Joel Connelly, the contumelious liberal columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an unusually (even for him) incoherent column today. Among Connelly's confused claims --
Blogging has been another device used by the right to inject poison into the body politic.But the only example he gives of bloggers who have injected incorrect information into the debate is that of one silly left-wing blogger who repeated a silly and irrelevant Democrat accusation about a former Congressional staffer who is now working for the McGavick campaign. The contumelious liberal columnist debunks this accusation and even he understands that
Hiring a campaign aide is not [big news in our Senate race].So tell me again what does this have to do with right-wing bloggers?
Also on the subject of aides, Connelly drops this confused reference:
[Sen. Cantwell] is defending student aide at the U-Dub todayPresumably he's referring to some UW graduate assistant who was accused of something or other, but I find no other reference to any such incident on the news pages. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 23, 2006 04:50 PM | Email This
I'm glad I'm not the only one who caught Connelly's column. Honestly, it was almost Ted Kennedy-esque in the rambling, off-kilter way in which it was composed.
I know that writing under deadline sometimes people take shortcuts -- I've never done it:-)
The thing I got out of it the most was how Connelly started out his piece in an attempt to be critical of Sen. Cantwell. Then halfway through though, he begins playing kissy-face to let her know that he really doesn't mean it.
I went to it on Saturday and was pretty stoked by what I heard. Loved the four issues he touched upon.
It was also fun making fun of the poor benighted, yellow-shirted, Democrat opperatives passing out Abramoff-McGavick "literature" and seeing the looks on their slack-jawed faces when you tell them that Murray and Cantwell are the ones who've been taking cash from Jack.
Posted by: Reporterward on January 23, 2006 06:25 PMI covered the McGavick Kick-Off at Respectfully Republican.
I'm also working on a post in response to Connelly's column today. Interestingly enough, I recently blogged on the "dream race" between McGavick and Cantwell that Connelly was alluding to in an earlier article. It provided several "prescient" replies to Cantwell's idiotic yellow-shirted minions, as well as the Democrats attack ad, "Life's Work".
Here's my prediction based on the 2004 election cycle. Connelly and other Seattle "journalists" will treat Cantwell with some disdain up until September, all the while treating McGavick with "cautious optimism". As soon as the primary is over, the gloves come off, and it's going to be a LANDSLIDE of ATTACK ads by Seattle media, except they'll be dressed up to look like objective news articles and "balanced" opinion pieces.
Republicans need to build off of any residual momentum from the 2004 election controversy, which Stefan has worked tirelessly to expose. We should also take on the 2000 election, as that could perhaps completely deracinate Cantwell.
Speaking of which, how about crashing an anti-war protest against Cantwell and Hillary Clinton, which is happening on January 27th (Noon) outside Qwest Field?
Posted by: Patrick E. Bell on January 23, 2006 06:55 PMYou'd kill yourself, but no one would notice. (or care)
Bit of a drama queen, aren't you, poopy-pants?
Posted by: alphabet soup on January 23, 2006 07:24 PM"Contumelious" TWICE? ...In the same very brief post which tried to point out a real columnist's supposed pretensions?
Gosh Stef, I agree that Connelly's getting a bit loopy, but methinks your daily guano huffing may be leading to real consequences.
Posted by: bartelby on January 23, 2006 10:09 PM
No matter, with the P-I circulation in a precipitous drop, no one is paying attention to him anymore.
Posted by: Jeff B. on January 23, 2006 10:36 PMThat was not Cantwell, but our other fine Senator, Murray, who referred to Osama bin Laden's "daycare centers" for Islamic Burka women.
Also, ever notice that we read or hear virtually nothing from these two for five years and suddenly they come alive with press releases. Remember Murray in '04? D'ya think it might be have something to do with election year?
Posted by: Saltherring on January 24, 2006 08:18 AMGood perspective on your coverage of the kick-off. Thanks for the effort. It was pretty exciting to see the Rainier Room at 1st and Republican packed with a couple hundred GOPers.
It was your typical rah-rah affair where everyone comes by to celebrate and encourage the candidate and his family.
I'm glad McGavick was able to speak, a little bit at least, on some of the issues he'd be hitting on during the campaign.
I'm going to paraphrase them here since I wasn't "on the pad" during the event and I didn't take notes. Obviously they're just campaign promises so a person can take them for what they're worth.
Since none of the press coverage has bothered to touch upon some of the actual issues that were discussed by the candidate, I'll just list them below from memory.
1) War on Terror: Win in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2) Budget: He spoke about the need to rein in the current federal budget deficit while not raising taxes.
(This one was a pleasant surprise)
3) Secure the borders: Said that the country needs to secure our nation's borders "by any means necessary" or something to that effect. He also favored a guest worker program but not until the borders were secured.
4) Health Care: McGavick basically expressed the opinion that federal rules and regulations needed to be overhauled in order to allow private citizens and healthcare providers to obtain and provide affordable healthcare without a lot of governmental middlemen mucking up the process.
I know it's fun bashing Connelly but it's never too late to start discussing "the issues" in any election campaign. Especially when it looks like the GOP can win when having an honest discussion about them.
Thanks for the info. McGavick sounds good, and so he will need votes from everyone outside Seattle and Tacoma or he certainly will not win.
How many fraudulent ballots will the Democrats try to slide through in Cantwell's behalf this time?
Posted by: Amused by liberals on January 24, 2006 12:56 PMWE JUST COUGHT HIM ON ONE OF HIS PHARMACOLOGICALLY PREFERENCED DAYS. NORMALLY THIS CEREBO-ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSOR OF TREE CARCASS'S IS JUST EMOTIONLLY DIFFERENT.
JOEL IS NONTRADITIONALLY ORDERED AND COULD USE A GOOD ADVANCED READINESS SEMINAR TO HELP HIM WITH HIS DIFFERENTLY LOGICAL MIND SET. THIS WOULD HELP HIM, FOR HE IS A UNIQUELY-FORTUNED INDIVIDUAL ON AN ALTERNATIVE CAREER PATH.
IF IT WERE NOT FOR JOEL CONNELLY AND THE MOTIVATIONALLY DISPOSSESSED, MISORIENTED, KNOWLEDGE-BASE NONPROSSESSORS AT THE P.U. ALONG WITH INDIVIDUALS WITH TEMPORARILY UNMET OBJECTIVES LIKE COMRADE "MY LEFT FOOT" THIS WOULD BE A DULL "TURTLE ISLAND"
Posted by: TACOMA PHLASH on January 24, 2006 12:56 PM"Presumably he's referring to some UW graduate assistant who was accused of something or other, but I find no other reference to any such incident on the news pages."
Actually, the sentence is grammatically incorrect, no matter how you slice it. If it's a person she's defending, the sentence is missing an article (of the part-of-speech variety). More likely, I suspect, is that she was actually defending student aid, not student aide. Connelly's article, to its credit, pointed out with rolling eyes the remarkably uncontroversial positions she was taking on numerous issues, and going over to the UW and telling students that money from the government for them to keep going to school is a good thing fits nicely into this thesis. Yes, the article was kinda all over the place, so it was hard to tell, but then again, it's also hard to tell sometimes when Stefan's being facetious, so he may have been kidding about that web search.
One other thing, though: A man who throws pea gravel at his adversaries is presumed not to have any real rocks in his pile. Connelly, as a useful idiot of the Old Media, ignores, glosses over, or distorts so much of the truth that we do indeed have REAL rocks to throw at him. Lots of folks struggle with the Battle of the Bulge, and by resorting to such petty attacks, we alienate them and divert attention from our own GOOD arguments.
Posted by: TB on January 24, 2006 11:01 PM