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Thanks to Newt Gingrich, it appears that a refresher course in Saul Alinsky and his teachings are in order, because clearly Bill O'Reilly and his sidekick Monica Crowley have no clue, even with Alan Colmes there to try and set the record straight.

Let's start with the end of this clip, where Colmes correctly asserts that the group most effectively employing Alinsky's tactics is the tea party. It's true. Tea party organizing has been exactly what Alinsky advised young radicals to do.

Via The Guardian:

It hurt me to see the American army with bayonets advancing on American boys and girls. But the answer I gave to the young radicals seemed to me the only realistic one: "Do one of three things. One, go and find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing – but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organise, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.

The tea party did this quite well, and the Occupy movement has taken some steps in that direction as well. Alinsky's message is clear: Don't simply protest. Act.

There's nothing radical about that at all, but to hear O'Reilly go on about it, it's just socialism, writ large. It's not socialism; it's democracy. Here was Alinsky's stated purpose, as laid out in "Rules for Radicals":

“What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

In a democracy, the power can only be with the people when the people stand up and speak for themselves, and then act on the collective message by inserting themselves into the political process. Tea partiers did this by protesting, and then running for school boards, state assemblies, state senates, and the United States Congress. It's classic Alinsky, which absolutely horrified Billo when Alan Colmes calmly pointed it out.

Bill O'Reilly isn't a fool. He knows this. But as long as he can keep the audience terrified of the name Alinsky without actually pointing out that the man was not some kind of radical socialist but one who believed in the power of communities and the disempowered to self-empower, he keeps the lie alive.

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I keep hearing this ridiculous canard in Republican debates and now from John Boehner about the alleged jobs bills the Republicans have passed that the "Democrat Senate" refuses to act upon. Since I watched the better part of their activity in real time, I know this is a lie. But most people aren't obsessive-compulsive about government and politics and might not realize just how much of a lie it is. So without further ado, let me debunk this claim made by the disingenuous Speaker of the House.

WALLACE: Question -- how will you counter that line of attack?

BOEHNER: Chris, 30 jobs bills passed over the last year in a Republican House of Representatives that are sitting in the United States Senate -- thirty.

Our focus over the last 12 months has been on jobs. Our focus over the course of the next 12 months is going to be on jobs.

The president asked us to extend the payroll tax credit, to make sure that we extended unemployment insurance with reforms, and make sure that doctors that dealt with Medicare patients were adequately reimbursed. And he asked us to do it for a year. We did it for a year. It was the United States Senate who decided, we're just going to do it for two months and we can't agree on how we're going to offset these costs. And so, we'll just kick the can down the road.

To make sure they back up their public claims with what might appear to be "fact", they've built a page on the House of Representatives site with a list of their so-called jobs bills, which number 27 and not 30 as the Speaker claims. What follows is a list and a brief explanation of why they are not jobs bills. Feel free to share it widely with your friends who might be inclined to believe Mr. Tobacco Lobbyist Check Distributor without questioning it.

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No matter what happens to Rick Perry in the GOP primaries, this video will go down in my book as an all-time classic. Can it get much better than a Republican candidate claiming he's going to pare down government and then forgetting which parts he's going to pare down, or in this case, eliminate entirely?

Clearly Rick Perry was not ready for prime time. Anyone want to start a pool on when he drops out of the race? He's spent more than any other candidate in Iowa, and is still in the second-tier, just ahead of Michele Bachmann.

Up till now, I just figured John Boehner was incompetent as GOP Speaker of the House, and he may still be. But Rachel Maddow makes a compelling argument here; namely, that Boehner was set up to fail on purpose by his own caucus. Watch the whole video for her argument.

In thinking about it, that would answer a lot of questions for me about why it was Tea Party freshmen who defected first after firmly declaring they would not, could not possibly vote for a 2-month payroll tax cut. If Cantor saw this battle as one he could set Boehner up to lose, he must really have designs on that Speaker seat before he loses in 2012.

I think there will be more to this story in the months to come.

Today's daily dose of wingnuttery was so rich I hardly know where to begin, so I'll just dive in. We begin with Pat Robertson, who is very, very worried about President Obama's visit to Indonesia.

Via Right Wing Watch:

Robertson: You know Lee the thing that somehow concerns me, they say he’s going back to the place that he spent his childhood, he spent four years in Indonesia, I don’t know if he was trained in a madrassa, one of those Muslim schools, but nevertheless that is his inclination. His father was a Kenyan socialist and he talks about the roots of his father. So he’s got an African and an Indonesian background. I don’t know what his mother was doing; she just sort of flitted around. But nevertheless, this may give him a warped perspective of what needs to be done to make America the greatest nation on earth.

Yes, of course. The President is going back to the country where he spent a few childhood years. Funny how Robertson never thinks about whether those childhood years were as great as he thinks they were, because you know, every 9-year old looks back with fondness on local children pelting him with rocks for being a black guy, after all.

Pat Robertson, king of the smarmy insinuation, pandering to the Christian loyalists waiting to lap it all up.

Then we have Rick Perry sounding the dog whistle for the faithful with this, via TalkingPointsMemo:

Rick Perry says President Obama, the son of a teen mother who frequently was absent from his life and often was stretched financially, grew up the easy way. It’s the latest in a series of winks at conspiracy-minded conservatives deeply suspicious about the president’s background.

Perry’s comments came as he discussed his new ad attacking Obama for saying US policymakers have grown “lazy” about honing America’s competitive edge, a comment that Republicans have inaccurately suggested was aimed at American workers. Asked by FOX News host Sean Hannity about the spot, Perry launched into a highly personal attack on Obama.

“It reveals to me that he grew up in a privileged way,” he said. “He never had to really work for anything.”

He added that “we need a president who has been through their ups and downs in life, and understands what it’s like to have to deal with the issues in our economy that we have today in America.”

Why that dirty, lowdown, food-stamp sucking President! Rick Perry's going to set the record straight about him, because you know, those poor folks just don't ever work for anything. They just wait for the government to hand it to them, right?

Finally, we have Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood editor-in-chief, John Nolte spewing a series of tweets hoping for violence against OWS protesters.

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Ohio's referendum on pay cuts and union-busting is coming up for a vote on Tuesday. As outside right-wing money floods the state, Republican lawmakers are trying to shift from defense to offense in the face of very long odds, since most Ohioans support repeal of this horrible law.

This short clip from a public radio interview in Ohio should give you a sense of the attitudes of Republicans in that state. In it, State Representative (and Speaker Pro Tempore) of the Ohio House of Representatives makes this statement in response to a question about why lawmakers expect sacrifice from public workers while not sacrificing anything themselves. Here's the money quote in response to the question:

Because it’s not merited. I earn my pay. I think that was just political baloney. So they can say in an ad, `Gee , you know, they didn’t support a pay cut.’ Well, no, I don’t support a pay cut. Republicans earn their money. Apparently Democrats don’t. They feel they should be paid less. That may be true. Maybe we’ll just cut the Democrats’ pay.

Daily Kos:

This time around, the Republican-dominated Ohio legislature has already attempted to disenfranchise 900,000 Ohio voters---nearly 20% of the overall electorate. The vast majority of these newly disenfranchised citizens come from demographics indicating they are progressive voters who would vote to defeat Issue 2. Republican efforts came through HB 194, designed to make it difficult for the elderly, disabled, poor, and students to vote. Thankfully, a separate petition drive has temporarily blocked this latest reincarnaton of Jim Crow in the north.

But the GOP did kill early voting on the weekend before the election. This hugely successful expansion of the effective franchise had allowed tens of thousands of Ohioans to vote at public locations the Saturday and Sunday prior to the 2008 presidential election. This “excess of democracy” proved too much for the 1%, which got rid of it this year on the back of one of the legislature’s many anti-voter rights bills.

Everyone should view this vote as a testing ground for 2012.

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Yes, you heard it here first. Programs that have lifted the poverty rate, empowered people to live independently - saving lives have made us "weaker" according to VP wannabe, Marco Rubio.

Speaking at the Reagan Library Tuesday night, Rubio said this:

These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job.

Such a big lie Rubio tells. Before Social Security, one in four senior citizens lived in poverty. Now that number is 14 percent.

The Social Security Act also precipitated adoption of far more employer-sponsored pension plans, and the union movement pushed those plans to be competitive and provide retirement security for employees. These are things that didn't happen before Social Security and Medicare. The same is true of health insurance. Health insurance did not have wide traction as an employee benefit until Medicare was in effect and unions negotiated health benefits for their members. Neither of these things weakened this nation. They strengthened it by keeping senior citizens out of poverty and giving families some breathing room. And of course, those dollars, such as they are, increase the number of consumer dollars available to stimulate the economy.

But perhaps the biggest lie of all is Rubio's lie about how the churches and synagogues cared for the poor. Here's an excerpt from testimony before Congress back in 1959 from one senior citizen (PDF):

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Behold, Michele Bachmann at her very best. Sometimes she puts Sarah Palin to shame with her unbeatable capacity for intellectual dishonesty and wide-eyed idiocy. Here is one such instance.

MODERATOR: I got a lot of questions from people asking is it fair for you to call for dismantling federal programs you ultimately have been a beneficiary of? So in terms of guaranteeing home mortgages, do you think the federal government has a role in that…?

BACHMANN: Now unlike all of you, who I’m sure pay cash for your homes, there are people out there like myself who actually have to go to a bank and get a mortgage. And this is the problem. It’s almost impossible to buy a home in this country today without the federal government being involved. Whether it is with the FHA, whether it’s with Fannie, whether it’s with Freddie, it’s almost impossible to buy a home…What’s important is that we do dismantle a number of these federal programs that everyone agrees are clearly out of control.

The question stems from a Washington Post report that she and her husband took out a loan in 2008 which is likely guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac so they could move up to the country club set.

Bachmann’s mortgage was part of a package of debt that she and her husband, Marcus, assumed to buy their home, public records show. They also have other loans, including a home equity line of credit, a business mortgage and another business loan for their Christian counseling clinics, bringing their liabilities to more than $1 million, according to the most recently available public records.

I'm really trying to follow Bachmann's logic here. Is she saying that if these federal programs were dismantled some other "free market" for mortgage lending would crop up? Does she not understand that the reason Fannie and Freddie exist is to mitigate credit risk for banks? Without these programs (which admittedly do have problems) banks simply wouldn't lend, which is what we're seeing now.

I might have more respect for these Birch conservatives if they weren't so baldly hypocritical about what they do, as opposed to what they say.

Think Progress:

Bachmann’s disapproval of federal home loan programs obviously didn’t stop her from using them to buy an enormous house for herself. During recent campaign stops, Bachmann has bragged that her family simply “did without” government aid when times were tough, but apparently this time they couldn’t help themselves.

Yeah, that country club home was just screaming for a federal loan guarantee so the Bachmanns could live there, but you know, god forbid some young person, veteran, or middle class family might need one.

Really, Fox Business? You irresponsible idiots. That's right, let's just all make a joke out of torture, shall we? As if it's not bad enough that you jerks make a concerted effort to convince your viewers that immoral, unethical, violent behavior is perfectly fine, now you joke about it?

Yes, Fox Business asked their twitter buddies who should be waterboarded next. And their Twitter buddies responded. Among their choices: President Obama, Alan Colmes, Rachel Maddow, Joy Behar and Keith Olbermann. There were more, but isn't this enough?

Perhaps the only light moment came when Monica Crowley said waterboarding Eric Bolling wouldn't help because he has no "actionable intelligence."

Neither, evidently, do the idiots who program this show. What an incredible waste of bandwidth.

Transcript of list-reading:

BOLLING: I wanted to know who else at home who you thought should be waterboarded.

So, Louise says, waterboard "Joy Behar." Patti says "Senate Dems... and then Obama... and then the kooks on The View, starting with Joy." Jerry says he wants to see Alan Colmes get waterboarded. "The secrets of the left wing cabal will come pouring out of that boy." This guy's a bit more sentimental, go ahead, waterboard "my ex-wife." Denise says Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow. And Mike says "Waterboard the Westboro Baptists Church." I agree with them.

Did Bolling agree with all of the suggestions, or just the Westboro suggestion? It's not clear to me...and it's hard to want to give him the benefit of the doubt given his obvious glee at asking the question and receiving the answers he did.

[h/t Media Matters]

John Fund is very, very upset over the FCC's weaksauce Net Neutrality declarations and he's aiming at 'wealthy left-wing' organizations as the culprits. This makes me happy. When a winger can only squirm over something so weak and toothless as to be useless, it's a good day. But look at who he aims at! Paranoid, much?

Free Press and allied groups such as MoveOn.org quickly got funding. Of the eight major foundations that provided the vast bulk of money for campaign-finance reform, six became major funders of the media-reform movement. (They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers's Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.) Free Press today has 40 staffers and an annual budget of $4 million.

These wealthy funders pay for more than publicity and conferences. In 2009, Free Press commissioned a poll, released by the Harmony Institute, on net neutrality. Harmony reported that "more than 50% of the public argued that, as a private resource, the Internet should not be regulated by the federal government." The poll went on to say that since "currently the public likes the way the Internet works . . . messaging should target supporters by asking them to act vigilantly" to prevent a "centrally controlled Internet."

To that end, Free Press and other groups helped manufacture "research" on net neutrality. In 2009, for example, the FCC commissioned Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to conduct an "independent review of existing information" for the agency in order to "lay the foundation for enlightened, data-driven decision making."

Considering how openly activist the Berkman Center has been on these issues, it was an odd decision for the FCC to delegate its broadband research to this outfit. Unless, of course, the FCC already knew the answer it wanted to get.

Wow. Openly activist? The Berkman Center? Here's the Berkman Center's Berkman@10 page, with some of their research projects and discussions posted online. Such terribly activist things. Open innovation, The Dilemma of Games, The Musician and the Scientist, and yes, Network Neutrality (not Internet Neutrality, by the way), as well as one called The Battle for the Web. Hardly activist.

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