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

-- by Dave

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

Bozell, like Miss Anne Elk, has his theory:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

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

-- by Dave

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

Of which, of course, they are perfectly innocent.

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

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

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

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

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

But Hannity loved it. So did Palin.

Figures.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

-- by Dave

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

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

Check it out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

-- by Dave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

-- by Dave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

-- by Dave

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

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

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

As TPM reported last summer:

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

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

The Democrats are reminding voters, too:



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



[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

-- by Dave

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

Because he sure was turning up the volume yesterday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Breitbart's boy strikes again:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hill: Yes, with fallacious information.

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

Hill: No. But they're wrong.

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

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

O'Reilly: OK! I want them to!

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

O'Reilly: No.

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

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

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

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Joe Miller, especially.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glenn Beck Claims Obama Is Taking America Down The Same Church-state Path As The Nazis. No Really.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The chryon in the screen capture above pretty much crystallizes Glenn Beck's Bizarro World show yesterday on Fox: Um, wait, lessee, isn't the state the same thing as the government? So how do you keep it out ... ?, OK, don't you mean to say that church-state separation was actually about keeping the state out of the church? And wasn't it equally about keeping the church out of state business? ....

Oh, nevermind. It's hopeless.

I'd like to think the confusion was unintended. But you watch the segment, and you realize that it was just as likely intentional. It certainly fit in with the perversely and proudly irrational argument Beck presented over the course of the show. In essence, this was it:

• Hitler seized control of the churches during the course of the Nazi reign in the 1930s and '40s.
• The exact same thing is happening when progressives like Jim Wallis bring "social justice" doctrines to American churches.
• The only way we can prevent this from happening is to elect Tea Party Republicans to control of the House in November.

Yep, that's pretty much it. And people lap this stuff up.

The key moment came when an audience member stood up and asked the question Beck had been gearing them up to ask all hour long, and he was answered by Kitty Werthmann, a right-wing Austrian who survived the Nazi regime and now loves to compare Obama to Hitler:

Audience member: There seem to be a great deal of similarities between early Nazi socialism and what we're going through right now in this country. I mean, what's the answer? Where -- how do we turn that back?

Werthmann: Well, right now we are very blessed that this is an election year. Uh, educate the voters. It's already happening. So we can take at least the U.S. House back, and hopefully the Senate.

Really, sometimes you just have to gape in wonder.

But the really disturbing aspect of all this is: What are these people going to do if they lose in November?

We're going to have millions of Beckians out there who will believe that a Nazi state is about to descend upon them. And God only knows how they will react then.

Bill O'Reilly Keeps Race-Baiting With 'New Black Panthers' Non-Story -- And Whitewashing The Record

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Everyone -- even Abigail Thernstrom -- knows what Fox News' endless flogging of the fake "New Black Panthers" controversy is really all about:

"This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration."

More than that: It's a classic case of race-baiting, using the incendiary rhetoric of the NBPP to whip up white racial fears and resentments. It is, in other words, a Fox specialty.

O'Reilly was flogging the story again last night, ignoring the inconvenient realities of the matter in order to claim that Obama's Justice Department under Eric Holder is discriminating against white people. O'Reilly wrapped it up with this observation:

O'Reilly: Everybody knows that if a Klan guy was outside a polling place with a club, shouting racial remarks, he would have been prosecuted. So you can draw your own conclusions here.

Oh, really, Bill?

Because a Klan guy in Arizona that same election was seen outside a polling place not just with a club, but with a gun -- and the same voting rights section ignored it!



We reported on this awhile back:

Leading off the pack is a fellow named Roy Warden. Roy is a well-known Latino-hating racist who is fond of threatening to kill his critics and anyone who opposes him -- and as you can see from the video, in fact packs a holstered pistol to all public events.

Warden is especially noteworthy because, just like those New Black Panthers, Roy Warden was in fact the subject of a DOJ voter-intimidation investigation -- and they indeed decided not to prosecute him based on a lack of evidence, just as in the NBPP case. Media Matters has more:

In his May 14 testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the DOJ's civil rights division, highlighted a case that completely undermines the notion that the DOJ's decisions in the Black Panthers case were unprecedented or racially motivated. Perez testified that in 2006, the DOJ "declined to bring any action for alleged voter intimidation" "when three well-known anti-immigrant advocates affiliated with the Minutemen, one of whom was carrying a gun, allegedly intimidated Latino voters at a polling place by approaching several persons, filming them, and advocating and printing voting materials in Spanish." [U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 5/14/10]

Anti-immigrant activist in 2006 case reportedly had "9mm Glock strapped to his side" at polling place. A November 8, 2006, Austin American-Statesman article reported (from the Nexis database): "In Arizona, Roy Warden, an anti-immigration activist with the Minutemen, and a handful of supporters staked out a Tucson precinct and questioned Hispanic voters at the polls to determine whether they spoke English." The article continued:

Armed with a 9mm Glock automatic strapped to his side, Warden said he planned to photograph Hispanic voters entering polls in an effort to identify illegal immigrants and felons.

Arizona Daily Star: "[A]nti-immigrant activist" "stood by with a firearm in a holster." A November 8, 2006, Arizona Daily Star article reported (from Nexis):

A crew of anti-immigrant activists, meanwhile, visited several South Side polling places in what one poll-watch group called a blatant attempt to intimidate Hispanic voters.

Anti-immigrant crusader Russ Dove circulated an English-only petition, while a cameraman filmed the voters he approached and Roy Warden stood by with a firearm in a holster.

Diego Bernal, a staff attorney with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), said the trio was trying to intimidate Hispanic voters. "A gun, a camera, a clipboard before you even get to the polls - if that's not voter intimidation, what is?" he asked.

Bernal said his group encountered the men at the Precinct 49 polling place at South 12th Avenue and West Michigan Street and began documenting the scene with their cameras. "There was an interesting period where they were taking pictures of us taking pictures of them."

Tucson Citizen: Incident "reported to the FBI." A November 8, 2006, Tucson Citizen article (from Nexis) reported that Mexican American Legal Defense Fund lawyer Diego Bernal "said he reported the incident to the FBI." The article also reported that Pima County elections director Brad Nelson said: "If intimidation or coercion was going on out there, even though it might have been outside the 75-foot limit, it's something we take very seriously, and we'll be looking into it."

O'Reilly, incidentally, is trying to claim that Christopher Coates has no ideological ax to grind -- though in fact Coates is a converted right-wing ideologue with a serious ax to grind, based on his demotion within the Voting Rights Section. Coates, during his tenure with the Bush administration, in fact did an incredibly poor job of protecting the voting rights of blacks and other minorities, often overlooking their complaints in order to please his bosses upstairs -- which is why he got the boot.

And now we're supposed to consider his testimony definitive? I don't think so.

Fox News, in the meantime, is clearly playing the race card. Funny how readily they like to accuse others of that, isn't it?

What, Republicans Islamophobic? GOP Candidate's Ad In North Carolina Answers That Question

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Remember how, during this long-running controversy over the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" all the right-wing talking heads have insisted that heavens, no, they didn't have anything against Muslims generally -- and they certainly had no intention of violating their rights? They just think the location of the mosque is a bad idea. Riiiiiight.

But then they'd keep letting people like Pam Geller be their spokesperson.

What's especially interesting is the way Republicans out in the hinterlands, far away from New York, have picked up on the brouhaha as a way of waging the old culture wars against Democrats. And when they do, there's no pretense -- it's just outright Islamophobia.

Take, for instance, this ad from Renee Ellmers, the Republican running against Bob Etheridge in North Carolina's 2nd District:

After the Muslims conquered Jerusalem and Cordoba and Constantinople ... they built victory mosques.

And now, they want to build a mosque by Ground Zero. Where does Bob Etheridge stand? He won't say. Won't speak out. Won't take a stand.

The terrorists haven't won and we should tell them in plain English, No. There will never be a mosque at Ground Zero.

I'm Renee Ellmers and I'm running for Congress. I need your help.

Yes, Renee, you do need help.

And so do we -- just figuring out where to start in the sea of ignorance you managed to unleash in just a few short sentences.

Perhaps it would help if you could answer some questions first:

-- Did the entire Muslim faith attack the United States on 9/11? Or was it just a tiny faction of violent radicals?

-- Did they conquer New York City, as Muslim armies did in Jerusalem et. al.? If not, then how could they claim this as a "victory mosque"?

-- Does this mean that all Muslims -- including our current allies like Turkey, Pakistan and Uzbekistan -- are now our enemies?

-- Finally, just how exactly do you intend to say "No, there will never be a mosque at Ground Zero"? Will you assume super-dictatorial powers once you've become a member of Congress, powers that let you abrogate due government process and citizens' constitutional rights?

Just wondering.

Megyn Kelly And Steve King Are Outraged, Outraged We Tell You, At Colbert's Testimony

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Well, the immigration hornets were a-buzzing with consternation at Fox this morning over Stephen Colbert's remarkable testimony on migrant workers -- probably because he got to utter the immortal line: "Turns out even the invisible hand of the market doesn't want to pick beans."

Megyn Kelly and Rep. Steve King -- yeah, the same Steve King who empathizes with nutcases who fly their planes into IRS buildings -- were particularly nettled by the satirist's powerful counterpunch to the kind of nativism they love to revel in. Both proclaimed it a waste of taxpayers' dollars, and King even tried to claim that Colbert had "lied" about work he did alongside migrants.

Well, as Faiz Shakir at ThinkProgress ably limns, Colbert was telling the truth.

More important, he actually illuminated a larger truth about immigrant labor in America: Migrant workers really are doing work that Americans won't do anymore.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It is, in fact, a product of the American Dream.

Let me illustrate this with a story of my own:

I grew up in southeastern Idaho, and in high school in the early '70s, I made my summer money by working on the potato farms that formed the basis of the regional economy. The summer after my senior year of high school I spent hauling irrigation pipe on a potato farm near Shelley (actually, we grew potatoes, wheat and hay, and I hauled pipe in all three).

It was the hardest job I ever had, and it really taught me how to work. But even then, it took me about a month into the summer before I finally became a reliable worker who could get the job done. I probably was the exception. The truth was, our crew of suburban high-schoolers was poorly equipped to do the job, and at $1.25 a line -- a line being composed of 22 pieces of 20-foot-long irrigation pipe, properly connected in place -- we didn't really have any incentive to learn to do it, either. There were a lot better and a lot easier ways to make better money, even in high school.

But it also meant that our employer couldn't really rely on us to get the job done right day in and day out, to be on time for work, to be ready to haul ass and lay out the irrigation lines.

A couple of years later, I went back and visited my old boss, who I had become friends with, on the farm near Shelley. He was pleased to see me, and introduced me to his new pipe crew: all Mexican immigrants. I don't know if he was particular about their immigration status, but I suspect he wasn't.

Because this crew was quite the wonder -- about 180 degrees removed from my old crew. Not only were they the most reliable people he'd ever employed, they were the most efficient he'd ever had, too. At hay-cutting time, they pitched in and worked in between pipe-hauling sessions -- something we Caucasian kids simply didn't ever have the energy for. (I'm telling you, this was hard work.)

For awhile I thought it said a lot about how soft and spoiled we suburban white kids have become -- and there's probably something to that. But reflecting on it further over the years, I realized it was perfectly natural. That's how the American Dream works.

Working-class people who come to this country start out poor and often have to work hard -- but they do it with the idea in mind of making a better life for their children. My great-grandparents were farmers too, but they wanted their children to achieve greater things -- and they did, though largely still in the working class (my mother's family did road construction, and my father's dad was a Ford mechanic). By the time my generation came around, we were being schooled to move up the career ladder into the white-collar world. So yes, we were softer. Of course we were. But that really wasn't a bad thing. God knows my parents would have been distressed had I not aspired to attend college.

Which I did, that first year, by doing the kind of farmwork I spent the entire summer swearing I would never have to do again. And I didn't. (The next summer I worked as a mechanic/welder in a farm-machinery plant, and the summer after that I did road construction. And the summer after that I was in my first newspaper job ...) In my family, that's how the American Dream came true.

Of course, someday the same will be true of the children and grandchildren of these migrants. That's the American Dream. And that's what Stephen Colbert was talking about.

Not that Steve King or Megyn Kelly would have any idea.

Joe Arpaio's Corruption Wells To The Surface In Latest Revelations -- But You Won't Hear Of Them On Fox

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It was pretty bizarre, watching Joe Arpaio come on Neil Cavuto's show yesterday on Fox and tout the wonderfulness of his record as sheriff of Maricopa County -- and sneer at his pursuers in the Justice Department -- when only a few hours before I had been reading about the latest in a series of damning revelations about how corrupt his office has become:

Joe Arpaio's office misspent funds, analysis says

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office misused at least $50 million from a fund for jail operations, and county supervisors may have to use the general fund to repay the money, top county officials say.

Findings by the county's Office of Management and Budget show the Sheriff's Office tapped the money to pay for functions not allowed under jail-fund rules, such as salaries for deputies who worked on public-corruption investigations into county supervisors and judges.

Ryan J. Reilly at TPM Muckraker has more:

Excerpts of the reports, obtained by TPMMuckraker, show officials from Arpaio's office made trips to Orlando, D.C., Honduras, Tempe, Belize, Alaska and Puerto Rico on the county's dime and racked up other questionable expenses, like $741 at Sardella's Pizza and Wings. The county was also charged $350 for a hotel room upgrade for one official's spouse. One employee went on multiple extradition trips without submitting receipts for the $62,750 he or she spent -- including $1,341 on Disney World Yacht Club Resort food and entertainment.

Others expenses charged to the county, according to the report, include $1,684 for a portable generator for parade lights on an army tank; $635 at Buca di Beppo when members of the Honduran National Police were in town; and $500 on a carriage ride.

Nary a word about this report was uttered on Cavuto's show -- instead, he was too busy whining that no one in the media would pay attention to Arpaio's clean audit on his handling of prisoners -- an inconsequential issue, since he's not under investigation for that.

Moreover, there was no mention whatsoever of the even more damning revelations coming from within his own office:

Top officials in the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio used its anti-corruption unit to conduct politically motivated investigations, misled the public about a campaign fund that helped Arpaio win reelection and surveilled the Arizona lawman's campaign rivals, according to an internal memo from a high-ranking officer.

The 63-page memo, first reported Thursday by the Arizona Republic, blames Arpaio's longtime No. 2 man, Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott, for the alleged criminal wrongdoing.

...

The most significant part of the memo concerns a search warrant that Hendershott allegedly directed to be served on the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, with whom Arpaio, also a Republican, has been embroiled in a lengthy feud. Arpaio and an ally, former County Atty. Andrew Thomas, filed conflict-of-interest charges against two supervisors that were quickly dismissed by judges as legally unsound.

Those charges, and investigations of the judges and other critics that followed, are believed to be at the heart of the federal grand jury probe.

Munnell wrote that, since the anti-corruption unit was formed in 2007, "it has been the pattern and practice of this unit to conduct politically motivated investigations at the implicit direction of Hendershott."

Munnell wrote that Hendershott ordered the department's anti-corruption team to write the search warrant to raid county offices. But team members refused, saying there were no legal grounds for such a search.

Munnell wrote that Hendershott threatened to "machine-gun" his staff to get them to write a warrant. The next day, a top aide to Thomas urged sheriff's investigators to use "creative writing" to justify the search. The leaders of the squad refused again. Munnell wrote that Hendershott soon replaced several of them.

But you'll notice that this memo is actually designed to whitewash Arpaio's role in the undeniable trail of corruption and political thuggery here, as Stephen Lemons observes -- because Hendershott was explicitly operating at Arpaio's behest, and on Arpaio's orders:

Arpaio and Hendershott. Hendershott and Arpaio. Joined at the hip in iniquity, like the Sith.

In the affidavit, Hendershott makes it plain to Wetherell that he's doing his dirty deeds on the sheriff's behalf.

"The dime droppers are going to learn that if you fuck with the Sheriff, you die," Hendershott says at one point in the document.

Wetherell recalled Hendershott saying, "We have to protect the Sheriff from dime droppers," and, "We will make an example of Mark Battilana so that these fucking dime droppers will keep their fucking mouths shut."

Interestingly, Wetherell told Ortega at the time that Hendershott began to target the lieutenant after he began to raise questions about the pink underwear money.

One of those to whom Weatherell says he forwarded the info was none other Lisa Allen, portrayed as a white hat in the Munnell memo for supposedly warning Arpaio about Hendershott's misdeeds.

And people wonder why I'm skeptical of the Munnell memo.

Indeed, the recent firing of former assistant county attorney Lisa Aubuchon opened a real can of worms in the FBI's investigation of Arpaio's abuse of power in Maricopa County -- which is what the Munnell memo is meant to cover.

It appears that Arpaio and Munnell are trying to get ahead of the factual findings in the FBI investigation, and are planning to make Hendershott the scapegoat in that case. Lotsa luck with that. Arpaio's onetime right-hand men have a propensity to spill their guys once their boss turns on them.

Memo To Right-Wingers: That 'Bearded Marxist' Line Is A JOKE -- One That Makes Fun Of Idiots Like You

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

OK, this whole "Chris Coons describes himself as a bearded Marxist" thing that's now the everyday talking point at Fox News -- embodied once again in Christine O'Donnell's interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night -- has really gone far enough:

O'Donnell: If the media is going to attack me for statements I made in my 20s, that's fair game. He made some very anti-American statements, apologizing for America and calling himself a bearded Marxist.

People. Fergawdsake.

It's a freaking joke!

“My friends now joke that something about Kenya, maybe the strange diet, or the tropical sun, changed my personality; Africa to them seems a catalytic converter that takes in clean-shaven, clear-thinking Americans and sends back bearded Marxists,” Coons wrote, noting that at one time he had been a “proud founding member of the Amherst College Republicans.”

Of course, considering that the joke is predicated on making fun of clueless right-wing buffoons who see a "Marxist" behind every liberal rock, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. You know: People like Christine O'Donnell, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and the rest of the crew at Fox News, as well as the entire wingnutosphere.

No wonder they don't get that they're the butt of it.

Waaaah! O'Reilly Whines That Mean Liberals Are Blaming Poor, Innocent Fox News For Warping People's Perceptions

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly was whining all night long on his show last night about Fox News being blamed for the warped nature of American discourse these days (something, of course, that John and I tackle front and center in our book Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane). His opening "Talking Points Memo" set the tone for the rest of the night's whine:

A few weeks ago, the president went after Congressman John Boehner. That didn't go anywhere. So now some lefties are bringing Fox News back into the war zone.

If you visit the left-wing websites, the rhetoric is pretty much all the same: Fox News lies; Fox News is a propaganda arm of the Republican Party; Fox News doesn't give President Obama a chance.

And in the past few days, we've seen that internet rhetoric expand to TV.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALAN GRAYSON, D-FLA.: One of the fundamental problems is Fox, OK? Fox has turned into Monty Python's lying circus. All day long they spew lies out time after time, day after day. And they have created this bubble of irreality around the people who listen to them, and it's a threat to this country.

FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Things have gone downhill, I think, in the last few years with the polarization of our country, with the evolution of a new kind of politics, with the birth of Fox News that now distorts everything rather than tells the truth.

RICK SANCHEZ, HOST, CNN's "RICK'S LIST": And then there is Fox News, which is essentially the voice of the Republican Party, whose job it is to make this man look bad no matter what he does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

This man, of course, is the president.

Since the war on Fox News failed the last time around, it is a bit perplexing that it would be resurrected. Americans can decide for themselves whether FNC is a propaganda mill. They don't need dishonest commentators to tell them that. We're here 24-7. You can see for yourself.

And the American people have. The CNN commentator you just heard gets beaten by "The Factor" about 7 to 1 in the ratings.

So blaming Fox News for the woes of the Democratic Party is another losing proposition. And like trying to demonize the Tea Party, it will backfire.

The troubling reality is that the USA is suffering economically and President Obama's leadership is being questioned. That's what's in play, and all the partisan bloviating in the world won't change that.

The problem is that Fox won't bring on anyone -- anyone -- who will demonstrate that Fox does indeed lie, and distort, and race-bait, and propagandize, all on a 24/7 basis. It's very easy to do -- but anyone who attempts to do so is immediately shut down. And anyone prepared to do so is never invited on. Indeed, we have considerable evidence that anyone prepared to criticize Fox is blackballed from their broadcasts.

O'Reilly claims his show has on Democrats all the time -- but it never has on critics of Fox. If O'Reilly really were to live up to his claim, he would invite John and me onto his show. But he knows we have the goods (just read Over the Cliff), he knows we'd make him look bad, and he'll never do it. Besides, he considers us to be too penny-ante -- which is pretty funny, considering he loves to present himself as a working-class guy who champions "the folks" all the time.

Moreover, Fox never invites on anyone (besides Alan Colmes) who will give a full-throated defense of what the Foxheads like to call "the left" -- not just President Obama, but the progressive agenda generally. Which is a large part of why the discourse that emanates from Fox is so distorted.

Let's use O'Reilly's centerpiece as our example here: the economy. It's true that Obama's economic recovery has not been as robust as any of us would have liked, and no doubt we can blame a large share of this on his conservative, Establishment-oriented economic team and his personal timidity.

But at the end of the day, his ability to be bold was constrained by the political realities created by Fox -- particularly its open advocacy and relentless promotion of an opposition movement (the Tea Parties) and its endless propagandizing on behalf of congressional Republicans who were rewarded for engaging in politics designed to make his programs fail.

Moreover, in spite of this, Obama has in fact done a reasonable job in turning things around -- a reality that you will never, ever hear expressed on Fox News.

To wit, here is a chart you will NEVER see shown on Fox:

That's a chart showing job growth in the USA. So much for "cutting taxes for the rich" as an effective job stimulus, eh?

O'Reilly may whine endlessly that Fox is being demonized as unfair to Democrats -- but it's simply a readily demonstrable reality.

Here's what we wrote in Over the Cliff -- Chapter 7, "Fox's War on the White House":

The Obama White House, in reality, did not “declare war on Fox News,” as the network’s favorite talking point claimed. Rather, it was self-evident to anyone watching cable news in 2009 that Fox had declared war on the Obama White House from the day of the president’s inauguration—and it took the White House until October to finally decide to fire back.

The campaign to undermine Obama, primarily by attacking his legitimacy, began almost the moment Obama took his oath of office on January 20. When administering the oath, Chief Justice John Roberts botched the reading of it aloud and was corrected, gently, by Obama as he responded.

Shortly afterward, Chris Wallace told the Fox News audience that Obama might not have been legitimately sworn in:

I have to say I’m not sure Barack Obama really is the President of the United States because the oath of office is set in the Constitution and I wasn’t at all convinced that even after he tried to amend it that John Roberts ever got it out straight and that Barack Obama ever said the prescribed words. I suspect that everybody is going to forgive him and allow him to take over as president, but I’m not sure he actually said what’s in the Constitution, there.

It emerged shortly afterward, in fact, that Obama had gotten it right and said the oath properly. But because these things take on a life of their own among the conspiracists of the Right, there was a brief oath-taking ceremony early that evening with Justice Roberts properly repeating the words so there would be no lingering questions.

Meanwhile, the Fox “opinion” anchors swung into immediate action on Inauguration Day. Sean Hannity attacked the new administration for the cost of the inauguration:

Barack Obama’s inaugural bash is going to be the most expensive celebration in U.S. history. Its opulence stands in stark contrast to our faltering economy, yet those who expected frugality from George W. Bush four years ago are strangely silent this go-around.

Hannity added that “the cost of Obama’s inaugural will dwarf past celebrations and make those of President Bush’s look like budget bashes.” In fact, as Eric Boehlert reported at Media Matters, the costs of the second Bush inaugural were roughly the same as those for Obama’s.

Hannity had made plain his intentions even before the inauguration. At his Web site, he began organizing in December what he called “the conservative underground” and asking people to “join the resistance” to the Obama administration. At the site’s discussion forum, one of his regulars posted an online poll asking respondents to answer: “What kind of revolution appeals most to you?” The possible answers: "A. Military Coup. B. Armed Rebellion. C. War for Secession."

We also discuss Fox's claims that its "news" shows provide straight, "objective" news free of the "opinion" taint, when in reality its news shows regularly pick up talking points from the previous day's "opinion" shows and treat them as news pegs ("Some are saying ..."):

This was just standard operating procedure for Fox’s daytime news shows, which regularly took their cues from stories drummed up in the afternoons and evenings by their “opinion” talkers. Some examples:

-- On March 24, Marsha MacCallum on Live Desk joined in furthering the then popular theme that President Obama’s programs were “socialist” by lauding her guest, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, when Bachmann claimed that Obama’s proposals are a “lurch toward socialism.” Said MacCallum: “I think you’re absolutely right about that.”

-- After Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity attacked Sonia Sotomayor as a racist, Megyn Kelly on America’s Newsroom told viewers that Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” remark “sounds to a lot of people like reverse racism, basically. Like she’s saying that Latina judges are obviously better than white male judges, and that that’s her assumption, and people get worried about putting a person like that on the U.S. Supreme Court.” Kelly later added, “I’ve looked at the entire speech that she was offering to see if that was taken out of context, and I have to tell you . . . it wasn’t.”

-- After Sean Hannity and other “opinion” talkers described President Obama’s trip to France as part of an “apology tour,” Jon Scott on Happening Now asked if “the president’s upcoming trip [to Europe and the Middle East will] be what conservatives might call another apology tour.” Both Scott and his co-host, Jane Skinner, showed viewers a set of clips from Obama’s remarks in an April 3 speech in France, carefully cropped to falsely suggest that Obama had criticized only the United States—just as Hannity had done two months before.

-- James Rosen attacked Cass Sunstein, the nominee to be the White House regulatory overseer, in a September 9 story on Special Report: “Rats could attack us in the sewer and court systems if all of Cass Sunstein’s writings became law. The Harvard Law professor . . . argued in 2004 that animals represented by human beings should be able to sue human beings and has even questioned whether humans can legally expel rats from our homes if doing so causes the rat’s distress.” The report came directly on the heels of a Glenn Beck segment making the same charges—albeit in a more incendiary fashion. Beck said that Sunstein was “a man that believes that you should not be able to remove rats from your home if it causes them any pain.” What Sunstein had actually written was: “At the very least, people should kill rats in a way that minimizes distress and suffering. . . . If human beings are at risk of illness and disease from mosquitoes and rats, they have a strong justification, perhaps even one of self-defense, for eliminating or relocating them.”

Similarly, as seen in chapter 5, these daytime news shows played an integral role in promoting the anti-Obama Tea Parties. America’s Newsroom, Fox & Friends, Live Desk, and Happening Now all avidly promoted Tea Party information on-air and online. The programs regularly hosted Tea Party organizers and posted protest dates and locations on-screen. Their Web sites all provided Tea Party information and directions as well.

If the news shows constantly blurred the line between opinion and news, at other times they obliterated the line between news and partisan propaganda. As Media Matters reported:

During the February 10 edition of Happening Now, co-host Jon Scott purported to “take a look back” at how the economic recovery plan “grew, and grew, and grew.” In doing so, Scott referenced seven dates, as on-screen graphics cited various news sources from those time periods—all of which came directly from a Senate Republican Communications Center press release. A Fox News on-screen graphic even reproduced a typo contained in the Republican press release. The following day, Scott apologized—for running the typo.

This wasn’t the only occasion when news pieces simply transcribed Republican talking points. Happening Now aired two April 1 segments featuring seven “FOXfact[s]” that purportedly detailed the House Republican budget proposal. The “FOXfact[s]” were lifted directly from an op-ed by Republican representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin that had appeared in that day’s Wall Street Journal. On America’s Newsroom, host Bill Hemmer reported on four “interesting” projects being funded by the just-passed economic stimulus package as part of keeping track of “stimulus money” using Fox’s independent researchers. However, Hemmer had lifted the graphics, on-screen text, and all four of the projects directly from Representative Eric Cantor’s Republican-whip Web site.

Fox fobbed off this kind of outright propagandizing on the public every day as “news” reportage, mixed in with the predictable menu of car chases and stories about missing college students. It amounted to a mountainous barrage of misinformation posing as news. The compiled record stood as stark evidence putting the lie to Fox News’s claim, after Anita Dunn called it on the carpet, that its news reportage was distinct from and untainted by its “opinion” shows. Not only was the content of those “opinion” shows wildly incendiary and consistently (not to mention irresponsibly) afactual, but its “news” shows were carefully programmed to retransmit those fraudulent claims in the guise of straight information.

And we also point out that this really represents a massive failure on the part of the journalistic profession generally:

Journalism is largely a self-policed profession, one in which standards are maintained by both internal editing and peer competition, with fellow professionals playing the role of calling out their peers for violating those standards. But that standard-keeping aspect completely failed when it came to Fox News—even after the White House had presented journalists with a golden opportunity to seriously scrutinize it.

Fox News had amassed a record, even before 2009, of failing to live up to basic standards of factual accuracy, genuine fairness and balance, and journalistic responsibility. After Obama’s election, it seemed to abandon any pretense whatever of meeting those standards—running false “facts,” deceptively edited videos, and outright ideological promotions while seriously mainstreaming extremist ideas from the radical right. As Media Matters put it in its exhaustive report on the relationship between Fox’s news and opinion shows, “it is Fox News that has been waging a partisan political war against the White House since Inauguration Day, and while doing so, revealing both its disdain for journalistic standards and its all-consuming political agenda—qualities that differentiate Fox News from any credible news organization.”

Instead of dealing forthrightly with the problem, the Beltway Village circled its wagons around Fox for having been horribly attacked by the White House. Fox, unsurprisingly, ran a stream of guests willing to come on and denounce the White House as being misguided for choosing to defend itself.

Glenn Beck Hears The Helicopters Whupping: Obama Plans 'Global Redistribution' Of The Wealth

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

For some reason, Glenn Beck is at his utter wingnuttiest when he makes his weekly appearance on Fox & Friends. After all, it was on the Fox morning show that he declared that President Obama is a racist who hates white people. Likewise, this was where he first promoted those FEMA concentration camps.

Yesterday he was at it again:

Beck: Look, here's what we have. We have a government that has built a cage. We have Marxist after Marxist after Marxist after Marxist -- anti-capitalists everywhere. We have John Holdren, the science czar, who has come out and said that we have to deindustrialize or devolve or de-develop the United States of America. Well, how do you do that?

You now have the Department of Energy this week coming out and saying, 'Well, we're going to go, and go through all of the regulations on all appliances to figure out which appliances will be available in the future -- for the United States consumer.'

I mean, we're going down really spooky paths that don't make any sense, unless you understand the framework of global redistribution -- not from the wealthy to the poor in America, but from the wealthy America to the poorest nations, and a global governance structure.

Gretchen Carlson: So you're alleging a big whole plot by the Obama administration to do this.

Beck: No, I'm not alleging it. I'm pointing it out. I'm showing it. It's in their own words.

I have a theory: In the mornings, Beck's handlers at Fox haven't gotten up yet and figured out what crazy ass crap they going to have to prevent him from saying that day on his afternoon show; usually they let him air it on his radio show, then they apply the filters. But they haven't had the chance to do that yet when he goes on Fox & Friends.

So we get the Crazee Beck, unfiltered, on those mornings. Black helicopters and all.

Why Do Right-Wingers Think A Terrorist Attack Is A Good Thing?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]


Ever notice how right-wingers seem to positively relish the prospect of Americans being attacked by terrorists? Mainly it's because they love to wrap themselves in the bloody flag of these national tragedies and claim them for their own, almost purely as a way to proclaim themselves more patriotic than everyone else.

That, and as G.W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani can tell you, it gives you long-lasting cover for pushing the rest of your agenda, and something to blame for all your problems.

Adam Shah at Media Matters observes the latest iteration from the wingnutosphere:

The right-wing media is in full freak-out mode over President Obama's reported statement that, while "[w]e'll do everything we can to prevent" another terror attack, but that if one comes "we can absorb" it. But no response may be able to match that of Warner Todd Huston, who says in a post on Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit blog that "somehow I can't escape the feeling that this flippancy comes from Obama's envy that George W. Bush got a 'big event' to make his presidency."

Huston later adds:

I can just see him, green with envy that Bush got that big moment. If ONLY Hussein could get a big attack of his own, why THEN he'd show the world what a great president he could be! If only we could "absorb" a big one like 9/11, eh Barrack [sic]? And we'd take it.... and take it....

It's funny how conservatives see these tragedies as big political jackpots, isn't it? Because, hey -- for them, it was. Remember George W. Bush's little "joke," circa 2002?

"You know, I was campaigning in Chicago and somebody asked me, is there ever any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at war or had a national emergency or were in recession. Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta." —President George W. Bush, Charlotte, North Carolina, Feb. 27, 2002

Of course, it was also noteworthy that this joke was a complete lie:

Bush's story, moreover, is fundamentally false as a purely chronological matter: Bush was already facing the certainty of deficit spending at the end of the summer of 2001, well before the attacks of Sept. 11. Some $4 trillion worth of budget surplus vanished over the spring and summer that year, and budget experts sounded the alarm about looming deficits then. The Congressional Budget Office warned Bush on Aug. 29 that Social Security funds would be needed to balance the books, forcing him to abandon a campaign promise not to use the retirement fund for other government spending.

Indeed, that is just what Bush proceeded to do in his actual budget, presented in January. According to the CBO, Bush’s budget plan would drain every dollar of the $527 billion surplus from the Social Security Trust Fund for the next two fiscal years even while creating a deficit. It would continue to raid the fund for varying amounts each year through 2012. Even with the fund’s help, the federal budget is expected to be in deficits through at least 2005.

Most economists peg the source of these nagging deficits on Bush's tax-cut plan, the deepest portions of which loom ahead. The administration sternly denies this. Yet it’s clear that while Sept. 11 may have deepened and broadened the budget-deficit problem, the administration was faced with chronic budget deficits no matter what.

I'm also reminded of Michael Scheuer's ardent wish from early in the Obama administration:

Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

One can only imagine Scheuer's disappointment -- as well as Glenn Beck's -- that we haven't suffered such a tragedy.

After all -- contrary to Huston's fantasy -- such a political benefit would never apply to Obama, because the Republican Rules would be in effect here: No matter what a Democratic president does, any pretext will suffice for impeachment.

The fact we haven't had a significant terrorist attack is probably the only thing keeping them from trying to initiate impeachment proceedings against Obama. (Just as they certainly would have, had we had President Gore in 2001 as the voters intended.) And if they win in November, you can count on that happening anyway.

They're Ba-a-a-ack: A New Generation Of Haters Bring Their Racial Violence To The Suburbs

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Not-so-uplifting news, from Cincinatti's WLWT:

Two local attacks with one word common to both -- skinheads. Skinheads manufacture fear as if it was a craft, mixing intimidation and violence. What makes all this even more unsettling is that they’re doing it right here in the Tri-State.

The most recent attack occurred in Covington in August. A resident who asked to remain unidentified said, “I’ve never felt like I’ve had to worry about my safety around here until recently.”

The Covington community around MainStrasse has several gay bars and very little trouble. That’s why people there were surprised when a man tattooed with Nazi swastikas, along with a couple of his friends, was charged with beating two women outside of a gay bar. Police said the attackers shouted anti-gay slurs in the process of knocking the women to the ground and hitting them.

Devlin Burke is the tattooed man accused of leading the attack. He’s also charged with cutting a bystander who saw the attack and stopped to help the victims, sending that man to the hospital.

Not all of them are violent skinheads. Out on the other side of the country, in San Diego, they're trying to pose as normal white folks:

The former Army Ranger and small-business owner is wearing a plaid ivy cap over a shaved head. His T-shirt advertises “American Third Position: Liberty, Sovereignty, Identity.”

Though he asked CityBeat to withhold his surname, Damon is open about his views. He believes the government doesn’t represent the common man, that immigrants are a threat to public safety and employment (particularly in San Diego County, where he grew up) and that white Americans must become conscious of their race. He doesn’t censor himself when a server walks by, and he pays no mind to the customers a few tables over.

That’s the point of American Third Position—it’s white nationalism packaged for a mainstream audience.

Damon wasn’t always so tempered with his rhetoric. He was involved with neo-Nazi groups in the past—he has protested, pamphleteered and brawled. “In my youth, like I think a lot of people are, I was just at odds with the world, and you get a little angry and you move with that because it’s kinda all you know,” he says. “As I got older and a little wiser, I saw that what I was doing wasn’t really reaching the regular white guy on the street.”

Damon first came to CityBeat’s attention through the Stormfront.org message board, the central online forum for the full spectrum of white nationalists, from Minutemen to skinheads. Damon participates under the username Cycoville. On his user profile, he identifies himself as “1/2 IRISH 1/2 SCOTTISH 100% CELTIC WARRIOR” and describes where lives as an “island of WHITE in a sea of mud.”

In May, Stormfront members from San Diego, including Damon, formed their own online “social group” to organize barbecues, hikes and a day trip to the Scottish Highland Games and Clan Gathering in Vista. But when one local neo-Nazi tried to use the forum to recruit members for protests against LGBT events—including “Out in Petco Park” on July 1 and San Diego Pride on July 17—Damon was quick to smack down the idea.

“If we want this movement to grow and work, we need to awaken the slumbering White Nationalists, the regular folks, and that doesn’t happen when we go and yell ni99er and fa66ot,” Damon responded on the site. “Makes us look like a bunch of ignorant a$$holes, and who want’s [sic] to be an A## Hole? I sure don’t.”

Damon told the user to be patient; San Diego’s white nationalists have something in the works—American Third Position or A3P.

This kind of mainstreaming has also been popular with Patriot/militia types as well.

It's all camouflage for the same old hate. But with the Tea Parties and right-wing pundits making overt racism fashionable again, it's not any surprise they're coming out of the woodwork again.