it is) to stretch, twist, and hammer previously recognizable facts into some dark one-off doppelgänger of the truth shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who has been more than a casual observer to this strange trailer trash soap opera to which we've been subjected over the last 15 months. Mishandling facts has been an occupational disease afflicting politicians of all stripes on this continent that may well date back to the first efforts of the Clovis people to elect clan leaders, but it has seemed to pass from avocation to vocation for politicians like Palin and others in this generation of Fox News Republicans who have come to understand that "The Message" is the 'truth' for The Base, regardless of what the truth actually is. Even beyond that, this right wing Fox News generation has had a pretty good run on the national media stage, where every absurd commentary and insane statement has been reported by the MSM in a straightforward fashion as if any of these ramblings actually had traction with a meaningful percentage of the population - which, in almost every case - they didn't...

It's actually a bit of a surprise that the AP has engaged in this bit of fact-checking, given the fact that its own Washington bureau has struggled mightily over the last 18 months (and has far too often failed) to stand up straight enough for the top of its collective head to hit the "You Must Be This Tall" line on the sign next to the entrance to the Edward R. Murrow Memorial Room Of Big Boy Fourth Estate Journalism. For whatever reason, though, the AP did actually slap on that Groucho Marx false nose and eyeglass disguise to trick the book distributor into giving it a pre-release copy of Palin's book, saving you and me from the grim prospect of actually having to sacrifice a good 45 minutes of our remaining time on earth sitting in a quiet corner of our local Big Box Book Store paging through this book before slipping it back onto the "New Release" display, only slightly worse for wear (after all, somebody has to do that whole 'book break-in' thing for all those wingers unfamiliar with the concept). For that effort, I'm grateful to the AP, even though I suspect that the effort is little more than snatching at low-hanging fruit rather than some sort of sea change in how the AP views its responsibility as a journalistic endeavor. After all, how do the Powers That Be at the Associated Press explain their general failure to so publicly fact-check the works of Ann Coulter back in the day when she actually seemed to matter?

The AP is going to find itself flung into the Flaming Pits Of Hell into which all liberals - especially including all members of the media who don't have right wing talk show cred, despite a history of uncritical reporting of right wing swill - will be sent when the True Believers finally gain ascendency. The AP certainly doesn't deserve such a horrible fate - based on the overall body of its faithful work - but this particular fact-checking moment challenges the Sarah Palin story line in which the crazy side of winger world is so strongly invested, so the AP will have to live with the ignomny of being part of that ugly hateful librul media...at least for now...
Posted by: Jack K. / 6:08 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Taking Bets On How This Ends 

...it isn't really much of a surprise that Reuters is reporting that Lou Dobbs is set to announce that he's leaving CNN. He has become almost a caricature of his own self with his passionate ranting about all those evil brown people streaming across our southern border and - demographics being what they are - his going-away party at CNN's world-wide headquarters probably won't be all that tearful an affair.

What is left unreported in this news flash is what ol' Lou's future plans might be. I've got "FAUX News" and the points. Any takers?
Posted by: Jack K. / 4:20 PM 0 comments

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