Brian Kilmeade sez: 'Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.' Oh really?

-- by Dave

Brian Kilmeade, defending Lord Bill O'Reilly from the nefarious Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, gives voice to the basic Fox News view of the world:

Kilmeade: They can't handle the give and take of the debate. They were outraged that somebody was saying, uh, there's a reason, there was a certain group of people that attacked us on 9/11. It wasn't just one person, it was one religion.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.

Oh really, Brian.

Well, just as we had to do for Sarah Palin back in 2008, let's do a little reminder session for Kilmeade et. al.:

Eric Rudolph:

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American radical described by the FBI as a terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States which killed two people and injured at least 150 others.

Rudolph declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion and what he describes as "the homosexual agenda." He spent years as the FBI's most wanted criminal fugitive, but was eventually caught. In 2005 Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous federal and state homicide charges and accepted five consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and the death penalty. Rudolph was connected with the white supremacist Christian Identity movement. Although he has denied that his crimes were religiously or racially motivated, Rudolph has also called himself a Roman Catholic in "the war to end this holocaust" (of abortion).

James Kopp:

James Charles Kopp (born August 2, 1954) is an American citizen who was convicted in 2003 for the 1998 sniper-style murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an Amherst, New York physician who performed abortions. Prior to his capture, Kopp was on the FBI's list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. On June 7, 1999 he had become the 455th fugitive placed on the list by the FBI. He was affiliated with anti-abortion group "The Lambs of Christ." He has been referred to as a terrorist by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism.

The Phineas Priesthood:

Letters left at the scene of an April 1996 bank robbery/clinic bombing in Spokane, Washington, contained Identity propaganda, diatribes against the banking system and were signed with the symbol of the "Phineas Priesthood." [At the time of the robbery, a bomb was set off at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic as a diversion, with death threats toward abortion providers contained in the note left with that bomb.] The three men arrested, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merrell, were linked to white supremacist and "Identity" groups and were also charged with setting off bombs at a newspaper office and a Planned Parenthood clinic. All three were convicted.

[More here.]



Tim McVeigh:

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran and security guard who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege, as revenge against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government. The bombing killed 168 people, and was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Buford Furrow:

Buford O'Neal Furrow, Jr. (born November 25, 1961) perpetrated the August 1999 Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting on August 10, 1999, when he attacked a day care center at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. The shooting injured three children, and a receptionist. He also shot dead US Postal Service carrier Joseph Ileto who was Filipino American. Furrow was a member of the white-supremacist group Aryan Nations in 1995.

On January 24, 2001 Furrow pleaded guilty all of the counts against him. In exchange for pleading guilty, Furrow avoided a possible death sentence, but was instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. According to the indictment, Furrow expressed no regrets for any of his crimes.

This is just a sampling. There were many more such cases in which clinics were bombed, government officials and offices threatened or attacked.

These activities slowed considerably in the past eight years, but continue to bubble along. There was, for instance, the case of Demetrius "Van" Crocker, who was caught trying to buy explosives he planned to bomb Congress with. Or William Krar, who put together a cyanide bomb he planned to set off in a public venue. Or Chad Castagana, the self-described Coulter/Malkin worshipper who sent various liberal figures fake anthrax threats. There have been many others.

Indeed, as we recently reported, there has in fact been an uptick in domestic terrorism cases in the past couple of years. Here's the rundown:

-- July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how "liberals" are "destroying America," walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.

-- October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.

-- December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear "dirty bomb" in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.

-- January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.

-- February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.

-- April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.

-- April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama's purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.

-- May 2009: A "sovereign citizen" named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Topeka, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.

-- June 2009: James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

-- February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one "domestic terrorism" too.)

-- March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.

-- March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.

-- May 2010: A "sovereign citizen" from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.

-- May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.

-- May 2010: Two "sovereign citizens" named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.

-- July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.

That's sixteen major incidents in a two-year period -- significantly more than we've seen over the same timespan from domestic radical Muslims. The BPC's report enumerates a total of seven incidents in 2009 -- two attacks and five serious plots (not to mention four attempts to join terrorist organizations). We've had the same number of right-wing extremist-related incidents of domestic terrorism in 2010 so far -- and the year isn't even over yet.

This has in fact been quite predictable, especially considering that both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL have reported a significant increase in recruitment by right-wing extremists, particularly white-supremacist and radical "Patriot" groups, in the wake of President Obama's election. These two factions, after all, have been responsible for the overwhelming majority of domestic-terrorism cases of the past thirty years and more. Indeed, the problem is serious enough that the Pentagon has finally begun to clamp down on the far-right extremists who have been infiltrating the ranks of U.S. troops in recent years.

But right-wingers are always eager to dismiss the reality of right-wing extremists -- even in the face of overwhelming data. So this means, evidently, that when we now assess terrorism on a "bipartisan" basis, we must omit them altogether.

Finally, perhaps the more important point: We were not attacked by one religion. We were attacked by fringe fanatics from that religion, not the religion en masse. Some of our important allies in this fight, as it happens, are Muslim.

Just remember: Every time idiots like Kilmeade say crap like this, Osama bin Laden -- who envisioned 9/11 as a way to create a war between Islam and the West -- pops a champagne cork.

Oh, and Brian? Just remember: Not all right-wingers are racists. But all racists are right-wingers.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly inspires walkout on The View: 'Muslims killed us on 9/11'

-- by Dave

Bill O'Reilly was in prime "We'll do it live!" form this morning on ABC's The View -- launching into a bigoted tirade, claiming that "Muslims killed us on 9/11!" It so infuriated co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar -- who just a little earlier had been given the O'Reilly "shut up and listen you stupid bimbo" treatment -- that they walked off the stage together.

It was entertaining, if nothing else:

The Fox commentator was a guest on ABC's talk show Thursday to promote his new "Pinheads and Patriots" book. The discussion got increasingly heated over the "Ground Zero Mosque" debate and he later went on to say "Muslims killed us On 9/11."

Co-Host Whoopi Goldberg disputed O'Reilly's claims that the mosque was inappropriate. "There were 70 families who are muslim who also died in that building," she said.

"Seventy percent of Americans don't want that mosque down there, so don't give me the 'we' business," said O'Reilly to co-host Joy Behar; the studio audience applauded.

Afterward, when pressed by Goldberg and Behar to explain why the "Ground Zero mosque" was somehow "inappropriate," O'Reilly leaned over and pointed at Goldberg saying, "Muslims killed us on 9/11."

Goldberg exclaimed , "That is such bullsh*t," in the midst of a cacophony of back-and-forth yelling. Goldberg shouted that "Timothy McVeigh [the convicted American-born terrorist who blew up the Oklahoma City Building in 1995] was Christian" before she and Behar walked off the set in protest. They later came back to finish the show.

Barbara Walters criticized her co-hosts for walking off stage during the live show. But she said O'Reilly should make the distinction that extremists committed the terrorist act.

Behar and Goldberg returned after O'Reilly said that "if anyone felt that I was demeaning all Muslims, I apologize."

"If anyone felt that"? Gee, I couldn't imagine why they would "feel" something as plain on the nose on your face, Bill.

O'Reilly simply can't escape a simple fact: His position on the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy is innately bigoted, because it is founded on conflating all Muslims with a tiny fringe of violent radicals.

Incidentally, I'm not so sure Tim McVeigh is the best comparison to make to the 9/11 fanatics when it comes to domestic terrorists, other than that he was such a successful mass murderer -- mainly because McVeigh was only nominally a Christian and really was not motivated by religion so much as ideology. A better comparison, frankly, would be with Eric Rudolph, who was decidedly Christian and decidedly motivated by religion.

Or how about Scott Roeder? That's a comparison O'Reilly knows all about. And it just might sting a bit harder.


[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

'Oath Keepers' up in arms about NH officials taking baby away from activist -- but even his father says he's a child abuser

-- by Dave

The Oath Keepers, I've explained, are not just your ordinary Tea Party support group -- they're a disturbing and potentially very dangerous organization, built around radicalizing members of the military, veterans, and police officers.

Now they're planning to protest in New Hampshire in defense of one of their associates -- a sometime Oath Keepers activist who, along with his fiance, claims the state came in to their hospital room and removed their newborn baby, all supposedly because he's an Oath Keeper:

The director of a self-described anti-totalitarian group is urging supporters to rally outside a New Hampshire courthouse this week in support of an Epsom couple whose newborn was taken last week by state social workers.

Johnathon Irish and Stephanie Taylor say their baby was seized because of Irish's association with the Oath Keepers. Court documents, however, charge Irish with a history of violence toward Taylor and her children.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, told his group's members yesterday that the rally, scheduled for Thursday outside the Rochester Family Division Court, would be "in support of the First Amendment-protected right of freedom of association."

... "The fact that the political association of the father with Oath Keepers, and his gun ownership, were even among the reasons given for the taking of this baby takes this case beyond the realm of your mundane family court matter and turns it into something that could affect the rights of us all, nationwide," Rhodes wrote on the Oath Keepers website yesterday.

What's really happened, as is so often the case with bizarre stories like this, is that this has been ginned up for the past couple of weeks by Alex Jones and his conspiracy-theory operation, which has been hitting the story constantly with its broadcasts and videos, and dozens of would-be "libertarians" have been jumping on the bandwagon. And so already there have been small clusters of protesters outside all of Irish's subsequent court hearings.

Hopefully, none of the kooks out protesting in defense of this child abuser will do what kooks often do, hurt other people (and themselves) by acting out violently. After all, we've already seen an Oath Keeper planning to take over a county courthouse. Crazier things have happened -- and with this bunch, are likely to.

The video above (compiled from couple of YouTube reports gives you a look at the couple in question as they're interviewed about the claims against them. The second half is a phone interview with Stephanie's ex-husband, who points to reports about Johnathon Irish being investigated for child abuse of Stephanie's two children.

Daniel Barrick of the Concord Monitor, who has been doing stellar work reporting this story, has more on that:

But according to an affidavit provided to Irish by the state Division for Children, Youth and Families, state officials took the child because of Irish's long record of violence and abuse. According to the affidavit, a judge determined that Irish abused Taylor's two other children. She is still married to the father of those children, though Taylor said yesterday that her husband has refused to accept her divorce petition for the past two years.

The affidavit also says that the police in Rochester report a "lengthy history of domestic violence" between Taylor and Irish, and that she accused him of choking and hitting her on more than one occasion. According to the document, Irish failed to complete a domestic violence course as ordered by the state, and that a hearing was held last month to terminate Taylor's parental rights over her two older children.

Taylor "has failed to recognize the impact of domestic violence in her life and the potential danger it poses to a newborn baby," the affidavit reads. "Mr. Irish has not acknowledged any responsibility to date and remains a significant safety risk to an infant in his care. . . . Without the intervention of the court, the infant will be at risk of harm."

All this is corroborated by an unlikely by probably authoritative source: Johnathon Irish's father, John Irish. Here's an interview Irish had on a self-described "Christian Patriot" radio show, "A Call to Action," hosted by Pastor Butch Paugh. It took place on Tuesday:




It's an incredibly damning interview. John Irish describes his son as not just a child abuser but a wife abuser as well, a violent man with a vicious temper and an obsession with guns. Moreover, he is someone who lives off the government dole and yet belongs to one of the most noxious anti-government Patriot groups in the business. The key quote:

Irish: The reason they are concerned with Oath Keepers is that Johnathon has a fanatical attitude that Oath Keepers is an organization that is planning to overthrow the present government, and bring us back into strict accordance with the Constitution. And Johnathon's feeling on that is he needs to be acquiring weapons to be ready for that overthrow.

Paugh: Has he been using the Oath Keepers as a means of threatening people?

Irish: At times he has gone around telling people that if they don't back off and leave him alone, that he's going to have the Oath Keepers come after them, that they're violating his constitutional rights.

As for the claim that the decision to remove the child from its mother's custody had anything to do with Johnathon Irish's OathKeeperhood, well, that doesn't hold much water either:

The head of the New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families said allegations that the state seized a newborn girl over her father's political affiliations don't reflect the division's policies.

"That's what people seem to be focusing on, but it's not what I'm focusing on," said Maggie Bishop, director of DCYF. "To think that we would remove a child because of a person's affiliation with a club - that's not what we do."

Bishop said confidentiality requirements prevent her from discussing the specifics in the case of Johnathon Irish and Stephanie Taylor, the Epsom couple whose daughter was taken from their custody a day after her birth at Concord Hospital last week.

An affidavit spelling out the state's reason for taking the child included Irish's affiliation with the Oath Keepers, a group that pledges to defend the Constitution and to oppose government tyranny. But Bishop said such affiliations rarely play a role in child custody matters unless they are connected with safety issues.

"The Oath Keepers piece is the most insignificant part of that," Bishop said. "An affiliation is only as relevant as it relates to the safety concerns of a child."

Child custody matters are normally private affairs, but Irish and Taylor's publicity has shined intense attention on their case. The affidavit supporting the state's seizure of the newborn cited allegations of violence by Irish, including a report by the Rochester police of a "lengthy history of domestic violence" between him and Taylor.

"Without the intervention of the court, the infant will be at risk of harm," the affidavit reads.

Of course, we also remember that this is not the first time someone involved with the Oath Keepers has been involved in child-abuse charges. What are they putting in their Oaths?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Would-be Tides shooter: 'It was the things [Glenn Beck] did, it was the things he exposed, that blew my mind'

-- by Dave

John Hamilton, an enterprising young Bay Area radio journalist, freelancing for Media Matters, recently committed a simple act of journalism -- you know, interviewing the subject of an important story -- and came away with the most amazing scoop:

Two weeks later, I'm back at the Santa Rita Jail, speaking with Byron Williams through the reinforced glass window that separates Housing Unit 8 from the outside world. This time, I press Byron on his media influences.

[image display="original" link="source" align="right" alt="williams-20101004-mugshot.jpg" width="240" height="312" id="6275"][/image] "I considered all of the news agencies to be censored," Byron says. "So perhaps Fox has broken away from the mold."

"There's only one conservative channel," he adds. "That's Fox. All the other ones are all liberal channels."
At one point, I ask Byron if he thinks Fox is worthwhile.

"I'm not gonna say anyone is worthwhile," he replies. "I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind. I said, well, nobody does this."

Throughout the interview -- and in a letter I would receive later -- Byron tells me I need to watch Beck's programs from June if I want to learn about the Soros-Obama-Petrobras conspiracy he heatedly described in our earlier conversation.

...

"Think like a conspiracy theorist," Byron tells me during the interview. "Except don't use the word 'theory.' Because the conspiracies are not theories. The official report is the lie; the conspiracy is the truth."
Byron says he thinks Beck has improved in recent months. "I don't think he's a natural newscaster, you know what I mean?" he says. "I look at it more like a schoolteacher on TV, you know? He's got that big chalkboard and those little stickers, the decals. I like the way he does it."

...

Back at the Santa Rita Jail, Byron again weighs in on Beck. "You know, I'll tell you," he says, "Beck is gonna deny everything about violent approach and deny everything about conspiracies, but he'll give you every reason to believe it. He's protecting himself, and you can't blame him for that. So, I understand what he's doing."

I ask Byron if he thinks Beck has a political movement. After all, I say, hundreds of thousands of people came out to hear him speak at his "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C.

"I think so," says Byron. "If there's hundreds of thousands of us, yes. Yeah, it's coming down to the line, you know, and these controllers are not backing off. They want total control, and they're gonna try to get it. And more and more people are waking up."

I ask Byron, are you a revolutionary, a criminal, a terrorist, a patriot?

"I'm a revolutionary," he responds. "I believe in the Constitution. I do not like crime."

"You have to have a society that is pure and clean," he says. "And you have to keep it that way. We have to go back to our original principles."

Byron tells me his name came up on Beck's show.

Yeah, I heard that, I say.

Byron says: "Yeah, I didn't know it went that far. I thought maybe, OK, I hit the local news, that's great. You know, not something I really wanted to happen. But I didn't know it all went all the way across the country. They were trying to -- I guess -- it wasn't good, you know? They were trying to say that it was a thing that now that the left would use it against us, right? And an act of violence."

He continues.

"And I'd say, well, you know, that's the thing. It's that anything you do is going to be considered promoting terror attacks or promoting violence. So now they've got Beck labeled as this guy that is trying to incite violence. And what I say is that if the truth incites violence, it means that we've been living too long in the lies.

"Because it's gonna be too many -- it's gonna be more and more people that are, you know -- when you become unemployed, desperate, you can no longer pay your bills, when your society has come to a standstill, and cannot grow anymore, you're becoming socialized, everything, you know -- companies are moving overseas, what do you think is gonna happen? You know, for crying out loud. It's gonna get worse. And more and more people are gonna get desperate."

Go read the whole thing. Hamilton and the Media Matters team did a great job putting this report together.

Dana Milbank did some early reporting on this for the WaPo on Sunday, including some coverage of the Washington Examiner's interview with Williams:

The Examiner, in an article published this week, exonerated Beck by pointing to Williams's statement that "I know Beck continuously talks about peaceful resolution but I have constantly disagreed." This, however, misses the point. It's not that Beck is directly advocating violence (he might be in Santa Rita himself if he did that) but he's giving voice and legitimacy to the violent fringe.

As we've explained, it's irrelevant if Beck has accompanied his fearmongering with warnings against violence -- that's akin to warning people that, since he's sprinkling them with kerosene, they shouldn't light any matches.

Ideologues who inspire violent action through radicalizing propaganda have been with us for many decades, even centuries. The fact that, in recent years, the more action-prone of the people who violently respond to these exhortations are increasingly confined to the fringes of American politics doesn't mean there isn't still serious culpability on the part of those who indulge rhetoric that winds up unhinging people.

...

The critical components that distinguish irresponsible free speech from responsible are interworking pieces: whether it is intended to harm by scapegoating or demonizing, and whether or not it is provably false. ... [Demonizing rhetoric more often than not comprises] things that are simply not true -- though the tellers wished ardently that they were, they are purely concoctions of their fevered imaginations.

This is true of so much far-right wingnuttery -- the "Birther" conspiracy theories, the FEMA-camp claims, the "constitutionalist" theories about taxation and the Federal Reserve, to list just a few examples -- and yet people believe them anyway.

This rhetoric also acts as a kind of wedge between the people who absorb it and the real world. There is always a kind of cognitive dissonance that arises from believing things that are provably untrue, and people who begin to fanatically cling to beliefs that do not comport with reality find themselves increasingly willing to buy into other similarly unhinged beliefs. For those who are already unhinged, the effects are particularly toxic.

All of these theories, you'll observe, serve the explicit purpose of supporting a scapegoating narrative. And a number of them have been featured in some shape, form, or fashion, in the mainstream public discourse because they have been presented seriously for discussion by various right-wing talking heads, most notably Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs.

But pointing out their ethical and moral culpability inevitably means that they immediately blame it on the "crazy" people, and who can take responsibility for "crazy" people?

Indeed, now it's unmistakable -- Howard Kurtz's "isn't that guilt by association" wankery a couple Sundays ago notwithstanding -- that what we've been saying all along is taking place: Glenn Beck's (and Fox News') reckless and profoundly irresponsible style of broadcast "news" is in fact inspiring acts of violence.

Beck has tried to pretend he has nothing, nothing to do with this violence. He's even run segments desperately pleading with his audience not to resort to violence. Of course, he's also qualified that: If violence does break out, it will be because President Obama provoked it.

Beck also combines his warnings with long screeds demonizing progressives. As Milbank pointed out in the sidebar to his excellent (if belated) deconstruction of Beck's misbegotten twisting of history: "One of Glenn Beck's cleverest ways to float a good conspiracy theory without fear of facts getting in the way is to say he is "not saying" that which he is saying."

Actually, this tendency goes beyond just Beck's proclivity for conspiracism: He uses the same "I'm not saying, I'm just saying" dodge whenever he wants to float an idea that is vile and outrageous and create controversy and thus boost his ratings -- but he doesn't want to face any accountability for floating it.

Williams is right: Beck knows what he's doing. As we've said:

Make no mistake: Glenn Beck has been inciting acts of terrorist violence, and the Byron Williams case clearly establishes it -- even though it is far from the first such case. It in fact was preceded by several similar cases in which the dehumanizing rhetoric, scapegoating and conspiracist smears promoted by Fox clearly played a powerful role in the violence that ensued:

-- Jim David Adkisson's shooting attack on a Knoxville Unitarian church. Adkisson left behind a manifesto that repeated numerous right-wing talking points generated by Fox commentators and specifically cited a Bernard Goldberg book. His library at home was stocked with books by Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage.

-- Richard Poplawski's shooting of three Pittsburgh police officers, because he believed a conspiracy theory that President Obama intended to take Americans' guns away from them, and he reportedly believed the cops had arrived to carry it out. Poplawski, a white supremacist, liked to post Beck videos about FEMA concentration camps to the Stormfront comments board.

-- Scott Roeder's assassination of Dr. George Tiller. Roeder was heavily involved in Operation Rescue and avidly read its newsletters -- which featured weekly pieces from Bill O'Reilly, including several attacking Tiller as a "baby killer" -- and its website, which liked to feature O'Reilly videos attacking Dr. Tiller. Indeed, O'Reilly had indulged a high-profile and unusually obsessive (not to mention vicious) jihad against Tiller, resulting in 42 such attacks on Tiller, 24 of which referred to him generically as a "baby killer."

The Byron Williams case was functionally a shot across Fox News' bow: a warning that it is playing with extreme fire by allowing Beck to recklessly demonize specific targets and to inflame his audience against them by imputing the most extreme and nefarious motives to them. In the case of Tides, Beck has been claiming all along that they are trying to "brainwash your children" -- a charge that always raises extremely visceral reactions.

If Fox allows this continue, then eventually someone -- someone who eats, breathes and lives Fox News, as so many right-wingers do these days -- is going to succeed. Eventually, someone is going to walk into (or drive up to) the offices of some group that Beck has singled out as being part of a nefarious progressive "cancer" that is "destroying America" -- whether it is the Tides Foundation, or the ACLU, or the SEIU, someone at MSNBC, or from ACORN -- and shoot the place up or set off a bomb.

And then not just Glenn Beck, but Fox News and all its affiliates, are going to have blood on their hands. And there will not be any hiding it or pretending otherwise.

Beck wants to pretend that all he's done is "discuss" the Tides Foundation -- but in fact he's consistently portrayed them as nefarious key players in the progressive "conspiracy" to "destroy America from within", and he's cast them in a particularly slimy role: propagandizing your unsuspecting children. Is it any wonder someone decided to "take them out"?

That's how this kind of rhetoric works. As I explain in The Eliminationists:

The history of eliminationism in America, and elsewhere, shows that rhetoric plays a significant role in the travesties that follow. It creates permission for people to act out in ways they might not otherwise. It allows them to abrogate their own humanity by denying the humanity of people deemed undesirable or a cultural contaminant.

At every turn in American history—from Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda’s characterization of the New World “barbarians” as “these pitiful men … in whom you will scarcely find any vestiges of humanness,” to Colonel Chivington’s admonition that “Nits make lice!,” to the declarations that “white womanhood” stood imperiled by oversexed black rapists, to James Phelan’s declaration that Japanese immigrants were like “rats in the granary”—rhetoric has conditioned Americans to think of those different from themselves as less than human. Indeed, their elimination is not just acceptable, but devoutly to be wished and actively sought.

And here:

It's one thing if a mentally unstable person acts out violently because of some perception or belief they obtained on their own -- when, for instance, someone shoots up a classroom or school because they heard voices telling them to do it, or from reading hidden messages into Metallica lyrics.

It's quite another if a person acts violently out of rhetoric specifically intended to inspire action, particularly radicalizing rhetoric. There are two specific kinds of rhetoric in this category that become profoundly irresponsible in this context: eliminationist rhetoric -- that is, words that demonize and dehumanize their subjects by characterizing them as toxic objects fit only for elimination -- and conspiracist rhetoric, which creates a state of paranoia and a feeling of helplessness among those who believe it. A final factor -- provable falsity -- often exponentially raises the effects of these kinds of rhetoric, because it has the real-world effect of driving a wedge between the believer and objective reality: people are far more likely to act out violently if they are disconnected from the real world.

Thanks to John Hamilton's fine journalism, Byron Williams has functionally confirmed what we've seen building in slow motion: a media outlet capable of launching an eliminationist crusade. It's time Americans woke up to the very real danger this represents.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Sharron Angle and David Vitter don the hooded masks with their fake 'scary immigrant' ads

-- by Dave

The other day National Review ran an open letter from Dennis Prager to Hispanics in which he assured them they would always be better off voting Republican, even though it might seem like right-wingers are hellbent on deporting 12 million Latinos these days. Among his soothing assurances:

Those who tell you it is racism or xenophobia are lying about their fellow Americans for political or ideological reasons. You know from your daily interactions with Americans that the vast majority of us treat you with the dignity that every fellow human being deserves. Your daily lives are the most eloquent refutation of the charge of racism and bigotry. The charge is a terrible lie. Please don’t believe it. You know it is not true.

Um, right. Does Prager really believe this?

Because if he actually, you know, knew any Hispanics he would know that they live in America under a constant cloud: Regularly treated as subhumans -- indeed, regularly labeled "illegal aliens," a classic dehumanizing trope -- and threatened constantly with being swept up in a Kafkaesque immigration system, even if they are here legally. Depicted with demeaning racial stereotypes, and treated by the Anglo public accordingly. Demonized as "criminals" simply for their presence here. And as a result, increasingly at risk of being the victim of a Latino-bashing hate crime.

And the people who make this kind of racist dehumanization a regular part of their daily business? The American Right, of course.

Exhibit A: The vicious political ads being run by Republicans Sharron Angle in Nevada and David Vitter in Louisiana, both using phony stock footage of "illegal aliens" sneaking in over our borders. The racist stereotyping in these ads is so clear and startling that Angle and Vitter might as well have just donned their Klan hoods.

Observes Adam Serwer:

Her campaign's latest ad, attacking Reid for his support of the DREAM Act, which Greg mentioned earlier in his roundup, is as despicable as it is desperate. In its naked appeal to racial animus against Latinos, it rivals the infamous 1988 "Willie Horton" ad deployed against Michael Dukakis.

The ad features a trio of "illegal immigrants" looking for a way to cross a chain link fence, as the word "illegal" flashes across the screen in bright red letters. After making previously debunked claims accusing Reid of pushing for "tax breaks" for "illegals," it goes after Reid's support of the DREAM Act, which would offer a path to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States before the age of 16 and who go to college or serve in the military. The ad says Reid wants to give "preferred college tuition rates to none other than illegal aliens," presumably referring to the fact that it would allow undocumented residents in a given state to qualify for in-state tuition.

Note that, despite the fact that the DREAM Act would specifically apply to undocumented immigrants who had no choice in being here and are diligent, patriotic and Americanized enough to attend college or commit to sacrificing their lives for their adopted country, Angle's campaign makes them out as smug, intimidating Latino migrants who came here deliberately in order to take advantage.

Andrea Nill reports:

The racial overtones of the ad are so offensive that the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has called it blatantly “racist”and is demanding not only an apology but that the ad be pulled altogether. WDSU reports:

“We found the ad to be totally abhorrent and shocking, and I’m going to use the ‘R’ word and say racist,” said Darlene Kattan, of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana.

Kattan said her issue is not with the senator’s position on border security, but rather how he presents his message. “In this ad, he has these Hollywood stereotypes, caricature-types portraying Latino workers,” Kattan said. “First of all, he uses the word ‘illegal’ so many times.” [...]

“To Sen. David Vitter, we are saying you owe us an apology, we are offended, we expect an immediate apology and we expect this ad to be yanked from the airwaves immediately,” Kattan said.

And as Melissa Bell reports, some of the scary-looking "illegal aliens" pictured in the ads weren't actually illegal at the time -- they were photographed in Mexico!

Ah, nothing like that GOP outreach to Hispanics, eh? Just keep soothing them that this really isn't racism, when it's as plain as the nose on your face, Dennis Prager -- I'm sure that will really help win you some voters. For Democrats.
[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Gee, I wonder if Fox will send out its ambush TV news crews after Charles Leaf

-- by Dave

Well, will ironies never cease:

A woman answered the door this afternoon at the Wyckoff home of Fox 5 news reporter Charles Leaf — where authorities say he sexually abused a 4-year-old girl — but the woman declined to speak to reporters.

A second woman arrived at the house later, going inside without speaking to reporters.

The award-winning Leaf, who is married with two children, was charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said. The house, a renovated Cape Cod with a three-car garage and dormers near the roof, is in a modest neighborhood in Wyckoff.

The child is an acquaintance, according to authorities. Leaf is being held in the Bergen County Jail on $250,000 bail and will be arraigned on Nov. 4 in Wyckoff Municipal Court.

Leaf, an ex-Marine, joined the station in 2006 and is the station’s investigative and general-assignment reporter who has covered national stories, including the Bernard Madoff scandal and the proposed development of a mosque near the World Trade Center site, according to his résumé on myfoxny.com.

A spokesperson for the station said Fox 5 was aware of the situation and was reviewing it.

The last time we saw Charles Leaf, he was busy chasing hapless accountants with a camera while ostensibly pursuing the financiers of the "Ground Zero mosque," all in the name of another Fox News just-coincidentally-Islamophobia-baiting "investigation".

As we observed at the time:

It's bad enough that they sicced their camera crews on a bunch of unsuspecting bankers, accountants and real-estate developers who are, unsurprisingly, not willing to have their lives destroyed by a scandal-mongering bunch of fake journalists on a witch hunt. But the pernicious part of this kind of reportage is the way that it implies guilt -- for some unnamed misdeed -- simply in the refusal to go on-camera.

We have long said that this style of pseudo-journalism is a violation of a whole raft of basic ethic standards for real journalists. The Fox crews disgracefully badger people outside their homes, and choose targets not merely for some official misdeed but, in some cases, merely for writing or saying something the reporter didn't like.

And this kind of reportage is even more clearly unethical, because it victimizes a bunch of ordinary citizens whose only misdeed is being associated in business dealings with an unpopular project. That's deeply disturbing.

Just remember: Whenever a Fox crew gets near you, simply repeat the magical words, "Andrea Mackris". They'll go away, as do all plagues eventually.

Somehow, I can't see Charles Leaf saying those words. Nor do I see him having to.

But then, Bill O'Reilly got all worked up the other night over his favorite new race-baiting bit -- "the New Black Panthers" case -- which he then connected to Meg Whitman's fired maid (don't ask me, you have to see the video to understand).



If the DOJ doesn't go after the nanny, O'Reilly asserted, it would be just like them ignoring the "New Black Panthers"!

So, Bill: If you don't go after Charles Leaf and harass him in his home -- for that matter, if you don't even bother to report on his arrest, particularly not on the shows where he appeared regularly (we're looking at you, Megyn Kelly) -- will that be proof positive that Fox News is nothing but a hack propaganda operation, a complete journalistic sham?

Well, yeah. But we already knew that.

[Crossposted at Crooks and Liars.]

Brent Bozell whines that librul media keeps painting Tea Partiers as nutcases. Actually, they do that by themselves

-- by Dave

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Brent Bozell of the right-wing "watchdog" Media Research Center was a guest on Hannity last night, whining about how the mean librul media keep painting those poor innocent wholesome upstanding realamerican Tea Partiers as extremists -- it's just so unfair!

Bozell, like Miss Anne Elk, has his theory:

Bozell: Yeah, let's understand what's going on here, Sean. If you were a Democrat running for re-election, and you wanted to run on your record, on the record of the Democrats, are you going to run on an agenda that calls for the nationalization of the banks, the socialization of health care, massive new tax increases, out-of-control deficit spending? If you want to look at an extreme agenda, it is the Democrats' agenda.

Um, excuse the brief interruption here, but, WTF? Who exactly is calling for nationalizing the banks or imposing massive new tax increases? And "socializing health care"? It's true that liberal Democrats called for a public option, but that is a plan that would preserve private health care as well. Bozell is just making crap up -- which, in fact, he has a long history of doing.

Bozell: They have only one option, which is to say, 'You may not like us, but those Republicans, they're even worse.' And that's what these attacks on the Tea Parties are all about.

Now, if Democrats want to do that, that's fine, it's politics. But what's reprehensible is that the liberal media are carrying their water for them every single night with these attacks on the Tea Parties.

This was followed by an amusing exchange with Hannity in which they whined about how poor Carl Paladino and his 10-year-old daughter have been treated unethically by the New York Post. Oh, is that that the liberal New York Post, fellas? Hahahahahahaha.

Bozell summed it all up with his theory, and what it is too:

Bozell: Sean, we watched this happen all year long, where the media will wade into a Tea Party even with hundreds of thousands of people, looking for that one brain-dead Lyndon LaRouche follower who isn't even a member of the Tea Party, who will say some crackjob, whacko thing, they'll put it all over the news.

Actually, you don't have to dive far into the Tea Parties to find them saying crackjob whacko things. After all, the "Birther" theory that President Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim is believed by a majority of Tea Partiers. They continue to believe that Obama is going to institute "death panels," that he's going to take their guns, or any of the other top 10 provably untrue things Tea Partiers believe.

Which includes, by the way, the claim that Obama is raising their taxes (he actually passed the largest middle-class tax cut in history) or that he's going to nationalize the banks. Things that people like Brent Bozell and Sean Hannity glibly repeat as truth on national television.

But really, the media didn't have to wade into the crowds to find the nutcases spewing extremism at Tea Party events: They only needed to go listen to the events' official speakers.

After all, who can forget Joseph Farah of World Net Daily at the National Tea Party Convention, assuring everyone that that Birther theories were all perfectly true:

Farah: I have a dream. My dream is that IF Barack Obama even seeks re-election as president in 2012, he won’t be able to go to any city, any town, any hamlet in America without seeing signs that ask, “Where’s the birth certificate?

It’s a simple question and it has not been answered despite what Bill O’Reilly will tell you.

The rest of the media think it’s ridiculous, which makes me certain it’s one of the most important questions we can be asking. It really hits the target. Polls now show 33 percent of Californians either believe Obama was born outside the country or have doubts about his alleged Hawaiian birth. Nationwide it’s closer to 50 percent. Even significant numbers of Democrats have doubts.

But the media and the politicians keep pretending it’s all been settled.

I say if it’s been settled, show us the birth certificate.

And then there were the folks at the Fourth of July Tea Parties in 2009, before everyone had twigged to the reality that they needed to tone things down:



Usually, your designated speakers are not the nutcases who hang out on the fringe. But at all too many Tea Party events, there's no difference.

The "liberal media" don't have to twist anything to make the Tea Parties look extremist. The Tea Partiers manage to do that all on their own.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Sarah Palin and Hannity whine about Obama and Dems' 'politics of destruction' -- then laud McMahon's nasty smear ad

-- by Dave

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Ah, the piteous whine of the crested Republican, heard everywhere whenever Democrats hit back: It's those mean liberals and their 'politics of personal destruction'!

Of which, of course, they are perfectly innocent.

Thus we had Sarah Palin last night, kvetching all over Sean Hannity's Fox News show, about how the recent poll numbers ginned up at Fox showing Republicans winning the entire planet, "because Sean, what this means is that the left will become even more and more desperate and adamant to destroy those who are running on a common-sense conservative agenda."

They whined especially loudly about Alan Grayson's "Taliban Dan" ad and other "smears":

Palin: Remember what they are doing -- this is coming from Obama's presidential campaign book, which goes back to Alinsky's campaign book, Rules For Radicals, which Obama and Michelle Obama have quoted from. And that is the politics of personal destruction, perhaps will be the only thing you have on your opponent, and so you make things up about them. You lie, you spin, you do whatever you can, and you use a complicit media to assist you in this, left-wing media to assist you in this. So these candidates just need to be prepared for those rules of radicals to be applied to them. They need to stay on message, they need to stay optimistic.

Yeah, we remember the 2008 campaign, when Palin was busy attacking Obama as a radical who "palled around with terrorists" and making stuff up about him. Come to think of it, she's still doing it here! But hey, that's not personal destruction. Nuh-uh.

A few minutes later, Hannity ran Linda McMahon's nasty ad accusing Richard Blumenthal of being a liar, calling it "hard hitting and truthful" -- when in fact it's actually just a willful distortion and a smear job of the lowest order. Indeed, everyone in Connecticut is aware that it's all just a McMahon hit job.

But Hannity loved it. So did Palin.

Figures.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Megyn Kelly gives Joe Miller another shot at endorsing Palin's presidential bid. He declines

-- by Dave

Well, the popcorn is a popping: After the revelations in Mudflats that Todd and Sarah Palin were pissed about his lackluster, noncommittal answer as to whether he would support Sarah's candidacy for President, Joe Miller went on Megyn Kelly's show this morning on Fox and got another shot at it -- and declined.

Along the way, he managed to raise the question: Is Joe Miller a Birther?

Check it out:

KELLY: So let me just ask you, let me just put it out there then -- are you willing to say now whether you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president?

MILLER: You know, I'll tell you the exact same thing that I just said this last week, while I was in D.C. And that is, she, if she puts her name in the hat, and that's totally up to her, there are a number of others that are there as well, any one of which would make a far better presidential candidate than what we've got right now in the Oval Office. But her decision to run is hers and hers alone, it's not our decision as to whether or not she runs. It certainly is a sideline to what's going on now in Alaska. And we aren't going to fall into the trap, again, that the media's trying to plant, create as some sort of a struggle between the Murkowskis and the Palins, because that is not what this race is about --

KELLY: I hear you, honestly, I'm not trying to ,lay any trap. I'm just wondering, you know -- she endorsed you, she and Todd Palin were clearly upset you wouldn't say whether she was qualified. And I wanted to give you the chance to say yes or no. It sounds like you're not really going to say yes or no.

MILLER: Well, no -- let me make this unequivocal. She's done phenomenal things for this country, there's no question about that. She's elevated the debate critical to our race, and let me tell you also, we know what qualified means, don't we? We know that we have a constitutional requirement for somebody that's gonna run for President. Of course she's qualified.

Well, Todd issued a statement saying he had just misunderstood Miller, but really, there's no misunderstanding this: Joe Miller refuses to endorse Palin as a presidential candidate.

Can't imagine he'll be pleased with a mere endorsement of her bare constitutional qualifications, since everyone running meets them -- everyone, it seems, but certain Kenyan-born Muslims.

Because that seems to be what Miller is referencing by emphasizing "we have a constitutional requirement for somebody that's gonna run for President". Earlier, Miller was emphatic that the current occupant of the Oval Office is unqualified.

It sure sounds like Miller is a believer in the Birther theories. It's about time someone asked Miller about this. If, that is, he'll let them.




[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Fox guest Lars Larson thinks 'racist' blacks should be 'ashamed' of their support for President Obama

-- by Dave

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It's getting pathetic really, how eager conservatives are to accuse black people of racism these days -- a la Andrew Breitbart and his various Shirley-Sherrod-like smear jobs. Aren't these the same folks who squeal piteously that "racist is the worst thing you can call anybody" whenever it's a right-winger who indulges it?

For instance, that recent Gallup poll finding support for President Obama still strong among blacks but down to only 36 percent among whites was evidence of "racism" among blacks, according to wingnut talk-show host Lars Larson yesterday on Fox's America Live with Megyn Kelly:

Larson: Well, it tells you that black Americans, for whatever reason, have decided to support this president, and it's hard not to read the race bias in that. To suggest that the president has failed, his policies have failed, he doesn't appear to be listening to the American public, and the American public has figured that out. And the only ones who are still solidly supporting him by 91 percent, are people who happen to share his skin color. So it's hard not to see that that support is because of his skin color.

And I would think that if this was reversed, if this was white voters supporting a white candidate in the face of overwhelming failure, then people would say they're supporting him because they're being racist. I think black Americans should be ashamed of those numbers.

Yeah, OK, I wound up with coffee all over my keyboard when I heard that one too.

See, Lars, it may be hard for a white guy from Portland to get this, but here's how this racism thing works:

Racism, once again, is all about believing one's race to be superior to all others, and concomitantly that all other races are inferior -- and it always emphasizes dehumanizing attacks, demonization, and character slurs in the process of establishing that inferiority.

So it is in fact racist to be ready to jump the gun and condemn someone of another race as being a failure -- with only the slimmest of evidence, and plenty of counterevidence.

It's not racist to refuse to join in that condemnation, particularly if you're a member of that race -- and particularly if that race has a history of being prematurely condemned as failures. Quite the contrary: this is known as standing up to racism.

So you know, when you're busy throwing President Obama under the bus and accusing black people of "racism," you're actually just raising real issues about just why so many white people are eager to do so -- issues that you and Megyn Kelly prefer to bury under groundless charges of racism.

And it's funny: the approval ratings for President Bush never broke the numbers down by race, so we can't be sure. But my recollection is that the tiny, sub-30-percent of Americans who still supported President Bush late in his tenure were almost 100 percent white.

And yes, they did so in the face of manifest and abject failure: Bush's presidency was the most catastrophic of any in our lifetimes.

But I sure didn't hear anyone accusing those bitter-enders of racism at the time. Particularly not from the likes of Lars Larson -- who was adamantly among them.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Beck points to pledge recitals to compare the Lincoln Memorial rallies. Here's footage he says he couldn't find from One Nation

-- by Dave

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Glenn Beck yesterday decided to compare his "Restoring Honor" rally to Saturday's One Nation rally by the usual Beckian means: contrasting his audience with the "radicals" -- "communists, revolutionaries, people who have called for the destruction of America." -- who showed up for the more recent rally.

How did he know they were radicals? Because they were "carrying giant signs bragging" about being socialists -- in contrast to to Beckapalaooza, where "there weren't any signs because the people who came weren't professional protestors or agitators." Of course, he didn't bother noting that he had also pleaded with his audience not to bring signs.

But my favorite moment in the comparison came when he decided to run the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance from 8/28 side by side with the one from One Nation -- well, sorta. See, he of course had footage from 8/28, which featured (as you can see on YouTube) just a single white Boy Scout leading the pledge. This was perfectly fitting, considering the unbearable whiteness of Beck's crowd -- another big difference Beck managed to overlook.

When it came time to show the One Nation side, though, he claimed he didn't have footage of people delivering the pledge: "We didn't have any footage because it was pre-show -- why, you know, make it part of the show". Instead, in order to show that people at One Nation weren't as respectful by placing their hands over their hearts, he could only run a single still photo.

This is more than just absurdly stacking the deck; it is just a flat-out lie. I recorded the Pledge while I was there, and the timestamp on my video shows it was shot at 12:19 p.m. -- well after the show had begun.

So I've run it here, and I think it's obvious why Team Beck mysteriously couldn't "find" the footage: Not only is it clear that people are engaged and respectful, but the Pledge was recited by a lovely gathering of schoolchildren of all ages, colors, and creeds, and not just a single white male.

In other words, it was perfectly emblematic of the REAL differences between the crowds: One looked like America -- the real America. The other looked like a conservative talk-show host's vision of America: Bizzarro Planet Beck.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

GOP's Dino Rossi gets Hannity job, touts campaign. Unmentioned: His foreclosure business.

-- by Dave

We're going to have to start calling it a "Hannity Job": If you're a Republican candidate, you can go on TV, get free airtime, and get stroked by Sean Hannity! All thanks to Fox News, the Republican propaganda network that puts it money where its mouths are.

Last night it was Dino Rossi's turn. Rossi is the Establishment Republican who actually managed to defeat the Tea Party candidate in Washington state, and he's giving Sen. Patty Murray -- a steady progressive vote from the Northwest, and a player on the Appropriations Committee -- a run for her money. A few things went unmentioned, as usual, including the fact that the state's Tea Party candidate, Clint Didier, refused to endorse Rossi. (Rossi declined when Didier demanded he pay obeisance to the Tea Party agenda.) And then there's Rossi's millions made from foreclosures after the housing bubble burst.

You see, there's a reason Dino Rossi wasn't a favorite of the Tea Party crowd: He ain't no populist.

As TPM reported last summer:

Rossi's day job entails very publicly helping rich people profit off the misfortune of those unlucky enough to have obtained a mortgage in the last four years or so. And that's leaving some in Washington a little confused about his priorities.

Rossi is a former gubernatorial nominee, and national Republicans are stoked about him now that he's decided to run for Senate against incumbent Sen. Patty Murray (D). Sticking with the job he had before he announced his candidacy, Rossi has decided stay on as the headline speaker for a series of seminars advising real estate speculators on how to profit off the collapsed mortgage market. Today, his spokeperson told Salon that he plans do more before he's done.

The Democrats are reminding voters, too:



We'll be hosting Senator Murray here for a live chat Thursday the 7th from 5 to 6 p.m. Be sure to tune in. And be prepared to help out if you can. Her seat is one of the important ones.



[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

OneNation march plans send Glenn Beck into a Red-baiting frenzy: Marxists are everywhere!

-- by Dave

Hmmm. Gotta wonder if Glenn Beck is worried that his mass self-promotion -- in which he claimed half a million people turned out, when the real number was about 90,000 -- is going to be overshadowed this weekend by the OneNation march being planned in D.C. this weekend.

Because he sure was turning up the volume yesterday:

Beck: Now, I'd love to see the president come out and denounce socialism, Marxists, communists, revolutionaries. Once! Mr. President, once! Deny Marxism, Communism, revolutionaries! Tell us you are against all of this!

Marxism is evil, and the only thing it has contributed to in the history of mankind is mass graves. All of these groups, and the president of the United States, want nothing short of fundamental transformation of America. It is not about cleaning up corruption. It is only a beginning -- a beginning of a radical, revolutionary Marxist land.

Do not allow them to get away with the lies! Do not allow them to say that we are just "one nation, working together". "We're just trying to put America back to work, and putting America back together." These people, a lot of them have fought their entire life to destroy America!

Now I get the guilt by association. If there's a lone wacko in a group that sneaks in, I get it. You happen to be standing next to somebody and they take a picture of them, and they're a whack job, you didn't know that necessarily.

But when you the overwhelming majority of groups organizing this event believe in Marxism, then yes we can, yes we can judge you by the people that you keep company with.

Overwhelming majority? Hell, go to the One Nation website and check out their extraordinarily long list of backers. It includes every major progressive group, including the NAACP and the NEA and the AFL-CIO, as chief sponsors, and a list of dozens of left-leaning groups -- including, indeed, the Socialist and Communist groups that Beck singles out as representative of the entire group. But in fact, they are a tiny minority of the overwhelmingly mainstream organizations at the march.

And yes, your humble correspondent will be there -- just to piss Beck off. More soon.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The Unbearable Lameness Of James O'Keefe: Attempt To Punk CNN Reporter Is A Final Stupidity

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Breitbart's boy strikes again:

A conservative activist known for making undercover videos plotted to embarrass a CNN correspondent by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating "palace of pleasure" and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show.

James O'Keefe, best known for hitting the community organizing group ACORN with an undercover video sting, hoped to get CNN Investigative Correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat filled with sexually explicit props and then record the session, those documents show.

The plan apparently was thwarted after Boudreau was warned minutes before it was supposed to happen.

"I never intended to become part of the story," Boudreau said. "But things suddenly took a very strange turn."

O'Keefe is best known for making a series of undercover videos inside ACORN offices around the country in 2009. The 40-year-old liberal group was crippled by scandal after O'Keefe and fellow activist Hannah Giles allegedly solicited advice from ACORN workers on setting up a brothel and evading taxes.

We all remember the utter lameness of his attempt to wiretap Mary Landrieu, which blew up in his face. Well, this scheme was even lamer:

CNN was forwarded an e-mail, sent from O'Keefe's e-mail address, to the executive director of Project Veritas, Izzy Santa; and two conservative activists, Ben Wetmore of New Orleans and Jonathon Burns of St. Louis, Missouri, dated after the call with Boudreau.

"Getting Closer," the e-mail states. "Audio attached conversation with Abbie. What do you think of her reaction guys. She said she could do it Monday, Tuesday. Ben, you think I could get her on the boat?"

Boudreau flew to Baltimore, Maryland, on August 17, rented a car, and drove to suburban Lusby, where O'Keefe wanted to meet. O'Keefe sent a text message to Boudreau that morning, saying that Santa would meet her when she got there.

When Boudreau arrived at the address, a house located on a tributary of the Patuxent River, Santa approached her with a tape recorder in her hand and said she wanted to talk in the car, Boudreau said.

"I noticed she had a little bit of dirt on her face, her lip was shaking, she seemed really uncomfortable and I asked her if she was OK," Boudreau said. "The first thing she basically said to me was, 'I'm not recording you, I'm not recording you. Are you recording me?' I said, 'No, I'm not recording you,' and she showed me her digital recorder and it was not recording."

Santa told Boudreau that O'Keefe planned to "punk" her by getting on a boat where hidden cameras were set up. Boudreau said she would not get on the boat and asked Santa why O'Keefe wanted her there.

"Izzy told me that James was going to be dressed up and have strawberries and champagne on the boat, and he was going to hit on me the whole time," Boudreau said.
A short time later, O'Keefe emerged from a boat docked behind the house. In that brief conversation, Boudreau told O'Keefe that he did not have permission to record her, and reminded him that the meeting was solely to discuss the upcoming music video shoot, and he had never mentioned that he wanted to tape their meeting.

Boudreau ended the meeting and left. After the incident, Santa gave CNN a series of e-mails she says shows O'Keefe intended to try to embarrass both the network and Boudreau through an elaborate plan.

The most amazing thing about this is that anyone continues to consider that Andrew Breitbart's pseudo-journalistic propaganda products have even an ounce of credibility. Why exactly was CNN even talking to O'Keefe? That'll teach 'em.

Maybe now is the time to start asking people exactly why ACORN was killed by Congress -- and doing something about it.

So What If Marc Lamont Hill Has Factual Evidence Of Tea Party Racism? Liberals NEVER Win On Bill O'Reilly's Show

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly last week challenged Marc Lamont Hill to come up with evidence of racism within the Tea Parties. So this week, Hill returned and plopped the evidence right in front of him.

Guess what? It didn't matter. O'Reilly tried countering with specious nonsense -- claiming, for instance, that "we don't know" who actually is putting up those racist signs at Tea Party rallies (according to Michelle Malkin, after all, they're purely the work of librul "infiltrators" trying to make them look bad). O'Reilly also tried on this claim:

O'Reilly: Look, if you want to go to the NAACP, you can find the same kind of radical element there.

Oh really? Does O'Reilly have any evidence to support this inflammatory claim? Of course not! He's Bill O'Reilly! We'll do it live!

Then Hill provided the scientific evidence from that University of Washington study of Tea Parties' racial attitudes. O'Reilly countered with a bizarre and half-assed attack piece from Real Clear Politics (to which the authors of the study have already responded). Interestingly, O'Reilly can't even read the RCP critique correctly and managed to mangle the numbers to say exactly the opposite of what they actually say.

Hill stayed on point, and O'Reilly refused to budge. He eventually resorted to that old standby, BillO Projection Theater:

O'Reilly: You believe what you believe, but I think you came in with a preconceived notion. And so did the professor.

Hill: No, I came in as a trained social scientist reading a study.

O'Reilly: You came in with two examples. I rebutted.

Hill: Yes, with fallacious information.

O'Reilly: No, it's not fallacious. Real Clear is very clear about how they did it.

Hill: No. But they're wrong.

O'Reilly: You say they're wrong, they say they're right. Let the audience decide.

Hill: Audience, please look at the study and read this for yourself. You'll see.

O'Reilly: OK! I want them to!

Hill: And if it turns out that my interpretation is correct, would that then make the Tea Party racist?

O'Reilly: No.

Hill: Well then you're saying I can't win! Even if they agree with my interpretation of the study, you're still right!

That's right. Why liberals think it will ever be any different on O'Reilly's show -- or any Fox show, for that matter -- is beyond me.

Joe Miller: The Patriot Movement May Be About To Get Its Own Senator

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

One of the real-world effects of the rise of the Tea Party movement, as we've been reporting here awhile, is that it has effectively revived the militia/Patriot movement of the 1990s.

A crystalline example of this is the Sarah-Palin-endorsed GOP Senate nominee in Alaska, Joe Miller.

As Justin Elliott reports for Salon, Miller is a favorite of the gun-toting secessionists who populate the state's militia ranks:

But the so-called "open-carry" display actually underscores the unusual enthusiasm Miller's candidacy has generated among members of militia and Second Amendment absolutist groups in Alaska who are excited about his hardline stance against the federal government.

"It's safe to say that Joe Miller is a friend of patriots," Norm Olson, commander of the Alaska Citizens Militia, told Salon. "His beliefs and platform favor Second Amendment rights as well as the power of nullification when the federal government intrudes into the private lives of Alaskans."

Olson, who lives on the Kenai Peninsula, claims that his group has several hundred members and supporters, adding, "what fuels the militia is fear." The militia's ideology is outlined in a list of 17 "acts of war." The list includes "firearms restrictions or other disarmament," "mandatory medical anything," "federal patrols," "taking control of children under duress or threat," "federalization of law enforcement," and "surrender powers to a corporation or foreign government."

That emphasis on opposition to federal power meshes with Miller's central message: get the federal government out of our lives. He often calls himself a "constitutional conservative." His website explains what that means:

The only answer [to government spending] is to return our federal government to the limits prescribed by our Constitution. Federal powers not specified in the Constitution are reserved to the States by the 10th Amendment.

Critics call this Tentherism, an interpretation of the Constitution that does not allow for a vast swath of what the federal government does today -- from Social Security to gun regulation. This is the centerpiece of Miller's political identity. He asserts that there is no constitutional authority for the health care reform law or proposed cap and trade legislation. He advocates a state takeover of federally controlled land in Alaska such as Denali National Park.

These are the kinds of positions that are creating buzz in the militia world.

Indeed, as I've explained in detail previously, the "Tenthers" are Patriots, pure and simple: the whole "state sovereignty" scheme was invented in the 1990s by a far-right Oklahoma legislator named Charles Duke, who was known for consorting with the vilest elements of the extremist right, including Christian Identity leaders.

Elliott's piece is excellent, though as Political Animal at the Alaska Dispatch notes, there are additional facts that add more nuance to the story. In particular, while the story focuses on some of the more colorful Patriot-movement figures in the state -- including Norm Olson, who actually only relatively recently moved to the state from Michigan -- it omits the state's longest-running and most substantial Patriot-movement presence: the Alaska Independence Party, which has the been movement's chief vehicle in Alaska since the early 1990s.

Miller claims he doesn't know what the agenda of the AIP might be, but as Craig Medred at Alaska Dispatch observes, Miller's scheme to boot the federal government out of the state of Alaska is pretty much identical to the AIP's.

Listen to Miller here, last Thursday on Fox with Neil Cavuto:

Miller: Well, you know, to change D.C., you've got to change the people that are there. I mean, this is the mindset -- it's a crisis of leadership that's caused our country to be at the point that it's at. The direction of this nation, it's not happened, you know, in one or two years. It's taken decades. And that's really reflected, I think, in the composition that we have up in D.C. today. So, you know, it's not an easy task, I will tell you. But that seniority's not going to matter after November.

[It sure won't in Alaska, bub. Because you know that pork pipeline Alaskans have been used to bellying up to and feeding off of? It's going away, far away.]

Miller: Clearly Alaskans are going to I think embrace the future, which is, I think, resource development, moving forward our state by getting more state control, and pushing the federal government out our back yard.

That's going to be one helluva removal job, considering that we're talking about 222 million acres -- 60 percent of federal lands -- that was granted to the state when it was granted statehood in 1959. It's almost entirely impenetrable wilderness. All told, that's an area surpassing either Texas or California in size.

But that's just part of what the AIP has been pushing as its agenda for some time. Moreover, it makes sense that Miller would sound like an AIP candidate, since his sponsor, Sarah Palin, has a long and colorful history with the AIP too.

Many of you will recall the story Max Blumenthal and I co-wrote investigating Palin's connections to the AIP and Wasilla's tax-protesting Patriots. As I summarized back then:

* Palin formed a political alliance with Wasilla's Patriot-movement faction while still a Wasilla city councilman, and they played a significant role in her successful campaign against the three-term incumbent mayor in 1996.

* Palin, in one of her first acts as mayor, attempted to fill the seat vacated by her ascension to the mayorship with one of the leaders of this faction -- a bellicose man described by the city councilman who blocked his appointment as having a "violent" disposition.

* Mayor Palin also fired the city's museum director at the behest of this faction.

* Palin also organized this faction to turn out at a city council meeting to shout down a proposed local gun-control ordinance. Palin also determinedly allowed the testimony of the pro-gun crowd before the bill had even been presented to the council or prepared for public hearings -- a clear violation of city-council policy.

* Palin had a continual association with Alaskan Independence Party chairman Mark Chryson (a Wasilla resident) throughout her tenure as mayor, and joined to support him in a series of anti-gun-control and anti-tax measures, both locally and statewide.

* Palin attended the AIP's state conventions in 1994 and 2006, the latter when she was campaigning for the governorship. The 1994 appearance is more questionable, since it came at time when the AIP was more openly radical (its members had backed militia figure Col. James "Bo" Gritz in the 1992 election), and its platform then contained what Chryson calls "racist language".

* She sent a videotaped address to the AIP at its 2008 convention, ostensibly because "I've always thought competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well" -- though notably, she sent no such similar videotaped welcome to the state's Democratic Party.

You'll recall the memo that McCain campaign chief Steve Schmidt wrote to Palin and the staff after Sarah got agitated watching me on CNN, describing what the AIP stands for:

"Secession," he wrote. "It is their entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site."

As I noted then, the cold reality is that Palin has a real history of empowering these extremists, and pandering to their conspiratorial beliefs, from her position of public office. That was an issue then, and it continues to be an issue today.

For Joe Miller, especially.

Especially appalling has been the tone-deaf idiocy of the DSCC in failing to step up to the plate, as Shannyn Moore at Mudflats puts it:

It’s mind-boggling how the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee hasn’t shown up for Scott McAdams, Alaska’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

They’ve had weeks to help secure a now open seat they didn’t think they had a prayer to take. Why aren’t they fighting for Alaska? Lisa Murkowski asked McAdams where his DSCC support was. When it didn’t show, she threw back in as a write-in candidate.

The front page of their website features a picture of Sarah Palin. Fear of her brand of crazy has been an ATM for the DSCC. They’ve raised millions off of Palin word salads with guano dressing. The DSCC website also has a link to Palin’s anointed Alaskan proxy for US Senate, Joe Miller, but they haven’t supported his opponent.

Alaska is the cheapest place in the country to run a campaign. One hundred dollars of campaign money in such a small market is equivalent to $2,000 for a race in Texas. With Palin’s negative numbers over 50%, her candidate, Joe Miller, is vulnerable. The Tea Party is recruiting people with “Lisa M” type names to run a write-in, and every Murkowski vote will be challenged by their attorneys. It will make the Franken/Coleman recount look like play-dough hour in kindergarten.

Stay tuned. I have a feeling this Bizarro Planet soap opera isn't over yet.