Our linkfest taking you to websites of varying viewpoints. Links do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of TMV or its many writers.
Sarah Palin Quits Again: This time her bus tour. Hey, if the media were losing interest then why go on a non-political vacation with her family (especially when the media including Chris Matthews now seems fascinated with Michele Bachman and Palin seems in danger of becoming the flavor-of-the-month has been)? The best comment in this comes via a Tweet from the great Andy Borowitiz:”Palin has quit her bus tour. Well, at least she’s consistent.” You can follow more blog comment on Sarah Palin’s latest quit HERE.
Clarence Thomas Is Raising Eyegbrows so high they are standing up straight near this independent voter’s hairline. The latest news about him apparently feeling he can push the envelope because he can is THIS news from Think Progress: :”ThinkProgress uncovered three briefs that AEI filed in Thomas’ Court after Thomas received their $15,000 gift. Thomas recused from none of these three cases, and he either voted in favor of the result AEI favored or took a stance that was even further to the right in each case.” Partisanship in American has come to mean looking the other way when someone does something on your own political sports team. So I would be surprised if Thomas faces any consequences. And I suspect he’ll be on the bench enjoying its many extra curricular benefits for years to come. Without consequences or criticism from political friends.
Bloggers Have to Take Care on Copyrights but they have just won a victory.
Jon Huntsman: The Right Timing? The Daily Beast’s John Avlon has this must read on Jon Huntsman who has jumped into the GOP 2012 nomination sweepstakes fray:
It’s so crazy, it just might work.
Jon Huntsman is set to officially announce his run for the presidency today in sight of the Statue of Liberty, where the Gipper kicked off his fall campaign in 1980.
The Reagan homage is intended to remind Republicans that Huntsman comes from the Western conservative tradition, a genial chief executive whose core electoral attribute is supposed to be the ability to win crossover votes.
Huntsman’s entry into the race has the chattering class chattering, even as conservative activists and Republican consultants consider his campaign a nonstarter. There’s just no way, they say, that a former Obama ambassador who intends to make civility a strategic centerpiece of his campaign can compete in an increasingly conservative populist GOP.
There’s no question it’s a long shot. But it is also true that even in the heady opening weeks of the Obama administration, Huntsman was regarded as the Republican that Barack & Co. least wanted to run against in 2012. That’s why they came up with the bright idea of bringing Huntsman into the fold as China ambassador. It didn’t stick.
Huntsman is the latest embodiment of the classic Catch-22 of partisan politics—the candidate most likely to win a general election has the hardest time winning the nomination. The qualities that make them so competitive in the fall alienate the base.
Read it in its entirety.
Is Huntsman Obama’s Most Dangerous Opponent? Andrew Sullivan believes Huntsman’s plead for civility in politics could be potent if he gets the nomination:
If the GOP really wants to win over the middle, they should listen closely to this insistence on civility. The Obama campaign has, in my mind, finally met an opponent they should fear for the best reasons, not the worst ones.
Newt Gingrich Loses His Fundraisers: The final blow to what is laughingly called his “campaign”?
The Word of the Day: portmanteau.
SWAT Teams, Student Loan Violators and Sloppy Internet Reporting: SIGH..
The blow that burst open Kenneth Wright’s front door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, June 8 could now be called the Shot Heard ‘Round the Internet as Liberal, Conservative and Libertarian bloggers suddenly screamed in unison about the coming Police State and the Department of Education making sweeping arrests and…
… all kinds of things that turn out not to be true when you draw a breath, step back and look at the facts.
On Tuesday, June 8, 2011, local ABC affiliate News10 allegedly reported that a SWAT team had surrounded Wright’s home and broken down the door in response to an unpaid student loan.
I say “allegedly” because shortly after that first story appeared- and all the screaming started- the story was taken down by News10, never to be seen again. In it’s place a revised story appeared, saying that federal agents- not a local SWAT team- had raided the home in connection with an ongoing investigation which was not connected to unpaid student loans.
Read the rest. As I’ve often said here the original dream of blogging and Internet news creating a sea of citizen journalists has not come to fruition. More accurately, we have seen the grown of Op-eds. And there is really nothing wrong about that. But those mean, old, mainstream newsmedia newspapers that are so often dissed would generally have standards on op-eds and too much of what is on the Internet is what meets this standard: can your finger hit the “publish” button and get it online?
Voter Suppression Efforts Underway B-I-G-T-I-M-E: Your contributions to the GOP at work (since this is strangely happening in states with Republican govenors and to groups that don’t generally vote for Republicans).
Chris Christie Ladie’s Man? NOT!
Did Cable New Networks Show Themselves to be a Weiners? A must-read-in-full from Reflections of a Newsosaur (a MUST reading site for news junkies and former newspaper reporters such as yours truly):
Anthony Weiner disgraced himself, his family and his constituents by his bizarre misbehavior on Twitter, but he has an explanation: He has some sort of psychological problem.
The cable channels and other news organizations that whipped his indiscretions out of all reasonable proportion have no such excuse. They were being cheap, cynical and opportunistic. And they ought to be ashamed of themselves, though I know they won’t.
To be sure, the Weiner story was a proper matter of public interest and the republic is better served with him in sext rehab, whatever that is, than flexing his pecs for his BlackBerry at the congressional gym.
But a sad aspect of this tawdry tale is that the media allocated a stunning 17% of the available newshole in the week of June 6-10 to roasting this emotionally arrested loser, according to the national coverage index published by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The worst offenders in this journalistic travesty, of course, were the brain-dead cable news networks, where fully a third of the airtime was devoted to flogging a matter of no major import and no enduring consequence.
Read it all.
Congress on Libya: Proof that they’re a bunch of political clowns?
President Obama Gets Laughs unintentionally while talking about jobs. An accurate description of what happened or not?
Will Obama’s Health Care Reform Cost More than thought? This too, unintentionally…
A Right Turn in Canada: Tough austerity measures are on the way…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.