Michelle Malkin: Obama "Doesn't like this country very much"

I saw a clip of Conservative author and commentator Michelle Malkin on Hannity last night and wondered if this kind of rhetoric is doing anything besides stirring up the base that already believes this nonsense:



Ah, the good old days of American Exceptionalism, when we forced our views on the rest of the world by invading countries that did not pose a threat to us. I can remember now how well that has worked out for us. Shame on Obama for asking the world for mutual cooperation to combat nuclear proliferation.

Sarcasm aside, Malkin is upset that Obama didn't mention our brave troops who have fought for freedom and upset that Obama didn't mention Neda (the woman who was shot on camera in Iran) when he was talking about innocent people rising up in Iran. She rambles on about how Obama is rejecting American Exceptionalism, how this is predictable because the people he associates with are sympathetic to dictators and how our enemies will think we are weaker because of this. In fact, she states that Obama is the "weakest of the weak leaders" in modern American history.

The kind of anger and hatred that Malkin likes to exude about anything and everything Obama is pretty amazing, even when it is hyperbolic or absent of fact. Especially considering that during the last eight years, Malkin supported many of the lawless policies of the Bush Administration. If you ask her about the last eight years, she will claim that she was "right there, leading the charge to blow the whistle on corruption and cronyism".

I tend to think that Malkin's motives fall more in line with what she said in a recent piece that discussed her book, over at the Daily Beast:

"To me that’s what makes this a compelling book,” Malkin says. “A sincere commitment to good government makes for some strange bedfellows. But I’ve been in bed with strange fellows – I shouldn't say that, ha ha ha—for my entire professional career.” She adds: “I like a good story. I think one of the misunderstandings about who I am and what I do is that somehow I do it because I just want to get on TV or it’s about the fame, or it’s about the ‘bomb-throwing.’…I’ve always thrived on digging up stories and shedding light on information that’s not getting out there.”

And if she’s getting rich in the bargain, so much the better. “I think that every good conservative capitalist pursues the profit motive.”

Coverage of the National Tea-Party Protest in Washington

Reporter Max Blumenthal was in Washington D.C. this past weekend to check out the National 9/12 Project and Tea-Party movement's march on Washington's National Mall. He ran into some interesting people:



Jon Stewart also commented on this in his return to the Daily Show last night:

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What kind of party would be complete without fun exaggerations about how many people came to your party? Michelle Malkin apparently decided that it would be a good idea to exaggerate the total attendance by 1,930,000 people:

Malkin, citing fictitious press accounts, led the charge to falsely inflate the size of the crowd by 30 times. Malkin and company, desperate to dress up the tea party event as a mass movement, saw a relatively modest crowd of 70,000 GOP protesters and imagined it was 2 million strong. (She's a dreamer, I suppose.)

Worse, Malkin spent most of Saturday in denial, refusing to update her transparently false report, which meant the rest of the right-wing blogosphere also played dumb on a massive scale and kept excitedly repeating the manufactured claim. The scary part is that within the fact-free conservative blogosphere, lots of people still believe the 2 million nonsense, or are at least repeating it. They believe it despite the fact that nobody can point to any evidence to support it.

[...]

The conservative comedy of errors began on Saturday when Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, took to the rally stage and unfurled a massive lie. He told the crowd ABC News had reported that between 1 million to 1.5 million people had gathered to protest Obama's policies. (Later, a FreedomWorks flack conceded she had no idea know why Kibbe manufactured the claim about ABC News.)

Immediately, conservative activist Tabitha Hale (aka "pinkelephantpun") tweeted Kibbe's lie but added an additional 500,000 people to the tally: "ABC reporting 2 million people."

Seven minutes later, Malkin re-tweeted Hale's claim. Then, one minute after that, Malkin turned that tweet into part of her ongoing protest coverage. Intrepid "reporter" Malkin took an unsupported tweet and reported it as news.

Note that in her blog post there were no links for Malkin's utterly fantastic claim, no place on the Web where readers could go and confirm that D.C. police had pegged the crowd at 1.2 million or that ABC had made the staggering claim of 2 million. The lack of live links should have been a massive red flag for readers and fellow bloggers, especially when it was associated with such a controversial and news-breaking claim.

What an interesting summer this has been.

The Trivial Obsession with Obama's Use of a Teleprompter

Apparently it has been come the latest fad to criticize President Obama for his reliance on a teleprompter when he gives prepared remarks. I don't get why this is an insult. Many Presidents have relied on a script when giving not only speeches, but remarks prior to taking questions as a press conference. Some Presidents have preferred to have their script on the podium so that they can occasionally look down for reference and some, like Obama, prefer to have the remarks on a screen.

This has led to some on the right to think that this means that Obama is useless and completely inept when you take him off of the teleprompter. Perhaps we are supposed to ignore that during his press conferences he responded at great length to questions...without a teleprompter, that during the campaign he debated John McCain three times...without a teleprompter, and that he has been interviewed a countless number of times...without a teleprompter. Is there any criticism of Obama that is more ridiculous right now?

Here is just a small collection of this latest talking point from:

Glenn Beck:

Is it bothering anybody else about the TelePrompTer? The TelePrompTer is really, really, really bothering me only because I have never seen -- I mean, we're looking for a guy who's real, who's himself, who's just like -- well, I got news for you, gang. I do three hours a day without a TelePrompTer. You know, the president is worried about, you know, well, one word can, you know, trip him up. Well, you don't think people like me or Rush or Sean are worried about that as well? You don't think people in talk radio know that there are people that have been hired to transcribe every word I say to be able to distort it, to take it out of context and use it against me.

Michelle Malkin:

Fun with TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States)...The Teleprompter of the United States has its own seal! Hey, why not? TOTUS has its own blog and its own Twitter accounts.

Glenn Beck...again:

...it really bothers me, this TelePrompTer thing. Last night I said -- I was watching it and in the middle I said, because I know a little bit about TelePrompTers because on television I do use a TelePrompTer from time to time and I'm watching, I'm watching his eyes. Did anyone notice that he wasn't looking at the camera? And I said, "They put the TelePrompTer down on the ground." And somebody who was with me said, "What are you talking about?" And I said, that TelePrompTer is not a regular TelePrompTer because he's not looking at the camera. I believe -- and this is -- I put it on pause for a second and looked at his eyes. He wasn't even looking at the camera.

Sean Hannity:

“It's sad, the reason he stayed on message throughout the campaign is 'cause he had the teleprompter following him everywhere.”

Ron Fournier of the AP:

It was a carefully modulated statement, and Obama — relying on a familiar crutch — read it off a flat-screen monitor perched at the back of the East Room.

The teleprompter was no help during the question-and-answer session (reporters don't signal their intentions), but Obama was no less careful during that give and take.

Even more Glenn Beck:

...this man is always on prompter. You want to talk about a Manchurian candidate — that’s it! Who’s writing every word for this man? […]

Is it bothering anyone else but me? We have a fraud in office, at least that’s the way it feels to me.

Peter Bronson of the Cincinnati Enquirer:

We can cut him enough yards of slack to raise a circus tent -- tough problems, still early, yada, yada -- and still there's that bothersome impression of someone not ready for prime time without his security prompter.

John Gizzi of Human Events:

From his opening statement (read from the now-famous teleprompter, which I glimpsed for the first time)...

The Right Perspective:

Obama’s over-reliance on teleprompters developed during the last presidential campaign, as it became quite apparent that the then-US Senator had difficulty in putting together coherent sentences together on-the-fly

and Glenn Beck one more time:

I swear, why doesn't he just -- he should have like a belt around him with, like, little bars that come off of his hips with TelePrompTers so he can just walk around. He can be in the kitchen: Well, I'd like a cheese sandwich, please. And then look to the other TelePrompTer: And a glass of milk because you're just like the average American.

With all the substantive items to discuss, this "smear" is just flat-out absurd. Other Presidents have used scripts and Obama has answered questions and given interviews without a teleprompter countless times in the past. Those who have been critical and ignore this point simply show how ridiculous their obsession with trivial talking points can be.