Right Wing Nut House

My latest column is up at PJ Media and in it, I share my thoughts about this season’s finale as well as chart the course of 24 through the years and how changes in the show reflected changes in America.

A sample:

As the years passed and his friends were killed off, his family drifting away, Bauer became more of a lone sheriff type facing off against evil, bringing to mind Will Kane in High Noon and other Hollywood icons. Indeed, the Bauer character was reminiscent of real American legends — hunter heroes like Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and Davey Crockett, whose exploits, portrayed in widely available dime novels, enthralled the nation. They too did what was necessary to survive, fighting savage animals and savage men, hacking a civilization out of the wilderness with their own two hands and the sweat of their brow, succeeding against almost impossible odds.

The Bauer mythos was enhanced by his battles with national security bureaucrats and politicos at the White House who never understood what it took to save lives. Frequently clashing with his superiors, Jack represented the quintessential American prototype who disparaged authority, was self reliant to a fault, and sought inventive means to fulfill his duty.

Read the whole thing.

My latest article is up at Pajamas Media and it’s already attracted the usual cast of thick headed numbskulls who think that “moderate” is a dirty word.

A sample:

RNC Chairman Michael Steele is trying. But his comments at a recent party conclave in Wisconsin point up the difficulty in translating that idea into any kind of practical program:

Eh … OK. Everyone can come in and sit down for the feast but if you are pro-choice, or pro-gay marriage, or pro-amnesty, kindly realize that no one is going to listen to you so you might as well keep your mouth shut. Meanwhile, your cousins and other relations can publicly chastise you for your different opinions, actively seek to undermine your re-election by running a primary challenger against you, deny you party support, and will stay at home on election day so a Democrat will probably defeat you anyway.

One jamoke in the comments:

Sorry, Rick. That’s nonsense.

Try being a Democrat today with some positions, shall we say, somewhat center-or-right of Kos.

You are political dog meat.

The hogwash you put forth is the Meggy McCain “why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along” mush which brought us liberalish McCain in 2008…as an “alternative” to (Chicago’s version of) Madison Avenue’s polished soap ad du jour.

Reagan HAD principles and stood by them, bending at times to compromise under the reality of DC politics.

What you propose HAS NONE.

Why should Republicans care if the Democrats are as narrow minded as they are? What possible benefit would accrue to the party by aping the worst instincts of their opponents?

And referring to John McCain as anything except a moderate conservative is nonsense. If he is “liberalish” the commenter is to the right of Attila the Hun.

And how about the myth that moderates have no principles? Nonsense. As I make clear in the article.

But this is the kind of ignorance the Republican party and conservative movement is up against in its efforts to reform. I don’t hold out much hope that anything constructive can happen until the Ed’s of the party and movement are either co-opted or simply shunted to the sidelines where they can rant to their heart’s content and do no harm in the meantime.

With the tea party protests now a part of history, I thought it might be helpful to try a little FAQ about them. Consider this a handy reference for what transpired and what might happen in the future.

1. How many tea parties were held across the country?

No one knows for sure. PJTV had 850 reports from citizen reporters across the country but some of those reports are duplicate efforts from the same venue. Tax Day Tea Party pegged the number at a 1,000. I think a safe estimate would be between 750-800 with many dozen more that weren’t reported because they were too small or more spontaneous than others.

2. How many people participated? (Updated below)

Got me. PJTV has reports from the field totalling more than 221,000 protestors. While recognizing that some of those numbers may be inflated because estimating crowds - even for experts - is more seance than science, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to say that more than 200,000 people turned out to protest…what?

3. What were the protests about?

I was surprised that there appeared to be such a uniformity of purpose to the protests. By all reports I’ve read, there was the occassional anti-aborton or anti-immigration protestor in some of the groups. And small groups of Ron Paul supporters showed up at many venues demanding the dismantlement of the Fed and a return to the gold standard. But by and large, the overriding theme of the protests was as organizers hoped; a broad critique of Obama’s economic policies with an emphasis on the maintenance of economic freedom. This included protestors who were anti-high tax, anti-bail out, anti-goverment control of business, and anti-ruinous spending. The signs at many protests pointed to the idea of “generational theft” as another dominant theme.

Were the protests anti-government? Given the diversity of opinions present, that theme cannot be dismissed. There is no doubt that what anger there was at the demonstrations came from those who see government as the enemy. And given that the Democrats are currently in power, there was certainly a partisan bent to the events. But as Jennifer Rubin reported from the Washington, D.C. protest, there was plenty to say against spendthrift Republicans also and there seemed to be at least some bi-partisan finger pointing at other venues as well. It was probably more pronounced at some locations than at others but it would be wrong to say that this was completely an anti-Obama or anti-Democratic party slugfest.

4. Did the media cover the protests?

Much local media coverage both before and during the protests was reported. As far as the national media, they got into heavy coverage the day before and day of the events - with predictable results.

5. What will be the dominant impression of the tea parties of Americans who watch the news?

Again, local coverage seemed to be a little more sympathetic and balanced than what came from the national media so it is difficult to say. Since studies show that most Americans give more weight to their local news than national broadcasts, it may be a wash in the end. The bias of all three cable networks probably won’t change any minds on either side, although the shocking bias of CNN has already exposed them to ridicule in some quarters. The disimissive tone of MSNBC was entirely predictable as was the rah-rah cheerleading by Fox. If one theme is able to penetrate the hype and bias - that this was a nationwide event and hundreds of thousands participated - that’s probably the best organizers can hope for.

6. What about the coverage by PJTV? (Disclaimer: I am employed by PJ Media, a subsidiary of PJTV)

There’s nine hours of coverage you can view for free here.. I am including this in my FAQ because there has been much written on the internet about the uselessness of PJTV, how it doesn’t have a mission, how it duplicates the MSM, and how it doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of succeeding.

I have been critical of PJTV in the past for some of their business decisions and have agreed with some of the serious critques of the network. But when they do something right, it’s only fair to mention that as well.

I would guess that most of the 850 citizen journalists who contributed reports to the tea party disagree with some of that critique. After all, would you rather visit 850 sites to see what the protests were all about or one? This is an extraordinary achievement that I do not believe any MSM outlet or internet network has ever even attempted on this scale. The network basically defined itself with the way they promoted and covered these protests. They have firmly established themselves as an important voice in the conservative alternative media universe with what they accomplished. While the network still has a ways to go, I would consider this something of a breakthrough moment for them. We will have to wait and see if they can keep the momentum going and add programming both topical and entertaining to their already rather eclectic mix.

6. What were some of the largest crowds?

Most of these are not police estimates but according to this website, 25,000 turned out in Sacramento, 20,000 in Atlanta, 15,000 in Houston, 12,000 in New York City, and many reports of 10,000 in cities across the country. The biggest rallies were not necessarily in the biggest cities. It appears that many of the demonstrations held in state capitols were extremely well attended.

But what is most impressive are the unfamiliar place names of small towns and villages where 100-200 people showed up. There are many hundreds of these venues and this speaks to the widepsread nature of the uneasiness many are feeling about the president and his policies.

7. Where does the Tea Party Movement go from here?

That’s the real question and I imagine there are many answers to it. There is talk already of holding the next round of protests on July 4th. But what is needed now is a clearinghouse of sorts, a place where organizers and participants can go to exchange ideas and connect. The best place for this is online and there is already at least one website where this is possible

Aftertheteaparty.com, a creation of American Majority, a non-profit political training institute, is already up and running. And I imagine PJTV will become an important player in the growth (or failure) of the tea party movement. This must be a long term investment in time and effort if anything is to change in America. We will see if anything comes of these protests or whether people lose interest and wander off.

UPDATE

Nate Silver has done an exhausting study based on media reports of “official” crowd sizes and come up with 250,000 as a nice round number for a little more than 300 protest venues.

It appears that he listed all the largest ones so I will only say that several hundred more were probably too small to warrant coverage but that the total particpation if you add them in would mean a grand total of more than 300,000 attendees.

I think he has too much faith in “official” estimates - especially where photos contradict them. But who am I to argue with a liberal?

C’mon, what’d you expect? A full fledged mea culpa complete with sackcloth, ashes, and my kneewalking to the shrine of  tea party activism?

Not hardly.

However, I was mostly wrong when I wrote this after the first round of tea parties in February:

I will say this as gently as my curmudgeonly soul will allow; not a chance. It is delusional to believe that these tea parties are the beginning of anything except a round of raucous Bronx cheers from the left, calling conservatives out for their inexplicable, over the top reaction and unrealistic expectations for these 40 or so tea parties that went off today.

If this really was the beginnings of something profound that was tapping into the rage of the American people, there would have been not 300 but 30,000 people screaming their opposition to spendthrift Obama. People would have taken off from their jobs, bundled up against the cold, walked, rode, took the bus, or crawled their way to a protest if they were truly fed up and ready to throw the Democratic rascals out.

Instead, we get 40 events that remind me of the old Mickey Rooney Andy Hardy movies where he and Judy Garland would put on a show to save someone’s business or house. “Hey kids! Let’s put on a show!” was Rooney’s battle cry in those movies and it is an apropos slogan for the effort that went into promoting these tea parties.

When you get some money, organization, professionalism, and a little more realism, come back and see me.

Well, there still isn’t much organization and little professionalism, but it turns out that I was the one lacking realism. I failed to grasp the excitement this idea generated and how it would animate the grass roots to actually get out of their chairs and do something about the creeping statism and generational theft being perpetrated by the Obama Administration. I also failed to give any credit to the thousands of ordinary citizens who, without any help from an organized political structure and with little or no money, managed to organize around 800 of these tea parties, and make a virtue out of their inexperience by being imaginative and working hard. In the end, results count. Today will see uneven results from venue to venue but overall, will no doubt be judged a success - if not by the media then by the movement itself.

(Note to our lefty friends: By the time Fox News got around to mentioning the tea parties, more than 500 had been announced. To believe that FNC is “behind” the tea parties is delusional. Any publicity they give is, I’m sure, appreciated by the organizers. But what does it say about the “reality based community” when they so easily slough off reality in favor of paranoia and fantasy?)

But my concern in February, as it is now, is that the rhetoric about what the tea parties will accomplish will not match the reality of what actually occurs. Exaggerated claims of “revolution” as appear on the PJTV site are not only unrealistic but defeat the purpose of the movement by scaring otherwise sympathetic people off. Most Americans probably do not want “revolution” nor are they necessarily in tune with the goals of the tea party - not when 71% of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the economy. The best that can be said is the that success of the tea parties show that many Americans are uneasy about this administration’s actions in spending our way to oblivion and that higher taxes for everybody are a dead certainty as a result.

It is amusing to watch many on the left pretend that they don’t know what the tea parties are all about - or posit wildly off base reasons for the protests that they know full well to be false. For a bunch that prides themselves on being smarter than the rest of us goober chewin’, bible thumpin’, gun totin’, cousin marryin’ rubes out here in flyover country, they sure are awful at pretending.

But for many liberals, if at first you don’t succeed in belittling the effort, why not simply make sh*t up about how the whole thing is a manufactured mirage, funded by lobbyists, and peopled by fakes:

This was easy for for Brian Beutler over at TPMDC:

That all changed on February 19, when CNBC commentator Rick Santelli erupted in anger on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and proposed a “Chicago Tea Party” for traders to protest the government’s plan to provide mortgage assistance to distressed homeowners.

The idea took hold and on February 27, a handful of cities across the country hosted gatherings that involved genuine tea (or at least the use of the word “tea”). One of those tea parties occurred from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. on Friday February 27, in Tampa, FL, organized according to the website Tampa Bay Online, by “John Hendricks, a Tampa-based consultant.”

John Hendricks turns out to be John Hendrix, who by phone earlier today described the events as completely spontaneous. “These are independent groups, not coordinated,” he says, “and most of the people, including myself, have never done anything like this.” He even said that two distinct groups in Tampa emerged simultaneously–both called the “Tampa Tea Party,” each unbeknown to the other.

I asked him where the idea came from. “Tom Gaithens,” Hendrix said. “He’s with FreedomWorks.”

“Oh really?”

“He sent an email out with his network of contacts to see who could help.”

Evil corporate lobbyists are hiding behind concerned citizens, pumping money and expertise into the protests in a classic case of astroturfing. I’m sure out of the 800+ protests planned for today, the overwhelming majority of organizers are asking, “So where’s the dough?” And all those conservative “plants” who have been hired as cut outs will no doubt ask the same question.

A little reality from Marc Ambinder:

Here is the organizational landscape of the April 15 tea party movement, in a nutshell: three national-level conservative groups, all with slightly different agendas, are guiding it. All are quick to tell you that the movement is a bottom-up affair and that its grassroots cred is real.

They are: FreedomWorks, the conservative action group led by Dick Armey; dontGO, a tech savvy free-market action group that sprung out of last August’s oil-drilling debate in the House of Representatives; and Americans for Prosperity, an issue advocacy/activist group based on free market principles. Conservative bloggers, talk show hosts, and other media figures have attached themselves to the movement in peripheral capacities. Armey will appear at a major rally in Atlanta, FreedomWorks said.

All three groups vehemently deny that the movement is a product of AstroTurfing–fake grassroots activism organized from the top down–as some on the left have claimed. They will tell you that citizens-turned-activists, upset with President Obama’s economic agenda and the financial bailout, have been calling them, asking for help and how they can organize protests on Wednesday. The movement, they say, is entirely organic: they are mostly providing help and resources to this new class of outraged conservative free-market populists, some of whom are their own members and some of whom are outsiders to politics with whom they’ve never communicated before–not even on an e-mail list.

It is arguable how many of these tea parties actually received help from any one of the three conservative groups. And I can guarantee if this was a “top down” organizational effort, you wouldn’t have the probable wildly different turnouts in various parts of the country as you will have today. Some events will no doubt see participants in the thousands. Others, in the hundreds. Still others will see a couple of families on a busy street corner with homemade signs like “Honk if you hate socialism!” If it really was as organized as many on the left claim, it would be a different story.

And you always know when the left gets stymied by something when the race card is dusted off and taken lovingly off the shelf:

Were you wondering what happened to all the rabid, wild-eyed bigots yelling, “Kill him!” and “Terrorist” and “Socialist” carrying stuffed monkey plush dolls at the McCain-Palin rallies? It’s easy in our jubilation over Obama’s victory to forget the many people in America who were deeply fearful and hate-oriented towards an Obama presidency. Those people didn’t just shrug their shoulders at the Democratic victory in Nov 2008. No, they’ve re-organized. Largely abandoned by the Republican party who tapped cynically into their ignorance, fear and hatred and whipped these folks into a racist lather as a Get Out The Vote strategy, the Tax Day Tea Party people have used the internet to find each other and organize.

[snip]

I’ve been parsing the words and the racists have been very careful to cover their tracks and fury that a black man is President. But not well enough. I’m starting to become pretty convinced at this point that “socialist” is a some kind of code word for “nigger”. Here’s an example of some of the subtle language the Tea Party people are using to describe their own movement (emphasis mine) from the Michelle Malkin blog, a central hive for the poorly informed, wild-eyed, bigoted, Fox News/wingnut blog-driven lynch, ahem I mean Tea Partiers:

I love it when liberals use the word “nigger.” They get such a thrill from it, showing how “authentic” they are and all. The fact that they have done more to contribute to the virtual slavery of African Americans by making the impoverished among them so generationally dependent on government for survival, the dripping irony of showing “solidarity with the oppressed” escapes them.

But leaving what liberals think of the tea parties behind - as well the organizers should - there is a burning question that needs answering when the last protestor leaves the venue and heads home.

Nedryun at Next Right:

But I have one concern: We show up; we protest; we go home. But what comes next?    There are events in history that impact the direction a nation takes. This could be one of those moments. I know the organizers of the National Tax Day Tea Party have begun to think about it, and I am convinced that if done right, this could be the MoveOn.org moment for the conservative movement. Think about it: MoveOn.org began as a simple petition and email list, wanting people and leaders to move on from the Bill Clinton impeachment. Consider what it is today.   To help keep the momentum of the Tea Party Revolution going, American Majority has developed an After the Tea Party plan. My challenge to those attending the Tea Parties is this: we’re showing up to protest on behalf of freedom and limited government. But that should just be the beginning. We need to take it a step further if we want to see true freedom and limited government here in America. We need implementers of freedom and limited government. If people are really fed-up with the current elected leadership of this country, then they should think about becoming the next generation of leadership. We need people to channel their passion into part of a long-term approach, and run for local office (or become more effective activists). What if we have 1,000,000 people show up on the 15th? What if 5% take up this challenge to run for state and local office on free market, limited government principles? It would be the beginning of something very, very good for this country.   That’s what After the Tea Party is about. We want people to go to www.aftertheteaparty.com and sign up. American Majority will then train those who sign up to run for office or to become a more effective activist.   I’m posting this so I can help get the word out about After the Tea Party.

Ned recommends several common sense steps that can be taken in the aftermath of the tea parties that seem to me to be eminently reasonable and doable. I am going to sign up and I would hope everyone who attends a tea party does also.

Last night on my radio show, I asked the same question - what next? - to my guests Ed Lasky and Rich Baehr of The American Thinker. Will some conservative politician try and “adopt” the tea party movement and would that be a good thing? We all agreed that some kind of leadership is necessary but that the movement should strive to maintain its independence. Clearly, there must be some kind of clearinghouse for information and ideas as well as coordination with other organizers for future events. But beyond that, perhaps I was wrong when mocking the movement as little more than aping the plot of the old Andy Hardy movies where Mickey Rooney, in order to solve a finanical problem for a friend, would snap is fingers and cry out, “Hey Kids! Let’s put on a show!”

Perhaps that is a large part of the movement’s charm - and potential effectiveness. And I guess I was stupid not to see it.

UPDATE:

See also Pat Ruffini’s “The Rise of the Right’s New Distributed Online Activism” that details the significance of the tea party movement to what Pat and others have been trying to accomplish on the net.

The chances of deep sixing the stimulus monstrosity and starting over again are as near to absolute zero as you can get in politics. The reputations of Speaker Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the president himself are on the line and a defeat of the conference report in the senate (still a possibility after the House tries to restore many of the cuts made by the senate), would be very damaging to that triumvirate, especially the president.

But if ever there were a case where the leaders of the Democratic party should swallow their pride and take the hit on their credibility by tearing up this piece of legislation and starting over, this is it.

Not much of a chance of that happening what with Obama going on national TV tonight and a cloture vote scheduled in the senate tomorrow. So Obama will probably ratchet up the fear mongering to heights not seen since Democrats ran commercials accusing Republicans of wanting to kill poor children and force old people to eat dog food. It is one thing to tell us the truth about our dire economic straits. It is quite another to try and make people believe that only by passing his $900 billion panic panacea will we avoid “catastrophe.”

And what are the consequences of all these dark nostrums being purveyed by a candidate who usually spoke in optimistic and hopeful language on the campaign trail?

Brad Blakeman, a senior aide to Mr. Bush from 2001 to 2004, said the new president’s language is immature.

“It’s not presidential. An American leader needs to be hopeful and optimistic - and truthful. Everything he says is parsed; everything he says is searched for deep meaning. When he goes to ‘DefCon 5′ on the economy and says that we’re on the brink of catastrophe, it’s absolutely insane.”

With his fiery rhetoric, the new president runs the risk of terrifying consumers and investors, which could depress the economy even further. While the economy is bad, it is a far cry from Great Depression levels, when as many as 30 percent of Americans were unemployed, compared with the 7.6 percent now.

Every president must walk a rhetorical tightrope when talking about the economy, a lesson Mr. Bush learned quickly, being bashed just after taking office for delivering somber news. The United States was just entering a mild recession - it had been in one, it turns out, for about nine months - and the new president said so.

Liberals went berserk.

“Every time we turn around, this guy is bad-mouthing the economy. Is that lifting our spirit or dumping on it in order to sell his tax cut?” liberal comentator Bill Press said on CNN. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, in an article headlined “Thanks Ever So Much, President Poor-Mouth,” said, “Even if Bush turns out to be right in his predictions of gloom, that doesn’t mean he was right to make them.” The New York Times lectured Mr. Bush, saying that presidents were supposed to be “cheerleaders for the nation’s economy.”

Of course, when Bush began to tout his economic accomplishments in the lead up to the 2004 election, he was skewered for being too Pollyanish and for not being “realistic.” So much for being a “Cheerleader” for the nation’s economy.

I made this point in my PJ Media column today:

That’s right. The candidate of “Hope and Change” has decided to be a president who espouses “Fear and Loathing.” Fear of financial Armageddon unless we do as we are told and blindly give in to his $900 billion panic panacea for the economy and loathing of the opposition — an opposition Obama unfairly portrays as opposing him out of spite and because a popular talk radio host is telling them what to do.

It is a far cry from the way Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan handled economic crises that in some ways were more dire than what Barack Obama is facing today. Both men came to office at a time when the American spirit was limping and lost. Both men were confronted with unprecedented economic problems (double digit inflation and interest rates in 1981 were an impossibility according to the books).

And yet, both men eschewed fear mongering and sought to lift the people out of themselves in order to bring back hope and allow the natural optimism of the American people to come to the fore. Arguments rage to this day whether FDR’s massive spending helped or hurt the economy. And Reagan’s tax cuts began a spiral of deficits that, save for a brief period in the 1990s, fostered a climate of “let the kids pay for it” on Capitol Hill.

But few can argue that FDR and the Gipper didn’t succeed in changing the dynamics of the crisis they were facing by inspiring the people to believe in themselves again and that better times were ahead.

Obama does not want Americans to believe in themselves. He wants them to believe in him…”

Now let’s be realistic and grant President Obama some leeway in this matter. A leader uses every tool at his disposal in order to succeed in getting the public behind him. And fear mongering is one way - the dirty, easy way - to accomplish that goal. A much better way to is to inspire hope and optimism in the future, “lifting the people out of themselves” as I say in my column. But if Obama can’t find the words then he is left with trying to scare us into supporting him.

The problem is that if the stimulus doesn’t work - and there are many smarter than you or I who say it won’t in its present form - then the American people will feel betrayed. If catastrophe occurs after warning that the way to avoid it was to pass his stimulus bill, only the true Obamabots will stick with him because he will have lost everyone else. He has promised relief if the bill is passed and when it is not forthcoming, his credibility will take a hit from which it will never recover.

The risks for Obama are considerable. He and the Democrats will have no one else to blame if the package fails to boost the economy. Obama himself has said his first term can be judged on whether it succeeds, whether it creates or saves the 3 million to 4 million jobs he promises.

And if the economy fails to show marked signs of improvement — a possibility indeed — Republicans will have a megabillion-dollar “I told you so” in their pockets, just in time for the 2010 midterm elections and Obama’s own reelection bid in 2012.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the fallout from a Democrat-only bill will be “squarely in the president and the Democratic leadership’s lap.”

The flip side of that risk belongs to Republicans. The economy may very well create 4 million new jobs in the next few years. It would create 3 million in the worst of times anyway. Obama has set the bar so low that if he succeeds (even if the unemployment rate continues to go up) the GOP is toast in 2010.

But the real problem remains the rank cynicism of Obama in carrying on with business as usual despite his promises to change things in Washington. His personnel problems, his refusal to even listen to Republicans who pointed out some $150 billion in pure pork in the stimulus bill, and his ceding responsibility for the crafting of the bill to Nancy Pelosi and David Obey - two of the most far left liberals in the House - all show a leader both unsure of himself and a betrayer of the public’s faith in him. Couple this with his exaggerated rhetoric and dire predictions regarding the bail out measure and you have a president whose biggest boosters are even starting to ask questions about his competency.

After a distinctly rocky start to his presidency, he has admitted he “screwed up” and is returning to one thing in his political career that he has perfected – campaigning. In Elkhart, Indiana, today and Fort Myers, Florida, tomorrow, Mr Obama will try to seize back control of the political agenda with question-and-answer sessions with voters in two of the swing states that gave him victory.

Already, however, he is struggling, and the product he is now selling is not himself but a near-trillion-dollar economic “stimulus” package loaded with pet Democratic spending projects that has awakened slumbering Republicans in Congress and is now supported by barely a third of Americans. In between the Indiana and Florida stops, he will return to the White House for a prime-time press conference in which he will appeal directly to citizens and seek to rekindle the magic of his campaign.

Which President Obama will turn up remains to be seen. Last week, he began as a wide-eyed bystander buffeted by events as he lost his key confidant, Tom Daschle, amid an uproar over $128,000 in unpaid taxes for a chauffeur and limousine. Mr Obama and his advisers believed the oversight did not matter because the over-arching virtue of the new White House could not be doubted. He was wrong and seemed out of touch in believing that ordinary people would not notice the contrast between the practice of politics as usual and his campaign slogans against it.

The White House is now in damage-control mode. After Robert Gibbs, Mr Obama’s spokesman, was lampooned by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show as a non-answering automaton in the mode of President George W Bush’s press secretaries, former campaign strategist David Axelrod was dispatched to television studios to make the stimulus case. However, this was tinkering around the edges.

As Jimmy Carter found out to his detriment, these early weeks and months in the White House set the tone for the entire term of office. Carter spun his wheels for 3 months, causing even the Washington Post to ask who was in charge. Carter first tried an energy package which got bogged down in committee. He then tried a little stimulus of his own but he allowed the process to get so out of control that he eventually scrubbed the whole plan. In short, nothing was done. Carter had wasted the first three months of his presidency and could never get the momentum back. He was basically judged a failed incompetent before the cherry blossoms had bloomed in the tidal basin.

Obama goes before the press tonight to try and save his stimulus and perhaps even his presidency. He may eventually get his bill. But it will almost certainly be a straight party line vote with one or two Republicans in the senate jumping ship. And then?

More bailouts as Treasury Secretary Geithner will be forced to go back to Congress this week and beg for more TARP money to save our banking system. And then it will be the automakers turn again in the spring, and the the states again next fall, and who knows what other industries who are too big to fail or who are generous with their donations to Democratic candidates will be able to milk the taxpayer in this crisis.

Will every bailout bill be a “catastrophe” if we don’t support it? How often can Obama go to the well and drink from the cup of fear and loathing before the people simply tune him out and identify as him as just another partisan politician?

Sooner than he could possibly dream.

This is pretty surreal. There have been dozens of posts on the discontinuation of PJM’s ad network and the majority of them seem to think that PJ Media is going under or has gone under.

It re-confirms a longstanding suspicion of mine - one that I’ve shared with other “long form” bloggers and essayists on the web. The fact is, the majority of people do not read what we write. They either skim the piece and choose one bone to pick with the author or, even more commonly, don’t even bother to do that and simply glean the subject matter from the title of the post and say any old thing in the comments about what we wrote.

This becomes painfully obvious when some commenter throws 200 words at me, complaining I didn’t raise this point or that one when, in fact, the point was raised - sometimes repeatedly.

Now, I will be the first to say (although I can guarantee you it will appear in the comments at least once) that I am pretty full of myself if I actually believe most people want to read a 1500 word blog post from some guy named Moran - at least on a daily basis. No doubt, some of what I write is indeed worth reading from beginning to end. Other posts, not so much. My beef isn’t necessarily with those who think I’m a crummy writer but rather with those who comment on what I write pretending to have read and absorbed what I’ve written. If I demand honesty from myself when writing, shouldn’t I hold my readers to the same standard?

A few years ago, I actually took to banning people who played that game but in the end, realized it is a function of the internet that very few have the time or interest to read an essay - unless it’s by Bill Whittle, Mark Steyn, or some other brilliant writer. So I relented and allowed all the banned folks back in. (I will do the same on “Blogroll Amnesty Day” this week. My list of banned IP’s over the last year runs to less than 2 a month.)

So it is not a shock that people have substituted their own interpretation of the news regarding the demise of PJM’s ad network, pulling from it the erroneous information that PJ Media is toast, that the website is kaput, that PJTV is on the ropes (or a hopeless cause), and that the company will be out of business in a few months. Some of this is surely wishful thinking on the part of long time critics. Some of it may be jealousy or hurt feelings (lots of that over the years). Some of it is political partisan warfare as the left universally celebrates the “downfall” of a conservative media platform - not recognizing because they never read it, that the range of opinion on the PJ website so far outstrips anything on “progressive sites” that it is obvious lefty detractors don’t have a clue what kind of site PJM actually strives to be or they wouldn’t reveal their ignorance so proudly.

We have had liberal writers in the past contribute to the site and I hope we can increase the participation of the left in the future. We have featured many dozens of articles that were highly critical of conservatives, Republicans, and Bush with many dozens more supportive. We have had religious conservatives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, and moderate liberals write on every political and public policy topic you can think of. I am sorry but the idea that The Huffington Post or any comparable site on the left has one tenth the range of opinion and thought featured regularly at the PJ Media site just doesn’t hold water. And liberals would realize that if they bothered to visit every once and a while. The fact that the demise of the ad network has smoked them out of the walls and has them trying to outdo one another in snarky tropes, gloating at the perceived “failure” of PJM without even being familiar with what regularly appears on the webpage reveals PJM’s critics to have the intellectual shallowness we’ve come to know and love.

This becomes painfully obvious when the reader of these screeds is informed that PJM is a “far-right” website. (Since most liberals believe anyone to the right of Che is “far right,” I suppose it makes sense - in a twisted sort of way.) Even if you were to stop by the site and read a couple of articles once a month, anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence would realize immediately the falsity of that statement. If one wants uniformity of opinion, go left, young man, go left.

I doubt whether any left wing site would have featured a pro-con argument at the top of the webpage that defended and criticized a controversial decision made by the parent company and yet PJM did exactly that regarding the decision to send Joe the Plumber to Israel. (There were also a couple of other articles that examined the issue and criticized the decision.) PJM has featured other writers that went entirely against the grain of conservative thought on torture, immigration, the war, health care, and other policy prescriptions. We have featured several articles highly critical of Sarah Palin, John McCain, the Republican leadership, and yes, the far right of the movement.

To refer to PJ Media as a “far right” website is ludicrous. Worse, it is ignorant. It reveals the writer of such nonsense to not know what they are talking about - something that is not unusual even among the largest lefty blogs. And to top it off, gloating over the demise of a website that will not be demising adds a little schadenfruede right back at ya. To spend 1000 words doing a verbal sack dance over a foe that is still on its feet and has just tossed a 50 yard bomb for a touchdown only makes the writer look silly indeed.

I have taken some time to defend PJ Media not just because I work there but because the amount of false, misleading, and just plain dumb information that has exploded on the net as a result of the news that the blogger network has been discontinued requires a response. Setting the record straight is not my job (what I write here is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the thinking of PJ Media’s management or employees). But long time readers of this site know I take particular pleasure in showing the right’s critics to be shallow, stupid, obstinate, and without honor. And the inability of PJM’s critics to even get the elementary facts of the story correct continues to prove my point.

ADDENDUM:

I didn’t mention that there will be a new approach to bringing revenue in through the website. One model has been discarded and another will take its place. To be completely accurate, one could say that the original model has indeed failed but how you can stretch that notion and say the entire enterprise is a failure is beyond me.

I have received several emails on this news - some of them gloating, some solicitous of my supposed loss of a job. To set the record straight, the ad network that PJ Media supported will cease on April 1. The site itself will continue as before and I will continue as Chicago editor.

I understand why many are angry and upset. I also understand the gloating, although I wonder what empty space in a man’s soul would motivate him to write an email to someone and gloat over their supposed loss of a job. But you get used to that if you make a living on the internet. And since I am still working - and will continue to work at PJM - for the forseeable future, the three gloaters who emailed me about how happy they were that PJ Media was going under and I would be unemployed are now exposed as the idiots and dolts they truly are.

I have less understanding with regard to the hundreds of comments I read this morning at Goldstein and Ace’s sites. There seems to be the notion abroad that PJM “betrayed” bloggers who signed up. And this from conservatives on a conservative website? PJM and bloggers like me entered into a contractual business arrangement. The contract simply said that PJ Media would use our websites to place ads while the participating bloggers received remuneration for their consent. There were no promises made in the contract - stipulated or otherwise - that the arrangement would last forever. Bloggers who went with PJM rather than another ad company made a business decision. The market has had its way and has now spoken. How this constitutes a “betrayal” is a mystery.

The fact is, as Reynolds points out, online ad revenue is tanking. Part of that is the economy and part of it is certainly that the ad industry has yet to figure out how to exploit and pay for internet advertising. All those eyeballs and no one can truly measure the impact of online ads. I’m sure it will work itself out eventually but in the meantime, sites like PJ Media suffer the growing pains.

So, those who find something to celebrate in the loss of revenue for bloggers, I wish you a peaceful night’s sleep. To those who are affected by the demise of the network, I sympathize. I hope you land on your feet by being able to find alternative ads for your site. I tried to get Blogads for my site when it was larger than it is now and was turned down so personally, I am not optimistic in my own case.

And to those critics reporting on and doing a sack dance on the supposed death of PJM, I would suggest a remedial course in reading comprehension. We aren’t going anywhere. And I have no doubt you will continue to hear from us in the future.

Note: The views expressed above are my own and not those of PJ Media, its employees, managers, directors or even the commenting trolls.

My latest at PJ Media is up. It examines the historic nature of Obama’s inauguration; that we have gone from “Whites only” drinking fountains to toasting an African American president in the White House within the span of my lifetime:

A sample:

Is it really possible we have gone from “Whites Only” drinking fountains to toasting an African American president in the White House within my own lifetime? I can easily recall the civil rights story told nightly through the grainy news film of the time. Images both unforgettable and horrifying were a nightly staple of the news. The dogs and fire hoses being let loose upon children. The beatings of demonstrators who sat stoically, knowing full well the blows were coming and refusing to fight back. And always, the dour, glowering faces of the southern authorities who resisted to the last.

No, the election and inauguration of President Obama does not banish racism or discrimination from America. That happy event is still in the future. But inaugurating Obama allows us a glimpse of such a future on the distant horizon, barely discernible but now a definite form shimmering in the morning sun. And a clear path to that goal is in front of us just waiting for us to take the first step.

Read the whole thing.

My latest column at Pajamas Media is up. I look at Blago’s master stroke of changing the dynamics of his personal political situation and throwing the ball into Harry Reid’s court as far as the senate choice is concerned.

A sample:

On the surface, this was a brilliant stroke by Blagojevich. By rolling the dice and naming Burris, he puts the onus of rejecting a supremely qualified African-American candidate smack on Senator Reid’s shoulders while perhaps even currying favor with Illinois blacks. In addition, if Reid were somehow to reverse himself, the drive for impeachment would slow considerably. The process had already been reduced to a crawl as a result of the holidays, and any urgency to impeach Blagojevich would dissipate because the idea was to get him out of office quickly so that he couldn’t name Obama’s successor.

To those who might wonder why this changes anything with regard to impeachment, it is important to remember that in Illinois politics all politicians are guilty until convicted. Then they are simply unelectable. Illinois House Democrats will move no faster than they have to. And if the Senate accepts Burris (or is forced to accept him), impeachment will proceed much more deliberatively.

Burris served from 1979-1991 as comptroller of the state and from 1991-1995 as attorney general. He is currently head of Burris & Lebed Consulting of Chicago, a high powered lobbying and consulting firm that, according to the Chicago Sun Times, has gotten nearly $295,000 in state contracts since 2004. Burris and his partners have donated more than $20,000 to Blagojevich since 2004.

In the news conference introducing him, Burris alluded to the idea that he was pleased Blagojevich had named another African-American to replace Obama and he pleaded with his “good friend” Senator Dick Durbin to talk with him about being accepted by the Senate. And it appears virtually certain that Blagojevich will fight to seat his choice, as Burris said during the press conference, “I welcome the challenge that awaits us.”

Read the whole thing.

My latest at PJ Media is about the Blagojevich arrest and details “the most breathtaking corruption in the history of Illinois politics.”

A sample:

In any other state, this would be simply unbelievable, or perhaps considered a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence to have such breathtaking and brazen corruption reveal itself at the highest levels of state government.

The “pay-to-play” charges have been out in the public for more than two years. This was a scheme where Blagojevich friend and campaign financier Antoin “Tony” Rezko pressured companies doing business with the state to contribute to the Blagojevich re-election campaign in exchange for lucrative state contracts. Rezko was convicted of 18 counts of fraud in connection with the scheme and the governor’s name was prominently mentioned during his trial.

This probably will not involve Barack Obama. The next president gave Blago a wide berth and evidently went so far as to pull Valerie Jarrett, his close personal friend, out of the running for his replacement when it became clear that Blagojevich was trying to sell the seat to the highest bidder.

But it is instructive to note that this is the political culture that nurtured and raised Barack Obama. To think that it hasn’t tainted him is just plain idiocy. There are plenty of examples of Obama using his clout to help a friend or crony not to mention steer government business to campaign contributors. Obama lived, breathed, ate, and slept Illinois politics for more than a decade. And that’s something to keep in mind as his Administration rolls along.