President Obama's real goal:  selling cars
 

Doesn’t this strike you as a spectacularly bad idea?  [A summary for those who are impatient:  some right-wingers are proposing a boycott of GM services and products to protest the publicly financed bailout and public ownership of the company.]

Here’s King Wingnut.  He starts out by reassuring GM workers that boycotters don’t want to hurt them, specifically:

“They don’t want to patronize Obama.  They don’t want to do anything to make Obama’s policies work!  This is an untold story, by the way.  Ohttp://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_06/018529.phpf course, the government-controlled media is not gonna report anything like this but there are a lot of people who are not going to buy from Chrysler or General Motors as long as it is perceived Barack Obama is running it, because people do not want his policy to work here because this is antithetical to the American economic way of life.”

This idea isn’t bad in the way that normal bad right-wing ideas are bad.  Normally, you kind of hope that they actually try to implement their bad ideas, just because it makes them look foolish.  Recent entries in that category of bad idea include fabricating reasons to oppose Sonia Sotomayor, throwing teabagging parties, and anything involving Sarah Palin.  No – this idea is bad in the way that rooting for President Obama to fail is bad.  Why would they think both a) a boycott of GM would be good for America, and b) it’s an idea that would draw people to their cause?  What kind of people are dominating the right in America?

This movement is taking place in the aftermath of another wingnut non-scandal:  a number of bloggers on the right have been busy trying to prove that the recently announced closures of GM and Chrysler dealerships unfairly targeted those whose owners were big GOP donors.  Yes.  They really believe that the Obama Administration would enter into an illegal conspiracy in order to spank a handful of GOP donors.

On the other hand, they don’t seem to be able to communicate effectively (except for having a bunch of lackies installed in crucial places in the MSM).  Twitter seems to be a big stumbling block.  And nobody knows who speaks for the GOP, either.

Important Events

First – a protest against torture on the bridge!  Actually, it’s on the bridge and it is meant to protest torture no matter where it happens.  The Interfaith Religious Coalition Against Torture is holding a protest on the Broadway Bridge, this Thursday, June 11th at 5:00 p.m.  This is a very worthwhile event.  Please show up and express your support for this fundamental American principle (bring a sign, if you can).

Second, Loving Day is this Saturday at Kate Curley Park at 1:00pm.  Please bring a dish, a chair, and some utensils.  We will provide burgers, hot dogs, veggie patties, chips, and drinks.  This is another wonderful American principle that we should support.

Cheers,
Dan

Jane Hamsher is the proprietor of the collaborative blog FireDogLake, and it has grown into one of the top progressive websites in the entire webiverse.  Jane was a co-producer of the 1994 film Natural Born Killers, along with a book about that experience, Killer Instinct.  She started the blog in late 2004, and began adding to the stable of writers later the next year.

FDL is famous for its in-depth coverage of some major issues that were pretty much ignored by the mainstream press.  They provided live coverage of the Libby trial.  They have done deep investigative reporting on Bush’s illegal wiretapping program and the subsequent trials, as well as the Valerie Plame scandal.  They have followed the entire history of the torture issue, even scooping the mainstream media.  In many ways, FDL is helping to usher in the next generation of investigative journalism.

I’m sure that each of you has an encyclopedic knowledge of my Drinking Liberally notices, since I’m sure that you read them in rapt attention from start to finish, so you’ll remember that the very first Blog of the Week winner was Marcy Wheeler.  Marcy joined FireDogLake in late 2007.  The other main bloggers include Spencer Ackerman, Christy Hardin Smith, Cliff Schecter, and TBogg.  Each one of them is qualified to be featured here in his or her own right.

In short, given the drastic decline of journalistic standards in America today, FireDogLake deserves to be one of your primary sources of news.