'Live Free Or Die': Beck brings Goldberg on to promote his 'Liberal Fascism'-based 'documentary'

-- by Dave

Glenn Beck has a special "documentary" he's going to show his audience today on Fox News titled "Live Free Or Die," and what's evident is that the entire show is going to be predicated on expanding on Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent thesis in his bestselling book, Liberal Fascism, namely, that fascism is "properly understood" as "a phenomenon of the left."

What's apparent is that Beck intends to leap from this fraudulent beginning to the bizarre conclusion that the progressive movement has always produced genocide -- mostly by equating fascists with communists with progressives, which is part of the underlying illogic of Goldberg's thesis. It seems he will be promoting the conclusion that President Obama is leading America on a path to genocide as well.

Indeed, anyone who's been watching Beck's show the past year is aware that his continually building thesis about Obama -- that he is secretly a black radical Marxist/fascist/socialist/whateverist intent on creating a totalitarian regime in America -- is largely built on Liberal Fascism and its thesis. Beck has
had Goldberg on numerous times to promote the fraud. And his long-running attacks on the progressive movement as the "cancer" destroying the country -- which has been the entire point of Beck's show this week, including the conclusion that progressives may try to assassinate Obama if he moves to the center -- have been nakedly drawn straight from Goldberg's Planet Bizarro version of history. (The giveaway has been Beck's running insistence that Woodrow Wilson is at the root of this evil.)

Towards the end of yesterday's segment, Beck fretted that "the academic wing" of the progressive movement was going to attack him viciously for his "documentary." Goldberg notes that he's faced the same for his book -- though in reality, academics have been largely silent on the subject of Liberal Fascism.

That, however, is about to end.

I've already explained in some depth exactly why Goldberg's thesis is so profoundly dishonest, especially when it comes to the mountain of historical facts that contradict his claims, which he simply elides. But I'm not an academic -- just a journalist who has real-life experience writing about real American fascists.

Academic historians, in fact, have tended to shy away from tackling Goldberg's book, precisely because it is such an obvious work of propagandistic polemics, and his methodology so shabby, that they haven't considered the work (such as it is) contained therein to be worthy of academic consideration.

But because Goldberg's fraudulent thesis has now become conventional wisdom on the American Right -- and particularly among the Tea Party set, where signs equating liberals to fascists and Obama to Hitler have become commonplace -- many historians, especially those who have specialized in the serious study of fascism, have come to the realization that calling out Goldberg for his fraud is long overdue.

To that end, I began organizing last fall a series of essays from academic historians and political scientists critiquing Liberal Fascism. The essays are now ready, and this Monday, Jan. 25, they will be presented at History News Network.

In addition to my introductory essay, there will be essays by four widely acknowledged experts on fascism:

-- Robert O. Paxton, professor emeritus at Columbia University and the author of The Anatomy of Fascism.

-- Roger Griffin, professor of political science at Oxford Brookes and the author of The Nature of Fascism.

-- Matthew Feldman, professor of history at University of Northampton, and a co-editor of several academic texts on fascism.

-- Chip Berlet, senior researcher at Political Research Associates and the co-author (with Matthew Lyons) of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.

Beck will probably believe this response from academics is inspired by his show today, but only in a purely accidental sense: It's been in the works for some months now, and was more inspired by the broad absorption of Goldberg's thesis as conventional wisdom -- of which Beck's constant promotion of it is a not-insignificant part. Let's just say the timing will indeed be serendipitous.

Incidentally, Beck gave us a little preview of the "documentary" on his Tuesday show:


This is going to be such a vicious and historically skewed misrepresentation of "the progressive movement" that it looks like it will go down in the annals of fraudulent history.

I especially got quite a chuckle out of the chryons Beck's show displayed during yesterday's promotion, such as this one:



Talk about projection.

I've previously discussed what Beck leaves out when it comes to the history of the progressive movement and its real historical impact:

The United States has always been an essentially capitalist economic system. However, we have experienced periods in our history where this system has seriously malfunctioned, and we've made adjustments accordingly that have largely worked well making things better.

One of those dysfunctional periods came at about the turn of the last century, when McKinley was president, corrupt robber barons ran Congress, and the latter-day version of "strict constructionists" ruled the courts. "Laissez faire" capitalism ruled, and America was functionally an oligarchy.

Squeezed out were the working people: the average workweek was 80 hours, there were no weekends, no vacation, only a few holidays, and the barest minimum of pay. Benefits and health care were unheard of. Child labor was the rule.

What happened between then and now? "Progressives" began agitating for better working conditions, and began organizing as labor unions. After a long period of violent repression, these reforms gradually became government policy -- especially in the 1930s under FDR. Americans began getting 40-hour work weeks with weekends off, paid vacations and benefits.

Probably the most significant and lasting legacy of this period of "progressive" innovation was the progressive tax code. It has been a feature of the income tax since its institution in 1913. Who was one of its original champions? Theodore Roosevelt.

The fact is that the United States -- like nearly every single Western capitalist democracy -- is a variable blend of socialism and capitalism, free-enterprise economies with regulatory restraints and modest income redistribution. The result of those "progressive" reforms from 1900-1940 was the birth of the great American middle class and the quality of life we have enjoyed so long we've forgotten what it was like not to have it. People like Glenn Beck seem never even to have learned.

Indeed, when right-wingers like Beck and Goldberg attack "evil progressivism," it sounds a lot like they want us to return to the bad old days under McKinley, when American workers were indentured servants to the wealthy.

Of course, maybe now that they're both wealthy men, there's a simple explanation for that.

I think I can pretty much guarantee that Beck's "documentary" shows none of this history.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

After Dyer's rape arrest, 'Oath Keepers' disavow any association with onetime key figure

-- by Dave

Gossip Boy -- which has been all over the case of onetime "Oath Keepers" figure Charles Dyer, arrested for the rape of a 7-year-old girl -- is reporting that the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, is running away from Dyer as fast as he can.

Rhodes, as you can see in the video from his Oct. 21 appearance on MSNBC's Hardball, tries to project a straight-shooter image, even though the underlying beliefs of the Oath Keepers' "oath" is a swamp of bizarre conspiracies.

So now Rhodes has scrubbed any mention of Dyer from the Oath Keepers site, and is claiming to have had no association whatsoever with him:

“Charles Dyer never became an actual member of Oath Keepers. I met him when he attended our April 19, 2009 gathering at Lexington, and back then I considered him for a position as our liaison to the Marine Corps, but I decided against that when he made it clear he intended to train and help organize private militias across the country when he got out of the Marines. I considered such plans to be incompatible with the Oath Keepers mission and goals, and certainly incompatible with any leadership position within this org. He understood and agreed with my decision to not have him become officially involved with Oath Keepers. All of that was long before we even offered official memberships. So, he was never a member, and never in any leadership position.”

One little problem with this explanation, as Gossip Boy explains, is the evidence from our friends at Google cache:





Yep, that's the same Stewart Rhodes announcing that Dyer would be representing the Oath Keepers at the July 4 Tea Party in Broken Arrow.

Indeed, the reality is that Dyer has been a significant figure for the Oath Keepers all along. His first video, released in March, in fact put the Oath Keepers on the map Internet-wise by going viral.

As we noted, at least Dyer's friends at American Resistance are standing behind him. You can't blame Stewart Rhodes for wanting to cut and run, but he's not exactly helping his cause by being the opposite of forthcoming about it all.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Unbelievable. Glenn Beck intimates that progressives will try to assassinate Obama if he moves to the center

-- by Dave

OK, OK, Glenn, we get it. The progressive movement is the root of all evil in America and must be purged by any means necessary to save the Republic. Really, we get that. You've been saying it for a long time now. And you've been repeating it a lot lately.

And yesterday's show was really just a continuation. We learned that the "coming civil war" for "the soul of the Democratic Party" will be fought as "progressives vs. Democrats -- it's blue vs. gray."

We also learned that when progressives lose, "all bets are off. They will cheat, they will lie, they will steal -- and they have in the past blown things up if it helps them win."

But really, do you think that progressives will try to assassinate Obama if he decides to move to the political center in the coming months?

Because that sure as hell was what you were getting at yesterday on your show. You fretted in the opening monologue, talking about that looming internal "civil war" among Democrats:

Beck: I believe it could get ugly -- so ugly, not only do I think the Republic is in danger, I think that we need to pay real attention -- I think this president could be in real danger as well -- something I have said for awhile.

However, he never fully explained what he meant by this remark -- mostly dropping further intimations, including the remark about progressives' supposedly violent tendencies, and then explaining "why the president is in danger" by running through one of his chalkboard talks showing Obama's connections to such nefarious progressive entities as SEIU and ACORN. Later, he added that these "radical revolutionaries" running the White House were planning to "deal a final death blow to the Constitution if they can."

Beck may have been a little oblique about this on his Fox News show, but earlier yesterday on his radio show he explained his thinking in more detail (via Media Matters):

Beck: The most dangerous time in any regime, especially a radicalized regime, is when it is in collapse.

Watch the uber-Left. Pray that Obama moves to the center. If he does, pray that the Secret Service care for that man. That that man is never left alone. He has invited 9-11 Truthers into the White House and into his administration! If they believe that he's 'just another one of these guys,' he is in danger.

Actually, Glenn, a far more likely scenario under which President Obama would be endangered were if he were to move away from the failed center where he's been operating and tack left, especially in a populist sense, by tackling issues like banking reform and immigration.

Because then we can be certain the dogs of the TeaPartying GlennBeckian Right will not merely be howling at full bay, as they have for the past year, but literally frothing at the mouth. Then, I would have even more concern for his well-being than I do now -- which is plenty.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

'Oath Keepers' Leader Arrested for Child Rape; Cops Find Stolen Grenade Launcher In His House

-- by Dave

We first noticed Marine Sgt. Charles Dyer, aka "July4Patriot," back in March, when we ran one of the first reports on the "Oath Keepers" bloc of the Tea Party movement -- an organization devoted to recruiting military and police-force veterans into a Patriot-movement belief system predicated on a series of paranoid conspiracy theories, especially the notion that the federal government intends to begin rounding up citizens and putting them in concentration camps.

Dyer played a prominent role in connecting the Oath Keepers to the Tea Party movement, speaking at a July 4 Tea Party rally in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. And he's been involved in organizing militia "maneuvers" in Oklahoma.

Dyer cropped up again in the news -- this time in the police blotter for allegedly raping a 7-year-old girl:

An ex-military man has been arrested on charges of rape of a child and forcible sodomy.

Charles Alan Dyer, 29, of Marlow, was arrested Tuesday afternoon by Stephens County Sheriff’s deputies, said Sheriff Wayne McKinney. Dyer served in the United States Marines in Iraq.

Oh, and guess what police found when they searched his home:

During the search the sheriff’s deputies noted several firearms and a device believed to be a Colt M-203, 40-millimeter grenade launcher, a complaint filed in the United States District Court of Western Oklahoma by Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco Special Agent Brett Williams said.

As the story from KAUZ-TV notes, Dyer had a history of making bizarre claims in his videos -- as well as violent fears of being arrested.

“We come home and those bastards want to talk about how we’re domestic terrorists and a threat to this country. It makes me so angry,” said Charles Dyer, who has been accused of committing rape.

... More incriminating evidence against Dyer has surfaced in a YouTube video. The video shows Dyer, a former U.S. Marine, talking proudly about domestic terrorism. “Join the military?”, said Dyer. “Depends on what you want to do with it. Me? I'm going to use my training and become one of those domestic terrorists that you’re so afraid of from the DHS reports.”

... “I’m certainly not going to be hiding from my command anymore. I’m not hiding from ATF. Not hiding from FBI. Any organization. If they want to come get me I’m not going to be afraid,” Dyer said.

“Patriots, we are not overpowered. If we united under one banner and fight for our children’s liberity and the constitution, our resolve is invincible to any standing army,” Dyer said.

GossipBoy is reporting that the rape victim was a close family member. They also report that Dyer had been in touch with a fellow militiaman linked to explosives dealing, and that when bomb-sniffing dogs searched Dyer's home, they indicated explosives had been stored there recently.

Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, the folks at American Resistance Movement -- a group Dyer was also prominently involved in -- are claiming that Dyer was set up, and the girl who accused him was "programmed" to do so. Accordingly, they've set up a "Free July4Patriot" fund, with a little button on their front page so you can donate.

Also, Dyer's YouTube page remains active.

Every movement attracts its freaks. But the Patriot movement attracts an inordinate number of them -- and particularly people with a pedophilia problem. (I can list at least 10 different prominent figures in the Northwest's Patriot movement in the 1990s who had a history of being charged with abusing and abducting children.) Evidently, being a pedophile leads to resentment of the government -- probably for its desire to lock you away.

We'll reserve judgment on Dyer's guilt or innocence for after the trial. But let's just say that the predictable claims that he's been arrested as part of a government plot to silence him are not exactly compelling in this case.

[Thanks to Susie for her help with this post.]

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Beck's eliminationist tirade against progressives: If Dems don't change course now, we'll know they're Marxist radicals

-- by Dave

Glenn Beck was in top form yesterday, anticipating Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts by launching into yet another tirade about the Monstrous Evil Known As Progressivism. This one was flat-out eliminationist, describing progressives variously as objects fit only for extermination, including diseases and monsters:

Beck: Progressives were lurking like a virus, waiting for their chance to suck all of the blood out of the Democratic neck. They were looking for the opening to infect the system. And once they were inside that system, I warned in 2004, the Democrats -- it will be a battle to the end of your party to get them out.

... What we are talking about is an ideological movement that has set its sights on the destruction of the Constitution and the fundamental transformation of our Republic. It is called the progressive movement, and it has been using both parties for a long, long time.

But mainly, it's the Democratic Party that has played host to it. And this parasite has been feeding on that host.

If Obama does the smart thing and re-energize his base, however, Beck will consider that confirmation of his running theory that Obama is a closet black Marxist/fascist radical bent on destroying America:

Beck: America, if these people are only politicians, they will do what they did in 1994, and they will migrate, starting tomorrow, right to the center.

But if we're right, that these are Marxist revolutionaries, that these are progressives who follow Mao, they are gonna put the foot on the gas -- it's not gonna be pretty. And they will eat their own, the Democrats, first.

Beck is obviously reading the Massachusetts results as proof that voters are buying into the Tea Party movement's right-wing panaceas and are repudiating health-care reform. That may not be the case: Media Matters notes that Massachusetts voters already have universal health care, and the issue wasn't of much importance to Brown supporters.

But watch in the coming weeks for calls to Democrats to expel the evil progressives from their midst.

And Republicans, too, no doubt. Which will mean, according to Beck, driving out evil "progressives" like John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Bill O'Reilly gets nostalgic about those Golden Years when ethnic slurs were no big deal

-- by Dave

Well, apparently one good way to make sure your music video gets lots of airtime is to mention Bill O'Reilly flatteringly. Mr. Falafel Head will be sure to bring you on for a talk segment, as he did with Ray Stevens on Monday night.

Nevermind, of course, that Stevens' hit "Tea Party anthem" features a lyric about euthanizing Grandma, which he heard about "from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh". O'Reilly replayed that part for us approvingly again.

But then he launched into a discussion with Stevens about his lame old 1962 hit novelty record, "Ahab the Arab," the video for which O'Reilly also played. And then he whined about how it's so politically incorrect to say that stuff now:

O’REILLY: So 48 years ago — 48 years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs. … We could make fun of people in a general way, and certainly, Ahab was the Arab was a general parody. But now, we can’t. What has changed in America?

STEVENS: I think we’ve gone overboard with the political correctness just like so many other people think the same way about that. And I don’t know. We’ve got to come out of that, I think.

Yeah, it's just tragic. As Adam Serwer observes:

The subtext of this lament is O'Reilly mourning the demise of what he refers to as the "white Christian male power structure." It's not really that you "can't" make racist jokes anymore; it's that you when you make them, you can't expect everyone to remain silent as you assert your cultural or racial superiority through humor.

Still, while we're clearly a country where simply "making fun of Arabs" is seen in most circles as inappropriate, we are a country where it's not as taboo to whine about no longer being able to make fun of Arabs. Meanwhile there's also a bipartisan consensus that anti-Arab racism can be government policy.

But hey, what's racial profiling, indefinite detention, and unprecedented levels of warrantless surveillance when white guys can't publicly tell racist jokes? I think we know who the real victims are here.

Transcript via Think Progress.

Priscilla at NewsHounds has more.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Compare and contrast: Glenn Beck and Father Coughlin

-- by Dave

One of Glenn Beck's favorite claims about the Tea Party movement -- and the surge of right-wing populism that he's leading -- is that it isn't about parties, it's about being American. And being American, of course, means being conservative.

He was on this briefly again last night:

Beck: Well, the media may be surprised, but I'm not. I think the days when people vote for Democrats or Republicans no matter what -- you know, if it's an R or a D, I'm just gonna pull it -- I think we're seeing the end of those days. For so long, we've bought into the Rs and the Ds -- you know, we're really at a one-party system at this point. We needed to identify ourselves as one or the other, even though it didn't really make a difference. And that label was much more important than the real label we all should have been wearing, and that is, American.

Progressives have put their agenda now into hyperdrive, and it is so crystal clear that their final goal is anything but American.

This claim -- to represent the real America, one that transcends political parties -- is the historic claim of right-wing populists throughout history.

Compare Beck's rant last night with this remarkably similar rant from Father Charles Coughlin, the renowned anti-Semitic radio preacher, in 1936:



And yes, Glenn Beck shares Coughlin's views on the Federal Reserve, too.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

There's a reason conservatives shouldn't claim Martin Luther King: When he was alive, they smeared and demonized him

-- by Dave

Glenn Beck decided to repeat his asking-black-conservatives-dumb-white-guy-questions show with a new round, this time evidently focused on Harry Reid's remarks. Unlike the last time, there weren't any open embarrassments, except for the moment when Beck agreed that poor people are "like a domesticated animal [that] never learns to hunt."

But again, Beck hijacked the words of Martin Luther King Jr. He opened up the show with a King quote written on a chalkboard.

And it really is shameless. Conservatives nowadays love to claim King as one of their own. And it's a complete joke -- because when King was alive, conservatives were the people he had to combat.

Rick Perlstein described this some time back:

When Martin Luther King was buried in Atlanta, the live television coverage lasted seven and a half hours. President Johnson announced a national day of mourning: "Together, a nation united and a nation caring and a nation concerned and a nation that thinks more of the nation's interests than we do of any individual self-interest or political interest--that nation can and shall and will overcome." Richard Nixon called King "a great leader--a man determined that the American Negro should win his rightful place alongside all others in our nation." Even one of King's most beastly political enemies, Mississippi Representative William Colmer, chairman of the House rules committee, honored the president's call to unity by terming the murder "a dastardly act."

Others demurred. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond wrote his constituents, "[W]e are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case." Another, even more prominent conservative said it was just the sort of "great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they'd break."

That was Ronald Reagan, the governor of California, arguing that King had it coming. King was the man who taught people they could choose which laws they'd break--in his soaring exegesis on St. Thomas Aquinas from that Birmingham jail in 1963: "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. ... Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."

That's not what you hear from conservatives today, of course. What you get now are convoluted and fantastical tributes arguing that, properly understood, Martin Luther King was actually one of them--or would have been, had he lived. But, if we are going to have a holiday to honor history, we might as well honor history. We might as well recover the true story. Conservatives--both Democrats and Republicans--hated King's doctrines. Hating them was one of the litmus tests of conservatism.

I lived in a conservative town in a conservative state at the time, and I remember how deeply and viscerally people hated Martin Luther King when he was alive. And for years after his death, conservatives fought his legacy. They opposed a national holiday in his honor (Jesse Helms, that conservative icon, launched a filibuster against the proposal). Even today, many conservatives believe the old Bircherite smears that King was a Communist.

I thought Beck had a phobia about Communists. After all, the allegations that King had "Communist ties" are about as well grounded as Beck's own charges that Van Jones was a "self-proclaimed Communist."

But I guess when they make for handy stage props for phony discussions about race with a carefully selected audience -- shows which rapidly devolve into whinefests by black conservatives about being pegged as sellouts -- he'll look the other way.

Now, I dunno about sellouts. But anyone who thinks "conservative values" were anything but a hindrance to the black community for most of this country's history is just plain ignorant.

Especially if you know anything about what Martin Luther King Jr. actually stood for when he was alive -- and who his enemies were. They were conservatives. And for them to try to claim his mantle now is a travesty and a joke.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Sarah Palin defends her 'Lie of the Year', claims 'death panels' are still in health-care reform bill

-- by Dave

There's a reason the Tea Party crowd still believes in "death panels" -- namely, because Sarah Palin, who coined the term, keeps claiming that they really do exist still.

Nevermind, of course, that it has long been exposed as a complete falsehood, and was named "Lie of the Year" by PolitiFact. To right-wingers like Sarah Palin, though, you can lie through your teeth, tell the press that up is down, that a report finding you guilty of various abuses of power as Alaska's governor in fact actually "completely exonerates" you -- and everyone will stand around and pretend like it's just another point of view.

So she repeated it again last night on Hannity:

Hannity: You stand by those comments because you think it still exists in the bill.

Palin: I do. It's a commission, it's bureaucracy, it's bureaucrats who will ration care if the bill goes through as Obama wants it to go through. Yes -- it's modeled, in essence, after a British system that does have people to decide whether, based on your quality of life, your age, whether you're gonna deserve health-care coverage or not -- that's what's gonna happen in America if this health-care bill isn't stopped, and it needs to be stopped soon, and that's why the people of this land can't give up in demanding that their voice be heard, demanding that the White House understand that this is a representative form of government, we do expect that the will of the people is listened to and adhered to and implemented via our representatives, who we elect.

Eh? The British system has no such "commissions." As the AP recently reported, officials in Britain recently repudiated claims like Palin's:

The criticism, widely covered in the U.K. media, has clearly stung Britain's left-leaning Labour government. The Department of Health took the unusual step of contacting The Associated Press and e-mailing it a three-page rebuttal to what it said were misconceptions about the NHS being bandied about in the U.S. media – each one followed with the words: "Not true."

At the top of the list was the idea that a patient in his late 70s would not be treated for a brain tumor because he was too old – a transparent reference to Grassley's comments about Kennedy.

And what of Republicans' claim that British patients are robbed of their medical choices? False again, the department said.

"Everyone who is cared for by the NHS in England has formal rights to make choices about the service that they receive," it said in its rebuttal.

Then followed a fact sheet comparing selected statistics such as health spending per capita, infant mortality, life expectancy, and more. Each one showed England outperforming its trans-Atlantic counterpart.

The British government offers health care for free at the point of need, a service pioneered by Labour in 1948. In the six decades since, its promise of universal medical care, from cradle to grave, is taken for granted by Britons to such an extent that politicians – even fiscal conservatives – are loath to attack it.

Apparently Palin is referring to British cost-containment measures:

The NHS has a body called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) that decides which new treatments and drugs the NHS should pay for. One of the factors NICE considers when deciding whether to approve funding for a new treatment or drug is cost-effectiveness. To determine the dividing line between what is cost-effective and what isn't, it must set a threshold. Taking its lead from Britain's Department of Transport — which has a cost-per-life-saved threshold for new road schemes of about $2.2 million per life, or about $45,000 per life year gained — NICE rarely approves a drug or treatment that costs more than $45,000 per life year gained. In short, NICE does not want the NHS to spend more than $45,000 to extend a citizen's life by one year.

While NICE's decisions have angered some doctors and patient groups — particularly some oncologists who say they are unable to prescribe expensive, life-extending cancer drugs — mainstream politicians, the media and most Britons accept NICE's rare rejections as a necessary compromise to keep universal coverage affordable in the face of rising health-care costs. As NICE chairman Sir Michael Rawlins recently told TIME, "All health-care systems have implicitly, if not explicitly, adopted some form of cost control. In the U.S., you do it by not providing health care to some people. That's a rather brutal way of doing it."

Indeed, that's the point PolitiFact raised in its piece on Palin's lie:

Democrats responded by saying the accusation wasn't true and highlighting the actual Medicare provision and what it said.

That wasn't necessarily an effective strategy, said Drew Westen, a psychologist who studies political communication and advises Democrats on messaging. "Instead of stopping and asking themselves, 'What are Republicans trying to appeal to?' the Democrats rolled their eyes and said, 'Isn't this stupid,' " he said. "On one level, it was stupid, but on another level, it was hitting seniors very close to where they live."

People intuitively understand that health care reform is about lowering costs, and end-of-life care can be quite costly, he said. The "death panels" claim exploited fears that people already had. Rather than just saying the claim wasn't true, Westen said, a better response would be that there already are "death panels" — run by insurance companies.

Indeed, there is no doubt that "death panels" already exist. They're just called insurance-company policies.

For right-wingers like Sarah Palin, though, it's better to have people denied any coverage whatsoever than the possibility that a government insurance plan might ration access to expensive treatments.

Baldfacedly and defiantly lying about it, evidently, is just part of the deal.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Palin pretends she didn't publicly support the bailouts too when Beck rips McCain as 'a progressive'

-- by Dave

It was Glenn Beck's turn to host new Fox News Analyst Sarah Palin yesterday. It was actually an incredibly boring interview, since Beck mostly seemed interested in whether Palin hung on his every word or not and bought into his theory that Obama is a radical black Marxist bent on destroying America. She did, of course.

It featured all of Beck's tired schticks, including his claim that Republicans like George W. Bush and John McCain are actually "progressives":

Beck: It killed me to vote for John McCain. And I voted for John McCain because of you. Um, John McCain is a progressive. John McCain -- he's an honorable man.

Palin: He is an honorable man.

Beck: He is an honorable man. And that goes a long way -- there's, I mean, that's a rare island to find. He's an honorable man. But he's also a progressive.

He's big government, he was for the bank bailouts, he was for the uh, uhm, health care. He's for all of it. He's for all of it.

Palin played along, pointing out: "Look what he's doing now!" and generally suggesting that those naughty wayward conservatives had gotten the gospel of Glenn and were back on the right track.

Beck seems utterly unaware that, in fact, Palin was for the bank bailouts too.

As you can see from the additional footage we included in the above video, Palin vocally supported the bailouts in her vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden, praising McCain's supposed work in trying to get the bailout package passed:

John McCain thankfully has been one representing reform. Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. He sounded that warning bell.

People in the Senate with him, his colleagues, didn’t want to listen to him and wouldn’t go towards that reform that was needed then. I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight, again thanks to John McCain’s bipartisan efforts that he was so instrumental in bringing folks together over this past week, even suspending his own campaign to make sure he was putting excessive politics aside and putting the country first.

As Dave Weigel noted awhile back, this was just after McCain had "suspended" his campaign to return to Washington to attempt to push the bailout through.

In late September, Palin also defended the bailouts in her interview with Katie Couric:

Palin: That’s why I say, I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bail out.

But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Helping the — Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. A

And trade we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation.

This bailout is a part of that.

That is, it's a defense of sorts. Actually, it makes no sense whatever -- it's just a big pot of policy-wonk words thrown together in a way that I think Palin hoped sounded like it made some kinda sense.

The only thing that's really clear from all this is that not only was Palin a full supporter of the bailouts, she was a big fan of health-care reform. In fact, she seems to have believed the bailouts would help reform health care. Eh?

No wonder her followers are similarly awash at sea.

Not to mention her interviewers.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

There's a funny odor emanating from the National Tea Party Convention

-- by Dave

Notice that peculiar odor arising from the news that Sarah Palin plans to speak at the National Tea Party Convention planned the first week of February in Nashville?

It's got the distinct whiff of a scam. Take, for instance, Palin's insistence last night on The O'Reilly Factor -- in her debut as a "Fox News Analyst" -- that "I will not be financially gaining anything from this".

Well, yeah, except for that $100,000 speaking fee. Palin insisted she was going to "turn it right back around and contribute to campaigns, candidates, and issues that will help our country."

Right.

But exactly what kind of movement is it that locks out the press and operates behind closed doors? As Dave Weigel says:

This really is unusual. As a journalist, I’ve been allowed into sessions, dinners, everything at conferences hosted by the Eagle Forum and by Focus on the Family. Extra credit to Eagle Forum here — when I was covering the How to Take Back America Conference in St. Louis, Phyllis Schlafly’s son Andy, an organizer, invited me away from my media seat and into a seat at his dinner table to chat with more activists. And some of the most controversial speakers at the National Tea Party Convention, like Rick Scarborough, happily chatted with me inside and outside of their sessions at previous events.

One major implication of this, of course, is that for the third time since the presidential election — the first at a speech in China, the second at a speech for a pro-life group in Indiana — Sarah Palin will give a political speech that members of the media are not allowed to attend.

The National Tea Party Convention is being largely spearheaded by Tea Party Nation, which styles itself an independent operation. But if you look at the list of speakers, among them is WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, who's keynoting the Friday dinner.

WND, you may recall, has been promoting an assortment of conspiracy theories about Obama, including the "Birther" theory and the claim that concentration camps are being planned for rounding up conservatives. (Weigel has more on this.)

Even the redoubtable Erick Erickson at RedState is sensing the odor:

I think the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be.

That’s not to say it is in every case. I have much good to say about groups like Tea Party Patriots, but I think this national tea party convention smells scammy.

Let me be blunt: charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number.

That scammy smell is what you get whenever you combine money and far-right wingnuttery.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Ray Stevens' 'Tea Party Anthem' features lyric about euthanizing Grandma

-- by Dave

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Well, Sarah Palin's "death panels" may have been named "Lie of the Year," but they live on in Tea Party movement legend.

Ray Stevens -- noted for such novelty songs as "The Streak" and "Ahab the Arab" -- has a music video out that's being hailed as "the Anthem of the Tea Party movement" titled "We the People":

“We the People” is about Obamacare and the health-care reform bills that have passed both houses of Congress.

The lyrics express a comic, but pointed warning to members of Congress: “You vote Obamacare, we’re going to vote you out of there. We the People have awakened to your tricks. You vote to let this pass, you’re going to be out on your (sound of foghorn).”

They also feature a noteworthy lyric:

We've heard from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh
What you got in mind for Grandma

[Video: Nurse putting chloroformed cloth over elderly woman's face]

Yeah, now that you mention it, we have heard that from those three -- and a number of others. And we also know that IT'S A FREAKING LIE.

And you'll notice that Bill O'Reilly played this very snippet the other night, quite approvingly, and made no attempt to correct the record. This is how the Fox propagandists keep spreading the lies.

But then, if there were some nugget of news on Fox that were actually true, these nimrods would never believe it.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Glenn Beck throws up a pre-emptive defense of the coming wave of anti-immigrant bigotry

-- by Dave

As I noted awhile back, when discussing the violent propensities of the white nationalists who have invaded the Tea Party movement:

One can't help but feel a sense of foreboding about what's likely to occur when immigration reform comes up on the national plate ... These people are already organized and already inclined to violence. If you thought the town-hall teabaggers went nuts over health-care reform, just wait.

We later got a prime example of this in the New Hampshire teabagger who shouted, "We don't need illegals. Send 'em home on a bus, send 'em home with a bullet in the head the second time!"

Of course, the problem isn't just the violence. Accompanying it, at every turn, is an overpowering nativist racism that opposes immigrants of every kind, and not merely the illegal ones.

Right-wingers love to whine that simply opposing illegal immigration brings charges of racism. That's what Glenn Beck was on about yesterday on his show.

Beck: The progressives must reactivate their far-left base, they must smear their detractors. They will call me and Fox News and anyone else if you believe that we are a nation of laws and not of men, you're going to be called nasty names. And they're not going to listen to any of the facts that you have to say.

That kinda sounds like Beck making excuses in advance, doesn't it? Because, heaven knows, the folks at Fox haven't indulged in racist stereotypes when discussing immigrants and crime, or don't reflexively demean them as "illegals", or mindlessly promote nativist operations like the Minutemen. Lord knows Glenn Beck would never do such a thing as help promote the white-supremacist based "Aztlan" conspiracy theory, or let the Minutemen smear the National Council of La Raza by comparing them to the Klan.

Perish the thought that they might continue resurrecting these canards during the immigration debate -- along with whatever new race-baiting memes they can come up with. (No doubt they'll be busily consulting Michelle Malkin on that front.)

You know, we'd love to have a debate about reforming our nation's immigration laws and policies that's sane and logical and free of the emotional taint of racism. But that will only be possible if the right decides to quit indulging it. If, in other words, hell freezes over.

Lou Dobbs was fond of this exact same whine -- even as he indulged in fake stories about immigrants spreading leprosy and attacked efforts to improve legal immigration, while hosting white supremacists and nativists on his program as "experts" on immigration.

It's one thing to hold a contrary opinion – which, despite the claims of Dobbs and defenders, was not what he was attacked for. It's quite another to irresponsibly demagogue and demonize an entire bloc of the American population with provably false information and paranoid conspiracy theories derived in large part from hate groups – which was in fact what he was attacked for. Dobbs wasn't in trouble with the public merely for opposing illegal immigration; a large segment of the public sought his removal because he had become an irresponsible font of false information and fearmongering, for demonizing and belittling Latino immigrants and peddling conspiracy theories; because he had indeed become a major conduit for right-wing extremism into the mainstream of our discourse. That's racism, and a whole lot more.

Of course, there was a special irony in Beck making this claim, especially when he went on:

Beck: Charges of racism deserve to be heard and debated -- if there is evidence. But there usually isn't.

Yeah, Glenn Beck would know all about that. Media Matters has the video:



Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

This guy wants to be a leader in the Tea Party movement

-- by Dave


David Weigel at the Washington Independent dug up this photo of Dale Robertson, who heads up the would-be national Tea Party website TeaParty.org, with the sign he was carrying at the February 27, 2009 Tea Party in Houston.

According to Weigel, Robertson was eventually kicked out of the event for carrying the sign. But as with most right-wing populist movements, the most extreme elements are very determined to shape the movement in their direction, and will inevitably find ways to float to the top. Especially when the supposed mainstream "just folks" who populate much of the movement turn a willing blind eye to the extremists who increasingly are leading them.

As Weigel notes, Robertson has arranged a series of "Liberty Concerts" to help promote the Tea Party movement. An e-mail sent out to subscribers to news from ResistNet -- one of the major clearinghouses of Tea Party activist information -- described Robertson's plans:

Robertson is molding the Tea Party events to empower Citizens so they will make a difference in the November 2010 elections. The ongoing tactics are to prioritize States, creating a durable model for ballot access, voter eligibility, precinct chair/county chairs, and candidate awareness. The Tea Party is actively seeking candidates that represent Conservative Constitutional Values. It appears the Major Parties can’t get in step with such a complex idea as Conservative Constitutional Values; therefore, the Tea Party will make it easy for the Independent Parties to break the glass ceiling and get on the ballot.

The ‘Liberty Concerts’ event taking place in Stafford, Texas is a developing prototype, which when successful, will allow the Tea Party to create a thriving event not in months but days. We will be quick on the draw, sure fired and ready to rock in a matter of only a few days. This Tea Party formula will work against incredible odds and will be nothing short of a miracle, but Robertson believes with all his heart all the pieces will fall into place.

Does the Tea Party really believe it can make a difference in November? “Some say, “talk is cheap” but 2 years ago when I started the modern day Tea Party no one believed it could work now 7 million strong, the world is listening and America is hoping, we will not fail.” Dale Robertson – TeaParty.org

As Tars Tarkas notes, the folks at ResistNet put out a disclaimer of sorts:

This is in response to the blast mail you received regarding the Liberty Concert being promoted by the National Tea Party group. The purpose of the email was to share an opportunity for you to experience the fellowship and company of other conservatives, as we kick off the election season and strive to take back America, restoring it to the Constitutional Republic it is meant to be. While they are a separate group from us, we share many of the same goals, a free, conservative America, and fiscal responsibility within our government. We are not necessarily promoting their complete ideology.

It's hard to say why ResistNet is even bothering to distance itself; it is, after all, a site riddled throughout with extremists of various stripes, as suggested by its reference to "the Constitutional Republic" in its disclaimer. After all, this is a site that hosts a copy of Louis Beam's essay, "Leaderless Resistance," which was nothing less than the basic blueprint for forming cells of "citizen militias" and "lone wolf" domestic terrorists as the blueprint for action of the white-nationalist far right. Beam, you may recall, was a leader in the Aryan Nations.

This is a movement that is not only riddled throughout with far-right extremists, but is increasingly being led by them. And no doubt they'll keep producing reminders of that for us.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

GOP candidate Allen Quist: 'Obama, Pelosi, Walz, they're not liberals, they're radicals!'

-- by Dave

Allen Quist is one of a bevy of wingnuts lining up to take on Democratic Rep. Tim Walz in Minnesota's 1st District. He's already making appeals to the Tea Party crowd, and now he's taken to channeling Glenn Beck, as you can see from the video above:

Quist: I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is -- every generation has had to fight for freedom. This is our fight! And this is our time. This is it! Terrorism, yes, but that's not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals! They aren't liberals, they're radicals! Obama, Pelosi, Waltz, they're not liberals, they're radicals! They are destroying our country! And people all over are figuring that out.

This was from a mid-December Christmas party for the Wabash County Republicans.

Richard Alan Smith at VoteVets notes that Quist's smear includes Tim Walz, a decorated veteran:

Sergeant Major (Ret.) Walz's service to his country apparently means nothing to Allen Quist, one of the Republicans lining up to challenge Walz in this year's mid-term election. Here is a video of Quist, who has never worn the uniform of his country, telling you that this brave American is a "radical", is more dangerous than a terrorist and is out to destroy the country he served for 24 years...

...

Allen Quist, a politician who has been chasing office since 1982, should be ashamed of himself. A year before Quist began his desperate attempt to become a career politician, the man who's patriotism he attacks put on an Army uniform at the age of 17 and wore it for 24 years, rising to the highest enlisted rank and becoming the highest ranking enlisted soldier in southern Minnesota. A man who has so little respect for the service of America's Veterans has no business serving in Congress.

Yeah, well, the only problem with teabagging Republicans is ... they have no shame whatsoever.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Rove says Obama's handling of Nigerian airline bomber weaker than Bush's -- even though it's identical

-- by Dave

Karl Rove went on Fox News twice yesterday -- first on Your World and later on Hannity, where he essentially repeated his earlier performance -- to accuse the Obama White House of being soft on terrorism because it did not declare Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber of that Northwest flight into Detroit, an enemy combatant:

Rove: This shows the big difference in this administration's approach to it. This guy was treated not as an enemy combatant, and turned over to the FBI and the CIA for interrogation, he was charged criminally, which means he immediately lawyered up and the amount of information we're going to get from him is going to be this much, compared to what we could get if he was just simply sweat by the FBI and the CIA -- not even using enhanced interrogation techniques, just using what police would be able to use if you weren't lawyered up. This is a very troubling way in which the administration has handled this.

On Hannity, he claimed that by filing criminal charges, "we treat him as a guy who tried to knock over a Seven-Eleven or got caught shoplifting."

Memo to Karl: Convenience-store robbers and shoplifters do not get charged with terrorism in federal court. Just sayin'.

Moreover, the problem with Rove's claim that "this shows the difference" between the Bush and Obama administrations is flatly false (aka a lie).

Faced with nearly identical circumstances with would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid -- who was attempting to use the exact same kind of explosive on an American flight -- the Bush administration in 2001 did exactly the same thing: it filed criminal charges and eventually tried Reid in federal court.

What's worth noting is that Reid, too, was potentially an intelligence bonanza, since he had numerous operational ties with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad.

Then there was Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was eventually convicted of plotting with Al Qaeda to participate in the 9/11 attacks. He, too, was treated as a federal criminal by the Bush administration.

Finally, it should be noted that declaring suspects "enemy combatants" -- especially when they are captured away from the field of battle -- is actually a legal minefield fraught with far greater uncertainty than the use of federal criminal statutes. The classic example of this was the case of Jose Padilla, who was declared an "enemy combatant" by the Bush administration and whose case wound up taking years to be settled by the Supreme Court -- which eventually insisted that he be tried in federal court. Padilla's case was somewhat different, since he is a U.S. citizen, but one can rest assured that the issue of habeas corpus central to his case would be resurrected should Obama have followed Rove's advice.

But then, anyone who follows Karl Rove's advice deserves everything that inevitably will happen to them.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

The Luis Ramirez case: Ripping open the truth about hate crimes in small-town America

-- by Dave

Many of us celebrated when the Justice Department announced it had indicted three police officers for obstructing justice in the case of the bias-crime murder of a Latino named Luis Ramirez in the rural town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

But as Maegan La Mamita Mala at Vivir Latino observes (be sure to read the whole post):

Civil rights and the more expansive human rights matter little when you’re dead. So longer sentences make us feel better, like all the marching, chanting, petition signing, mouse clicking and text messaging meant something. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, no one will go to jail for taking Luis Ramirez from his children and this world. So while we need to support this case, it has to be done in a larger context. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, it still will be dangerous to be a Latino in the United States.

This reality is underscored by the details as they emerge in the Ramirez case. Indeed, the conditions that gave rise to the attempt to cover up the bias crime by local officers are present in nearly every small rural town in America.

Consider, for instance, what the local prosecutor saw going on with the case as he handled it:

The Pennsylvania prosecutor who failed to secure felony convictions against two teens in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant says he thought his case was "compromised" from the start.

Like many residents in the small, tight-knit eastern Pennsylvanian community of Shenandoah, Schuylkill County District Attorney James Goodman knew that an officer investigating the death of Luis Ramirez was in a relationship with the mother of one the teens involved.

Goodman also believed the investigation and evidence hadn't been handled as it should have been.

"They didn't interview the perpetrators, the boys. In fact, not only did they not interview them, they picked them up, gave them rides, helped them concoct stories, brought them back and told the boys what to say," Goodman told CNN.

The son of Shenandoah Police Lt. William Moyer also played on the same football team as the teens who were involved in the July 2008 street brawl, according to court documents.

"It's clear they were trying to help these boys out, for whatever reason -- they were football players, these police officers were trying to help these boys out and limit their involvement in the death of Luis Ramirez."

Likewise with the local eyewitnesses to the crime:\

Residents say they witnessed or long suspected the culture of corruption, nepotism and coercion among the town's law enforcement described by federal prosecutors in indictments and at hearings this week. The police chief and his second-in-command also face federal charges of extorting payments from illegal gambling operations.

Eileen Burke, a former Philadelphia police officer who moved back to her native Shenandoah, said she saw its bleakest example firsthand. After the beating, Ramirez lay about 15 feet in front of her house at Vine and Lloyd streets. From her porch Thursday, she pointed to a manhole cover in the middle of the street where she kneeled over him as he convulsed on July 12, 2008.

A nearby utility pole once had "RIP" scrawled onto it, but it has since been painted over. Now there is only a faint orange blob to mark the spot.

"I knew there was a cover-up," Burke said. "I knew."

Police from other municipalities and state police responded to the scene before a single Shenandoah police officer arrived, she said.

"I sat on my porch that night, from when it happened at approximately 11:15, until 2:30 in the morning," Burke said. "No one came to me to ask what I saw, what I did."

It wasn't until 10 days later that Shenandoah police dropped off a paper on which she was asked to write out a witness statement, Burke said. In the months after, she said she watched the teens walk around town as if nothing wrong had happened. People coddled and protected them, she said, because they were star athletes in a town where Blue Devils football is the primary preoccupation and where the newest immigrants, Latinos who come to work on farms or in factories, are often seen as aloof and unwelcome.

"They made them heroes," Burke said. " 'Free the three.' They wanted to make shirts up and everything, because it was our illustrious football team."

When she walked around town, some people called her a "Mexican lover" or told her to "go see a Mexican," Burke said.

"I had people who said, 'Why didn't you just close the curtains?' "

Having worked for many years in small rural communities, I can attest that this kind of corruption is common, especially when it comes to crimes against people who are considered "outsiders".

Indeed, this very problem is the major subject of my 2003 book, Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America, which focused on another hate crime in a small rural town in which the outcome was reversed, similarly revealing the nature of what goes on in hundreds if not thousands of small towns across the country: hate crimes are ignored, covered up, and go unprosecuted at a disturbing rate in small towns.

One Justice Department study found that the actual occurrence of bias crimes is about fourfold what are actually recorded in FBI statistics, for a variety of factors -- one being that the victims themselves, fearful of further persecution or public exposure, often refuse to press charges or file a complaint. Gays and lesbians and Latinos are particularly unlikely to act because of such fears, and it becomes especially acute in rural areas.

Compounding this, of course, is the reality that local law enforcement is likely to be either ignorant and poorly trained in the nuances of identifying and investigating bias crimes, or as in the Shenandoah case, they are actively hostile to a bias-crime prosecution, and are thus prone to victimizing the victims a second time (as we saw in Ocean Shores).

All the more reason that we should be glad we finally passed a federal bias-crime law.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Justice arrives: Three cops among five indicted for obstructing federal hate-crime investigation in Shenandoah, PA

-- by Dave

Already we can be thankful that we finally passed a federal hate-crime law this summer -- because it's helping bring about justice in the case of a Latino man killed by white thugs in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted in the fatal race-related beating of a Latino man in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Two indictments charge the five with federal hate crime charges, as well as obstruction of justice and conspiracy, authorities said in a written statement. A federal grand jury handed up the indictments last week, and they were unsealed Tuesday.

Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky are charged with a hate crime for beating Luis Ramirez in July 2008 while shouting racial epithets at him, according to the department. Ramirez died two days later.

"Following the beating, Donchak, Piekarsky and others, including members of the Shenandoah Police Department, participated in a scheme to obstruct the investigation of the fatal assault," the Justice Department said. As a result, Donchak faces three additional counts of conspiring to obstruct justice and related offenses, officials said.

Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor and two other officers are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in the Ramirez investigation. Nestor and a fourth police officer are named in a third indictment and charged with extortion and civil rights violations related to police corruption, the Justice Department said.

It's genuinely disturbing to discover that local law-enforcement officers were involved in covering this matter up and obstructing justice. It adds just another twist to an already shocking case.

The Ramirez case was a classic example of why we needed to pass a federal bias-crime law -- especially considering the outrageous circumstances in which the local jury slapped the young thugs on the wrist:

[T]his was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it's clear the all-white jury -- like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle -- was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, "the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican."

Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.

Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground.

As they poured out of courthouse, the teens' supporters shouted "I was right from the start" and "I'm glad the jury listened" at cameras that caught the late-night verdict.

But Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the jury had sent a troubling message.

"The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted," she said.

Considering some of the details of the killing, it's also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:

"Isn't it a little late for you guys to be out?" the boys said, according to court documents. "Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here."

... Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. "They yelled, 'You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you're gonna be laying effin next to him,' " she said.

That is, of course, the entire purpose of bias crimes: To hold the victim up as an example: "You're next." The purpose is to terrorize the target community, to drive them out, eliminate them.

This is why Latino advocates demanded the Justice Department step in and deliver justice. It looks like they have.

Larry Keeler at HateWatch has more.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Stewart lambastes Glenn Beck for his gold-standard conflict of interest

-- by Dave

Oh what fun: Jon Stewart rips into Glenn Beck for his manifest lack of ethics in promoting gold as an investment on his program.

YahooNews's Brett Michael Dykes explained it in some detail:

For some time Beck critics have cried foul over his relationship with Goldline International, a precious metals vendor that features the TV and radio host's endorsement prominently on their website. Critics charge that Beck is guilty of misleading his audience by often advising them to purchase gold in advance of the potential collapse of the value of the dollar on the world currency market, without disclosing that he is in fact a "paid spokesman" for Goldline. Beck's on-air promotion of gold, which includes advising viewers to construct "fruit cellars" and to rely on a "three G system" of "God, Gold, and Guns" in the event of America's collapse, dates back to his time as a host for CNN Headline News.

Glenn Beck also regularly talks up gold on his nationally syndicated radio show, where he often endorses Goldline during live commercial segments. Additionally, Beck has had the company's CEO on as a guest. Advertisements for Goldline are also featured prominently on Beck's own website, where he recently promoted gold in an audio clip warning of an apocalyptic future:

When the system eventually collapses, and the government comes with guns and confiscates, you know, everything in your home and all your possessions, and then you fight off the raving mad cannibalistic crowds that Ted Turner talked about, don't come crying to me. I told you: get gold.

And as James Rainey explained at the LA Times, he may be leading a lot of people down a financial garden path:

Beck, true to form, has not been subtle in making his pitch. He has appealed to listeners to "think like a German Jew" during the period of Nazi ascendance. "I think people are running out of options," he said, "of something that could be worth something at all."

The alternative? Gold. Beck touts his personal investments in the metal and, though he has offered cautionary notes, he leaves no doubt about his bottom line.

"If you have been watching for any length of time and you still haven't looked into buying gold, what's wrong with you?" Beck asks on a video on his personal website. Those not following his advice, he adds, are "nuts."

Buying gold during economic hard times is not, to be sure, a new concept. In the current recession, it's a strategy that has been embraced by many mainstream investors.

My colleague Tom Petruno has written of how some economic wizards -- including David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, predictor of last year's financial swoon -- have replaced some of the cash in their portfolios with gold.

But even some of those who have been making lots of money selling gold concede that the appeal goes beyond mere reason. Peter Epstein, president of Merit Financial Services, told Politico that his firm had advertised on CNN but that the gold message resonated more with Fox's viewers "because it's the angry white man audience -- it's the conservative audience. . . . They are distrustful of the government, of the regime."

That sort of thinking might not lead to the soundest decisions, some gold professionals told me.

"When people buy into the fear and flock into one thing, it's only a matter of time before it turns," said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at Chicago-based LaSalle Futures Group. Indeed, since last week's high of $1,218, gold had dropped Tuesday to $1,143, Zeman noted, adding: "I think the wheels could really come off the gold bandwagon."

Actually, Beck is promoting Ron Paul's extremist brand of libertarianism by promoting the "gold standard." It's been a sucker play for the Far Far Right for many years, and now it's being promoted by a mainstream news entity.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Glenn Beck can't seem to recall describing the Obama administration as fascist. We remind him.

-- by Dave

Glenn Beck seems to be increasingly rattled by having been designated by the ADL as the nation's "Fearmonger in Chief" -- though he continues, on his Fox News show at least, to avoid tackling his critics by name. (He's pushed back at the ADL on his radio show, but only briefly.)

Yesterday he went on his show and denounced the unnamed "they" who say he is encouraging violence with his extremist rhetoric (which would decidedly include us). Keying off his softball interview with Barbara Walters -- who never did bring up his serial falsehoods about Walters and her colleagues at The View, oddly enough -- Beck gets all worked up about the toughest point raised in the whole conversation:

Beck: Barbara Walters even played into this nonsense during her interview with me last night on her annual 'Fascinating People' show. Here it is:

[CLIP] Walters: Glenn Beck is somebody who incites people to violence --

Beck: Oh, I've heard a lot --

Walters: -- He is inflammatory, he makes us scared.

Beck: Yeah. People say Glenn Beck is someone who incites people to violence. Yeah, a lot of people are saying that, but what's the evidence?

She also mentioned that I called Barack Obama a fascist. I don't know -- I, I don't think so. Maybe -- I don't think so, I do realize that Media Matters and MoveOn.org now just got an extra grant from Soros and they're moving into hyper-scramble to find, you know, an example. But I don't know if I ever even called him a fascist. I know I've said 'fascistic tendencies' -- sure, the administration is going in this direction.

Actually, what Walters said was this:

Walters: OK, you have said the Obama administration is fascist.

And in fact, that is exactly what he has done -- on multiple occasions, but most notably back on April 1:

Beck: Like it or not, fascism is on the rise. And that doesn't mean the Adolf Hitler kind of fascism. It's fascism with a happy face. I'll explain the exact definition of fascism in a second, and it will boggle your mind.

--

Beck: I looked up the definition of fascism yesterday, and I want to break it down. The first part is: "Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners." Wouldn't you say this is what's happening with GM right now?

As we noted then, this even included a segment with a time-traveling dime:

How far out to lunch was Beck here? Well, one of the goofier moments in this whole charade came when Beck trotted out the back of an old American dime -- first minted, as Beck says, in 1916 -- which has a fasces, the fascist symbol, on its reverse side:



This is the famed "Mercury dime", which was designed by sculptor Adolph A. Weinman, who won a 1915 competition: "The reverse design, a fasces juxtaposed with an olive branch, was intended to symbolize America's readiness for war, combined with its desire for peace."

Now, the fasces has a long history of inclusion in various parts of American symbology besides just this dime. You can find it in the Oval Office, on National Guard Bureau insignia, on the American flag that flies in the U.S. House, in the Mace of the House of Representatives; on the seal of the U.S. Senate, on the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol building, and on a frieze on the facade of the United States Supreme Court building. Fasces are incorporated into the Lincoln Memorial.

But then, fascism as a political movement was not born until 1919. So for sculptor Weinman to have intended the fasces on the Mercury dime to imply a "fascist" intent, he'd have had to have jumped in a time machine, traveled to the future, met Mussolini, and come back to 1915 with that nefarious design in his head. Somehow I doubt this.

Beck had made the charge even before then, in a February conversation with Laura Ingraham:

Beck: We are really, truly, stepping beyond socialism and we're starting to look at fascism. We are putting business and government together!

Ingraham: Glenn, you're throwing a lot of terms around, and I'm going to play devil's advocate, because this is fair and balanced. Now, moving from socialism to communism, that's, that's a pretty big leap -- socialism, obviously, the economic system, communism the political system. How are we right now moving toward state ownership of all, for instance, heavy industry?

Beck: Let me first of all just explain first what happened in Nazi Germany. It was National -- Socialism. We're talking now about nationalizing the banks, and socialized programs. National. Socialism.

At first in Nazi Germany, everybody was so panicked, they were so freaked. Remember -- don't take anytime to think about it, we've just got to do, do, do. At first all the big companies and the big capitalists in Germany said, 'Oh thank goodness there's a savior! OK, great! We'll do that, yes!' It didn't take too long before -- like here in America, now Goldman Sachs. They've started to see the writing on the wall and went, 'Whoa, whoa whoa! You guys are getting out of control here. What are you guys doing?' And they couldn't get out of it fast enough.

Unfortunately, for those in Germany, you could never go back. I don't know if this is the system that we're headed towards or not, where they're not going to let you out, but let me tell you something, I don't want to play this game. This is becoming extraordinarily dangerous.

Now, Beck did not specifically call Obama himself a fascist -- but then, that's not what Barbara Walters accused him of, either. She said he described the Obama administration as fascist -- and he definitely did that.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.