Cue the all-out media assault on Hillary Clinton

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What else is new?

As of course you know, if you pay even the slightest attention to American politics, and probably even if you don't, Hillary Clinton is running for president. She just hasn't announced it yet.

But the announcement is coming soon. Perhaps very soon.

And so you know what's coming, right? Not just an escalation of the Republican assault on Hillary, Bill, and all things Clinton, but a media hit job as well.

And I'm not just talking about the usual suspects over on the right-wing noise machine. No, it's the "lamestream" media, so much itself the target of cynical right-wing attacks, that will be right in the middle of this all-out assault, aiding and abetting Republicans and their own media mouthpieces as they do everything they can to bring the Clintons down and derail Hillary's frontrunning campaign, much as they did back in the '90s when they did everything they could to derail Bill's presidency.

Not that this will be much of a change. The anti-Clinton campaign has been in swing for some time now, and one could argue that it's been going on for many years now. But the swing will turn full.

And, indeed, it has already begun. Cue Politico, of course:

The Secret Lives of Hillary and Bill in the White House

Broken lamps, shouting matches, sneaking away to the pool—and other scenes from the Clinton residence during the Lewinsky scandal.

Read it for yourself, if you must, but I assure you it's a shameless piece of sensationalistic gossip and hearsay, mostly quoting anonymous "domestics," household staffers, that seeks to tear down not just Bill and Hillary but Chelsea as well (who apparently called Secret Service agents "pigs," explaining that that's what her parents called them -- the article actually ends with that, as if there's nothing else to say, as if there's no other side to the story, as if there's no doubt that that happened and that the Clinton's are awful).

But I would recommend avoiding it, because it's nothing new, this hit job, and if you pay even the slightest attention to American politics leading up to the 2016 election you'll no doubt hear much more just like it, such is, and will be, the seeming ubiquity of the effort to destroy Hillary.

It may be the surest thing, even surer than Hillary winning the Democratic nomination, of the 2015-16 Crazy Season.

Obamacare victory: GOP spin doctors have their work cut out for them

By Marc McDonald

I must admit, I've quite stunned by the Supreme Court's upholding of "Obamacare." I've never really been a fan of Obamacare, as I would prefer a European-style single-payer system.

But still, I hugely enjoyed the High Court's decision yesterday. It will be immensely entertaining to see GOP thugs like Limbaugh and Levin desperately try to spin this news to their deluded Kool-Aid-drinking base.

The Great GOP Propaganda Noise Machine usually prevails when it targets a specific issue -- (i.e., "Reagan won the Cold War," "Obamacare is Socialism," "Obama's birth certificate is bogus," etc., etc.) I get the feeling that the Noise Machine will eventually find an angle to exploit and will work hard to try to diminish Obama's victory. (And, as it usually does, it will get the mainstream media to take the bait.)

Speaking of the mainstream media, CNN really had a spectacular failure in initially screwing up the story. I originally got a CNN alert that claimed the Supreme Court had struck down the mandate. I was quite stunned when I turned on my computer a few minutes later and saw the news that the mandate had in fact been upheld.

After months of hearing smug GOP partisans claim that "Obamacare" would be overturned, it's an enormously enjoyable feeling knowing that now all these people are sitting around shell-shocked and depressed. I normally don't take pleasure in other people's pain. But I'll make an exception for this.

Hey, Rush... how are you going to spin this one?

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Epitome Of Ultimate Superlative Hyperbole

(By Zandar)

No subject in American politics in 2011 brings out the flammable straw men being engulfed in the fires of rhetoric, the over-the-top references to doom and destruction, the cries of helpless victimization and the utter nonsense of warnings of evil quite like the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.  Combine Obama Derangement Syndrome with this subject and the odiously mendacious Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, and you have a recipe for one of the all-time classics of truly terrible "journalism" as the President addressed the annual AIPAC conference this weekend, elaborating on what he meant by "1967 borders" for Israel, and Rubin wastes no time in letting the blood fly.

Obama must be very certain that liberal Jews will enthusiastically support him no matter what. And there is evidence he is right. Josh Block, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and a former AIPAC spokesman, e-mailed: “It [the speech] was a strong reaffirmation of the US-Israel relationship, and was an important and positive change from his remarks on Thursday. It reflected an important continuity of US policy going back to President Johnson.”

This is the sort of spin that pro-Israel Democrats use to justify voting for Obama. But there is a reality that can’t be avoided. This president once again has proved an apt negotiator on behalf of the Palestinians and a thorn in Israel’s side. Now is a time of choosing for the American Jewish community, for Israel and for Congress. And if Obama should be reelected in 2012 one can only imagine how hostile he will become toward the Jewish state.

So not only does Rubin stop about a micron short of accusing first African-American president of being an anti-Semite and an enemy of Israel, she stops maybe two microns short of accusing anyone of Jewish faith in America who supports Obama of being the same, calling on the American Jewish community to choose between their faith and Obama.

That's outrageous, the kind of spittle-flecked invective one expects to find from Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post.  But the insinuation here is that the biggest single threat to the Jewish homeland is not the intransigence of Israel's righteous indignation, nor the continued justifications for the treatment of the Palestinians, nor the international community becoming bone-weary of a country that has flouted international law time and time again, but that the American President is saying these things in public. This alone makes him an enemy of all Judaism in the eyes of some.

Oh, and by no means are the Palestinians angels in this bloody idiocy.  They have killed with suicide bombers and gone after civilians for the sheer shock value and fired rockets indiscriminately and taken pound after pound of flesh from their neighbors.  They too are part of the problem, not the solution.

But the issue is that the Palestinians aren't getting billions in military equipment, training, and cutting-edge technology from the United States, and that they aren't rounding up Israelis and putting them in armed camps, either.  Jewish right-wing neo-cons say that they could never understand supporting Obama.  I say given the tragic history of the Jewish people in the last century, I can't fathom anyone of the Jewish faith wanting to inter any group of people to single them out for collective punishment.

Imagine if the 12% of the nation's population that is African-American took over an American state, or if the nation's Native American population gathered together to do the same, or the nation's Latino or Japanese-American or any group took over an area of the country, declared it their new ancestral homeland, and then herded the people not of that ethnicity into separated, armed camps.  The new state created demanded its own independence and UN recognition, while the basic civil rights of those who were not of the proper background were curtailed severely in the name of public safety.  Trade of basic foodstuffs, livestock, building supplies, even information, would be arbitrarily monitored and controlled by the ethnic group in charge.  Bad movie plots and "Second Amendment remedies" aside, this is the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" right now, it's pretty one-sided.

But to even mention this unfortunate truth at AIPAC, well apparently this makes Obama and anyone who supports him an enemy of Israel and the Jewish people.  And yet people like Jennifer Rubin wonder why no progress has been made on this front.

I can't imagine why.

(Cross-posted at Zandar Versus The Stupid)

How "Climategate" is a phony, manufactured scandal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's a must-read: "A Case Of Classic SwiftBoating: How The Right-Wing Noise Machine Manufactured 'Climategate'," by Lee Fang at Think Progress.

It's right on the mark. Here's a taste:

While the hacked e-mails may reveal that scientists might not have nice things to say about climate change deniers at times, they do nothing to change the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use are raising temperatures and making oceans more acidic. As the right attempts to use the Climategate story to derail the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference this week, arctic sea ice is still at historically low levels, Australia is still on fire, the northern United Kingdom is still underwater, the world’s glaciers are still disappearing and today NOAA confirmed that not only is it the hottest decade in history, but 2009 was one of the hottest years in history. But how did the right-wing noise machine hijack the debate?

Read on.