ABC NEWS GIVES THE MORONS WHAT THEY WANT

Desperate for right-wing links, and clearly hoping to curry favor with the Romney campaign by aiding and abetting the campaign's "I'm rubber, you're glue" strategy, ABC News posts this nothingburger story:

On Obama Adviser's Disclosure Form: 'Bermuda'

A lot of attention has been focused lately on Mitt Romney's offshore finances in places like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

But the word Bermuda pops up on the financial disclosure forms of one of President Obama's top advisers too.

Valerie Jarrett's financial disclosure form filed May 4 lists a line of credit from a Bermuda insurance company valued between $100,000 and $250,000.

Omigod! Omigod! We found a new libtard hypocrite! And it's the evil Svengali Negress!!

This is already being linked at National Review Online, the Washington Free Beacon, Free Republic, Lucianne.com, Fire Andrea Mitchell, Michelle Malkin's Twitter feed, and various talk radio Web sites, with, no doubt, more to come.

But, as ABC notes (in paragraphs not cited by most of the above linkers), the reference to Bermuda on Jarrett's disclosure form appears to be utterly innocuous:

"This is a letter of credit disclosed in the liability section of the personal financial disclosure form, meaning it is a potential obligation, not an asset," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement....

Before the White House replied to us, we spoke to tax experts who said the filing could be completely innocuous. It appears that Jarrett borrowed money from JPMorgan Chase, which has a subsidiary in Bermuda -- not unusual for insurance companies that want to lay off some of their risks. It doesn't mean that Jarrett sought any sort of transaction from Bermuda, but rather that the bank could be using its Bermuda subsidiary on credit forms.

In other words, routine credit card statements can include references to Bermuda simply because insurance companies have subsidiaries there.

So there's nothing here. But ABC still posted the story, knowing that the M.O. of the right is to distort stories like this in order to bamboozle the rubes. ABC knew the Jarrett/Bermuda link would be widely discussed, and knew there was no actual news value in the story -- and still ABC put it out there.

Publishing a story like this in modern-day America is like handing out free drinks at an AA meeting -- an AA meeting attended by people with a history of drunken violence. It's utterly irresponsible. It's bad for society. There's no excuse for it.