Norway Terrorist Breivik Was An Ardent Subscriber To Theories Of 'Cultural Marxism'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We're starting to get a clearer portrait of Anders Breivik, the right-wing extremist whose rampage in Norway yesterday took at least 95 lives, the vast majority of them young people attending a youth camp.

The picture that's emerging is of an ordinary right-wing man stoked into anger by theories about "Cultural Marxism" that originated on the anti-Semitic far right but have in recent years been spreading into more mainstream venues, promoted by the likes of Andrew Breitbart, among others.

You can read for yourself Breivik's postings to the Norwegian site Document.No (application/pdf - 211.61 KB) (translated here), which should give you a clear enough picture.

Chip Berlet, who specializes in analyzing right-wing extremism, has been going through them, and here are his initial thoughts:

Based on online posts apparently by Anders Behring Breivik circulated in Norway, the alleged terrorist opposed multiculturalism and Muslim immigrants in Norway. Breivik championed opposition to "Cultural Marxism," a right-wing antisemitic concept developed primarily by William Lind of the US-based Free Congress Foundation, but also the Lyndon LaRouche network.

... The idea is that a small group of Marxist Jews who formed the Frankfurt School set out to destroy Western Culture through a conspiracy to promote multiculturalism and collectivist economic theories. A key "Cultural Marxist" guru William Lind spoke at a Holocaust Denial conference, and worked at Free Congress Fdn. which sponsored a former Nazi collaborator, the late Laszlo Pasztor. See Bill Berkowitz article on Cultural Marxism for Intelligence Report at SPLC website .

Bill Berkowitz reported on "Cultural Marxism" as a far-right organizing concept for the SPLC back in the summer of 2003:

At the core of the far right's concept of cultural Marxism are the Jews. Lind made this plain in June 2002, when he gave a speech on the subject to a Washington Holocaust denial conference hosted by the anti-Semitic journal, Barnes Review.

Although he told his audience that his Free Congress Foundation was "not among those who question whether the Holocaust occurred," he went on to lay out just who the cultural conspirators were: "These guys," he explained, "were all Jewish."

Like Jews in general, the Frankfurt School makes a convenient antagonist — one that is basically seen as antithetical to all things American. The school, says social psychology professor Richard Lichtman of the Berkeley-based Wright Institute, is "a convenient target that very few people really know anything about.

"By grounding their critique in Marxism and using the Frankfurt School, [cultural conservatives] make it seem like it's quite foreign to anything American. It takes on a mysterious cast and translates as an incomprehensible, anti-American, foreign movement that is only interested in undermining the U.S.," he said. "The idea being transmitted is that we are being infected from the outside."

Not everyone who uses the cultural Marxism construct sees Jews in general at the center of the plot. But a 1998 book by California State University-Long Beach evolutionary biologist Kevin MacDonald — one of just two witnesses to testify on behalf of Holocaust denier David Irving in a famous 2000 libel trial — makes plain that Jews in general are implicated in what is seen as an attack on the West.

In The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Social Movements, MacDonald says that while all Jews are not guilty, the movements he attacks are indeed "Jewishly motivated."
In a chapter devoted to the Frankfurt School, MacDonald suggests that Jews criticize non-Jews' desire to form "cohesive, nationalistic, corporate gentile groups based on conformity to group norms" — with Frankfurt School principals painting this desire as a psychopathology — while they hypocritically pursue cohesiveness in their own group.

As Berlet explains:

The trope of Cultural Marxism combines this view of political economy with a narrow view of Christian superiority and an ethnocentric White Nationalism. In both sectors--Christian superiority and ethnocentric White Nationalism--there is a great fear of Muslim immigration.


Among right-wing Christians who fear Muslims there are some that see Islam as the false religion of the Antichrist in the End Times in their idiosyncratic reading of Biblical prophecy. This apocalyptic view is widespread in some areas. For example a poll found that 15% of Republicans in New Jersey though President Barack Obama might be the "Antichrist" who is Satan's chief henchman in the End Times. Another 14% were convinced Obama was the Antichrist. Whether it is based on religious or secular themes, the idea of a vast longstanding conspiracy of Cultural Marxists to destroy Western Culture creates apocalyptic aggression, in which believers in the conspiracy theory decide to act first against the named enemies.

The concept has been mainstreamed in recent years, promoted -- in a form stripped of its anti-Semitic elements -- by a number of supposedly mainstream conservatives. We knew we had heard the phrase bandied about the past couple of years on Fox News, and went looking in Google to find out where we had heard it.

Originally we thought the chief culprit would be Glenn Beck, who has indeed made a fetish out of Marxism on his show. But the chief promoter of the concept of "Cultural Marxism" on Fox News was none other than Andrew Breitbart:



Breitbart has made a number of attacks on "Cultural Marxism" as a liberal phenomenon -- such as his insistence that "political correctness is Cultural Marxism". Indeed, Breitbart has made something of a fetish about using the phrase. Likewise he has made something of a fetish out of "Frankfurt School" theories.

And as you can see from the above video, he got a nice national platform to promote the concept back in 2009 on Sean Hannity's Fox News show -- twice. This is a classic form of what acting as a "media transmitter," repackaging ideas that originated on the racist/anti-Semitic Far Right and injecting them into the mainstream.

This is not to suggest in any way, of course, that Breitbart is connected directly to the Norway terrorist attacks nor even that he is by any means responsible for them. It's clear, however, from Friday's events that the ideology he promotes radicalizes people and indeed ultimately invites and inspires extremist violence. Considering his legion of right-wing fanboys in America, that's cause for concern.

Striking The Blind Spot: Norway Terror Attacks That Killed 80 Carried Out By Islamophobic Right-Wing Extremist

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It looks like everyone's first guess (including ours) about the perpetrators of yesterday's terrorist attacks in Norway that killed 80 people -- that it was Islamist radicals -- was dead wrong.

Devin Burghart at IREHR has the wrapup:

Shortly before midnight on Friday, July 22, police arrested a 32-year-old Norwegian man who allegedly went on a murderous shooting spree at a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utoya and may also be responsible for the horrific bombing in Oslo earlier in the day.

The man arrested for the attack has been identified as Anders Behring Breivik. Norwegian TV2 reports that Breivik belongs to "right-wing circles" in Oslo. Sources in Norway tell IREHR that Breivik has been known to write posts in right-wing internet forums in Norway, where he has described himself as a “nationalist” and has also written numerous screeds critical of Muslims.
The Associated Press reports that Breivik has a Glock pistol, a rifle and a shotgun registered in the Norwegian gun registry. According to his Facebook page (since taken down), in 2009 Breivik established a business called GeoFarm, which he claimed to be engaged in the cultivation of vegetables. Such a business would give him access to large amounts of fertilizer, which could be used in the making of explosives.

According to witnesses in Utoya, the gunman was dressed as a police officer and gunned down young people as they ran for their lives at a youth camp. Police said Friday evening that they've linked the youth camp shooting and Oslo bombing. Late Friday, police also tell Reuters that the killings are of "catastrophic dimensions", and that the total number dead from the attacks may rise above eighty, just on Utoya. Seven people are currently reported dead from the Oslo bomb blast, though that number may climb.

William MacLean at Reuters reports that the attack signals an intensification in right-wing extremist activity in Europe, which was already rising significantly in recent years:

A report that Norway's bomb and gun rampage may be the work of a far-right militant confronts Europe with the possibility that a new paramilitary threat is emerging, a decade after al-Qaida's Sept. 11 attacks.

One analyst called the attacks possibly Europe's "Oklahoma City" moment, a reference to American right-wing militant Timothy McVeigh who detonated a truck bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.

Police forces in many western European countries worry about rising far-right sentiment, fueled by a toxic mix of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry and increasing economic hardship.

But violence, while sometimes fatal, has rarely escalated beyond group thuggery and the use of knives.

That may have changed in Oslo and on the holiday island of Utoya on Friday. Seven people were killed in a bombing in the capital — Western Europe's worst since the 2005 London al-Qaida-linked suicide attacks that killed 52 people — and at least 80 in a shooting rampage by a lake.

Independent Norwegian television TV2 reported on Saturday that the Norwegian man detained after the attacks had links to right-wing extremism.

Police were searching a flat in west Oslo where he lived, TV2 said.

"If true this would be pretty significant — such a far-right attack in Europe, and certainly Scandinavia, would be unprecedented," said Hagai Segal, a security specialist at New York University in London.

"It would be the European/Scandinavian equivalent of Oklahoma City — an attack by a individual (with extremist anti-government views, linked to certain groups) aimed at the government by attacking its buildings/institutions."

"The next key question is whether he was acting alone, or whether he is part of a group."

James Fallows has a tart reminder for those who, like Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, took that ounce of speculation and tried making a ton of speculative anti-Islamic hay out of it:

No, this is a sobering reminder for those who think it's too tedious to reserve judgment about horrifying events rather than instantly turning them into talking points for pre-conceived views. On a per capita basis, Norway lost twice as many people today as the U.S. did on 9/11. Imagine the political repercussions through the world if double-9/11-scale damage had been done by an al-Qaeda offshoot. The unbelievably sweeping damage is there in either case.

It's also a sobering reminder that, while we've been obsessing nationally over the supposed threat of Islamist radicals -- embodied by Peter King's haplessly myopic hearings on domestic terrorism -- the reality remains that right-wing extremist terrorism remains the most potent domestic-terrorism threat in America as well. Indeed, the number of violent domestic-terrorism incidents has been steadily rising for the past two years, but the threat has gone largely ignored. Indeed, the Obama administration has kowtowed to right-wing complaints by gutting our own government's intelligence-gathering capacities in this area.

We shouldn't assume that this is a problem isolated to Europe -- especially given the track record of right-wing extremists in the USA in recent years.

The New McCarthyism: Oregon Tea Partiers Invade Quiet MoveOn Picnic, Break It Up With Threats -- And Boast About It

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Probably the most disturbing aspect of the multifarious effects of Fox News' right-wing propaganda machine and its Tea Party offspring is the way it has utterly taken over the lives of so many senior citizens, who lap up every word as the gospel truth and have become increasingly radicalized by talking heads like Glenn Beck.

Even as they project their own intentions onto the likes of the unions, the Fox acolytes and the Tea Partiers have effectively become a brownshirt corps of mean-spirited, vicious thugs. It's deeply disturbing to watch people in our parents' generation viciously attacking liberals with increasing venom and violence.

The latest example took place last weekend in the quiet little retirement town of Roseburg, Oregon. It's a pretty little burg on the I-5 corridor in western Oregon that is mostly populated with senior citizens of various stripes. Via Carla at Blue Oregon, we happened upon this story in the local paper:

A small political gathering of about 18 liberal thinkers at River Forks Park Sunday afternoon erupted in conflict when about 35 members of the conservative tea party intruded upon the meeting, waving flags and holding signs accusing the rival group of being communists, Marxists and socialists.

The liberal group — organized by MoveOn.org — decided to leave the park and move its potluck to a nearby home. Members of the conservative group followed, parking at the entrance of a private lane leading to the home to continue their protest.

Roseburg Democrats Dean and Sara Byers said Monday they told tea party members who followed that they were not welcome to drive down the lane to their home.

The Byerses said they got out of their car to stop vehicles from entering the driveway and one tea party member almost ran them over.

Sara Byers said she was so shaken she called 911. She said a Douglas County deputy called about an hour and a half later and said he had been unable to respond because of other incidents. Byers said she was still considering filing a criminal complaint against members of the tea party for harassment.

A leader of the tea party group, Rich Raynor of Roseburg, disputed the liberal group's version of events.

“They are liars,” said Raynor, director of Douglas County Americans for Prosperity. “That is what communists do.”

The latter confrontations were not videotaped, but the Tea Partiers themselves proudly posted the video of their invasion of the MoveOn picnic. Moreover, it clearly documents how they effectively broke it up -- by threatening the attendees with intimidating speech and making it clear they wanted the group to clear out. What it doesn't show, of course, is that they followed these folks to someone's private home and tried to invade the gathering on private property as well.

Here's the script the proud authors of the video provided:

Self professed communist Van Jones teams up with MoveOn.org to promote the American Dream Project, aka I want what you have worked for. Promoted here by the Douglas County Democratic Central Committee members. Challenged by Americans who love freedom!

I have an idea. Let's end class warfare. If you want more, get up earlier and work harder. It works wonders for your self-respect.

We had to disable comments. They were vile, vulgar, threatening...typical Chicago thuggery stuff.

One thing that's clear from both the script and from the video is that what has the Tea Partiers especially exercised about MoveOn is the fact that Van Jones is now working with them to promote his Rebuild the Dream project. The Tea Partiers kept repeating "Van Jones!" "Van Jones!" almost mantra-like, and then calling MoveOn a bunch of "communists."

This is the New McCartyhyism at work, thanks in no small part to the effective work of Glenn Beck during his misbegotten tenure at Fox News -- the apotheosis of which was his successful attacks on Van Jones.

We discussed this at length with Jones himself recently. And while he's right that we can't let these kinds of smears deflect or distract us from what we're trying to achieve, there's no doubt he also understands that they need to be knocked down fiercely and effectively.

And the claim that Van Jones is a Communist is simply a baldfaced lie. Maybe every MoveOn member is now going to have to equip themselves with the words of Jones' attorneys, in their letter to Fox News, on this matter:

Mr. Jones is not a member of any Communist Party or Marxist organization whatsoever, and has not expressed any support for any form of Communist or Marxist ideology for many years. In the same 2005 article in which he Mr. Jones discussed having had such notions as a young man, he also talked about his growth away from those views.
Mr. Jones has repeatedly clarified that his economic views are firmly pro-market, in numerous speeches, televised interviews and in the Huffington Post. In fact, Mr. Jones is known as a leading champion of free-market solutions to current environmental problems. His best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy (2009), advocates government policies to promote private-sector innovation. The World Economic Forum itself has repeatedly honored Mr. Jones' work. He has been called the "Green" Jack Kemp, because he shares that GOP leader's commitment to entrepreneurship as a cure for poverty.

The allegations that Mr. Jones is an "unrepentant Communist," "is a Communist," "is a Communist guy," and "is a revolutionary" are thus demonstrably and unequivocally false. Clearly these statements were calculated to, and do, injure Mr. Jones in his professional and community standing and lower him in the estimation of the American public. They are actionable as a matter of law.

Liberal organizers have taken for granted far too long the toxic effects of these kinds of lies and smears -- because they are exactly the kinds of smears that have always provided the bedrock of right-wing extremism and xenophobic scapegoating. And it's especially remarkable that we're seeing it happen with so many supposedly "conservative" mainstream and often elderly people lapping up the lies.

This was clear from the report on the confrontation:

Roseburg resident Lillen Fifield, 70, called the group's actions an “act of domestic terrorism” and said she was appalled that a peaceful gathering — mostly of women older than 65 — was interrupted.

“It is not OK to go around and intimidate and threaten people. That is not acceptable in a polite society,” Fifield said.

Conservative organizers defended their actions and said they will continue to protest similar gatherings.

“We were there to find out what they had to say and to bring a notice to the public that this kind of thing was going on. Quite honestly, if they have it again, then we are really going to make it well known,” Raynor said.

Raynor said the group believes MoveOn.org is a communist front and said he would not stand for America becoming a fascist nation.

It's unsurprising that these Tea Partiers thus replicate Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent scrambling of the meanings of "fascism" and "communism", something that was avidly promoted on Fox by Beck and others as well.

Likewise, it's unsurprising that this obliteration-of-meaning-by-Newspeak would result in thuggish behavior remarkably like that deployed by brownshirts historically. The only strange thing was that it involved a bunch of senior citizens and middle-aged folks. It was obvious, for instance, that these people were hoping to provoke an angry response resulting in violence that they could then trot out as proof of liberal "thuggishness." (That's an old brownshirt tactic.)

Fortunately, this particular gathering of progressives was smart enough to avoid that trap. As we see more of these attempts to provoke violence, though, I'm not so sure that's going to continue happening.

It's all very disturbing. As Carla puts it:

Clearly the fine details of what took place are in dispute. What isn't, however, are the overt attempts at intimidation and bullying perpetuated by Raynor and the others that showed up to shut down a tiny, peaceful group who chose to meet to talk. Last I checked, that's still allowed in the US. And while MoveOn is decidedly NOT communist, socialist or Marxist--it shouldn't matter if they are. People in the United States are allowed to discuss and promote those ideas if that's what they really believe.

Why are Raynor and his ilk so desperately frightened? Are their own ideas and beliefs so weak that they can't stand up to a miniscule group even having an opposition discussion about them?

Right-Wing Union-Bashers Trying To Turn Ordinary, Legal Organizing Tactics Into 'Thuggery'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Ever notice how conservatives love to preach to everyone else about the virtues of responsibility and accountability, but really, really hate it whenever anyone holds them accountable?

When they get called out for destroying the economy, they shift the blame to minority lending. When their underlying racism comes bubbling up and people point it out, they run to shout "bloody shirt" and turn the victims into demagoging perpetrators, declaring that liberals are the real racists. When it's pointed out that they coddle far-right extremists within their ranks, they claim they're just being smeared. When some far-right extremist indulges in some act of extreme violence inspired by their insane rhetoric, they claim that mean liberals are just trying to silence them by pointing out the connection.

And when organized labor tries to hold corporate CEOs and banking executives responsible for the economic havoc they have wreaked on working people, they call it "thuggery."

Michelle Malkin was on Fox earlier this week promoting the anti-unionists' latest smear campaign against SEIU, claiming that a union members' handbook they just discovered -- even though it has been generally available for a long time, and certainly was not a secret -- somehow coaches union "thugs" in various tactics of "intimidation."

They trotted out footage of that protest held by the SEIU in May 2010 where they went to the home of Bank of America lobbyist Greg Baer to ask him to speak with some of the people whose homes were being foreclosed upon. Malkin and the Fox host tried to make this out to be some unspeakable horror, claiming that Baer's teenage son was alone in the house and had to hide in the bathroom.

In reality, Baer himself was out on the lawn of the house, mingling with the protesters:

Not surprisingly, neither of them talked with us. In fact, Gregory Baer from Bank of America initially tried to blend in with the crowd and, instead, let a family member answer the door. When one of his neighbors pointed him out to us, he announced he "didn't have time for [us]," and went inside.

Police at both events described the proceedings as entirely peaceful and cordial. That, of course, didn't stop Nina Easton, Baer's next-door neighbor, from describing them in her Fortune column as "a mob." That might have some thing to do with the fact that Easton's own husband has close business ties with Bank of America. (We're also acutely aware of Easton's deep compassion for the unemployed.)

Malkin was actually just teeing off a Vincent Cernuccio column in the Moonie Times, claiming that the handbook they "uncovered" gives union members all kinds of tips for thuggish behavior.

SEIU is in federal court defending itself against charges of racketeering and extortion filed by one of its unionizing targets, the catering company Sodexo Inc.Sodexo's court discovery recently revealed an SEIU “Contract Campaign Manual” on “Pressuring the Employer.” Union pressure is nothing new, but what SEIU recommends is not limited to organizing drives and strikes. Rather, the pressure takes the form of a so-called corporate campaign, whereby the union allies itself with outside third parties to raise intimidation to a new level.

SEIU’s manual details how “outside pressure can involve jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds.” The union advises using legal and regulatory pressure to “threaten the employer with costly action by government agencies or the courts.”

It details the use of community groups to “damage an employer’s public image and ties with community leaders and organizations.” SEIU recommends going after company officials personally. Not mincing words, SEIU states, “It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management officials with release of ‘dirt’ about them if they don’t settle a contract. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers.”

The “dirt” includes charges such as “racism, sexism, exploitation of immigrants or proposals that would take money out of the community for the benefits of distant stockholders.” SEIU recommends “[l]eafleting outside meetings where [targeted managers] are speaking, their homes, or events sponsored by community organizations they are tied to are some ways to make sure their friends, neighbors, and associates are aware of the controversy.”

Putting this into practice, in May SEIU drove 14 busloads of protesters to the quiet suburban home of Bank of America’s deputy general counsel, Greg Baer. Fortune magazine’s Washington bureau chief, Nina Easton, Mr. Baer’s neighbor, reported on the “hordes of invaders” shouting into bullhorns and waving signs. Ms. Easton wrote that “a more apt description of this assemblage would be ‘mob.’ Intimidation was the whole point of this exercise.”

Only Mr. Baer’s teenage son was home. Terrified, he locked himself in the bathroom, pleading with Ms. Easton, “When are they going to leave?”

Obviously, lying without compunction is simply these folks' bread and butter.

You see, it absolutely terrifies right-wingers that the captains of industry who underwrite their paychecks might be held to account for their misdeeds. The very idea that corporate CEOS might be held accountable for breaking environmental laws, or labor laws, or creating unsafe working conditions, or any of the other many issues that unions wind up confronting them about -- well, that just completely freaks the lot of them out.

So the prospect that unions might actually support whistleblowers who will bring down the weight of the law -- not to mention public disapproval -- on them for their unethical and illegal activities is instead transformed, in their depiction, into a campaign of union "thuggery" and "intimidation".

Well, you can read Chapter 4 of the manual -- the section that has them all worked up in a tizzy -- for yourself here (application/msword - 808.5 KB).

As you can see, it actually just outlines ordinary organizing tactics, including work stoppages, strikes, and whistlebowling activity -- all perfectly legal tactics, and which have nothing whatsoever to do with "thuggery". Yes, CEOs might find these tactics "intimidating" -- as well they should.

Mind you, a Tea Partier showing up at a health-care town hall with a gun strapped to his waist is not intimidating in the least. That's just standing up for your Second Amendment rights.

Those First Amendment rights, meanwhile, are evidently too much for them -- and their shills in the media -- to handle.

Wealthy Fox Pundit Stuart Varney Reminds Poor People Just How Much Better Off They Are Nowadays

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I'm always amused when wealthy TV talking heads -- people whose six-figure-and-better incomes pretty much ensure that they can afford whatever they want in terms of household appliances and other necessities of modern life -- try to pretend that they're just ordinary folks who understand what "middle America" is thinking.

Even more hilarious, in a twisted way, is when they take it upon themselves to lecture those same Americans about the virtues of poverty -- or to explain, as Fox's Stuart Varney did yesterday, just how much better off poor Americans are now than they used to be.

In fact, according to his guest -- Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, who has assembled his damned lies and statistics in a single report at their site, America's poor people have a better standard of living than your average European. Right -- if appliances were any accurate measure of your standard of living.

This is just one of those pleasant reminders from our corporate masters that you're never as bad off as you think you are. Why, Varney and Rector seem dismayed that today's poor in America don't live off dirt floors. If you keep pushing for taxes on the rich, that may be what you'll get!

Palin's Propaganda Movie Does Not-So-Boffo Biz -- Even In Right-Wing Markets

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We noticed last week that Sarah Palin was opening her propaganda movie, The Undefeated on the same day as the final Harry Potter movie. It's turning out about as well as you'd expect. Like Dolores Umbridge and the centaurs.

As Reuters reports, the movie is only being released in 10 theaters nationwide, all focused on right-wing precincts like Orange County and Dallas. And the folks who are showing up are certainly enthusiastic:

"Run, Sarah, run!" shouted Californian Sherman Roodzant, 64, as the final credits rolled on the 1:10 p.m. showing in a half-filled theater in Orange. Roodzant drove 150 miles (240 km) to see it and said it was worth every mile.

"It was awesome," Roodzant said. "It showed her life story and showed what a great American she is and what a great potential leader she is. It made me feel stronger toward her."

That kind of fervor is exactly what distributors are banking on. They saw it at the premiere last month in a small town in conservative-leaning Iowa.

"I couldn't believe the crowd reaction" in Iowa, said Trevor Drinkwater, CEO of ARC Entertainment, which is handling the film's distribution. "It is a biased crowd, but still."

And of course, they're outraged that the movie isn't showing in more theaters RIGHT NOW:

Gay Meador, 62, said she was "shocked and ashamed" that the Orange AMC theater was the only place where "The Undefeated" was showing in her area, let alone California.

Except, of course, for the little problem that, as Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic reports, most of the seats in the 10 theaters where it's showing are going empty:

I hurried through the teenage hordes, bypassed a concession stand that sold 1,020 calories of soda for $5.25, and entered theater number 30, hoping I'd have ample time before the previews to talk to some people. But inside, the theater was empty. I sat there alone for 20 minutes, at which point an usher stuck his head in the door, gave me a quizzical smile, and said, "How come you're not watching Harry Potter?" Then he left me by myself again, and without any good answer.

And those who have seen the film with, ah, more objective eyes seem to want the hour and a half of their lives back -- such as Marlow Stern at The Daily Beast:

When Palin is selected as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 presidential election, and the small-town girl is besieged on all sides, the film loses its grip entirely. In a classic film-propaganda tactic, personal attacks on Palin by media pundits correspond with shocking videos of avalanches, packs of lions feeding on zebras, people being buried alive in sand on the beach, and medieval knights with arrows in their backs. At times, the viewer feels like he or she is playing out the iconic scene in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, where criminal Alex DeLarge is strapped to a chair, eyes spread wide, and subjected to a series of violent images as a brainwashing technique.

Me? I'm going to see the Potter film this afternoon. In IMAX 3-D. The Palin film isn't showing anywhere in Seattle.

Gaxiola Escapes The Death Sentence In Flores Family Murders -- For Now

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Well, Albert Gaxiola may have been convicted of first-degree murder in the killings of Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul at the hands of Minuteman leader Shawna Forde, but unlike Forde and the gunman in the case, Jason Bush, it appears that Gaxiola will not be sent to death row -- at least for now (via Kim Smith at the Arizona Daily Star):

Albert Gaxiola will not be joining Shawna Forde and Jason Bush on death row for his involvement in the May 2009 death of Raul Junior Flores, but the jury could not reach a unanimous decision as to the death of 9-year-old Brisensia Flores.

The Pima County Attorney’s Office must now decide whether they want to empanel a new jury to comtemplate a possible death sentence for Brisenia’s death or let Pima County Superior Court Judge John Leonardo sentence Gaxiola to life with or without the possibility of release.

The jury deliberated around 11 hours before sentencing Gaxiola to life in prison for Junior Flores’ death, but were at a stalemate as to the sentence pertaining to Brisenia.
Gaxiola is also facing additional time for the attempted first-degree murder of Flores’ wife, Gina Gonzalez, and a variety of other charges.

He will be sentenced on those charges Aug. 15.

As Dave Ricker reports, Gaxiola was obviously pleased:

The jury of seven males and five females took a little over 11 hours before returning their verdicts to a surprised audience of onlookers in the courtroom of Judge John S. Leonardo. “I’m relieved,” said defense counsel Steven D. West, immediately following the reading of the verdict.

West said Gaxiola had similar feelings. “I think he was greatly relieved,” West said.

But that doesn't mean he's entirely off the hook. Prosecutors, as Ricker explains, now will consider whether to drop the effort to obtain a death sentence in Brisenia's case or to empanel a new jury:

A hearing on whether the death request will be withdrawn on the count involving the murder of Brisenia is set for July 29 at 10 a.m. If the death request is withdrawn then Leonardo will have the option of sentencing Gaxiola to natural life or whether he will have an opportunity to apply for a parole hearing after he has served 35 calendar years in prison. The 35-year threshold applies in Brisenia’s case because she was younger than 15-years-old.

A sentencing hearing has been set for Aug. 15 at 10:30 a.m. on the other six counts for which Gaxiola was convicted, as well as the murder count for which he will receive life in prison. It is up to Leonardo to determine if Gaxiola will be sentenced to natural life or whether he will have an opportunity to apply for a parole hearing after he has served 25 calendar years in prison.

I'm pretty interested in hearing what the final vote was -- particularly given the powerful statement given by Gina Gonzalez, the surviving victim. Ricker obtained a copy of the statement she read to the jury, and it's quite powerful:

Gonzalez is a very soft-spoken person so not all of her words could be heard from the back of the courtroom, thus she graciously provided a copy of the statement she read to the jury. It is reproduced below.

Dear Jurors,
I am so thankful and relieved you have taken the time to allow me to read my impact statement. As you can probably imagine, the murder of my husband and daughter on May 30, 2009, has changed my life forever.

I went to bed with my family as I normally would on any given night, not imagining I would never wake up from this never-ending nightmare.

The defendant and my family hung around together, we laughed, he played video games with my daughters, told them how beautiful they were, how well-behaved they were, how their hair always looked nice. The memory that sticks out most in my mind is when the defendant would throw Brisenia up in the air, catch her and make her laugh.

We were all friends. How could someone who loved my family plot their final destiny? How could someone who loved my family stand by and allow a child he made laugh be murdered?

Brisenia was a beautiful little girl. I can’t possibly understand what she could have done to deserve this. What could I have done to deserve this? What could my husband have done to deserve this? What did Alexandra, my oldest daughter, do to deserve the loss of her little sister, who was her best friend and her father, who she misses very much?

I am still in denial about the whole thing. I can’t believe someone I loved and trusted could have done something like this. For the longest time, I never thought the defendant would have been capable of doing something like this...almost wiping out my entire family.

It saddened me to know that Brisenia’s face had to be reconstructed for her funeral. It was very hard to see my child in the casket. It was also hard to see my husband in the casket. But it was more difficult to comprehend that I may know the person who did this to them. I continue to have a hard time re-directing my grieving for both my husband and daughter. It’s all so overwhelming!

Who put Junior’s name on the bullet and didn’t care what happened to my daughter and me?

The defendant knew my history with Junior. He knew we had been together since he was 15 years old. When my husband was murdered, we were two-and-a-half months short of being married 13 years. We had built our lives together and we were looking forward to growing old together. He had a great sense of humor, was a great cook and he loved his little girls very much.

It’s hard for me to understand how this all happened. I have so many questions that will remain unanswered. I just need to know “Why? Even though knowing why still wouldn’t be good enough. It still won’t bring them back.

My life is ruined. I now know that evil lives among us and it comes in many forms. It can even befriend you, gain your trust and kill your family.

Thank you for your time.

Grover Norquist Tries Put All Blame On Obama For The Economic Mess. Grade: FAIL. CNN's Morgan: 'It's Complete Hogwash'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

CNN's Piers Morgan likes to cast himself as an outsider, but he is in many ways a classic Villager, since he shares the Beltway's relentless fetish with "bipartisanship" and "centrism".

Of course, this has for many years just been a cover for allowing right-wingers to lie, distort, smear and bully relentlessly, all in the name of "bipartisanship", while demanding that liberals apologize abjectly for any pushback deemed too uncivil. It's allowed GOP operatives like Grover Norquist to manipulate the media narrative so that anything other than right-wing orthodoxy is derided and dismissed -- even when right-wing orthodoxy is just certifiably insane.

Thus we had Norquist on Morgan's CNN show the other day, playing the same game -- but this time, it became clear that right-wing insanity on the debt ceiling is becoming too much even for Villagers to handle. This time, Morgan -- in a rare display of principle -- actually tried to call Norquist out on the right's ongoing and egregious violations of the Village's standards for fairness and bipartisanship in this debate, particularly their insistence on blaming Obama and Democrats for an economic mess created by conservative misgovernance.

Morgan tried to get Norquist to say just how much responsibility Republicans might have for our current economic miseries, and couldn't get an honest answer. Instead, Norquist veered into a classic piece of misdirection from the guy who once was quoted saying that "bipartisanship is a form of date rape":

NORQUIST: We need to get away from partisan politics.

MORGAN: Why don't we -- let's put it all in the mix.

NORQUIST: And solve the problem.

MORGAN: Let's put it all in the mix. All in the mix, everything taken into account, percentage of the current crisis down to Republican decisions versus Democrat. Give me a percentage.

NORQUIST: Well, OK, the Republicans have put forward a budget under Ryan cut $6 trillion out of the Obama budget. Obama has accepted none of that so he's 100 percent responsible.

MORGAN: So President Obama is 100 percent responsible for our current financial crisis.

NORQUIST: For the failure -- for the failure to get our -- get out spending down.

MORGAN: Isn't your answer exactly what the problem is? For you to sit there and just look me straight in the eye down this camera and say President Obama is 100 percent responsible for the financial crisis in America, it's obviously complete hogwash.

And that kind of partisan opinion is what is preventing any kind of sensible deal, a strategy being achieved, isn't it?

All Norquist could answer was to say that, yeah, Bush spent too much, but Obama has just put the pedal to the metal, blah blah blah. Never any acknowledgment that the meltdown occurred on Bush's watch, and as a result of Bush's policies, which were in fact broadly supported by conservative Republicans like Norquist throughout his tenure and which were never opposed by any conservative faction with any pull. Policies which, in fact, Republicans now propose as the solution to the same economic disaster they actually created.

It was a classic display of right-wing insanity. And it's only going to get worse.

Lou Dobbs Thinks President Obama Is 'Beneath Contempt' For Warning That Debt-Ceiling Vote Will Hit Social Security Payments

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The usual cast of right-wing pundits was all worked up yesterday on Fox about President Obama's simple observation that if House Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling, he won't be able to guarantee that he can write Social Security payment checks come Aug. 3.

He's fearmongering! Scaring old people! How disgraceful!

This, of course, from the people who brought you "death panels."

Moreover, it's coming from the same people who then turn around and try to make seniors fearful that Obama is going to take away their Medicare coverage.

The apotheosis of this miscreancy was Lou Dobbs on Bill O'Reilly's show last night, unleashing a relentlessly vicious assessment of every Obama step, culminating in his complaint that Obama's remarks were "so low as to be contemptible" and indeed were "beneath contempt".

Of course, Lou Dobbs knows "beneath contempt": That pretty aptly describes his nasty and ultimately derailed career at CNN, when no lie directed at Latino immigrants was too disgusting or vicious to transmit to his audience of millions. It's why he's been such a good fit at Fox News.

It's doubtful, though, that Dobbs can recognize it when he sees it.

Now The FBI Is Looking Into Murdoch Media's Phone-hacking Activities In The USA

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Gee, I wonder if this will be discussed on any of the Fox News shows:

Responding to allegations from several Washington lawmakers, the FBI has opened an investigation into whether Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. attempted to hack into the telephones of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the families of those who died.

According to federal law enforcement sources, the decision by the FBI's field office in New York to launch the criminal probe came after several members of Congress raised concerns in letters to FBI headquarters, questioning whether reporters for the media empire may have tried to compromise Sept. 11 victims just as they reportedly hacked into the phones of numerous individuals in England.

"We are doing this based on their requests," said an FBI source, who asked not to be identified because the investigation is just getting underway. "But after reviewing the letters and their allegations, and after consultation with the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, we are proceeding."

At the Department of Justice, officials also acknowledged they are "reviewing" the allegations by Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and others that Sept. 11 victims and families may have been put at risk by News Corp.

"If these allegations are proven true," King wrote in his letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, "the conduct would merit felony charges for attempting to violate various federal statutes related to corruption of public officials and prohibitions against wiretapping. Any person found guilty of this purported conduct should receive the harshest sanctions available under law."

Maybe Bill O'Reilly can invite King -- a frequent guest -- onto his show to discuss this, eh?

The New York Times has more, as does the U.K. Telegraph.

Question of the Day: Will Darrell Issa investigate?

'The Five': Fox's Fill-in For Beck's Hour Features The Network's Idea Of 'Fair And Balanced'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It seems Fox's plan for filling the 5 pm EDT slot once held by Glenn Beck is to trot out some of its pundits and see which of them floats to the top. With, of course, a lone Democrat along for comic relief/punching bag duty.

The show is called "The Five," and it debuted Monday with a lineup that pretty much tells you Fox's idea of a "fair and balanced" debate: four right-wingers and a lone Fox Democrat, in this case Bob Beckel, whose function as usual is to mealy-mouth the liberal position and give a lukewarm defense of the targeted liberals du jour. He was joined by a cast of right-wingers ranging from the usual smarmy Establishment type long favored at Fox (Dana Perino) to the haplessly juvenile frat/sorority types (Andrea Tantaros and Greg Gutfeld) to the simply execrable (Eric Bolling).

This segment -- featuring a discussion of whether or not Media Matters should be permitted to maintain its tax-exempt status because it takes an obvious liberal position, while the permeation of the Beltway with right-wing think tanks and Tea Party apparatchiks bothers them not one whit -- was pretty representative of the quality of discussion to be had on the show. Which is to say, only a technician's half-step away from being something I might run across late at night on my local access cable TV.

It's all part of Fox's sad and pathetic attacks on Media Matters, which Karoli posted about yesterday.

The hypocrisy here is profound: Fox and its hosts, after all, are fond of declaring that their critics -- who merely criticize them -- are out to "silence" them and shut them down. But these attacks on MM are in fact quite explicitly intended to silence the organization and shut it down.

Kenneth Gladney's Supposed 'Victimhood' At Hands Of 'SEIU Thugs' Exposed As A Fraud: Jury Acquits Pair

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've been saying all along -- practically since it happened, in fact -- that the right's claims that Tea Partier Kenneth Gladney, a black man, was victimized by SEIU "thugs" during a health-care protest was dubious at best, and Gladney's subsequent claims (particularly that this was a "hate crime") even more ludicrous.

Now it seems that a Missouri jury agrees:

CLAYTON, MO –(KMOX)–Almost two years after the national uproar over health care reform, a jury has acquitted two labor union activists accused of assaulting a man selling conservative buttons outside a Cogressman Russ Carnahan town hall forum.

Service Employees International Union members Elston McCowan and Perry Molens had been accused of misdemeanor assault in the August, 2009 tussle with button salesman Kenneth Gladney. The fight caught national attention at a time when there was rampant speculation the union had been dispatched to tamp down opposition to President Obama’s health care reform.

Jurors heard conflicting testimony in the two-day trial over who actually started the fight, and they viewed video tape showing the end and aftermath of the brawl — but no video showed who threw the first punch.

Of course, the wingnutosphere -- particularly those like Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit (aka the World's Dumbest Blogger), who heavily promoted the claims in the first place -- is outraged, outraged we tell you.

But as Adam Shriver at St. Louis Activist Hub observes:

The conspiracy pushed relentlessly for the past two years by Dana Loesch, Jim Hoft, Andrew Breitbart, Fox News, and the tea party has been shown at long last to be a complete fraud. Two innocent men have been harassed and threatened for two years as a result of a tea party smear campaign with only one objective: to make unions look evil.

Shriver covered the trial, and pointedly observed that Gladney's own testimony doomed the prosecution:

Gladney's testimony was the most damaging to the prosecution's case. For starters, Gladney appeared in a neck brace, which brought back memories of him showing up at a tea party rally in a wheel chair despite the fact that he was running around with no obvious discomfort immediately after the altercation took place. The defense lawyer said that Gladney's neck brace, which he was wearing because of surgery for a herniated disc, had nothing to do with the altercation, and Gladney did not challenge him on that point, so I assume it's true. But this opened up a criticism from the defense lawyer who asked Gladney why he showed up at the tea party rally in a wheelchair. Gladney said, basically, that it was hot and he was on medication and "they didn't have folding chairs or lawn chairs." Ouch.

... A more important problem for Gladney was that his previous descriptions of what happened did not match his current testimony. He previously had claimed that Elston McCowan, a black minister, had called him the n-word. In today's testimony, he now claimed that Perry Molens, a white man, also called him the n-word, which would be a strange detail to leave out of all of his previous interviews. More importantly, he had previously claimed that 4 different people "attacked" him, yet now he clams only two.

He also claimed that he "never said a word" to McCowan, which I'm pretty sure is at odds with his previous interviews. And finally, his story of the altercation provided no explanation of why Elston McCowan was seen lying on the ground at the beginning of the video And all of this was despite the fact that he told the defense attorney that his memory today was as good or better as immediately after the incident happened.

And as Riverfront Times noted:

The defense also hammered Gladney on why he was seen walking around virtually unscathed in the immediate aftermath of the fight only to show up in a wheelchair two days later at a Tea Party rally.

Shriver also completely demolishes Hoft's new conspiracy theory about Gladney with an impressive array of facts. This guarantees, of course, that it will continue to enjoy a significant half-life of several more years as one of the Right's classic Zombie Lies.

Eric Boehlert is (as always) on the money:

As I said, the incident was regrettable and I'm sure everyone involved, if they had a chance to go back, would make sure the night did not unfold the same way again. But the idea that the mini-altercation was some sort of on-command union attack directed from the Oval Office and that it represented a looming wave of left-wing violence in this country? That was always a sick joke. It was a sick joke played at the expense of Gladney, and at the expense of two union members who were crucified by the right-wing press and called every conceivable name. All without a shred of evidence to support the union-bashing denunciations.

Fox's 'News Watch' Program Discusses Everything BUT The Murdoch Phone-hacking Scandal

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I don't know how many of you have been watching the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal as it grows and digging up the tidbits, but if you have, you already know that the only place not to bother looking is at any of the Murdoch-owned properties in the USA, including the Wall Street Journal and even more particularly Fox News.

This reached hilarious depths this weekend on Fox's own media-analysis show, wherein they discussed everything even vaguely media-related EXCEPT the Murdoch scandal. The big focus was on the Casey Anthony trial and the coverage around it -- and even on that, the discussion was disingenuous and dishonest.

Media Matters has more:

This weekend, Fox News Watch, Fox News Channel's media criticism show, covered the following issues: The media's coverage of the Casey Anthony trial verdict; MSNBC's suspension of Mark Halperin for making vulgar comments about the president; the media's role in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case; the cancellation of In the Arena, Eliot Spitzer's CNN television show; and Vice President Joe Biden's new Twitter account.

The glaring omission from this list is any mention of the shuttering of the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World, billed as the largest English-language newspaper in the world, which published its last edition today. The paper is folding following allegations that it hacked the voicemails of a slain teen girl in the United Kingdom, an action which potentially impeded the police investigation and gave the girl's family false hope that she was still alive. There are also allegations that family members of soldiers who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and families of victims of the 2005 subway bombings have been phone hacked.

Apparently, there were some brief allusions to it onstage during the commercial breaks:

CAL THOMAS: Anybody want to bring up the subject we're not talking about today for the -- for the [online] streamers?

JAMES PINKERTON: Sure. Go ahead, Cal!

THOMAS: No, go ahead, Jim.

[LAUGHTER]

THOMAS: I'm not going to touch it.

JUDY MILLER (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): With a ten foot [inaudible].

And the scandal news got even bigger today, with the possibility of prosecution for News Corp officials in the United States looming as well:

But Murdoch may soon have bigger problems on his hands. Legal experts told the AP today that his company could face criminal prosecution in the U.S. for his U.K. papers’ alleged bribery of British police officers, which would be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). According to the the Department of Justice, “The FCPA prohibits payments made in order to assist the firm in obtaining or retaining business.”

Thus the papers’ use of bribery to obtain information which helped sell newspapers could fall under the act’s purview. And even though the bribery occurred entirely in Britian, NewsCorp is an American company, incorporated in Delaware, and held accountable for its foreign subsidiary’s actions. Even if the corporation wasn’t directly involved in bribery, it could be found in violation of the law for turning a “blind eye.”

The legal experts told the AP they would be surprised if the Securities and Exchange Commission and the DoJ have not already opened investigations into the matter and said the decision to shutter News of the World was potentially an attempt to limit Murdoch and NewsCorp’s legal exposure.

As Will Bunch explains, Murdoch's depredations in the USA have actually been more serious and damaging than what's been uncovered by the scandal.

Ellen at Newshounds has six good reasons to demand an investigation into the company's activities here. And you can go to Media Matters for a petition demanding such action.

Meanwhile, as something of an absurd endnote, did anyone notice that the Fox News crew tut-tutted those generic "media" figures who decided ahead of time that Casey Anthony was guilty and had convicted her in the media, most notably Nancy Grace.

But the same was true -- in spades -- at Fox News, where the running assumption all along was that Anthony would be convicted, deservedly so. Indeed, check out the fifteen minutes of coverage on Fox just prior to the announcement of the verdict on Monday.



Funny that the Fox media-analysis crew didn't bother to mention that these people were wrong, wrong, wrong. Because at Fox, being wrong isn't a bug. It's a feature.

Sharron Angle And Sean Hannity Have A Big Bowl Of Sour Grapes Over Her 2010 Election Loss To Harry Reid

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Sharron Angle went on Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night to promote her new book, ostensibly, but really, it was mostly a long session kvetching about Angle's loss to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

HANNITY: You lost a tough election. That was, for me, one of the harder ones. I wanted him beaten so bad.

ANGLE: Everybody did. You know, I had a 7-year-old boy say to me, I'm so sorry you lost. And I have lots of people coming up. And all I can say is, I'm sorry too. But life isn't about winning or losing, it is about doing the right thing and doing your very best. And I think, that's what we just have to continue to do as people who want to get back to the Constitution. We can't give up, we can't quit. We've got to keep in the game even if we lose one.

HANNITY: Let's talk about, did Harry Reid steal this election? Do you think he stole votes in this election?

ANGLE: Well, in my book, the "Right Angle," I do discuss that a bit. And you may know this, we have a lawsuit after Department of Justice.

HANNITY: About ACORN and the SEIU?

ANGLE: It's actually about Harrah's casino and the SEIU and their involvement and what we feel was not legitimate election conduct.

Of course, Angle was making these claims even before the election, and they were every bit as groundless then, though of course you'll never learn that while watching Hannity.

Neither, for that matter, will you hear any mention of the real reasons Angle lost, beyond her utter nutbaggery -- the primary one being that Republicans tried a stop-the-Latino vote campaign that horribly backfired, along with Angle's obscene demonizing of Latinos in her campaign, followed by her hilarious flip-flopping on the subject. Result: Some 90 percent of Latino voters backed Reid, and he won going away.

The Wait Is Over! Palin's 'Undefeated' Movie Trailer: Pure Essence Of Propaganda

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Most normal moviegoing folks -- especially those of us with kids -- are looking forward to July 15 for one very good reason: It's the release date for the final Harry Potter film, and the trailers look terrific. The end of Voldemort, at last!

Then there are the hapless conservadweebs who instead will plunk down their hard-earned dollars to endure two hours of propaganda devoted to singing the praises of Sarah Palin titled The Undefeated.

Of course, this is kind of a strange title, considering that Palin indeed was defeated in her campaign for the vice presidency. And for some reason, they didn't title it The Uncompleted as a way of actually describing her term as governor. Or The Quitter, which would also be more accurate.

Anyway, Andrew Breitbart plumped the first trailer for the movie yesterday. You'll notice that he didn't bother to mention to readers that he's in the trailer. There is no need for full disclosure at propaganda mills like Breitbart's operation.

Indeed, the Palin trailer -- and no doubt the movie itself -- reminds me of the propaganda techniques identified half a century ago by the long-defunct Institute for Propaganda Analysis, because each of them can be seen at work here:

-- Name Calling, or hanging a bad label on ideas or persons.

-- Card Stacking, or the selective use of facts or outright falsehoods.

-- Band Wagon, or claiming that everyone like us thinks this way.

-- Testimonial, or the association of a respected or hated person with an approved or despised idea, respectively.

-- Plain Folks, a technique whereby the idea and its proponents are linked to "people just like you and me."

-- Transfer, or an assertion of a connection between something valued or hated and the idea or commodity being discussed.

-- Glittering Generality, or an association of something with a "virtue word" to gain approval without examining the evidence.

Now, you may ask yourself: Why would Sarah Palin put out a propaganda movie about herself right now if she weren't running for the presidency? And that would be a good question.

The answer, of course: She wouldn't.

Meanwhile, look for a fresh bumper crop of "Republicans for Voldemort" bumper stickers.

Paul Ryan Thinks Voters Will Go For His Medicare-killing Budget Plan If It's Just Sold Right

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Republicans have been deluding themselves, ever since the debacle in NY-26, that all Republicans really have to do is sell their proposals better, and voters will get on board with the Paul Ryan Path to the Poorhouse budget plan -- you know, the one that ends Medicare as we know it, among other things.

In an interview with WISN-TV, Ryan himself explained why polls consistently voters strongly disapprove of his plan:

RYAN: Those polls don’t describe it very well. When the plan is described accurately, it actually polls very well.

Well, Greg Sargent runs through the list and finds that the polls describe his plan perfectly well:

In reality, the polls that accurately describe Ryan’s plan almost all show woefully low support for it. What’s more, Republicans have in effect already acknowledged that they lost the larger argument over Medicare by beginning to attack Dems from the left on the issue. They are now accusing Democrats of being the ones who really want to cut Medicare, and have even accused Dems of wanting to “shred the social safety net.” And even Mitch McConnell has distanced himself from Ryan’s plan.

How does Ryan intend to improve those poll numbers? The WISN interview makes it plain that his strategy is simple: Slag the Democrats on Medicare.

RYAN: Whenever you lead and propose a solution to a complex problem, you're putting yourself out there to be distorted, to be demagogued to be lied about. What's happening is the other party's chosen to try to scare senior citizens to try and get votes. Here's the deal on our Medicare plan: ObamaCare ends Medicare as we know it.

Got that? The whole story on Ryan's plan is that it's actually "Obamacare" that's the problem. Of course, this has been Ryan's fresh new lie for a week now. And as Brian Beutler observes, it's profoundly mendacious:

Ryan's plan actually sustains those $500 billion in cuts, while repealing just about all other parts of the health care law. Far beyond that, though, his plan would close the door on traditional Medicare in 10 years, and phase it out by putting new retirees in a private, subsidized health insurance market. As usual, though, privatizing a major entitlement polls really poorly, and Republicans are facing huge voter backlash in their districts after voting to endorse Ryan's plan.

The most amusing part of all this is watching Republicans flop back and forth on scaremongering seniors. After NY-26, they denounced Democrats for waging "Mediscare" tactics. There was no small irony in this, considering that this was the party that invented the "death panels" lie and ran videos of Democrats killing poor grannies.

Man Loses His Job After Chase Bank Has Him Arrested For Cashing Their Own Check

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Lynda Bryon at KING-5 News in Seattle has the story, ably summed up at The Consumerist:

Ikenna [Njoku], a 28-year old construction worker, went to deposit a $8,463.21 Chase cashier's check at his local Chase branch, only for the teller to decide that neither he nor his check looked right and he got tossed in jail for forgery, KING5 reports. The next day, a Friday, the bank realized its mistake and left a message with the detective. But it was her day off, so he spent the entire weekend in jail.

By the time he got out, he had been fired from his job for not showing up to work. His car had been towed as well. It ended up getting sold off at auction because he couldn't afford to get it out of the pound. He had been relying on that cashier's check for his money but it was taken as evidence and by the time he got it back it was auctioned off.

All this while the cashier's check had been issued by the very bank he was trying to cash it at.

Chase didn't even apologize, not even after a year. A lawyer volunteered to help write a strongly-worded letter requesting damages. After trying hard to get a response, they sent KING 5 a two-sentence reply: "We received the letter and are reviewing the situation. We'll be reaching out to the customer."

I dunno about you, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if he had been another color, none of this would have happened. Auburn is not a lily-white suburb by any means, but the man's description of her questions raises all kinds of red flags.

Meanwhile, I just love being at the mercy of the people who run the financial-services sector, don't you?

Just How Is It That Republicans Get To Lecture Democrats About Ballooning Federal Deficits?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

This sneering, preening performance by the new Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, yesterday on Fox News really set me off, for some reason. As you can see, it's all about blaming Democrats for the state of the economy, insisting that they are somehow responsible for the ballooning federal deficit and the need to raise the debt ceiling. That's the thrust of the RNC's latest round of Obama-bashing ads.

You certainly can't say they lack for chutzpah.

Look, this meme has been building ever since the Tea Partiers started raging about the deficit and the debt, and now it's the official Republican talking point. It all makes me want to ask:

Where do you guys get the balls to lecture Democrats about deficit spending and the state of the economy?


Seriously.

The previous Democratic president -- a guy named Bill Clinton, who Republicans hounded with a meaningless sex scandal -- handed off to his Republican successor a $46 billion federal surplus after having erased the deficit for three successive years.

That surplus disappeared the first year George W. Bush was in office, even before the 9/11 attacks happened, in no small part because Bush began slashing taxes for the wealthy immediately upon taking office. And then he and his Republican allies running the Congress proceeded to ring up the deficit to unheard-of heights, thanks largely to a needless invasion of another nation under false pretenses.

Where were all these Republicans in the years 2001-2006, when they were setting new records for federal deficits and destroying the economy along the way?

And then blaming Obama and the Democrats for lost jobs really takes the cake. It's undoubtedly true that Obama's policies have not restored jobs in anything near an adequate fashion. But those millions of jobs were destroyed on Republicans' economic watch, as a result of Republican economic policies.

Fixing the economy is indeed a much bigger uphill climb than the Pollyannas on the White House economic team reckoned. But Republicans have done nothing but make it harder, by obstructing every Democratic initiative to stimulate the economy and improve our economic competitiveness (which was what the health-care debate was largely about), not to mention the employment picture generally.

Indeed, it's now becoming crystal clear that they are perfectly willing to wreck the American economy entirely in order to defeat Obama's economic policies, such as they are. And at the same time, they not only plan to blame Obama for the wreckage, they are already doing so.

Remind me again why our president is deluded into believing he can bargain in good faith with these people.

OK, rant over.

To No One's Surprise, Exxon/Mobil Was Lying About The Severity Of The Yellowstone River Oil Spill

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We already noticed that Exxon/Mobil officials were downplaying the severity of that oil spill in the Yellowstone River. Now it turns out -- to absolutely no one's surprise -- that they were lying through their teeth:

Federal documents show it took Exxon Mobil nearly twice as long as it publicly disclosed to fully seal a pipeline that spilled roughly 1,000 barrels of crude oil into the Yellowstone River.

Details about the company's response to the Montana pipeline burst emerged late Tuesday as the Department of Transportation ordered the company bury the duct deeper beneath the riverbed, where it is buried 5 to 8 feet underground to deliver 40,000 barrels of oil a day to a refinery in Billings.

The federal agency's records indicate the pipeline was not fully shut down for 56 minutes after the break occurred Friday near Laurel. That's longer than the 30 minutes that company officials claimed Tuesday in a briefing with federal officials and Gov. Brian Schweitzer.

An Exxon Mobil spokesman said the longer time span was based on information provided to the agency by the company and the discrepancy might have come about because Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. President Gary Pruessing was speaking without any notes in front of him when he addressed Schweitzer.

There's also been a startling lack of information for the people who are directly affected by the spill.
Gee, who could have foreseen this? Drill, baby, drill!

ACLU And Elon James White Call Out The Lost War On Drugs

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[Video Not Safe For Work]

Elon James White, one of our favorite comedians and a Netroots Nation stalwart, channels a lot of people's sentiments in this video. It might be NSFW, but White says a lot of things that need saying.

It's part of the ACLU's campaign to End the War on Drugs:

June 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs" — a war that has cost roughly a trillion dollars, has produced little to no effect on the supply of or demand for drugs in the United States, and has contributed to making America the world's largest incarcerator.

The war on drugs has sent millions of people to prison for low-level offenses, and seriously eroded our civil liberties and civil rights while costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year, with nothing to show for it except our status as the world's largest incarcerator. There are 2.3 million people behind bars in this country — that is triple the amount of prisoners we had in 1987 — and 25 percent of those incarcerated are locked up for drug offenses. Taxpayers spend almost $70 billion a year on corrections and incarceration. A far more sensible way to deal with a public health problem like drug addiction is to provide treatment, which study after study has shown is more effective than incarceration.

Through advocacy and litigation, the ACLU has been seeking an end to this failed war on drugs and our costly addiction to incarceration for decades. Go here to read more about the ACLU’s work to end to excessively harsh crime policies that result in mass incarceration and stand in the way of a just and equal society.

There is a series of posts on the subject at the ACLU's Blog of Rights. Be sure to check it out.

The Big Right-wing Lies: We're Going Broke, And Spending Is Out Of Control

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've remarked from the get-go that the most remarkable thing about the Tea Partying Republican Right is that they represent a political bloc predicated on people believing things that are provably untrue. This has, of course, ranged from the Birth Certificate nonsense to the belief that Obama is going to take everyone's guns away, and everything in between.

But these are in many ways secondary add-ons to Tea Partyism, whose core mantra really revolves around the federal deficit and spending: We're on the verge of bankruptcy, they claim, and it's being caused by "out-of-control" federal spending.

In the video above, Van Jones -- who knows all about right-wing lies -- deconstructs the Really Big Lie that is a cornerstone of Tea Party beliefs, not to mention right-wing media talking points, namely: We're going broke.

We're not.

Meanwhile, Brian Beutler at TPMDC deconstructs the claim that "federal spending is out of control":

But a close look at the numbers reveals a few important, and frequently overlooked facts.

Domestic discretionary spending is a small sliver of the budget. Our deficit and debts can be traced to the fact that spending on entitlement programs and defense has shot up, and tax revenues have plummeted to their lowest level in decades. But spending on domestic discretionary programs has grown much more slowly. And, if you correct for inflation, and for growing population, it turns out we're spending exactly the same amount on these programs as we were a full decade ago.

These numbers come from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are doing their best to guard this turf.

"Although non-defense discretionary spending in nominal dollars has increased, when taking inflation and population growth into account the amount contained in the [2011 budget] represents no increase over what we spent in 2001, a year in which we generated a surplus of $128 billion," said chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) in a prepared statement.

"So the right question to ask is: Are we really spending too much on non-defense programs? The answer is clearly no."

Beutler provides some graphic illustrations of the reality behind the numbers that make it clear, as he suggests, just who the chief culprit in this matter really is: right-wing governance and its mania for cutting taxes.

In the wake of the Bush tax cuts, and the Great Recession, tax revenue has fallen through the floor to near-historic lows. As a percentage of GDP, it's fallen 24 percent since 2001, and if you correct for inflation, the government is collecting nearly 20 percent less per person than it was a decade ago. At the same time, the population-adjusted costs of mandatory spending programs -- driven by Medicare, including its new prescription drug benefit, and Medicaid -- have increased by over 30 percent. And, of course, defense spending has skyrocketed. But if you isolate domestic discretionary programs, a decade later we're spending no more on a per-person basis than we were back then.

Meanwhile, Robert Reich explains all this in detail:



Yes, it's true: Right-wing ideology is increasingly built on a foundation of lies.

Gaxiola Found Guilty Of All Counts In Flores Family Murders

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

While cable channels like Fox have been paying attention 24/7 to the largely meaningless Casey Anthony murder case, we've instead been following the trials in the case of Shawna Forde and her killer Minutemen, which has considerably more social significance -- and thus has, of course, been largely ignored in the media. Indeed, the clip above was the only video I could find of the final verdict, which came down Friday:

An Arivaca man was convicted today of being behind a May 2009 home invasion that resulted in the death of a former friend and the friend's 9-year-old daughter.

It took a Pima County jury five hours to convict Albert Gaxiola, 44, of first-degree murder in the deaths of Raul Junior Flores, 29, and Brisenia Flores. He was also convicted this afternoon of attempting to murder Flores' wife, Gina Gonzalez, and one count each of burglary, armed robbery and aggravated robbery; and two counts of aggravated assault.

Jurors must now decide if the circumstances of the case warrant consideration of the death penalty. If they say "Yes," defense attorneys will present mitigation evidence over the next several days.

Dave Ricker has much more at his blog:

Now that the jury has found Gaxiola guilty of the two counts of first-degree murder the trial will move to the aggravation phase starting on Wednesday, July 6. If the jury finds one of the alleged aggravators, multiple murders and a victim under the age of 15, to have been proven then the trial will move to the penalty phase where the burden lies with the defense to persuade the jury to grant the defendant leniency.

During closing arguments in the trial, Thursday, the jury was reminded of a text message sent on May 30, 2009, by the defendant just hours after the a deadly home invasion in Arivaca.

That message sent by Gaxiola read “Sweet dreams.” Deputy County Attorney Rick Unklesbay paused for a moment. “They had just killed a 9-year-old. They had just killed her father. They had just wounded Gina,” he said. “And, Albert Gaxiola’s text message back to Shawna Forde was ‘Sweet dreams.’ Shawna Forde’s reply was: ‘You’re one of my minutemen.’”

Unklesbay found himself searching for words. “I’m not sure what words can adequately characterize the actions of these people,” he said. “This is beyond outrageous. This is just downright scary.”

During those same closing arguments defense counsel Jack L. Lansdale suggested to the jury that his client was incapable of harming Brisenia or her sister. He asked the jury to recall testimony by the medical examiner complete with detailed pictures of the injuries suffered by Brisenia and her father. “Did anyone of you hearing the testimony during the presentation of the photographs of Brisenia Flores happen to notice Albert and his reaction?” he asked, rhetorically. “For him to participate in any action to hurt those children is incomprehensible.”

We'll keep you posted on the final sentence for Gaxiola -- which will wrap up this case, barring appeals, for good.

Oh, Those Annoying Peasants: Montanans Outraged By Exxon/Mobil's Tepid Response To Yellowstone River Oil Spill

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]
 
[From KTVQ-TV.]

That horrifying oil spill on the Yellowstone River in Montana is bad enough. But of course, Exxon/Mobil officials had to go and make it worse by minimizing the damage done to the river and making only the most tepid of cleanup responses:

An oil spill in Montana's Yellowstone River surged toward North Dakota on Sunday as outraged residents demanded more government oversight of Exxon Mobil's cleanup.

An estimated 750 to 1,000 barrels, or up to 42,000 gallons, spilled overnight Friday through a damaged pipeline in the riverbed, Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said. The break near Billings could be related to the river's high water level, officials said.

More than 100 people were working on the cleanup late Sunday, Jeffers said. But local officials said that, because of the raging floodwaters, only a handful of crews were laying absorbent pads and booms to trap oil along short stretches of the river between Billings and Laurel. In some areas, residents said, oil may be flowing underneath the booms and continuing downstream in the murky water.

Jeffers said most of the oil was believed to be within 10 miles of the spill site, and Exxon crews were flying over the area late Sunday to assess how far it had spread.

But Montana's governor disputed the estimate.

"Nobody can say definitively," Gov. Brian Schweitzer said. "It's too early. We need boats on the water," not only flyovers. Boats were potentially unsafe because of the high water, however.

Montanans don't let just anyone mess around with their rivers. After all, this is A River Runs Through It country, and every summer the state's blue-ribbon trout streams draw a steady stream of fly fishermen who spend lots of tourist dollars. It's a big moneymaking industry -- maybe bigger than oil in the state.

As the story observes:

Oil was reported as far as 100 miles away near the town of Hysham, Yellowstone County Commissioner Bill Kennedy said.

Although the spill is downstream from Yellowstone National Park and the fertile Yellowstone fly-fishing grounds frequented by tourists, some officials worried about harm to the industry that draws 11 million annual tourists a year to a state with a population of 980,000.

"We take our rivers very seriously here in Montana," said Schweitzer, a soil scientist who planned to visit the spill site Tuesday. "We will not allow this catastrophe to affect the $400 million trout industry in Montana."

Of course, Exxon Mobil officials claimed there had been no sign of harmed wildlife so far:

UPDATE 7 a.m.: Gov. Brian Schweitzer says statements from ExxonMobil officials that no injured wildlife had been found were premature.

"For somebody to say at this early stage that there's no damage to wildlife, that's pretty silly," Schweitzer told the Associated Press on Saturday. "The Yellowstone River is important to us. We've got to have a physical inspection of that river in small boats — and soon."

The Billings Gazette has published photos of soiled pelicans and turtles. The Environmental Protection Agency said it can't confirm any damage to wildlife or fish kills, but investigators were checking and the federal agency expected to know more Monday.

Here's one of those photos:

The worst part is waiting to see what happens to the trout populations on the Yellowstone and its tributaries. This could get very ugly.