JohnKWilson's blog

Kurtz's grand conclusion: Ayers and Obama went to the same meetings! And this brilliant attack by Kurtz: Obama is "comfortable working with people" on the left. Well, that's no surprise, since he's also comfortable working with people on the far right.

But although Kurtz smears failed for lack of even a sliver of any evidence, he and the far right have come up with another line of attack.

Today, Rush Limbaugh claimed Kurtz was a victim of repression by the Obama campaign. Why? Because Obama's campaign sent out an email urging people to call into Milt Rosenberg's radio show where Kurtz appeared last night. Limbaugh claimed, "Obama does not want people to know how close he is to Bill Ayers." According to Limbaugh, asking people to call into a radio show to criticize Kurtz's lies was a "brutal sleaze and smear tactic."

Unlike Limbaugh, I listened to Kurtz on Rosenberg's show. More than half the show was devoted to Kurtz's laughable attacks on Obama (in one case, Kurtz started reading from an innocuous book on global justice that he admitted Obama probably never read, but which he linked to Obama because Obama knows the man who runs the foundation that produced the book). There were a couple of people just reading from the Obama campaign email, but plenty of anti-Obama people had the chance to call and were apparently given preferential treatment to get on the air (Rosenberg even called back notorious Obama critic Steve Diamond because his line was bad). So Limbaugh was lying about an "effort made to clog up the phone lines."

Amazingly, Kurtz and Rosenberg played the same victimization card as Limbaugh. During the show, Kurtz accused the Obama campaign of "stifling reasonable debate and free inquiry" by sending out an email encouraging people to call in to the show and express themselves. He claimed, "this is an effort to silence me illegitimately." And you agreed: "It sure has that ring to my ears."

Well, I got the email, and it says nothing about stifling debate. Here's what the email says:

In the next few hours, we have a crucial opportunity to fight one of the most cynical and offensive smears ever launched against Barack.
Tonight, WGN radio is giving right-wing hatchet man Stanley Kurtz a forum to air his baseless, fear-mongering terrorist smears. He's currently scheduled to spend a solid two-hour block from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations about Barack and University of Illinois professor William Ayers.
Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse.
Call into the "Extension 720" show with Milt Rosenberg at (312) 591-7200
(Show airs from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. tonight)
Then report back on your call at http://my.barackobama.com/...
Kurtz has been using his absurd TV appearances in an awkward and dishonest attempt to play the terrorism card. His current ploy is to embellish the relationship between Barack and Ayers.
Just last night on Fox News, Kurtz drastically exaggerated Barack's connection with Ayers by claiming Ayers had recruited Barack to the board of the Annenberg Challenge. That is completely false and has been disproved in numerous press accounts.
It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies.
Kurtz is scheduled to appear from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. in the Chicago market.
Calling will only take a minute, and it will make a huge difference if we nip this smear in the bud. Confront Kurtz tonight before this goes any further:

The campaign also offered this advice:

Tips for making your call:
Be honest, but be civil.
Be persistent. It may take a few attempts to get through to the show. Just keep trying. Your call is important.
Use the talking points above to help you speak confidently and concisely.

Everything in the Obama email was correct, and it never urged censorship (or even rudeness) of any kind. By contrast, Kurtz has been guilt of numerous inaccurate smears.

According to Kurtz, "just after Barack Obama effectively secured a seat in the State Senate, the University of Chicago invented a new job, for which it hired Michelle Obama. In that job, Michelle would be able to channel University of Chicago students into the radical anti-American groups that she and her husband worked with, and whose ideology has received far too little scrutiny. Some of these organizations, even if unofficially, provided campaign workers for Barack Obama on election day."

This is total nonsense. It's noteworthy that Kurtz doesn't actually mention the names of any of these "radical anti-American groups." Does he know what these groups were that the Community Service Center was involved with? Or is he just making things up? I challenge Kurtz to identify the groups Michelle "channeled" students into, and which of these are "radical anti-American." Kurtz likes to smear every liberal group as "deeply radical and anti-American," which is an indication of anti-intellectual propensities.

Kurtz also likes to speculate about bizarre conspiracy theories: "So we see here an unusual arrangement between the University of Chicago and its new teacher/State Senator. The Senator’s wife provides political cover for the university with the community, in return for which the university provides a previously non-existent and prestigious position to the Senator’s wife, which allows her to funnel students into hard-left political groups that sometimes provide campaign workers to the Senator."

This kind of crackpot idea is both insane and loathsome. The "prestigious" position that Michelle Obama took was a relatively low-level administrative post with few resources. I know because I interviewed her at the time for a campus newspaper. The Community Services program was politically bland, not "hard-left" unless you're an extreme right-winger who thinks every group that helps people is vaguely communist.

The Ayers smear by Kurtz is part of a larger right-wing smear movement, such as the advertisement claiming that "Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as quote 'respectable' and 'mainstream.'"

This is false. Obama is not friends with Ayers. The proof offered is Axelrod calling them "friendly," which is not the same as friends. Obama is friendly to lots of people. Also, Obama never defended Ayers as "respectable" and "mainstream." His campaign posted a newspaper article which said that (and it's true).

But rather than admit that they're engaged in a low-life smear campaign without any proof, the far right has decided to claim that criticism of their actions is a form of repression. It's a sign of how low the conservative movement in America has sunk, where they refuse to engage in an honest debate of ideas.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

Here is the response I got from Samantha Power: "the charge is ridiculous. i opposed the war in iraq and spoke out in radio and television. i consistently and loudly favored withdrawal. i have spoken out about the need to incorporate the welfare of iraqis into withdrawl plans. since rick is a person who has spoken out forcefully against the falsehoods of the bush administration, it is disappointing that he himself proves so indifferent to facts." This 2004 Time article confirms that Power opposed the war in Iraq.

I didn't contact Anthony Lake, but at least one report indicates that he opposed the war in Iraq.

It's true that Power and Lake (and Obama) are not isolationists. And that's a good thing. One of the dangers of any president is to fight the previous war and blunder because of it (that's McCain's problem with the Vietnam War he wants to win in Iraq). The selection of Joe Biden, who supported the war in Iraq, raised questions in the minds of some progressives about Obama's commitment to end the war in Iraq. It's all nonsense. Obama is willing to listen to people who, like Biden, have interesting ideas but are sometimes wrong. However, it's ultimately Obama's judgment that matters, and his judgment has been sound.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

If you think it takes $5 million a year to be rich, you might be a rich guy.

If you think some people "are poor if they’re billionaires," you might be a rich guy.

If you have a fireplace next to the outdoor spa in one of your mansions, you might be a rich guy.

If your plan to cut taxes on the wealthy would save your family $373,429 a year, you might be a rich guy.

If you dumped your first wife to have an affair with a wealthy heiress, you might be(come) a rich guy.

If you fly around with a lobbyist on corporate jets while doing favors for her client, you might be a rich guy.

If you wear $520 loafers, you might be a rich guy.

If your annual expenses for servants are five times the median income per person in America, you might be a rich guy.

If you refer to your 6-acre Sedona lakeside estate, worth more than one million dollars and complete with a large home, a guest house, and the house next door, as a "cabin," you might be a rich guy.

If you think that no American would pick lettuce for less than $50 an hour, you might be a rich guy.

If you fly around on your wife's corporate jet for free, you might be a rich guy.

If you think that big corporations need $200 billion in tax giveaways, you might be a rich guy.

If you think inheritance taxes on multi-millionaires need to be cut by 67%, you might be a rich guy.

If you think being given a vice president's job at your father-in-law's beer company is an accomplishment, you might be a rich guy.

If you and your wife are worth well over $100 million, you might be a rich guy.

If you think selling junk on eBay is how Americans can avoid poverty, you might be a rich guy.

If you think it's normal to take a free trip to Charles Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat and get $112,000 in campaign donations in exchange for meeting with federal regulators on Keating's behalf, you might be a rich guy.

Crossposted at DailyKos.

According to MRC, in the last month of the primary race, 43% of the network news stories were positive and only 1% were negative. This period covers May 7 to June 3. According to MRC, there were 2.94 stories per day in the final month about Obama, or a total of around 90. This means that according to the MRC, there was only one story in the entire month on all three networks that was negative about Obama. So, out of all of these stories—about Michelle Obama's "proud" remarks, about Obama overwhelming losses in West Virginia and Kentucky, about John McCain and George W. Bush denouncing Obama on Iran and comparing it to appeasement of Nazis, about Michael Pfleger's speech at Obama's church denouncing Hillary Clinton—the MRC claims that only one story was negative.

That's utterly preposterous. So I decided to look at what the real news coverage shows. The best source for this is the Tyndall Report, which documents the network news coverage every weekday. A good sample of the news coverage is Tyndall's daily list of the key news stories and the angle being offered. Here's a complete list of all of them in the May 7-June 3 period, with Tyndall's summary of the "angle" of the report:

May 9, NBC: 2008 Barack Obama campaign: Still has to work to attract white support.

May 12, NBC: 2008 West Virginia primary: Rodham Clinton favored, Obama looks ahead.

May 14, CBS: 2008 Barack Obama campaign: Endorsement by John Edwards offsets WV defeat.

May 15, CBS: 2008 issues: diplomatic outreach to hostile powers: Obama's Iran plan equated with Nazi appeasement.

May 16, CBS: 2008 Barack Obama campaign: Denounces fearmongering over diplomacy with Iran.

May 19, CBS: 2008 Barack Obama campaign: Attracts massive crowds, defends wife Michelle.

May 20, CBS: 2008 Kentucky, Oregon primaries: Obama expects to move closer to nomination.

May 26, ABC: 2008 issues: veterans' benefits: Obama and McCain exchange barbs over GI Bill.

May 30, CBS: 2008 Barack Obama campaign: Priest delivers taunting sermon at his church.

June 2, CBS: 2008 Barack Obama campaign: Expects to clinch nomination after SD-Mont vote.

June 3, ABC: 2008 Barack Obama campaign: Factors, tactics that led to nomination victory.

We would normally expect the coverage of Obama in the final month of the campaign to be strongly positive, since he was clinching the nomination and garnering more and more endorsements, leading in the polls against McCain, and Clinton was reducing her attacks as Obama's victory became clear.

Yet Tyndall's analysis would indicate something far different. There were plenty of negative stories on the evening news about Obama.

Tyndall noted that all three networks reported on the right-wing attack on Michelle Obama for saying, "For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country." On May 13, CBS's Jim Axelrod predicted "a huge win" for Clinton in West Virginia. On May 14, ABC's David Wright reported on Obama's "pitiful performance" there. On May 16, Obama's speech about Iran was called "pugnacious" on CBS, not exactly a positive view.

Evaluating the May 19 broadcasts about McCain denouncing Obama's "inexperience and reckless judgment," Tyndall noted: "CBS' Reynolds made McCain's disdain seem reasonable, characterizing it as being directed towards Obama's assessment of Iran as 'a tiny threat.' The paraphrase of Obama by NBC's Cowan was less tendentious, saying that Iran 'poses only a tiny threat compared with that of the former Soviet Union.' ABC's Wright used a formulation--'the threat posed by Iran is not as serious as once posed by the former Soviet Union'--that was so reasonable that it made McCain appear to be the one whose judgment was unhinged." Of course, McCain was indeed the one whose judgment was unhinged, since no rational person could compare the threat posed by Iran with the former Soviet Union. The fact that the three networks were balanced overall (one pro-McCain, one pro-Obama, one fairly neutral) on a story that clearly showed McCain's flaws indicates how anti-Obama the press has been.

Altogether, there were numerous negative stories about Obama, not just one. If MRC is this wrong, by a factor of ten, in analyzing one month during the campaign, then all of its figures claiming a 34:5 ratio of postive:negative stories about Obama are completely wrong.

Yet Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote uncritically about this ridiculous assertion, giving his biased (and false) views that Obama has received "awfully good coverage" from the press. Kurtz does note that the MRC study ignores John McCain (which makes it entirely worthless as a tool for comparing bias). But here's another example of Kurtz's bias: "Media coverage tends to be more positive when candidates are winning, and Obama did, of course, manage to defeat Hillary Clinton. The report does not include stories since he opened the general-election battle against John McCain. But other studies have found that Obama consistently gets more coverage than his Republican rival." Kurtz omits the fact that these studies, such as one by the conservative Center for Media and Public Affairs, found that Obama had received a far higher proportion of negative coverage than McCain in the general election. Why is Kurtz giving kid glove treatment to a clearly false right-wing study and distorting the results of other studies?

I've previously written about the anti-Obama bias in media coverage of the campaign, and will have a lengthy article coming out in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's magazine Extra!

I challenge MRC to release the full details of their study, so that outside observers can determine exactly how they determined "bias" in the media and why their results are so far out of touch with reality.

Crossposted at DailyKos.