More Pap From The Gristmill

I pointed out yesterday at TFR how fast and carelessly eco-chamber blog Grist plays with the facts:

In what amounts to an errant, drive-by shot at car makers, popular Eco-blog Grist misrepresents the current debate over new NHTSA standards to its readers by posting a blatantly false headline and targeting in on an alleged previous position of auto makers Grist evidently manufactured itself out of thin, hopefully carbon-free, air.

They've outdone themselves today with this tripe via Matt Yglesias who will apparently be joining the Center for American Propaganda. I guess the rich libs that prop these sites up like to pass their trumpeting strumpets around.

So here's a thought: For years and years before 2006, the savvy leadership of the Republican Party took the view that indulging the base's passion for Mexican-hating would be a political error. It was important, thought Bush, Rove, et. al, to position the GOP as a forward-thinking pro-immigration party. Then along came a moment of political desperation for congressional Republicans at which point they seized upon immigrant-bashing as a cure for their midterm blues. Democrats, conditioned by decades of defeat to instinctively believe that whatever crap the GOP is pulling at any given moment is political genius, had a moment of panic. But at the end of the day, it turned out that the Republican strategists were right the first time and there is no mass swing constituency for immigration restriction capable of delivering elections -- the crank racists were already Republicans, and this just helped push Hispanics into the Democratic column.

Flash forward to the Great Drilling Debate of 2008. Recall that it's unlikely that Bush and the GOP leadership weren't pushing this issue back in 2006 or 2004 out of their deep-rooted environmental convictions. Instead, the leadership didn't used to push offshore drilling because they thought offshore drilling was a bad issue -- the people who care either work for the oil companies (and are Republicans anyway) or else are drilling opponents worried that their communities and coastal economies will be wrecked by drilling. But facing another drubbing in November, congressional Republicans have talked themselves into believing that "drill drill drill" will deliver them a victory.

These folks can't see anything in a non-political light and continue to be out of touch with the thoughts and opinions of mainstream America. Drilling - and shale oil - are hot topics because oil prices shot through the roof. Both alternatives would be positive if utilized correctly and price factors make them practical. That wasn't necessarily the case 4, or even 2 years ago. Maybe they're all too busy off riding eco-friendly tricycles to realize there's actually a real world out there that drives to work everyday and reads the news.

And as for the immigration debate, that too was driven by the perceptions of the American public, not the opposite.

These folks are bubble-heads trapped in a DC mindset that always comes back to bite them in the end. Everything is Bush/Cheney to them, as if Americans really care given it is time to elect someone else. Keep fighting the last war, boys ... and you'll end up losing this one in November.

Comments

[Fred Beloit]

It makes it very easy when the propagandists simply lie. One of their favorite lies is the Repubs and conservatives are ant-immigration. This is false. They are anti-illegal immigration. They are pro legal immigration. And so is the law of the United States of America, which the libs and Dems love to flout. The Yglesias lie is right here:
"Then along came a moment of political desperation for congressional Republicans at which point they seized upon immigrant-bashing as a cure for their midterm blues." The bashing, such as there has been any, is of ILLEGAL immigration.

[SacTownMan]

Another liberal Harvard educated philosophy major. Matt the Weasel has his head so far up Soro's butt his feet could be mistaken for hemorrhoids!

[Fred Beloit]

Here is another perfectly predictable event: The emotion-filled Lefties have been screaming for years that captured combatants need and deserve a judicial procedure that will determine their guilt or innocence. So they get their wish. They haven't been careful, as usual, what they wished for, and they don't like it when their wish is granted:

Hamdan was Osama bin Laden’s driver, not Osama bin Laden. He never denied that he was bin Laden’s driver. It would have been an open and shut case of material support for terrorism in federal court. Hamdan could have been securely locked away years ago, but the Bush administration chose to pursue the risky path of an untested military commissions system. The judge in Hamdan’s case was put in the unprecedented position of deciding how much torture was too much in determining which of Hamdan’s statements made during “coercive” interrogations would be allowed into evidence. No U.S. court has yet to decide if the entire military commissions system is lawful, and a negative verdict like the two others already handed down on military commissions by the Supreme Court could invalidate Hamdan’s conviction putting us back at square one."

He doesn't mean this: "...No U.S. court has yet to decide if..." He means this "...A U.S. court has yet to decide..."

Poor libs. So full of hope and so full of...you know.
http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/08/06/hamdan-after-7-years-found-guilty-of-a-crime-he-never-denied/