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Segment II: The GOP's congressional strategy for '11

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Segment III: Will Palin run? And who is the GOP frontrunner?

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Segment IV: Does Obama have to worry about a rebellion from the left?

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Segment V: Obama's prospects for 2012

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To be sure, Google News is a blunt instrument for measuring volume of press coverage. But the timeline nevertheless conveys a lot about the strange, still somewhat inexplicable burst of coverage surrounding what became known as the "Ground Zero Mosque."

The story began inorganically, with misleading framing pushed into the mainstream by a right-wing blog and the New York Post. It evolved into the national political obsession of the summer and, finally, into a midterm election issue. And then, just like that, it disappeared. 

The course of the media coverage had little to do with the facts on the ground at 49-51 Park Place in lower Manhattan, the proposed site of the mosque. To review what happened: 

News of the proposed Islamic community center first broke in a front-page New York Times piece in December 2009, but it garnered very little attention. The attention it did receive -- including from the likes of Fox News -- was positive. Then in May, when the project was facing some local bureaucratic hurdles, anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller stepped up her coverage of what she called the "Monster Mosque" of "Death and Destruction." The New York Post adopted Geller's perspective on the project: that it was something to fear and defeat. (See Salon's detailed timeline on the origins of the story here.)

The first peak in the coverage came when a wave of national Republican figures weighed in. Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty each took shots at the project and its organizers. Sarah Palin took to Twitter to call on "peaceful Muslims" to "pls refudiate."

Meanwhile, the proposed community center had gotten all the necessary regulatory approvals -- though there were (and still are) serious questions about whether the organizers could raise the money needed to make the project a reality.

Again, very little about the project itself shaped the media coverage. There were distortions that are, at this point, well known: A mosque was only a small part of the proposed center; it was not at ground zero, but a few city blocks away; the organizers had been operating a progressive mosque in a nearby neighborhood for many years; there were no links to terrorism; lead organizer Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf had in fact worked with both the Bush and Obama administrations promoting the United States in the Muslim world. 

The second peak in coverage came in mid-August when President Obama weighed in at a press conference, citing religious freedom. Those comments gave political reporters an excuse to keep writing about the story for weeks.

But then, after a last gasp in October in the run-up to the election (including a few memorable anti-mosque campaign ads), the story all but disappeared. What changed? Well, on the ground, exactly nothing. The organizers had not changed their plans. Fundraising continued.

There can be no single explanation for why a news story of this magnitude disappears. But, given the timeline here, it seems likely that the electoral calendar played a role. National Republicans who used Park51 as a bludgeon against Democrats suddenly were less interested in talking about the project after the election. In addition, there was suddenly action in Congress again after Nov. 2. And political analysts turned their focus to what Washington would look like with a Republican House majority in 2011.

The media, too, decided that a proposed Islamic community center in Manhattan was not deserving of daily, granular coverage. Looking back now, it's pretty good evidence of a manufactured story when coverage spikes and then vanishes, even as nothing has fundamentally changed.

In 2011, the "ground zero mosque" story will probably live on -- but primarily on Fox News and Pamela Geller's blog. It's unlikely that anyone else will pay much attention ever again.

For Michele Bachmann, it was historical fiction.

Yes, Michele Bachamnn was a liberal until she read Gore Vidal's "Burr." Bachmann tells the tale of her creation about five minutes into the clip:

Until I was reading this snotty novel called 'Burr,' by Gore Vidal, and read how he mocked our Founding Fathers. And as a reasonable, decent, fair-minded person who happened to be a Democrat, I thought, 'You know what? What he's writing about, this mocking of people that I revere, and the country that I love, and that I would lay my life down to defend -- just like every one of you in this room would, and as many of you in this room have when you wore the uniform of this great country -- I knew that that was not representative of my country.

And at that point I put the book down and I laughed. I was riding a train. I looked out the window and I said, 'You know what? I think I must be a Republican. I don't think I'm a Democrat.'

Yep! Gore Vidal's "Burr" created Michele Bachmann. Because it was "snotty" to the founding fathers.

In my perhaps unrepresentative experience, Vidal's historical fiction -- especially "Burr" and "Lincoln" -- are the only things Vidal ever wrote that conservatives like. (I mean, thank god Michele didn't pick up "Myra Breckenridge.") But those are the conservatives who, I guess, are adult enough to read a mostly historically accurate account of the Revolution in which the Founders are portrayed as recognizably human and not become offended that the book is not a literary adaption of the Schoolhouse Rock classic "No More Kings."

Even if you dispute his characterizations, anyone with a genuine interest in our founders can find something worthwhile in "Burr." Unless Bachmann -- who's twice as smart as Palin but a much deeper believer in her brand of revivalist bullshit than the Alaskan opportunist -- never actually read the damn thing, but she knows that Gore Vidal is a gay liberal commie, and therefore to be hated.

And, christ, it looks like Michele's been dining out on this stupid story for years. She told it to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ("He was kind of mocking the Founding Fathers and I just thought, 'What a snot.'") and she even told it to George Will ("I set the book down on my lap, looked out the window and thought: 'That's not the America I know.'") I'd imagine Will was somewhat confused, because it's a bit like saying his silly baseball books made me a leftist.

Barely related: Here's Pat Buchanan and Gore Vidal talking about Lincoln, syphilis, and Hemingway, in 1984. One highlight comes shortly after the five-minute mark, when Vidal reveals which one film he considers a true work of art.

That's likable former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, the famous Fox talk show host, directing viewers to sign a petition to repeal Obamacare. Harmless enough stuff, really, except that the silly "Repeal It Now" campaign was being managed by a known scam artist, as Think Progress reported yesterday.

The company running the website and doing other media work for Repeal It Now is run by a real scuzzball named Derek Oberholtzer, who, once various attorneys general told him to stop ripping off homeowners facing foreclosure, decided to turn instead to Republican politics, where there are just as many suckers willing to open up their wallets to shady characters.

Flat tax advocate Ken Hoagland, whose "Restoring America's Voice" PAC is behind the repeal petition campaign, announced that the campaign had fired Oberholtzer once they learned that he went around defrauding people for a living. So, problem solved!

Except that the campaign is still, at heart, a silly fraud. Go ahead, sign the petition. This is what happens next:

What will Repeal HealthCare Act do with all of these donations, e-mail address, and credit card numbers? I am guessing, for one, that they will not use them to repeal the Affordable Care Act, because credit card numbers cannot override a presidential veto.

I'm not saying that most of these exciting new PACs are basically massive slush funds that allow political operatives to live the lives they're accustomed to without ever having to show that they've accomplished anything with all the money they've raised, but that is basically what they are.

(What Restore America's Voice did do with the surprisingly small amount of money they spent in the last election cycle, for the record, was spend most of of it on Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell.)

So it was quite a surprise this month to read that Sullivan has set his sights on a new target: Canadian teen pop superstar Justin Bieber.

Mosque foes recently started a boycott of Bieber after he made comments in support of the mosque project in an interview with Tiger Beat, a teen fan magazine, Sullivan told WYNC earlier this month. Now, his 8-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son have been banned from attending Bieber performances.

"I informed them, 'Hey guys, guess what? Justin Bieber spoke out for the ground zero mosque," Sullivan explained to Salon in an interview. "My little girl took down his poster and said she didn't want to have nothing to do with him anymore. These are my kids. They're living this thing."

A Facebook page has been set up by an ally of Sullivan publicizing the boycott of Bieber and several other pro-mosque celebrities. It has attracted nearly 500 fans.

Intrigued by the idea that Bieber would weigh in on one of the most polarizing political issues of the day, I began looking for his interview with Tiger Beat. 

The magazine does cover Bieber obsessively ("Justin Bieber Dodges Dating Selena Gomez Question!" and "Did Justin Bieber Grow a Mustache?" are two recent features). But I couldn't find any sign of an interview on Park51. There is, however, a post on the website CelebJihad.com purporting to describe a Tiger Beat interview. It reads in part:

In an interview with Tiger Beat, the pop sensation stressed that freedom of religion is what makes America great, and went on to say that those who oppose the Mosque are motivated by bigotry.

“Muslims should be allowed to build a mosque anywhere they want,” the singer said. “Coming from Canada, I’m not used to this level of intolerance, eh.”

Bieber went on to say that Muslims are “super cool,” Christians are “lame-o-rama,” and that the mosque will help “start a dialogue” with all religions about which Justin Bieber song is the most awesome.

“I was like seven when September 11th went down, and frankly I’m surprised people are still going on about it. Move on, already!”

Celebjihad.com seems to specialize in softcore celebrity porn, but poke around a bit and you find this disclaimer:

CelebJihad.com is a satirical website containing published rumors, speculation, assumptions, opinions, fiction as well as factual information

I was able to reach the proprietor of the site, who confirmed that the Bieber item is in fact a hoax. "[T]he fact that some people take it seriously is hilariously depressing," he said in an e-mail.

It's a hoax, though, that has spread around the Web, and succeeded in taking in several anti-mosque activists. They recently discussed the issue on the wall of the Facebook boycott page:

Megan Alpert: Why is Justin Beiber on Boycott companies for ground zero?? He's a kid. lol

Cynthia Bloemer: That stupid dhimmi kid spoke out for the Mosque. Idiot kid!

Megan Alpert: That's crazy Cynthia. I totally missed that all together.

Administrator: Justin took an adult position and spoke out in support of the mosque in tigar beat magazine. He one of the most influential teen sensations, reaching millions of impressionable kids. If he is going to play like the big boys he better expect some back lash...

Megan Alpert: Well then he is leading all the young teens into a funny way of thinking. He was just a baby when the attack came upon us. He has no clue what we are up against. He is very lost.

Walter H Steinlauf: Justin Beiber is "fishing in DEEP water" now. I eat people like that for breakfast. 

Bieber's publicist did not immediately return a message seeking comment about the hoax and Bieber's views on the mosque.

The move comes after scrutiny in the United States, first by Salon, of Davis' representation of a client who has been accused of widespread human rights abuses since a presidential election last month.

Gbagbo has refused to step down, despite the international community's conclusion that his opponent won the election.

According to Davis' resignation letter, it was not human rights concerns that prompted him to drop the account. Rather, it was Gbagbo's failure to take a call from President Obama. (Davis did tell Salon in an interview that he would not continue to represent Gbagbo if there were substantial reports of human rights violations, but he did not act on that.)

The resignation also comes just a few days after Davis said he was playing the role of a "paid George Mitchell" in Ivory Coast. Meanwhile, the situation there worsens.

Here is the letter, first reported by Ben Smith:

 December 29, 2010

Dear Mr. Ambassador,

As you know, for the last two weeks, I have been working to help resolve the crisis in the Ivory Coast. As I said publicly in my statement on December 20th, my mission was not to say who won or who lost the election or who was right or who was wrong, but rather to help resolve this crisis peacefully, through dialogue, mediation and with leadership and participation of the international community.

As you know Mr. Ambassador, from the earliest moments of my involvement, I have publicly urged Mr. Gbagbo to invite an independent international investigation into his claims of electoral fraud and violence, and to respect the results of that review, as a path to the peaceful and mediated resolution of this crisis.

In the past ten days, I have spoken repeatedly with a senior official of the State Department toward this end, and specifically to facilitate a call between the President of the United States and Mr. Gbagbo so Mr. Gbagbo could be presented with options for a peaceful resolution, that would avoid further bloodshed and be in the best interests of his country and the people of the Ivory Coast. There is no excuse for a return to violence or civil war.

Unfortunately, as you know, the decision was made in Abijan [sic] not to allow President Obama's call to be put through to Mr Gbagbo, despite my repeated objections to that decision. Nor have I been able to reach Mr. Gbagbo directly myself to offer him this advice, despite repeated requests, as recently as the last twenty-four hours. Therefore, without going into further details regarding disagreements between me and representatives of the government, of which you are aware, I have reached the conclusion that I have not been allowed to effectuate the mission that I was expressly asked to do by your government, despite all my best efforts to do so.

I therefore cannot in conscience continue to represent your government. This is a difficult decision for me because I truly believed that I could assist in finding a peaceful solution consistent with the international community's concerns and the interests of the people of the Ivory Coast to avoid further bloodshed.

My decision is final.

I will continue to do all I can to help encourage the parties to resolve this matter peacefully, through dialogue and mediation and non-violence, but for the reasons expressed above I will no longer be able to do so as a representative of your government.

Sincerely,

Lanny J. Davis

Lanny J. Davis and Associates

Washington D.C.

 

Since her early days at the Times, when she inserted CIA misinformation into a piece on Libya, she's always been a tool of power. She was the voice of the Defense Department, embedded at the Times. She was hyping bullshit stories about Iraq's WMD capabilities as far back as 1998, and in the run-up to the war, her front-page scoops were cited by the Bush administration as evidence that Saddam needed to be taken out, right away.

Lying exile grifter Ahmad Chalabi fed her the worst of the nonsense designed to push America into toppling Saddam Hussein (and giving Iraq to him), and she pushed that nonsense into the newspaper of record. She got everything wrong, and for some insane reason, she remained employed at the Times until 2005, when she negotiated her separation from her longtime professional home.

There was also the extended farce in which she went to jail to "protect" Scooter Libby, who had given her permission to "reveal" his role in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name, which did net her some sort of "First Amendment award" (for excellence in the field of comforting the powerful), and finally embarrassed the Times enough to get rid of her.

At that point, she ensconced herself in a right-wing think tank, and occasionally appeared on Fox. When no one else would have her, because she's a bad journalist (and, reportedly, a rude and unpleasant person), the right-wing media welcomed her.

And now she writes for Newsmax, also the home of this guy with an eyepatch who calls himself a "global economic warrior" and used to be married to Peggy Noonan.

It's a profitable site, but not a particularly respectable one. Where other political magazines attempt to make money by attracting readers with interesting or provocative content, Newsmax achieved profitability by scamming old people, obtaining the credit card info of readers under false pretenses and "subscribing" them to expensive newsletters they don't want. (To be fair, the Times is ripping off its subscribers in other ways.)

While someone who's wrong about everything is an odd hire for any magazine, even one that exists mostly to sell old people Acai berries, Judith Miller, you must remember, was fired by the liberal New York Times. If liberals hate her, Fox and Newsmax will have her, no matter her sins.

But this must still be galling to Judith. Becoming a right-wing martyr is generally a pretty good career move -- it'll make Juan Williams a millionaire -- but Judy Miller is used to the respect afforded a New York Times foreign correspondent superstar. Filing a piece from Iraq to a wingnut's pet newsletter is probably not how she envisioned her career shaping up.

But it works for me.

Specifically, the research shows that people with conservative tendencies have a larger amygdala and a smaller anterior cingulate than other people. The amygdala -- typically thought of as the "primitive brain" -- is responsible for reflexive impulses, like fear. The anterior cingulate is thought to be responsible for courage and optimism. This one-two punch could be responsible for many of the anecdotal claims that conservatives "think differently" from others.

Since only adults were included in the investigation, researchers were unable to determine if cerebral physiology drives politics or if political beliefs change the brain. A previous University of California study suggests the former is possible, isolating a so-called "liberal gene" -- the neurotransmitter DRD4 -- responsible for an increased receptiveness to novel ideas.

Predictably, conservatives have jumped on both studies as an indication of their biological superiority. Across the right-leaning blogosphere and twitterverse, DRD4 was cited as the underlying cause of the "mental illness" known as liberalism; and some conservative tweeters have even tried to claim that the enlarged amygdala just means that conservatives "have bigger brains." Of course, the first claim begs the question, and the second ignores the shrunken anterior cingulate.

While the extent of the differences is still unclear, the biology of politics has begun to confirm that those differences are real.

I learned this thanks to Google's Autocomplete function, an algorithm that considers your search terms and suggests similar searches based on other users' activity. When I entered "Frank Beamer" into the search bar, Google's suggested terms included "Frank Beamer face," "Frank Beamer neck," "Frank Beamer chin" and "Frank Beamer neck growth." More than half of the suggestions focused on Beamer's physical appearance above the shoulders.

Beamer does have some kind of skin abnormality in his neck/chin area (it is apparently the result of skin grafts he received after being rescued in a fire as a child). But this is not something that television announcers typically bring up when Beamer and his team are on television, nor is it something that sportswriters tend to mention when they write about him. In other words, it is almost never addressed in the media -- and yet, to judge from Google's algorithm, people are more curious about it than they are about, say, Beamer's career won/lost record

Which made me wonder: When it comes to our political leaders, what is it that people really want to know? After running the names of some prominent (and once-prominent) public figures through Google, I can report several findings: (1) Just about every recent "scandal" kicked up by the right is still alive on Google ("Joe Biden cattle guards" is the top suggestion for the vice president's name); (2) We're really interested in knowing if people are gay; (3) Lots of people wonder if Keith Olbermann is Jewish. Here's a look at some of the search suggestions I encountered:

Barack Obama:

Hillary Clinton:

John Boehner:

Nancy Pelosi:

Sarah Palin:

Mitch McConnell:

Joe Biden:

Keith Olbermann:

John Edwards:

Michael Dukakis:

Dan Quayle:

Richard Nixon:

 

 

A smart person could write a good column about the trajectory of the gay rights movement, the long journey from Gay Liberation to NOH8, the story of how America deals with radical movements by eventually allowing formerly marginal minorities to join mainstream society. But Jonah Goldberg is not a smart person and this is not a good column.

The column encapsulates Goldberg's pathetic conservatism: It's a philosophy defined entirely by opposition to whatever those stupid liberals want. There's no principle beyond the adolescent desire to be contrary.

Two decades ago, the gay Left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise, and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian “free love” and avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight Left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents’ generation along with their gray flannel suits.

As a sexual-lifestyle experiment, they failed pretty miserably, the greatest proof being that the affluent and educated children (and grandchildren) of the baby boomers have re-embraced the bourgeois notion of marriage as an essential part of a successful life. Sadly, it’s the lower-middle class that increasingly sees marriage as an out-of-reach luxury. The irony is that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.

Any sources or citations for quote for any of this? (Monogamy is the best guarantor of success! QED!) No. But don't worry, he has a really good example coming up:

The gay experiment with open bohemianism was arguably shorter. Of course, AIDS played an obvious and tragic role in focusing attention on the downside of promiscuity. But even so, the sweeping embrace of bourgeois lifestyles by the gay community has been stunning.

Nowhere is this more evident — and perhaps exaggerated — than in popular culture. Watch ABC’s Modern Family.

Yep. "Gay people are all bourgeois now, I learned it on a TeeVee show I watch. Liberals stink!"

No but seriously:

The sitcom is supposed to be “subversive” [no it isn't] in part because it features a gay couple with an adopted daughter from Asia. And you can see why both liberal proponents and conservative opponents of gay marriage see it that way. But imagine you hate the institution of marriage [only cartoon caricatures of radical leftists go around consciously "hating the institution of marriage" but OK] and then watch Modern Family’s hardworking bourgeois gay couple through those eyes [but if I hate the institution of marriage why the hell am I watching "Modern Family"?]. What’s being subverted? Traditional marriage, or some bohemian identity-politics fantasy of homosexuality? [Can a "bohemian identity-politics fantasy" be "subverted"...? Does anyone read these things before they're published?]

Goldberg goes on to note that Republicans love family but Democrats love murder, according to science:

By the way, according to a recent study, Modern Family is the No. 1 sitcom among Republicans (and the third show overall behind Glenn Beck and The Amazing Race) but not even in the top 15 among Democrats, who prefer darker shows like Showtime’s Dexter, about a serial killer trying to balance work and family between murders.

That study seemed like nonsense (conclusion: self-proclaimed conservatives like high-rated popular television shows slightly more than self-identified liberals do, and liberals also like less highly rated shows) but its methodology has nothing to with its relevance to Goldberg's point, which is none.

And we end on this note:

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.

Jonah goes on to explain what he means when he says gay marriage will be both good and bad, and he elaborates on which arguments from gay marriage opponents he finds so "persuasive," despite his obvious sympathy for the cause of gay marriage. Oh, wait, no he doesn't. He doesn't do any of that, he just ends the column with a dumb attempt to coin the term "HoBo."

So I'm guessing that he doesn't actually have any reason at all to think that gay marriage will be bad for anyone, but he has to pretend that he does, because otherwise K-Lo will cry, or something. Who knows.

I thought this would be the dumbest thing I read at the National Review Online today, until I read this, which notes that Mexico has only one gun store and comes to the conclusion "Less Gun Stores, More Crime"; and this, another episode of the on-going series "Andrew McCarthy proves that liberals love Islamofascists" (tonight's smoking gun: a New York Times profile of a Lebanese newspaper editor); and this astounding single paragraph from someone named Charlotte Hays that insists that snow will make people conservative, because it proves that government doesn't work. (Did the private sector plow Park Slope yet...?) Ms. Hays wrote a similar piece the last time it snowed, about how snow proves that the government doesn't work because the USPS website didn't announce that post offices would be closed. ("A murmur of approval greeted my suggestion that he call his boss and urge USPS to post information about delivery on their website, as any normal, unsubsidized business would have done by now." Tell that to every New York restaurant on SeamlessWeb, lady.)

He may be right, of course. But as always with such predictions, it's worth keeping in mind historical context. That is to say -- as Salon documented in this timeline -- that Israeli predictions about Iran's nuclear program have been wildly inconsistent and inaccurate for many years. 

Yaalon's line, in fact, sounds a lot like what we were hearing in the mid-1990s, as a sample from the timeline shows: 

January 1995: "Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought, and could be less than five years away from having an atomic bomb, several senior American and Israeli officials say."

Source: New York Times, "Iran May Be Able to Build an Atomic Bomb in 5 Years, U.S. and Israeli Officials Fear"

1995: "The best estimates at this time place Iran between three and five years away from possessing the prerequisites required for the independent production of nuclear weapons."

Source: Benjamin Netanyahu, in his book "Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network"