*Conservatives from The Weekly Standard and The Daily Caller admit to host of The Big Picture, Thom Hartmann, that closing the gun show loophole would be a good idea.

Somehow, between breathless fanboy posts alerting his readers to the every movement of Rick Perry (he sure is dreamy!), The National Review's Kevin Williamson found time to prostrate himself (not once, but twice) before National Rifle Association (NRA) talking points, support the interests of al-Qaeda, and fit multiple lies all into one little screed.

Pretty impressive work, especially when you factor in his limited availability. I mean, those Rick Perry posters aren't going to just stare at themselves.

In these pieces, al-Qaeda Tool Williamson did what gun fetishists and NRA apologists always do when inconvenient truths about the blood already on their hands, or yet to come, are presented to them: He threw out random vituperation (even attacking one of his colleagues at NRO who happens to have more common sense than he could ever possess--he must be an absolute joy to work with!), and some misdirection that would make Houdini proud.

My problem, of course, is that I don't much like wannabe-bullies. Especially those who view the NRA like David Vitter does a lady-of-the-night with extra Huggies in hand, even more so when they lie and attack my friends at Media Matters on an issue I work on and care about, with Bachmannian reasoning to boot. So I thought I might respond, you know, for fun.

The crux of our story is that Adam Gadahn, the American-born al-Qaeda spokesman, made a statement that was 90% correct about the easy availability of firearms for terrorists in the US (because of people like Williamson and the NRA), so this al-Qaeda Tool, of course, chose to focus on the 10% that wasn't accurate. Here is our own David Neiwert's explanation of what set off this jack-in-the-box originally:

That popping sound you hear is the heads of NRA loyalists exploding from massive cognitive dissonance, all because of the release this week of a video showing a spokesman for al-Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, urging would-be jihadis to go out and stock up on as many guns as they can get their hands on -- through the gun-show loophole

So what do you do when you're a shill for the NRA and have to explain why you don't support the simple common sense of 69% of NRA members and 85% of Americans, (in a poll conducted by known liberal Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns) all of whom want to close the Gun Show Loophole? The one that Al Qaeda thug Gadahn spoke about. The one that has allowed everyone from Hezbollah to Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell to the Columbine killers to arm themselves--and provided a nice source of income for Timothy McVeigh. The one that sadly, as the thug Gadahn points out, would allow any Ayman al-Zwahiri to walk into a gun show in the 33 states that have not closed it, and buy a gun from "private sellers" without any kind of background check.

What you do is lie of course, and portray private sales of firearms as "Uncle Bubba," deciding "to swap his deer rifle to Otis for $100 and a case of Bud."

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Last night, John Amato and Dave Neiwert (two of my favorite people) were my guests on Virtually Speaking Susie, my Tuesday night Blogtalk Radio show. You can listen here:

Clearly, there's a lot of anger in America right now.

Much of it justified, as some can afford shower curtain rings that would dwarf others' weekly wages (and the latter are the ones who are lucky enough to have jobs). When you take this fact, combine it with the Orwellian "Newspeak" so pervasive in our media (which David Neiwert has written so articulately about), and multiply that by the NRA's mission to fight for the rights of criminals, the mentally ill and even terrorists to have access to guns, you have a toxic stew, ready to erupt.

Scene: Panama City, Florida. A school board meeting is interrupted by a man with a criminal record of assault (with a gun) waving a gun, and furious that his wife lost her job, his benefits have run out and the board members were unwilling to raise sales taxes so she and others like her wouldn't be fired (it should be noted that reports are still sketchy, so not all of what he says about his wife and himself during the 5 minutes when the board members try and talk him down can be confirmed yet).

We don't yet know where he got his gun -- but we do know his criminal record and history of mental illness made it illegal for him obtain a gun of any kind. We also know that you can walk into a gun show in many states, such as Virginia, and buy any weapon, no background check necessary. The Governor of Virginia thinks that this is a-ok. No matter that everyone from members of Hezbollah to the Columbine killers to the Pentagon shooter got their guns in this manner.

Apparently, to make an omelette, you have to shoot a few eggs.

But the gun lobby marches on: Much harm, no foul.

The NRA has spent years trying to destroy and delegitimize the ATF, such that nobody has been leading this important law enforcement agency for the past 4 years. Why? Because they try and track where guns come from when they kill people. Crazy. right?

And of course we know that we are creating our very own Bonus Army, as millions are filled with despair and anxiety as we give them a pittance while extending tax cuts for people who make Richie Rich look like Oliver Twist.

So is this our future? Videos of killers wielding illegal guns and holding innocent people hostage -- or worse. Reality TV, gone very, very wrong.

Unless/until we decide that gun safety, economic equality, and preventing pundits from inciting riot/slandering whole groups of people on air are reforms worth fighting for. Stay tuned on this one. In the meantime, sadly, I can promise you one thing: Many mini-revolutions such as this will be televised. And it will be ugly.

We're finally ready to rumble! Our new book is available for purchase now and David and I are very excited about it. Here's a blurb from the presser on the book:

Barack Obama’s election to this nation’s highest office was an historic achievement in American politics. His victory brought the best out in many Americans, but sowed the seeds of venom and hatred in many, many others.

In the first two weeks of Obama’s presidency, more than 200 hate crimes were committed throughout the United States, including assault, arson, and murder. And within a few months, a seemingly new right wing populist faction called the Tea Party Movement invaded the political landscape.

In a groundbreaking new book, Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (PoliPoint, June 2010), blogosphere pioneers John Amato and David Neiwert carefully document the aftermath of Obama’s victory in chilling fashion.

Amato and Neiwert explain that this “movement” was not the organic uprising it was made to appear, but rather was kick-started by Roger Ailes’ FOX News and follows in a long tradition of movement conservative activism that harkens back to the street theater days of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist...

Over the Cliff puts the finger on the driving force behind this descent into madness: the extremist Radical Right, where the Tea Party movement’s most unhinged ideas originate, and the conservative pundits and politicians who were willing accomplices to a divisive politics of resentment.

Please buy a copy here too. We can use your support and it's a good read.

The amount of work it took to write this book was incredible and I have a newfound admiration for authors everywhere.

Praise for Over the Cliff

“John Amato and David Neiwert have produced a book that should stay on shelves for 50 years—long enough to remind us that at least some people understood the strange and vile energies consuming the social contract at the beginning of the third millenium. As a record of what is happening to American conservatism in the year 2010, Over the Cliff is unmatched.”

—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

Those are wonderful words from Rick. We have a few more endorsements we'll share with you later. David and I will set up a live chat during the week, but I wanted to share the news.

You can also buy it from all the major online retailers like Barnes&Noble, IndieBound, Powell's, and Border's and Over the Cliff is now available as an ePUB and mobi-Kindlen on PoliPoint.com.

PoliPoint has all the information listed, so click on over.

Our own David Neiwert flew to DC to participate in the huge march on DC for immigration reform. He'll be filing in some reports as soon as he can.

America's Voice:

Today's the day. Tens of thousands of people are registered to come to the National Mall for today's immigration reform rally, called the March For America. Hundreds of buses are still pouring in from across the country, and several major progressive and pro-migrant bloggers will be reporting directly from the rally, which starts at 2pm. Expect coverage from Vivir Latino and Crooks and Liars, among others, as well as pictures and video from the National Mall. Look for a performance by Grammy award-winning talent, Los Lonely Boys! Live-streamed video should pop up at C-SPAN, Telemundo or Univision. On twitter, check out the #m4a hashtag. Follow @AmericasVoice and @RI4A.

I'm hearing that there are well over 200K people protesting at the March, but I expect the media to not care all that much about it.

Here's a little update for C&Lers.

David Neiwert and I have been writing a book for a few months now. It's going to be titled Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane, and it's due to hit the shelves sometime in the spring. PoliPoint Press is the publisher. We just shipped off the first iteration of the manuscript this week, but we still have a lot of work to do.

I have a new appreciation for all published authors. I know it took a lot of work to do, but it's simply been hell on wheels, especially with what's been going on during this ferocious health care debate, my work with Blue America against Blanche Lincoln and I know both of us are exhausted. I'm suffering from some TMJ stuff now too.

I want to thank the great people that make up Team Crooks, because they have been pumping out dynamite material while we've been working on the new project and it's almost done now.

Anyway, that's it from my C&L bat cave...

[Warning: Naked self-promotion ahead.]

My book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right continues to attract a lot of interest, partly because it so clearly anticipated the current descent into madness of mainstream conservatives, currently drowning in a lake of right-wing extremism. I didn't predict tea parties, but I did warn that '90s-style militia wingnuttery was about to swamp the Republican Party, and I do explain how this is happening.

So this week I was the featured interview at Amanda Marcotte's podcast at RH Reality Check. We specifically focused on the way right-wing domestic terrorists have had a profound impact on women's reproductive rights. This is a brief interview; it starts at about the 8-minute mark and continues to the 24-minute mark.

And I was also featured as the live guest on Second Life for this week's episode of Virtually Speaking on BlogTalkRadio.

This is an hourlong session and fairly broad-ranging. It was fun for me because I've known Jay Ackroyd for over 10 years -- online (we useta post at the old Slate forum The Fray back in the day), but we only finally met in person this summer at Netroots Nation. We talk about posting at Crooks and Liars, among other things. I also get to talk about my favorite moment of the past year: Having been the guy who made Sarah Palin crazy enough to try to have McCain lie, thereby cementing her rep as a diva among the McCain campaign.

It's now been a full year since I've been at C&L. I think I'll celebrate by running the video that made Palin crazy, which occurred my first week here:

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Meanwhile, John Amato and I are ensconced in the writing process this weekend for our upcoming book from PoliPoint Press: Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane. (Due out next spring.) We'll have more details as we get closer.

In the meantime, I'd like to say thanks to the community of readers and commenters here at C&L for welcoming me so warmly and making me feel right at home from the start. It's been a blast, with lots more to come.

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I went on Countdown last night to chat with Lawrence O'Donnell -- who was filling in for Keith Olbermann -- about Bill Clinton's remarks the other day about the never-ending bloodlust of the "vast right-wing conspiracy".

O'Donnell was critical of Clinton for suggesting that the power of the conspiracy was less today than what he faced -- and regarding that aspect of Clinton's remarks, I agree with him. The reality, as I explained in the segment, is that the spread and reach of the really virulent wingnuttery that plagued Clinton -- the black-helicopter conspiracy theories like Mena, or the Vince Foster suicide, or the Clinton Body Count -- was largely relegated, until later in his tenure, to the fringes of the militia movement.

Obama, by contrast, is not even through his first year as president and he's already being plagued by Birthers and Tenthers and Teabaggers and Death Panels (along with, of course, the obligatory "He's Going To Grab Our Guns" conspiracies).

And it's true, moreover, the Clinton is right that the country has changed demographically since he was president, which means they do not possess the actual political power they held during much of his tenure. But they've made up for the lack of power with a much deeper reach into the mainstream. I dunno about you, but it sure looks to me like the Teabaggers are the new Patriots -- and there's a hell of a lot more of them.

Perhaps more to the point, they've already demonstrated -- by at least temporarily derailing the debate over health-care reform with wingnutty distractions like the "death panels" and the gun-brandishing nutcases showing up at health-care town hall forums -- that they continue to have an outsize influence on the national discourse. Especially because of Fox News and the rest of the mainstream media's willingness to be bullied by them -- led, as always, by the wise media poobahs of the Beltway Village.

That is -- and you can file this under the L'esprit de l'escalier Dept., since I meant to say it in this segment -- what they lack in power they've more than made up for by continuing to pull the media reins and shape the national discourse. They're able to move the media needles still -- which is, of course, the problem. The Village gives movement conservatives far more respect than they deserve, especially at this juncture, with the movement fully in the hands of nutty populist demagogues.

Glenn Beck is as popular as he is because everyone in the "mainstream" is too busy running fawning puff pieces to point out his actual extremism. No one has the guts to explain that these people are driving the Republicans over a cliff into political oblivion.

In The Eliminationists, I do talk a lot about how vicious the campaign against Clinton got to be -- and how many bridges and alliances were built between the far right and mainstream conservatives during those years as a result, particularly in the way right-wing talkers started picking up and transmitting memes from the far right.

Finally, I should add that, while I disagree with Clinton on this point, I generally agreed with the overall thrust of his recent comments, particularly his warning that the "conspiracy" (as it were) remains a potent force, capable of undermining Obama's presidency in unexpected ways. One can't help but suspect that Obama has been naive on this front -- how many times does he have to reach out to Republicans and come back with a chewed-up hand to get it? -- and I suspect Clinton intended to point out the cold reality. To which I can only add: Hear! Hear!

It's day two of our C&L '09 fundraiser. We're reaching out to our readers and asking for your help so that the MSM and Corporate media do not overrun the blogosphere with Villagers. With ad revenues way down and the corporate elites funneling in millions of dollars to compete with us, it's going to be hard for all blogs to thrive and survive.

David Neiwert, who is the best expert we have today on right wing hate talk radio and hate groups, has become the managing editor of C&L.

Jane Hamsher writes:

There are lot of people on TV saying irresponsible things about the shooting at the Holocaust museum (one mentioned the "Obama effect," as if this was something that Obama's election precipitated).

If any TV bookers are looking for someone knowledgeable to speak on the subject, they should call David Neiwert. David blogs at Orcinus, he's the managing editor of Crooks & Liars, he's an expert on the subject and the author the new book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right.

David actually predicted something like this in the book. You can find more on the book here on David's book salon, which was hosted by Digby.

If any media folks need contact info for David, drop me a line.

Thanks, Jane, for your kind words about David. He'll be on the air this morning on MSNBC and has been a great addition to the site. Our initial goal is to reach at least $50,000, and the target is to get up to and beyond $100,000. Day I of the donation drive: C&L's Donation Drive '09: Please help save blogs before we're overrun by the corporate media was awesome. Yesterday we had over 200 people donate and hit the six thousand dollar mark, which was really a great start. I know this will take time and energy. I'd like to pay more money to the people that help make C&L a good blog and I do need to hire a few more bloggers and staffers because the workload is so tremendous.

I'll write more about this in the next posts, so please, donate if you can. You can also use snail mail to make your donation.

For Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

P.O. Box 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

We're reaching out to our readers and asking for your help so that the MSM and Corporate media do not overrun the blogosphere with Villagers. They are funneling in millions of dollars to compete with and ultimately drive away independent bloggers so that they can rule the Internet. And the kind of cash they are pouring in is staggering.

It's hard to compete with that since the economy is way down, and I think what we've accomplished is in jeopardy if the Internet doesn't step up to help us all, including other blogs that you like. So please donate what you can.

As you've seen, C&L has been expanding and improving the site and we need your help to continue to make more improvements and add more bodies to keep it going. We've released a host of new sites, including our Supreme Court blog Third Branch, the excellent Video Cafe, an expanded LNMC that is breaking new music and bringing music stars to our pages and finallythe very cool Newstalgia--which is posting the most extensive historic audio and video content on the web today. We've also released our first embeddable video player that now lets you embed all videos you see on C&L. This has taken a lot of time, effort and money to do, but we're succeeding. The economy is way down and it's affecting the blogs as well.

Our initial goal is to reach at least 50,000 dollars and the target is to get up to and beyond 100,000. I know this will take time and energy. As you've seen we're also reaching into the blogosphere and hiring bloggers to make C&L an even better site and to reward some of our own. The workload is tremendous. David Neiwert is now the managing editor and Susy Madrak has become a valued front-pager. Max Bernstein is handing the Late Nite Music Club and Gordon Skene is digging into his amazing time vault to bring us historical content that is relevant to today's news and Heather is leading the charge at Video Cafe. Now we're looking to hire video bloggers, a researcher, extra site monitors and an investigative journalist, but we can't do it without your help.

The money is going to be poured right back into C&L and into the hands of our own. It's a daunting task to keep the content flowing, even the MSM has recognized our efforts:

It's wild knowing that we've had over 200 million visitors and growing, so won't you please help us? You can also use snail mail to make your donation.

For Snail Mail:

Crooksandliars.com

P.O. Box 66310

Los Angeles, CA 90066

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