Keeping Score, forces “afoot” within the gov’mint are gonna get rid of Obama

Lakeside Autumn wallpaper

Remember all those compare and contrast papers you had to do in high school. One contrasting the difference between what passes for a Republican party and incoherent mental patients would find little if any light in the tiny fissures of difference. Internet media outlet Newsmax is advocating the military throw a coup to remove a legally elected president. Confronted with questions about about the legality said proposition, Newsmax says they’re just floating treason as one possibility among others. The exact wording is Orwellian,

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

No sir we’re not saying the mob should start another Confederate-like war, we’re just saying that if a large group of fellow batty conservatives, preferably heavily armed, happens to find having democratic elections as a big as a pain in the ass as Newsmax, let the festivities begin. Not that we’re advocating anything because we’re building a gold plated tea bagger monument to Glenn Beck and really would rather not have a long conversation with the secret service. Conservatives are no longer getting high enough on drinking the kool-aid, they’re snorting it raw out of the packet. GOP Rep. Trent Franks Calls Obama “An Enemy Of Humanity”. Franks does a Joe Wilson walk back saying he was only referring to Obama’s abortion policies. You know the polices that that have remained about 99% the same as they were doing the Bush years. That 1% makes President Obama an enemy of humanity. What is that 1% that have Rep. Franks jockey shorts wrapped so tight around his brain that they’re cutting off rational thought, Obama reverses abortion-funding policy, reversing a Bush era executive order. the Senate overhelmly voted to provide those funds.

“Women’s health has been severely impacted by the cutoff of assistance. President Obama’s actions will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and women dying from high-risk pregnancies because they don’t have access to family planning.”

Republican lawmakers were critical of the new president’s action.

[   ]… The Bush administration has repeatedly withheld funding authorized by Congress for the U.N. fund, saying the agency has funded a forced sterilization program in China. The fund has repeatedly denied that accusation.

“By signaling his intention to restore U.S. funding for UNFPA, the UN Population Fund, President Barack Obama is signaling his re-engagement with the international community on the critical challenge of improving reproductive health around the world,” UN Foundation President Timothy Wirth said.
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“For the past seven years, UNFPA funding has been a victim of false accusations and misinformation that had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with sound policy,” he said.

“Approximately 180 industrialized and developing countries, including all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, contribute to UNFPA. The United States was the only country to withhold funding for political reasons.”

Republicans like Frank can only see women’s health-care as far as their ability to control those women. If he and conservatives like him are genuinely pro fewer abortions then providing the full menu of health-care counseling has been proven(pdf) as the best way to do that. If anyone should be taking a closer look at their ethics, its people like Rep.Frank. This is a list of 10 of President Obama’s accomplishments in his first 100 day in office. The pernicious Right have looked at these very centrist accomplishments and proposals like not letting insurance companies sentence people to death, stop the very real possibility millions more Americans will have no health insurance coverage because of out of control costs. Newsmax, Rep. Frank, Glenn Beck and the tea baggers might be filling the Right’s appetite for urban myths, vitriol and bitter loser Chicken-little controversy of the day, but is this the direction of the Republican party that seems shamelessly unremorseful about getting over 4000 Americans killed for some bunk about WMD and letting Wall St operate like a circus on steroids. As a blogger it makes things much easier. I do not have to sift through any actual ideas because the Right is digging that anti-Enlightenment trench a little deeper every day. Can a political party reinvent itself based on character assassination, elminationism and social Darwinism. As someone once said, you betcha. Unless you were around in the 1930s, could find a radio to listen to or spare a few cents to buy a newspaper the Right’s cracked moral compass might seem shocking. In some ways its a replay of the past.  Obama right that Roosevelt was called a socialist and a communist

“What’s happened is that whenever a president tries to bring about significant changes, particularly during times of economic unease, then there is a certain segment of the population that gets very riled up,” Obama said. “FDR was called a socialist and a communist.”

Indeed, Roosevelt was called a socialist or a communist many times. Most of that criticism came in the 1930s, when he was enacting programs intended to pull the country out of the Great Depression.

• “Roosevelt is a socialist, not a Democrat,” declared Republican Rep. Robert Rich of Pennsylvania during a debate on the House floor on July 23, 1935. That remark came after Republicans hinted they were considering a move to impeach Roosevelt, according to The New York Times.

• “The New Deal is now undisguised state socialism, declared Senator Simeon D. Fess (R-Ohio) today as he pictured President Roosevelt as the New Deal’s leading socialist,” reported The Chicago Daily Tribune on Aug. 7, 1934. “The president’s recent statements,” Fess said, “remove any doubt of his policy of state socialism, which necessitates increased activities of the government in either ownership or operation of industry, or both.”

• “The Russian newspapers during the last election [1932] published the photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt over the caption, ‘The first communistic President of the United States,'” said Sen. Thomas Schall, a Republican from Minnesota. “Evidently the Russian newspapers had knowledge concerning the ultimate intent of the President, which had been carefully withheld from the voters in this country.  In fact, the voters of the United States were meticulously misled as to such intentions.” We found Schall’s comments in the book, All But the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Critics, 1933-1939.

The infamous newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst( the inspiration for the movie Citizen Kane -1941) is mentioned in the same column. Hearst and his newspapers were the Rupert Murdock/Fox news of their day. Though it can be argued that today’s toxic right-wing political machine makes those days seem merely eccentric by comparison. Glenn Greenwald recently took a look back at the Right during the Clinton years, Is the Right’s Attack on Obama’s Legitimacy New or Unprecedented?

Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right — and that’s been true for a very long time now.  It didn’t just become true in the last few months or in the last two years.  Recent months is  just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are:  a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don’t really believe in the country’s core founding values and don’t merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren’t part of their movement.  Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn’t any truer then than it is now.  All one has to do is review their behavior during the Clinton presidency — to say nothing of the Bush years — to see that none of this is remotely new.  Nothing they’re doing to Obama is a break from their past behavior; it’s just a natural and totally predictable continuation of it.

Glenn wrote that on September 12, 2009, before Newsmax was begging for a military coup. On the other hand the Right had already ( ironically in light of the Newsmax editorial) been circulating viral e-mails warning that Obama was going to use the military to round up political adversaries and put them in internment camps.The official party of permanent derangement, fake values and corruption seems sorely in need of a score keeper for all its crack pot theories. One month its Obama and the big bad gov’mint out to get everyone and the next,  forces “afoot” within the gov’mint are gonna get rid of Obama.

Mountain Ravine Fall wallpaper

Mountain Ravine Fall wallpaper

A new report on ACORN and the media picks up where media Matters left off in this report, REPORT: ACORN OBSESSION: Beck, Hannity obsess over ACORN while virtually ignoring major corruption scandals. In this report the Urban and Environmental Policy Institute writes, Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong( there is a pdf to download at link)

Although ACORN is involved in many community activities around the country,
including efforts to improve housing, wages, access to credit, and public education,
the dominant story frame about ACORN was “voter fraud.” The “voter fraud” frame
appeared in 55% of the 647 news stories about the community organization in 15
mainstream news organizations during 2007 and 2008. The news media stories about
ACORN were overwhelmingly negative, reporting allegations by Republicans and
conservatives.
• In October 2008, at the peak of the campaign season, negative attacks dominated the
news about ACORN:
76% of the stories focused on allegations of voter fraud
8.7% involved accusations that public funds were being funneled to ACORN
7.9% of the stories involved charges that ACORN is a front for registering
Democrats
3.1% involved blaming ACORN for the mortgage scandal
• The mainstream news media failed to fact-check persistent allegations of “voter
fraud” despite the existence of easily available countervailing evidence. The media
also failed to distinguish allegations of voter registration problems from allegations of
actual voting irregularities. They also failed to distinguish between allegations of
wrongdoing and actual wrongdoing. For example:
82.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
mention that actual voter fraud is very rare (only 17.2% did mention it)
80.3% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
mention that ACORN was reporting registration irregularities to authorities, as
required to do by law
85.1% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
note that ACORN was acting to stop incidents of registration problems by its
(mostly temporary) employees when it became aware of these problems
95.8% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
provide deeper context, especially efforts by Republican Party officials to use
allegations of “voter fraud” to dampen voting by low-income and minority
Americans, including the firing of U.S. Attorneys who refused to cooperate with
the politicization of voter fraud accusations – firings that ultimately led to the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
61.4% of the stories about ACORN’s alleged involvement in voter fraud failed to
acknowledge that Republicans were trying to discredit Obama with an ACORN
“scandal”
• 47.8% of the news stories about ACORN in October 2008 linked the organization to
candidate Barack Obama, most of them seeking to discredit him and his campaign
through guilt-by-association.
• The media bias against ACORN was evident not only in its focus on allegations of voter
fraud but also in the language used to describe ACORN, such as leftist, left-wing, front
(for Democrats), radical, activist, political, militant, and socialist.
• The attacks on ACORN originated with business groups and political groups that
opposed ACORN’s organizing work around living wages, predatory lending, and
registration of low-income and minority voters. These groups created frames to
discredit ACORN that were utilized by conservative ”opinion entrepreneurs” within
the conservative “echo chamber” – publications, TV and radio talk shows, blogs and
websites, think tanks, and columnists – to test, refine, and circulate narrative frames
about ACORN. These conservative “opinion entrepreneurs” were successful in
injecting their perspective on ACORN into the mainstream media.
• Perhaps the peak moment in the attack on ACORN occurred at the presidential
debate between Obama and McCain on Oct. 15, 2008. Although not asked a
question about ACORN, McCain injected the issue on his own, saying: “We
need to know the full extent of Senator Obama’s relationship with ACORN,
who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in
voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.“
Clearly this statement was newsworthy. This study reveals, however, that
opinion entrepreneurs, the conservative echo chamber, and the mainstream
media had laid the groundwork for McCain’s attack on ACORN.

Writer-pundit Eric Alterman once said there is no hidden right-wing conspiracy, for the most part its out in the open. The secrecy part is not so much the problem as how the Right is covered. Obviously some people embrace it like sacred dogma, others do not fellow politics and do not care and then there  is a corporate media that will not do its job on occasion. That media that does  will usually be a newspaper – thus the Right’s general contempt for print media. Who should be reporting on the recent ACORN story in context of the Right’s history of attacks on ACORN – the folks that are supposed to be the watchdogs of American democracy. Its not that ABC, CNN and the rest have taken a lazy dog approach to just the pimp story, they have helped with conservative framing and propagation of that distorted framing.

In light of the Conservative Culture of Corruption, for conservatives to mindlessly yap about ACORN is like a bank robber complaining about the bars on his cell. List of Scandalized Bush Administration Officials

* Brian Doyle – Deputy Press Secretary, Department of Homeland Security – Resigned in wake of child sex scandal. Doyle was arrested on April 4th, 2006 and pleaded no contest on September 19, 2006 to seven counts of use of a computer to seduce a child and sixteen counts of transmitting harmful material to a minor. On November 17th, 2006 Brian Doyle was sentenced to five years in state prison and ten years of probation. He will also need to register as a sex offender.

* Steven Griles – Deputy Secretary at the Interior Department – is the highest-ranked administration official yet convicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. In March 2007, Griles pleaded guilty to lying about his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Sentenced to 10 months incarceration.

* John T. Korsmo – Chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board from 2002 to 2004 – pleaded guilty in 2005 to lying to the Senate and an inspector general. He swore he had no idea how a list of presidents for FHFB-regulated banks were invited to a fundraiser for his friend’s congressional campaign. On the invites, Korsmo was listed as the “Special Guest.” Got 18 months of probation and a $5,000 fine.

More at the link.

Americans Pay More to Die Earlier — Why Is Our Health Care System So Screwed Up? or our health-care system is better then Slovenia’s,

In 2007, the United States spent an average of $7,290 per person on health care — 16 percent of gross domestic product. By contrast, our Canadian neighbors  spent an average of $3,895 per person, or 10 percent of GDP. The British spent $2,992 per person, or 8.4 percent of GDP. And the Japanese, who have some of the longest life expectancies in the world, spend $2,581 per person, or 8 percent of GDP.

The numbers for the U.S. are ridiculous by any measure, even if all this spending was producing a race of super beings capable of outswimming sharks and defeating grizzly bears in steel-cage death matches. But no: most studies of the world’s healthiest nations don’t even place the United States in the top 10, and the World Health Organization ranks our health care system 37th, just ahead of Slovenia’s.

Scenes from Wingnutville

Scenes from Wingnutville

Tea Party Founder Announces: “A Huffington Post Of Our Own”

A few lines above ALA’s not-a-single-person-makes-money statement, they lay out their plans for a revenue-sharing model for bloggers who participate in Project 73,

All bloggers/writers are required to submit two posts per week (minimum). There is a revenue sharing system in place that will help you earn revenue on the posts you get published.

Sounds reminiscent of uber conservative Pajamas Media. If their revenue model is as successful, expect this mysterious rightie answer to HuffPo to be eating choking on its own dust rather quickly.

Odom is setting up a “news” site that he admits will tell only his “side” of the issues. And bloggers get paid only if the editorial team approves their posts. In other words, bloggers will get paid only when their articles are in agreement with the site’s founder.

Eric Odom and Ken Marerro, the founders of the tea bagger movement and heads of ALA, have made their living by creating and managing professional, well-funded websites that appear at first glance to be grassroots.

Remember all the talk among conservative pundits about reinventing the Republican party just after the 2008 election cycle. Its sounds like they’re determined to be the same ideologically rigid fudpuckers they’ve always been. Much like Democrats lack of such message discipline is our strength and weakness, at least up through the the first year of Bush’s second term, having a zealous and disciplined message was conservative’s strength. While its never a good idea to underestimate one’s opponent, trying to continue that same rigidity on a web site that has ambitions to be the conservative HuffPo ( which gives its contributors lots of editorial freedom. Web traffic at HuffPo is in the millions per month) might be interesting to watch.

Fir Tree and Ferns Fall wallpaper, The Republicrite Party

Fir Tree and Ferns Fall wallpaper

A regular feature of the conservative noise machine is the weekly faux outrage. What makes it false is that given a few days to do some research it is usually found that when a conservative did the same thing or something very similar, the rabid right’s response was either to praise the behavior – behavior that could be classified as either bizarre, unethical or illegal – or ignore the glaring hypocrisy. Flashback: Students Sang Bush’s Praises Too (And For Katrina Response!).

But on Friday it boiled over into the realm of political opportunism when the Republican National Committee sent out a fundraising appeal calling the episode an “indoctrination of our nations… children” and “fanaticism.”

“Friend,” RNC Chairman Michael Steele wrote, “this is the type of propaganda you would see in Stalin’s Russia or Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. I never thought the day would come when I’d see it here in America.”

The Chairman of the Republican takes what one teacher did ( who certainly used poor judgment in those lyrics) and extends that poor judgment to the President. Steele’s distortion and exploitation is what feeds the ideological agenda of the conservative movement. When the story of the New Jersey children’s song lyrics broke Fox put up a very different story then the one they took down, the one with reports of death threats against school officials. Fox also edited out the remarks of one parent.  Fox News altered ‘Obama praise’ story to exclude ‘death threats’.

The story also appears to be significantly shortened and comments by one of the kids’ mothers, who took an opinion contrary to others expressing outrage, were deleted outright. Paragraphs nine through 11 in the first published version read:

But Andrea Ciemnolonski, the parent of another one of the students in the video, said the song was part of a second-grade project on a variety of topics related to the month of February, such as Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day.

“They did songs about President Washington, Lincoln, and they did do one about President Obama,” Ciemnolonski said. “My daughter was in the class that did the songs about Obama. It was black history month. … It was something for the kids to celebrate.”

The lyrics of the final song the kid’s used was more a celebration of the historical significance of electing the first Black president.

Obama is the President!
First African America in history
44th president of the United States
The ground has shifted
The world has changed!

CHORUS:
Oooo Im a proud American
Oooo yes yes yes yes YES WE CAN!

Im going to study really hard just like Barack
Learning never ever stops
Gonna set my goals HIGH and graduate
You might be looking at the President of 2048!

We are a nation of a thousand colors, look at me
Our strength is our diversity
Walking hand in hand we sing
Each a day a little closer to the dream of Dr. King

Fairly innocent stuff. For better or worse the kind of elementary school glossing of history and all presidents that has become the standard. Raygun Ronnie speaking directly to school kids was doing OK, sounding a lot like President Obama in telling kids to work hard, have goals etc then went off on a weird digression about tax cuts,

PRESIDENT REAGAN: I do. That’s a big argument that’s going on in government and I definitely believe it is because one of the principle reasons that we were able to get the economy back on track and create those new jobs and all was we cut the taxes, we reduced them. Because you see, the taxes can be such a penalty on people that there’s no incentive for them to prosper and to earn more and so forth because they have to give so much to the government. And what we have found is that at the lower rates the government gets more revenue, there are more people paying taxes because there are more people with jobs and there are more people willing to earn more money because they get to keep a bigger share of it, so today, we’re getting more revenue at the lower rates than we were at the higher. And do you know something? I studied economics in college when I was young and I learned there about a man named Ibn Khaldun, who lived 1200 years ago in Egypt. And 1200 years ago he said, in the beginning of the empire, the rates were low, the tax rates were low, but the revenue was great. He said in the end of empire, when the empire was collapsing, the rates were great and the revenue was low.

Reagan actually increased taxes. He lied to those kids when he claimed supply-side (“voodoo economics”) would create so much growth in GDP they would pay for themselves. Now that’s indoctrination and indoctrination is OK when conservatives do it..

I was reading this post at Newshoggers about neocon Michael Ledeen’s latest diatribe at National Review and its the usual logic impoverished crap that the Right’s “intellectuals” have become notorious for, it reminded me of something. Ledeen writes,

Is Obama Naïve?

….There is nothing unusual about elitist hatred of freedom. Back in the 18th century, when book publishing really got going, British authors were infuriated that they had to submit to the judgment of a marketplace. They didn’t want to be judged by people who were obviously inferior to them, and there was a great rage among the intelligentsia, including some very famous men. And in modern times, we can all name famous intellectuals who fawned all over Mussolini, Stalin, Fidel, and even Hitler.

Ledeen should have left out the histrionic comparisons between our sometimes maddeningly centrist bend over backwards try and please everyone  president and some of history’s worse tyrants. They reminded me that Ledeen is a fan of Italian fascism, Neocons plagiarize Italian Fascists

What Leeden(Sp.)did was not copy Marinetti word for word, but rather he stole his ideas and passed them off as his own (My add – Leeden’s book is called “The War Against the Terror Masters”) , without ever crediting the source. Now this is not the first or the last time that some bit of fascist ideology will be resurrected and passed off as new.  What makes this instance frightening are two things, the sector of fascist ideology being recycled and the recycler, a man with a great deal of influence in American foreign policy.

F.T. Marinetti helped Mussolini found the Fascist Party and is perhaps most famous for his love and glorification of violence and war.  Marinetti wrote eloquently and convincingly about the beauty of violence and death.  He wanted perpetual war and believed that only through continuous violent destruction could society move forward.  Marinetti wrote:
We will glorify war- the world’s only hygiene- militarism, patriotism, the destructive      gesture of freedom bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.  We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, we will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.

Leeden has repackaged Marinetti’s ideals into a theory he calls “Creative Destruction.”  Like Marinetti, Leeden believes that only through violent action can society progress.

Liberals have historically been demonized by the far right and the far left. Obama may have a a few actual liberals in his administration, but so far he is not shown that he is a liberal. Ledeen, like the Beckian tea baggers think that Obama is a liberal because their ideological alliances are so extreme that anyone closer to the center then Marinetti is a threat to their bizarre dystopian ideals for the United States.

Whether its isolated incidents of well meaning, but misguided teachers or historical comparisons and utterly unsubstantiated similarities, the modern Republican party is the party of shrill hypocrites.

Newsbuster’s Bizarre and Hypocritical Attack on FCC Appointee

The self proclaimed far Right media watchdog blog Newsbusters has found yet another SHOCKING story, FCC’s Diversity Czar: ‘White People’ Need to be Forced to ‘Step Down’ ‘So Someone Else Can Have Power’ in which they do provide the full quote. Which does not support the headline unless one is inclined to discombobulate what someone says into partisan spin,

This… there’s nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem.

We’re in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.

The question as to who should be in power is one that is constantly debated and at regular intervals we have elections. Those elections determine to some extent the answer to who should govern. Newsbusters implies that a middling ranked appointee (Mark Lloyd) at the FCC, in voicing such opinions has abridged some social convention where it was agreed we as a nation would not express such sordid opinions. Someone might want to tell the entire right-wing noise machine from The Heritage Foundation to Sean Hannity.

As to the race of those in power there have been occasions on which the Conservative movement has been  candid about its opinions on the race of our leaders in the public and private sectors,

Bill O’Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have.

O’Reilly one of the highest ranking members of the rightie pundit chain of command says that Mr. Lloyd is correct, there is a white power structure. Pat Buchanan has been a voice for conservatism for so long when he first started he wrote his columns and did his radio broadcast from a cave wearing mammoth skin PJs. Buchanan thinks the United States popped fully formed out of the white male power structure and no one else made a contribution or should be allowed to,

“White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks, who were 90% of the nation in 1960 when I was growing up and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That’s why. (Buchanan)

”

Damn straight! And what were all those black people doing at the time when heroic white people were setting about the important business of founding this great nation of ours? You guessed it! Hanging around fields, picking cotton, like bone idle jerks! None of that ever contributed anything to the common weal, of course! I mean, what is “cotton?” Not exactly THE FABRIC OF OUR LIVES, right?

Sure, at that time, their presence in the New World was based upon the economic need for a cheap and readily available supply of ambulatory chattel, and yeah, the consensus opinion was that they weren’t even really members of the human race, but as Pat Buchanan has, in the past, endeavored to explain to black America, being dragged to this continent in leg irons was the best and most generous thing that anyone has ever done for them! Surely, out of pure gratitude they could have ponied up a decent amendment to the Constitution or inscribed three-fifths of their signature on the Declaration of Independence.

Did you know that only twenty-percent of the people killed in 1770’s Boston Massacre were black? It’s true! One guy, named Crispus Attucks, who was obviously an affirmative action slaying!

How many blacks fought in the Union Army during the Civil War? A paltry 163 units! And it’s not like any of them had to risk life and limb, fleeing bondage to join up and fight to preserve the Union? No, no! Black people had it totally easy! ( More on Pat’s ignorance of American history here)

Unfortunately we cannot get a redo on our history, but it doesn’t strain the imagination to wonder about all the contributions that various non-white Anglo-Saxons could have been made if they would have been allowed to participate. The Confederacy was so determined not to deny African Americans freedom, not to be allowed full partnership in our democracy, they betrayed the Republic. Then between deeply ingrained racism and resentment, Black Americans had a defacto seat at the back of the social and economic bus until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One tends to think that even the shallow likes of the Newsbuster sycophants can see a pattern here. Americans of color have had to struggle against Bill O’Reilly’ and Pat Buchanan’s “White” “male” power structure for over 200 years. It is also no secret that the mere election of a person of color caused a wave of paranoia among those that still think like plantation owners, White Supremacists Report an Increase in Visits to Their Web Sites

Neo-Nazi, skinhead and segregationist groups have reported gains in numbers of visitors to their Web sites and in membership since the senator from Illinois secured the Democratic nomination June 3. His success has aroused a community of racists, experts said, concerned by the possibility of the country’s first black president.

“I haven’t seen this much anger in a long, long time,” said Billy Roper, a 36-year-old who runs a group called White Revolution in Russellville, Ark. “Nothing has awakened normally complacent white Americans more than the prospect of America having an overtly nonwhite president.”

[  ]…”The truth is, we’re finding an explosion in these kinds of hateful sentiments on the Net, and it’s a growing problem,” said Deborah Lauter, civil rights director for the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate group activity. “There are probably thousands of Web sites that do this now. I couldn’t even tell you how many are out there because it’s growing so fast.”

Some of Mr. Lloyds phrasing might be a little terse, but in relation to our history and our current social climate he has a way to go before he reaches the heights of hyperbolic nonsense expressed by the likes of Newsbusters or what are considered mainstream conservative opinion makers.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor(R) Says Woman With Growing Tumors Should Find Gov’t Program Or Charity

CANTOR: First of all I guess I would ask what the situation is in terms of income eligibility and the existing programs that are out there. Because if we look at the uninsured that are out there right now, there is probably 23, 24% of the uninsured that is already eligible for an existing government program […] Beyond that, I know that there are programs, there are charitable organizations, there are hospitals here who do provide charity care if there’s an instance of indigency and the individual is not eligible for existing programs that there can be some cooperative effort. No one in this country, given who we are, should be sitting without an option to be addressed.

Cantor is opposed to any health-care reform that includes a public option, but clearly states that some government program somewhere is the answer to his constituent’s problem. Eric is supposed to be one of the brighter lights of social Darwinism’s conservatism’s future. In that case he should learn how to pass the buck more artfully. As to what “No one in this country, given who we are, should be sitting without an option to be addressed.” means, I’ll let everyone know as soon as I get my right-wing secret decoder ring.

North Window Rock Formations wallpaper

EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda or Not

That Liberty Shall Not Perish…circa 1940s

The poster is a shocking reminder that our government has been known to promote its agenda

The current headline at a conservative site that has been hanging in the wind trying to generate traffic reads “EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda”. Only its far from explosive ( The NEA “Scandal”: That’s It?) or new, Yosi Sergant, Administration Aide Demoted: Glenn Beck Strikes Again – First Posted: 09-10-09

UPDATE: The NEA has updated their statement to emphasize that Yosi Sargent remains with the agency, but in a different position: “As regards Yosi Sergant, he has not left the National Endowment for the Arts. He remains with the agency, although not as director of communications.”  – ( Another way of saying he was demoted)

[   ]…”On August tenth, the National Endowment for the Arts participated in a call with arts organizations to inform them of the president’s call to national service. The White House office of public engagement also participated in the call, which provided information on how the Corporation for National and Community Service can assist groups interested in sponsoring service projects or having their members volunteer on other projects. This call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda and any suggestions to that end are simply false. The NEA regularly does outreach to various organizations to inform of the work we are doing and the resources available to them.”

The language that Sergant used was ironically in-artful. He was demoted. Which seems appropriate unless you’re Andrew Breitbart or Glenn Beck, who apparently are determined to whine the story to the apex of of all controversies. Unless someone from the Obama administration is tied down and given a lethal injection for these dastardly deeds we’re promised untold years of shrill cries of yet more conservative victimhood.

Some skillful satire on Beck and Breitbart here,  Conservatives are outraged over an actual outrage? Color me impressed.

Big Hollywood, conservatives are positively fuming over the Bush Administration‘s decision to funnel $2.2 billion through the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives….

Click over for the rest, well worth the time.

Some other bloggers commenting on the story, New word – “beck”( a reminder that the White House did not promise a penny to anyone involved in the conference call initiated by the arts organizations) and TGW picked up on the same meme I did. Our government has been sponsoring the arts for some time now and sometimes it has an agenda, Andrew “BIG” Breitbart Promotes “Explosive” New NEA Scandal (Yawn).

World Map 1795

World Map 1795

Despite all the hysteronics the tea baggers didn’t gain much ground. They got a lot of attention from the press because of two things. The first is the old if it bleeds it leads. In this case a very modest, small c conservative attempt to reform health-care and get costs under control versus some colorful characters and their kolorful kool-aid colored signs, side arms and shouting contests. The second is much of the media is composed of tea baggers – see Fox, the Washington Post and Times, 24/7 AM radio and so on. Gee, who would have thought that a small push back by the White House would gain ground against people that would compare President Obama to Hitler. That portion of the conservative circus that never ends was getting old so n to the vast left wing ACORN conspiracy, Time to Get Real About the ACORN “Controversy”–and Republican Double Standards

The bottom line is this: if the same standard used to prevent ACORN from receiving federal contracts were applied to many large corporations — Boeing, financial institutions like AIG and CitiCorp, not to speak of private military contractors like Blackwater — they would all have been barred as federal contractors long ago. But instead of being blacklisted, many of them actually received billions of taxpayer dollars to bail them out.

One of the things catching up to the “populist” tea bagger phenomenon is that its an oxymoron. They protest against what they believe to be some great injustice directed especially at them, but take up for the corporate interests represented by groups like FreedonWorks. The ACORN workers caught on tape controversy is pretty old in the reality based world. Just as with any organization public or private, wrong doers should be fired or prosecuted. Republicans live by the moral relativity rule when it comes to scandals. Former aid to Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby was convicted of four federal counts of lying to a grand jury. Republicans started a defense fund. In today’s headlines at USA Today there is a story about a search for a murderer, a possible swindle by an ex-marine, and more on the recently arrested terrorists suspects. America is a great country, but not a day goes by where someone isn’t doing something they shouldn’t. The initial shock value wears off, so what can attention hog conservatives like Andrew Breitbart and Big Hollywood do. They can get another lung full of hot air and create another forgettable controversy. ANDREW BREITBART DESPERATELY TRIES TO SUSTAIN THE HIGH

Where was little Andrew when Republicans National Committee was using vote caging to win elections. Where were they when Bush was using the U.S. Department of Justice to engage in vote caging. I like the rule of law at all times, not just when its convenient and in a world of limited time and resources I tend to think big issues should take precedence over small time stuff. And lets not confuse some low ranking newbies at the NEA for the White House Oval Office. If the fringe Right feels that its wrong for the White House to put out what they perceive to be propaganda then I should have been able to find some article or video by a prominent conservative from the Bush years that expressed some outrage over this story – Bush ‘planted fake news stories on American TV’ – but i cant,

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

“We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them,” said Diana Farsetta, one of the group’s researchers. “I would say it’s pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air.”

[  ]…The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying “Thank you Bush. Thank you USA” in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

The reason that I cannot find any columns by Bill Kristol, Coulter, Limbaugh or any other of the usual hypocrites on the Right is because they do not care whether government shoves propaganda down America’s throat as long as its a conservative doing the shoving.

Backed Into A Corner, Boehner Admits That Obama Is Not A Socialist

You Have No Idea What Health Costs – If You Did, You Might Just Want Real Reform

The average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375, according to Kaiser. Over the past decade, premiums have increased by 138 percent. And if the trend continues, by 2019 the average family plan will cost $30,083.

Three years of slightly above-average health insurance will cost a solid six figures.

For Republiwhiners Press Coverage is Either Too Hot or Too Cold

Republiwhiners

Republiwhiners are the Goldielocks of politics. They do not have much initiative, they believe that benefiting disproportionately from the labor of others is their divine right and the porridge or press coverage in this case is either too hot or too cold. ‘You Lie!’ Good, ‘News Report’ Bad

MSNBC and Fox News reporters heckled and interrupted on live TV at the ridiculous “Values Voters Summit.”(emphasis mine)

The right-wing’s incessant whining about ACORN coverage has become insufferable

What is wrong with these people?

First they bitched and moaned that nobody would cover the ACORN story, when in fact pretty much everybody was. And now, with even more ACORN coverage coming from the MSM, they’re whining that it’s the wrong kind of coverage.

Leading the pity party? Andrew Breitbart. He’s all upset because CNN adding it’s own reporting to the story and adding it’s own context. Y’know, like journalists do from time to time. He’s blowing a gasket because CNN won’t just air the raw ACORN videos the way Fox News does, propaganda-style

Does the bland lazy corporate media get it. You will give the news how, when and where the Conservative handbook dictates. Oh, and be sure to always get a shot of one of the tea smokers carrying a sign that gripes about lack of freedom.

Rawstory on the original brouhaha about which Fox and Andrew Breitbart are have fainting spells, CNN anchor calls out Fox News: ‘You lie’

When Fox News ran a full-page ad in the Washington Post — as well as in two newspapers owned by Fox’s parent company — claiming that it had been the only network to cover the 9.12 tea party rally in Washington, DC, it was more than one CNN anchor was willing to take.

“I usually don’t suffer fools gladly,” CNN’s Rick Sanchez began. “Especially when it comes to the fools who perpetuate falsehoods. Well, today thousands of you flipped through the pages of the Washington Post, only to come up a lie so bold and so upsetting that frankly I’m just not going to sit here in silence and allow my craft or my news operation to be unfairly maligned.”

Over a large photo of the rally, the ad asks, “How Did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN Miss This Story?”

“Enough is enough,” Sanchez went on, sounding as though he had been taking lessons in righteous indignation from Keith Olbermann. “And yes, I’m talking to you, Fox News. You, who claim to be fair and balanced. At what, I wonder? … They are saying we did not cover this story. They are using a lie to try and divide people into camps. … That’s an offense to myself and my colleagues, who risked their lives in Iran and Afghanistan and around the world to bring the news.”

Sanchez then backed up his charges against Fox with clips of several different CNN reporters covering various aspects of the rally and even played a clip of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly saying smugly, “CNN, as we mentioned, covered the anti-Obama protests, of course.”

“Here’s the fact,” Sanchez summed up. “We do cover the news, and we did extensively cover this event. We didn’t promote the event. That’s not what real news organizations are supposed to do. … ‘Cover’ is kind of like a ‘fair and balanced’ way of doing things. You get it? You might want to look into that.”

“Let me address the Fox News Network now,” concluded Sanchez, “perhaps the most current way that I can — by quoting somebody who recently used a very pithy phrase. Two words, that’s all I need. ‘You lie.’”

New Rule: You Can’t Complain About Health Care Reform If You’re Not Willing to Reform Your Own Health

New Rule: You can’t complain about health care reform if you’re not willing to reform your own health. Unlike most liberals, I’m glad all those teabaggers marched on Washington last week. Because judging from the photos, it’s the first exercise they’ve gotten in years. Not counting, of course, all the Rascal scooters there, most of which aren’t even for the disabled. They’re just Americans who turned 60 and said, “Screw it, I’m done walking.” These people are furious at the high cost of health care, so they blame illegals, who don’t even get health care. News flash, Glenn Beck fans: the reason health care is so expensive is because you’re all so unhealthy.

Yes, it was fun this week to watch the teabaggers complain how the media underestimated the size of their march, “How can you say there were only 60,000 of us? We filled the entire mall!” Yes, because you’re fat. One whale fills the tank at Sea World, that doesn’t make it a crowd.

[   ]…..Bill Maher on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/billmaher

Watching anyone of the hundreds of videos, perhaps thousands at this point, of any of the tea bagger rallies, and there is this gaping black hole of dissociation. You’ll almost always see elderly, disabled and vets that are getting government health-care. Maybe this is beyond politics. We need to get a team of scientists to look into why these people do not understand that their health or that of their family is directly tied to government health-care.

Country Road Autumn wallpaper, Conservatives and The Hysterical Style Month Nine

Country Road Autumn wallpaper

An end of the week round-up:

First let’s take a non-hysterical look at the news about ACORN. The Anonymous Liberal writes, You Can Tell a Lot About People By Who They Choose to Demonize

But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday’s Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it’s an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.

Let me address an attitude expressed in one of A.L.’s comments. ACORN has had a few employees dismissed over the years for wrong doing, thus ACORN is a corrupt organization that should be dismantled. Let’s extend that logic to the police. Every year we can find corrupt and blatantly criminal activity by a few members of most police departments. Thus we should do away with police altogether. The few define the many, the few make the entirety guilty. If we apply this new ethical standard to the Republican Party we could easily fill up a few federal penitentiaries with Republican and disband the Republican Party. More typical then ironic Michelle Malkin in a diatribe advocating more corporal punishment in public schools called Abu Ghraib-i-fying America’s Schools

Of course educators must use common sense when punishing bad apples. Of course they should be held accountable if they cause undue harm. But the agenda of these outfits is not to ensure the safety of everyone in the classroom. Their agenda is to demonize unapologetic enforcers of order and to impose international dictates on American public institutions.(emphasis mine)

Her general argument is spurious, but note the appeal to differentiate between entire organizations and “bad apples.” There might be a few bad apples in ACORN and they should be dealt with accordingly, but how about some of that institutional respect Malkin cheerleads for kid beaters, for ACORN. Joe Conason gets at the root of what the rabid Right sees as ACORN’s real crime, In defense of ACORN

Yet ACORN’s troubles should be considered in the context of a history of honorable service to the dispossessed and impoverished. No doubt it was fun to dupe a few morons into providing tax advice to a “pimp and ho,” but what ACORN actually does, every day, is help struggling families with the Earned Income Tax Credit (whose benefits were expanded by both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton). And while the idea of getting housing assistance for a brothel was clever, what ACORN really does, every day, is help those same working families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

Perhaps the congressional investigation now demanded by some Republican politicians would be a useful exercise, if conducted impartially. A fair investigation might begin to dispel some of the wild mythology promoted by right-wing media outlets.

Among the most popular canards on the right, repeated constantly by conservative pundits and politicians, is that ACORN has been found guilty of engaging in deliberate voter fraud, using federal funds. In reality, ACORN has registered close to 2 million low-income citizens across the country over the past five years — a laudable record with a very low incidence of fraud of any kind.

Over the past several years, a handful of ACORN employees have admitted falsifying names and signatures on registration cards, in order to boost the pay they received. When ACORN officials discovered those cases, they informed the state authorities and turned in the miscreants.

ACORN has gotten poor Americans to vote and acted as their advocates. On the Conservative tablet of great sins, there are few more grievous there empowering low income Americans. That is one of the reasons liberals and many independents find the signs with the saying “Don’t tread on me” so laughable in the context of the tea baggers parties. They’re at these protests to protect the interests of the corporate elite and are positive America’s working class is out to rip off their hard earned money. The undercover weenies that made those videos of ACORM employees might well have gotten a couple of legitimate wrong doers, but they have also lied and the ACORN worker who claimed she shot her ex-husband definitely punked them. Those old enough to remember the deranged right-wing attacks directed at President Bill Clinton probably remember those were the glory days of the American Spectator. They are proof  that wisdom does not always come with age and experience. Glenn Greenwald writes in The distracting benefits of ACORN hysteria

UPDATE II:  The American Spectator’s Joseph Lawler responds by claiming that the tea-party movement is every bit as devoted to combating the extreme corporate influences I highlight here as it is the likes of ACORN (“it is the same right wing that uncovered ACORN’s crimes that opposed the same marriage of state and big business that Greenwald complains about”).  Sorry, but that’s just ludicrous.  I have no doubt that there are people attending these protests who are non-partisan, non-discriminating and principled in their opposition to government corruption, expansion and excesses.  That’s because there’s no real coherent message to these protests; it’s just amorphous anger which likely has numerous causes among the various participating constituents:  Ron-Paul libertarians, paleoconservatives, LaRouchians, Southern race resenters, social conservatives, GOP operatives, standard dittohead liberal-haters, etc.  Each group has a different agenda, often wildly divergent.  The only thing they seem to have in common is that they hate Obama.

But look at who the lead supporters are:  Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, the right-wing blogosphere and talk radio generally, business groups led by Dick Armey.  Does anyone actually believe that what motivates them is concern over the excessive, corrupting influence of Wall Street and large corporations in government?  Please.  They are pure GOP partisans who are exploiting citizen anger to undermine Democratic politicians in order to return the GOP to political power.  It’s nothing more noble or profound than that.  In fact, many of the movement leaders are among the most vocal advocates for unfettered corporate power.

What’s beyond hypocrisy. Vitterocrisy: DC Madam Customer David Vitter Is Outraged By The ACORN Prostitution Scandal

Vitter’s outrage over the latest ACORN scandal seems extraordinarily hypocritical, in light of what he went through in 2007:

A woman accused of running a Washington prostitution ring placed five phone calls to David Vitter while he was a House member, including two while roll call votes were under way, according to telephone and congressional records.

Vitter, a Louisiana Republican now in the Senate, acknowledged Monday that his number was on the woman’s call list and apologized for a “very serious sin.”

Vitter, of course, kept his federal funding, and remains in the Senate.

Vitter is also a recipient of tax payer subsidized health-care. A corrupt, serial lying hypocrite in the party of hypocrites. Maybe like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, when you’re found to be a corrupt lying hypocrite just claim God is one your side and start shouting ACORN ACORN to distract everyone.

Many of us may not live long enough to see the end of the investigations into Republican Bush era corruption, Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton illegally used her position to benefit Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the company that later hired her, according to officials in federal law enforcement and the Interior Department.

The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department’s 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars.

So what where is Obama’s birth certificate, Obama is going to put us all in concentration camps, chop off our heads and harvest the organs and fly the hammer and sickle over our graves while ACORN employees vote Democrat in our names.