Obama?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Agree with her that the biggest news here is that the Obama administration rolled over for this bullshit and shoved her under the bus. Very disappointing.

@dag, I find myself (yet again) in total agreement with what John Cole wrote on this topic.

The left blaming Obama for Tom Vilsack being duped by enemy action is purely icing on the cake.

IMO, the big score is that a landmark financial reform bill is getting zero coverage, because this non-story has taken all the oxygen out of the room. It means once again, progressives are going to generally think "Obama hasn't done anything but capitulate to the right" when in fact he and the Democratic party just scored another historic victory over Republicans and their masters on Wall Street.

But he (and the rest of the Democratic party) is getting little or no credit for it from any part of the political landscape, left or right, because we're all too busy being pissed off that one of his underlings (who, if you're a good progressive with a good memory, you never liked in the first place because he's a big agribusiness sellout) got duped by a prank from a petty prankster.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I just saw Glenn Beck make the same point about this being a distraction from the financial reform bill. You guys are kindred spirits. Still though, Vilsack taking the fall for this and claiming no White House involvement smells like rich bullshit. >> ^NetRunner:

@dag, I find myself (yet again) in total agreement with what John Cole wrote on this topic.
The left blaming Obama for Tom Vilsack being duped by enemy action is purely icing on the cake.
IMO, the big score is that a landmark financial reform bill is getting zero coverage, because this non-story has taken all the oxygen out of the room. It means once again, progressives are going to generally think "Obama hasn't done anything but capitulate to the right" when in fact he and the Democratic party just scored another historic victory over Republicans and their masters on Wall Street.
But he (and the rest of the Democratic party) is getting little or no credit for it from any part of the political landscape, left or right, because we're all too busy being pissed off that one of his underlings (who, if you're a good progressive with a good memory, you never liked in the first place because he's a big agribusiness sellout) got duped by a prank from a petty prankster.

>> ^dag:

I just saw Glenn Beck make the same point about this being a distraction from the financial reform bill. You guys are kindred spirits. Still though, Vilsack taking the fall for this and claiming no White House involvement smells like rich bullshit.

Geeze, everyone's going nuts lately. Ok, so I'm Glenn Beck for saying that the media isn't focusing on what's important.

Also, Obama is both prone to making rash decisions without all the facts, and a coward who'd hang out a member of his cabinet to keep from having to take his lumps in front of the American people. Not to mention, his political team is naive enough to think that throwing us a scapegoat will insulate him from the political fallout.

If I had a blackboard I'd draw an org chart of the US government, and try to guess at how many reporting levels separate Shirley Sherrod from Barack Obama (I'm thinking ten would be a safe minimum number), and point out that Vilsack is only the next rung down from Obama...and then I'd just slap a Hitler moustache on them all, and say "they're just purging the racists, the way the Nazis purged the Jews!"

As I understand it, the financial reform bill isn't really that much of a victory, with banks claiming it won't touch their derivatives trading at all.

2 1/2 minutes to get to the point.

Andrew Breitbart posted the video on his site Monday at 8:18 a.m. By mid-afternoon Shirely Sherrod had been fired. Fox News didn’t report the story until later that evening. Who’s to blame for her firing? Fox News? Breitbart? That is absurd.

By mid afternoon of the same day, Ms. Sherrod’s boss, Cheryl Cook, called her and fired her because “you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight”. In fact, she did not appear on Beck that night. He made no mention of her whatsoever. She did appear on Beck the following night though, and he was DEFENDING her. The first mention of the Shirley Sherrod tape on Fox News was on Bill O’Reilly’s show which aired at 8 p.m. That’s almost five hours AFTER Sherrod was fired.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

I agree with you and Glenn Beck.

I just thought it was funny that he was making essentially the same point. Of course he thought it was all an orchestrated conspiracy by space Nazis to distract people from the financial reform bill.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^dag:
I just saw Glenn Beck make the same point about this being a distraction from the financial reform bill. You guys are kindred spirits. Still though, Vilsack taking the fall for this and claiming no White House involvement smells like rich bullshit.
Geeze, everyone's going nuts lately. Ok, so I'm Glenn Beck for saying that the media isn't focusing on what's important.
Also, Obama is both prone to making rash decisions without all the facts, and a coward who'd hang out a member of his cabinet to keep from having to take his lumps in front of the American people. Not to mention, his political team is naive enough to think that throwing us a scapegoat will insulate him from the political fallout.
If I had a blackboard I'd draw an org chart of the US government, and try to guess at how many reporting levels separate Shirley Sherrod from Barack Obama (I'm thinking ten would be a safe minimum number), and point out that Vilsack is only the next rung down from Obama...and then I'd just slap a Hitler moustache on them all, and say "they're just purging the racists, the way the Nazis purged the Jews!"

So that is where the fuss came from? On the radio (NPR) this morning they were discussing the matter and only said that the video first surfaced on a "conservative blog" which left me wondering...

I had not really been following what had been going on other than a blurb one day about her getting thrown under the bus to now the video being altered. Son, I am disappoint.

Yeah, I'd be asking the same... what's next? Oh wait people now think The Onion videos are real now right?

>> ^bobknight33:

2 1/2 minutes to get to the point.
Andrew Breitbart posted the video on his site Monday at 8:18 a.m. By mid-afternoon Shirely Sherrod had been fired. Fox News didn’t report the story until later that evening. Who’s to blame for her firing? Fox News? Breitbart? That is absurd.
By mid afternoon of the same day, Ms. Sherrod’s boss, Cheryl Cook, called her and fired her because “you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight”. In fact, she did not appear on Beck that night. He made no mention of her whatsoever. She did appear on Beck the following night though, and he was DEFENDING her. The first mention of the Shirley Sherrod tape on Fox News was on Bill O’Reilly’s show which aired at 8 p.m. That’s almost five hours AFTER Sherrod was fired.


Okay, so you've copy-pasted the same two paragraphs to all three Maddow clips.

If the Breitbart video and Fox News' reporting on it didn't have anything to do with Sherrod's firing, why did they really fire her?

If it did have to do with the firing, why presume that the pranksters bear no culpability, simply because they successfully duped someone in the administration?

>> ^bobknight33:

2 1/2 minutes to get to the point.
Additionally, you couldn't wait 2.5 mins to understand the character assassination of someone who didn't deserve it? No wonder we're in this mess....

"The question is, who isn't next?"

Perfect in it's Truth.

>> ^gwiz665:

"The question is, who isn't next?"

They fired her without any kind of investigation. Even though Sherrod is a die hard liberal Obama supporter she should still sue.

The Obama WH is has shown nothing but failure this past Summer. From a out of control oil spill, firing a general during war time, and now firing a woman who shouldn't of been. Just shows that America elected a very inexperienced person for the job.

PEDRO LACKS POLITICAL EXPERIENCE

P.S. Don't blame Obama for the mistakes of foolish BP and their pro-drilling anti-regulation Republican friends.

Seriously people... WTF.

It's a good thing it turns out Shirley Sherrod wasn't racist. We would have had to shutdown the entire Department of Agriculture, just to be sure.