Joan Walsh needs a reminder

Joan Walsh, former editor of Salon and MSNBC contributer, has been in a lot of trouble lately. From her embrace of the 'Professional Left', to trying to subdue and beat back Black Obama supporters and openly howling that someone (re: Hillary Clinton) would've been a better president than Obama.

This week she whined that it was the Obama campaign who "accused" the Clintons of attacks during the 2007/08 Democratic primary.

Miss Joan, no one has to "accuse" anyone of anything. Attacks on Obama's religion and teenage drug use are easily traced back to the Clinton campaign.

Lets take a trip down memory lane:

Hillary Clinton's campaign passes around this photo of then-Senator Barack Obama in traditional Somali clothing:


Hillary Clinton campaign co-chair accuses Obama of dealing drugs:


Hillary Clinton says Obama is not a Muslim "as far as I know."


Hillary Clinton campaign advisor accuses Barack Obama of being an affirmative action candidate:


Keith Olbermann had to put together a Special Comment to try and put a lid on the Clinton campaign dirty tricks:


Yes Joan, that's your girl, Hillary Clinton.

--
ETA: The original blog said Joan worked for The Nation, it's actually Salon. Thanks to Joan for pointing it out. I guess i'm on the list of mulattoes who disappoint her. At least I'm in good company :)

We Made the List!

A few weeks ago we asked you to vote for us in Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza's "Best State-Based Political Blog" contest.

He was compiling a list of the best political blogs in each state. We asked you to vote for us, and you came through, we made the list!



Thank you for your support and readership. Chris, Derek and I try our best to provide regular updates while juggling our "real" jobs and other obligations. We hope to have The Sausage Factory show back up and running real soon too.

Stay tuned!

Twitter spam accounts for dummies

If you're going to create a fake account to mock Democratic candidates, don't use your own personal information in the profile.




http://twitter.com/youth4shelley



http://twitter.com/hipstervative

Nine registered voters in Wade Wagner's household

This was sent to me earlier today. It's a voter data base screen cap of the nine registered voters in Wade Wagner's household. Either Wade's got a big house or--as was suggested to me by the sender--he's committing voter fraud by allowing people to register to vote using his address.

The only change I've made is editing out his home address:


Maybe those private detectives who staked out the Adriana Martinez residence(s) can pay a visit to the Wagners.

And going on right now in North Las Vegas, a meeting with state officials to discuss how completely fucked the once fastest growing city in the nation is.

Why didn't you hear about this meeting? Mayor Shari Buck apparently forgot to send out a release and there's nothing on the city's website when I checked early this morning. But she did remember to send out a press release announcing the swearing in of Wade Wagner, who also just happens to be her dentist and her husband also just happened to be a Wagner paid campaign staffer, who was never listed on campaign finance reports...which happens to be illegal.

But don't fret, you have another chance to hear from Mayor Buck and the council. Tonight at 6:00pm (July 20th) head down the the city hall on Civic Center and Las Vegas Blvd N. On tonight's agenda under "news business"? Mayor Buck is going to shut down all the recreation centers in North Las Vegas.

North Las Vegas is starting to resemble my hometown of Colorado Springs.

It's too bad Mayor Buck didn't put as much effort into being an effective mayor as she did trying to elect her dentist.

Vote for the best blog in Nevada

Do you love The Sausage Factory? Vote for us in this Washington Post poll so we can have a chance to be featured as one of the top blogs in the state!

The best state-based political blogs, 2011 edition

Click the link above, log in and comment that The Sausage Factory is one of the best state-based political blogs in Nevada.

Also, check out out blogroll for some more recommendations --->

This blog has made news, it's made some friends and some enemies (and gotten us in trouble) but we always appreciate your readership and we'd really appreciate your vote!

Mark Halperin's obsession with genitals -- our political discourse

In 2008 Mark Halperin had to apologize for claiming disgraced politician John Edwards called Barack Obama a “pussy” (he didn’t, it was Mark’s own character association) and today he’s apologizing for calling the President a “dick” live on MSNBC’s three hour brain drain, Morning Joe.



Halperin, political analyst for Time and Drudge-worshiping Morning Joe troglodyte, apologized on air only after Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski giggles died down and they all realized the hyperbolic comment would not be edited out.

Halperin also apologized on Twitter and MSNBC later suspended him indefinitely:





Why did Halperin call the President a dick? Because the President used his bully pulpit to call out Congressional republicans for their debt ceiling demagoguing.

Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent missies the point of the suspension. Halperin wasn’t suspended for calling the president a dick, he was suspended for saying dick on live TV which may very well result in an FCC fine. But Sargent does make some good points on our political discourse, what’s acceptable and who makes these unwritten rules:

I care less about Halperin’s use of the word “dick” than I do about the argument he and Joe Scarborough were making — that Obama somehow stepped over some kind of line in aggressively calling out the GOP for refusing to allow any revenues in a debt ceiling deal. This notion that Obama’s tone was somehow over the top — when politics is supposed to be a rough clash of visions — is rooted in a deeply ingrained set of unwritten rules about what does and doesn’t constitute acceptable political discourse that really deserve more scrutiny.

This set of rules has it that it should be treated as a matter of polite, legitimate disagreement when Michele Bachmann says deeply insane things about us not needing to raise the debt limit, but it should be seen as an enormously newsworthy gaffe when she commits a relatively minor error about regional trivia. This set of rules has it that it should be treated as a matter of polite, legitimate disagreement when Republicans continually claim that Dems cut $500 billion in Medicare in a way that will directly impact seniors, even though fact checkers have pronounced it misleading, but it should be seen as “demagoguery” when Dems argue that the Paul Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it.

Halperin has certainly done his part to encourage these unwritten rules, and so maybe there’s a certain poetic justice in the fact that he’s now been suspended indefinitely for violating them, but still, this is over the top. I care that Halperin uncritically claims that Drudge rules the media world, and acts accordingly. I care that Halperin published a book that accused public officials of using explosive, racially charged quotes that were paraphrased, without guaranteeing their accuracy, in order to gin up media controvery. I care that Halperin does dumb things like parroting GOP predictions of a big victory when all available evidence is pointing the other way, as he famously did in the runup to the 2006 elections. I don’t care as much that he used the word “dick.” Suspending Halperin indefinitely for this only reinforces the bogus idea that a crass and dumb slip into foul language is worse than all this other stuff we see on a regular basis.

Has the pundit class fallen asleep?

I was going to post something about the photograph the Las Vegas Sun chose to accompany the article about former Assemblyman Morse Arberry's misuse of campaign contributions, but I was distracted by this in the comments section:

Have our journalists lost their way? Is a tip from a lobbyist more valuable than a gut feeling?

The June 24th Nevada Week In Review roundtable agreed that Morse Arberry's campaign finance reports (and paperwork in general) have always been fishy. Las Vegas Review Journal columnist Jane Ann Morrison even said:

"When I started looking in the late 80s at his campaign finance reports they were always just hand-scrawled, you could hardly read them. But there was something-you know, when you go through as many as we do, some jump out at you as...suspicious and his always jumped out at me as suspicious."

Always suspicious? Did she ever report her suspicions in the past 20+ years, or ask Arberry about them? Is it her role as a journalist to do so?

What is certain, thanks to Secretary of State Ross Miller, it will be a lot easier for all of us to look through these reports and speak up when something looks fishy.