When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters. [source]

So sad. So pathetic.

And how concerned is Bush about Bin Laden? From March 13th, 2002:

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he’s alive at all. Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not; we haven’t heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is — really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he’s just — he’s a person who’s now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He’s the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is — as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide — if, in fact, he’s hiding at all.

So I don’t know where he is, nor[*]… You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you.

* he almost said, “Nor do I care.” at the end. An element that the White House official transcript removed.

Watching that video, all I could think was, “What a smug, condescending, arrogant idiot.”

O’Reilly suggests that what liberal bloggers are doing is blackmailing politicians by banding together and telling politicians that to receive bloggers’ support, a politician must advance a particular point of view on a particular issue.

Bloggers threatening — you know, what people don’t understand is that these Internet bloggers give messages to these candidates: “If you don’t do what we tell you to do, we will trash you and try to interfere with your fundraising.”
…
…I think it’s a danger to have blackmailers, which is what these bloggers are, active in the political process. [source: media matters]

Whether it’s paid lobbyists, grassroots organizations, the Religious Right and even individual voters, each and every one of them conditions its support for a politician on how well that person is representing them. This isn’t blackmail, Bill. It IS the democratic process.

Frankly to suggest otherwise frightens me. Perhaps we should let politicians or windbag Fox News pundits tell us the issues that are important and which ones are not. Maybe the government should be in charge?

I can see why he feels the need to lash out at all of us. No one loves a hypocrite more than a blogger and he’s one of the biggest.

There is much to learn from the contempt expressed by John Yoo, Joe Klein and Jon Alter towards blogs — i.e., a collection of hundreds of thousands of politically engaged citizens who are dissatisfied with the prevailing political and media power centers and have created their own instruments for expressing and activating that dissatisfaction.

It is absolutely true that citizens are forced to rely upon large media organizations to collect information and report what the government is doing, and that is precisely why their profound failures are of such concern. And the isolated and all-too-few instances of real adversarial and investigative reporting (see e.g., Dana Priest and Charlie Savage) sadly illustrate what this country has been so sorely lacking.

These blogging instruments prevent people like Yoo, Klein and Alter (and Brian Williams) from making pronouncements without being challenged and corrected, and it undermines the authoritative opinion-making monopoly they once held. I wonder if that has anything to do with the contempt they feel.

I couldn’t agree more.

bloggers have added another dimension of vituperation toxicity

Well… I’m not exactly sure what you mean by putting those two nouns together–vituperation toxicity–but if that means that bloggers are an extra set of eyes calling out your terrible record of supporting Bush’s war in Iraq or the false charge that Ned Lamont’s campaign hacked your web site…then I’m happy about it.

Get the whole transcript and video at [Think Progress]

From an article in the Capitol Journal:

The blurring of entertainment and news and the relaxing of journalistic standards can be seen in online bloggers who are critical of people without giving them an opportunity to respond or who don’t post corrections when they learn that what they have posted is wrong.

Um… That’s wrong, wrong, wrong. I realize that I’m just a blogger with poor ethics, but how much easier could it be for you to respond to my post here? Respond away!

No corrections? She clearly reads blogs about as much as she checked her sources on her Iraq psy-ops news stories she so dutifully published for the Bush Administration and that shifty guy Chalabi. Corrections are made all the time right in the post…sometimes even striking out the incorrect text so the reader can see just how wrong the writer was.

Did the New York Times run a correction for the 8 months of vaunted journalism they did before the U.S. invaded Iraq? Please…

“I’m worried about bloggers,” she said. “(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it’s repeated as fact.”

And she scoffs at the blogging world as opposed to newspapers like the New York Times where reporters repeat her “facts” so many times that our country goes into a bogus war?

[via ThinkProgress.org]