I say this to the world: Dave Neiwert is my hero. Anyone who can seriously monitor the Fox News grind day after day deserves a medal of honor. I have spent a week watching, and come away with the understanding that a steady diet of what they serve over there will leave you sick, angry, and spelling-challenged.

I knew something was wrong yesterday when I had to stop and think about how to spell a word I've known how to spell forever. It was something simple, like "labelled." But I had to think about it for more than a few seconds. This is not like me. I am anal about spelling and rarely make a mistake. Using a spell-checker is a matter of pride with me. I could, but I won't. What evil influence could possibly be corrupting my spelling abilities? I found myself not even caring if I could spell it right just as long as I could be done with what I was doing.

And then it hit me. I realized yesterday marked a full week of watching Fox. I knew it had to be the culprit. As one who has banned Fox News from my house for years, it is never, ever on. But with Dave gone, I volunteered to monitor it for a week in his absence. I did learn a few things, about myself and about their techniques.

I learned there is a "theme of the day", set at 3AM California time when Fox and Friends comes on with their faux friendly little coffee klatch. Yesterday's theme was "Liberals are less civil than Tea Partiers." It began last night with Bill O'Reilly's ongoing claim that he's unfairly accused of being unfair. But today, it was the overriding, dominant theme.

Every show serves their own flavor of the theme inside the context of the main story, which happened to be the Wisconsin showdown with Governor Walker. Whether they were talking about the reporter punking the governor, or protests in solidarity with Wisconsinites, it is hammered home over and over and over and over again. No one is exempt or escapes The Theme, not even Glenn Beck. Watch here, as he takes a break from his incoherent ranting about President Obama making a statement about Libya while they were sleeping, and how that must have been because he had to coach his daughters or something. I'm convinced he was just pissed that his show was interrupted for it. Here's the clip:

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Conservatives love to write off progressive populism as “the politics of envy,” saying we envy the rich instead of recognizing them for being the hardworking entrepreneurs they are. Given that, the current conservative exercise of attacking public employees for getting pensions, decent health care coverage, and occasional salary increases is irony on a scale rarely seen. Republicans and conservatives’ basic argument is that since private-sector workers have been so thoroughly screwed on wages, health care, and retirement plans in recent decades, those same workers should be mad that teachers and cops and social workers have gotten a little more economic security than they have. If that ain’t the politics of envy, I don’t know what is.

Pitting workers against workers for the scraps of the economic system as a few people and corporations at the top rake in, and then hoard, most of the money is a tried and true tactic, and it sometimes works. But the movement revolt that started in Wisconsin and is spreading rapidly to other states is so far successful in turning the argument around. When 70,000 pro-union progressive protesters show up at the Capitol in Madison, and the numbers keep building day after day, and the kind of folks coming are just soft-spoken teachers and hearts-on-their-sleeve firefighters, it gets impossible to write these people off as a narrow special interest.

The other thing that is so exciting about what is going on is that this is not like the usual stock demonstrations of the recent past, when organizations or coalitions would plan months in advance and raise millions of dollars to try to turn out a modest crowd for a one day, six-hour rally in D.C. The events in Wisconsin are inspired far more by Egypt than by the traditional methods of American organizations, as people from the labor movement, but also supporters from all walks of life are turning out day after day after day. It is one of the most remarkable moments this old activist has ever seen, and it is changing our political expectations as we speak. There is no envy on our side of these demonstrations: people just want a fair shake. There are no tantrums about being unwilling to talk or compromise or sacrifice in hard times, they just want to have a voice through collective bargaining. And a majority of people in Wisconsin get it — 65 percent support the right of public employees to bargain.

The tantrums and the envy are all on the side of the conservatives. They don’t want to compromise with public employee unions, or bargain with them, they want to shut them down. If they don’t get their way at the federal level, they’ll just shut the government down. And speaking of envy: the Tea Party folks in all their ballyhooed hype have never been able to turn out these kinds of crowds, even with the enormous corporate money behind them. They still get coverage from the establishment media (Did you see the ridiculous headline in the Washington Post yesterday? “Supporters Rally for Governor’s Bill." In the third paragraph the intrepid Post reporter did note that “The overwhelming majority of protesters were teachers, students and other public-service workers…”), but the numbers all are on our side.

The Democratic senators in Wisconsin are doing the right thing in staying away and showing solidarity with the attacked unions. Now the national Democratic Party is going to have to step up to the plate and show whose side it is on. They need to embrace the protesters and embrace this moment. There has been a widening gulf between establishment D.C. Democrats and grassroots progressives, as the latter have gotten more and more alienated from too many Democrats taking on the pro-big business and bankers ideology. In this movement moment, Democrats need to stand unapologetically with progressives, which so far too many seem to have been wobbly about doing. It is great that President Obama signaled his support, and that OFA has helped out in Wisconsin. They need to not back down. In fact, if I were at the White House, the first thing I would do whenever the Wisconsin standoff gets resolved is to invite the leaders of the protest to the White House to celebrate their taking a stand for democracy. (Side note for current White House staffers planning this event: If there ends up being mass civil disobedience, and the leaders get invited to the White House, the Secret Service will have to be talked into going along with the plans. When I was at the Clinton White House and invited people with histories of civil disobedience in to meet President Clinton, the Secret Service was never very happy with me.)

But it is not just Democratic officials who should be standing with Wisconsin movement leaders: all progressives should. Conservatives want to roll back the clock on more than a century of social progress, and they are only going after the unions first because they are the strongest progressive institutions in America. They figure if they can take out the unions first, everything after that — outlawing abortion, ending progress on LGBT and other civil rights, privatizing Social Security and Medicare, etc. — will be relatively easy.

This fight is for all of us; it is about preserving the American middle class and our ability to organize collectively. It is about human rights. It is about focusing the blame for the economic crisis where it belongs, on bankers and policy makers, not teachers and cops. And the fight isn’t just in Wisconsin: All over this country, the conservative movement is trying to take away our rights, and everywhere in America, we should be showing solidarity with our embattled brothers and sisters in Wisconsin.

Here is a list of rallies happening this week to show support for the protesters in Wisconsin. Go to the one closest to you, take your family, take your friends. This is a big deal.

Let me repeat that: This Is A Big Deal. Given the money and entrenched power of corporate conservatives, progressives are not going to win anything that matters in the coming years unless we do what the protesters in Wisconsin are doing and go far beyond the usual call-and-petition-your-member-of-Congress tactic. We are going to have to be creative, we are going to be bold, we are going to have to incredibly dogged and determined. Just like Wisconsin. Just like Egypt. And the powers that be in both political parties will have to listen if we are.

Yes, TSA procedures suck, and yes, they're heading toward a tipping point where there will be nearly unilateral support for getting rid of them. But make no mistake, the publicity was turned up by the right in order to leverage maximum political points for them. Had these procedures been in effect when Bush was in office, Rush most certainly would have extolled their value and reminded us all that it was in the name of "keeping us safe".

In Rushbo classic hyperbole, he instead suggests that the president should have his daughter "groped" by the TSA so he can show everyone how safe it is. These procedures are ridiculous, and the right argument to make on both sides is that they will not prevent an attack. They're a reaction, and one that actually hands a victory over to terrorists instead of dealing with the problem. But once again, instead of dealing seriously with an issue that garners agreements across partisan lines, Limbaugh ignores the real problem and goes after the president.

Sadder still, it works. People actually believe what this gasbag says, and how he says it. And so then we have surveys that indicate a majority of Americans believe President Obama's religion is somehow subversive, scary and different from most Americans, and "patriots" selling copies of Mein Kampf.

The tactic? Easy. Keep the noise level high and severe for 2 more years until everyone begs for it to stop, then offer up a nice, white, clean-cut Republican to turn down the volume.

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Dadgummit, once again, the right wing noise machine has framed the debate and the Democrats are forced to play defense. Of course, the Shirley Sherrod smear by Andrew Breitbart would be a topic of discussion on the Sunday shows.

But will they take a hard look at the responsibility of news organizations to fact check and contextualize before just blindly repeating a partisan smear from a known liar and smear merchant? Surely, you jest. Stop playing the blame game, you liberals.

Instead, we're treated to these false equivalencies and ridiculous Broderisms by David Brooks with a clear candidate for The Jayson Blair Project:

There are liberals who call conservatives racist as a matter of tactics, too. That happens, as well. Listen, I was out jogging, you wouldn't know it to look at me. I was out jogging (LAUGH) you wouldn’t know it to look at me, I was out jogging on the mall. I was at a Tea Party rally, Tea Party rally. Also there was a group called the Back-- Black Family Reunion, celebration of African American culture. I watched these two groups intermingle. Sitting at the same table, eating-- watching concerts together. Among most of those people, there was a fantastic atmosphere of just getting along on-- on a warm Sunday afternoon.

And so, there are people, but I-- I was struck by a story of progress. A story of progress, that we're making some progress to this. And this whole week, that speech was about progress. We now have a gotcha culture that punishes people that say terrible things. So, I think overall, it's slow, steady--

Any one actually believe that anything like this actually happened? If so, I got a bridge to sell you...cheap.

But ultimately, it's entirely beside the point.

The issue is not nor ever has been whether ALL tea baggers are racist. It's an intellectually dishonest argument to paint any group of people with such a broad brush, and it was never done by anyone on the left. But since the right has grabbed hold of the narrative, they can dismiss any and all discussion by such a straw man.

Remember the timeline of events: The NAACP asked the tea party organizers to disavow the racist element that showed up at every tea party event. Not every tea bagger. But it's hard to argue that they didn't exist, especially with the preponderance of pictures proving so.

It's not an unheard of request. The Republican Party disavowed the fascist McCarthyites and also the extremist John Birchers at one point in time. Democrats were asked to disavow MoveOn for the Gen. Betrayus debacle.

But that doesn't work for polemicist and unabashed hater Andrew Breitbart. He instead decides that the way to respond to a call for civility and respect is to counter-attack with a smear, even if he has to make one up. And his thesis? If the tea party is racist, so is the NAACP. And to prove it, he shows an edited video of a 24 year old incident involving an African-American mid-level bureaucrat and a white farmer. So in Breitbart's Bizarro-World logic, NAACP = white racism = black government bureaucrat singly discriminating against white farmer (she didn't, but go along with the analogy)= ? Is Breitbart insinuating that a single incident 24 years ago is enough to indict the entire NAACP of white racism? And is Sherrod even a member of the NAACP? She's not an officer of the organization.

And don't think for a moment that the choice of a government employee who works to support the poor and needy is an accident either. This is just more serving of the oligarchy, a fact that the media conveniently lets slide down the memory hole.

If Breitbart--and the media enabling him and accepting his framing-- is going to use the analogy that one act condemns an entire group, why can't we call all tea baggers racist?

Let's see David Brooks answer THAT one.

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I need some help understanding this post from The Hill. I read it twice, and both times did a double take at how it subtly rewrites history into a frame that benefits Republicans. A week back from vacation has given sufficient time for the island vibe to be replaced with hair-ripping annoyance over the ease with which lies are perpetuated.

Jared Allen writes:

The GOP plan calls for the top officials from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Association of Homebuilders and the National Association of Manufacturers to gather with leading House Republicans in the Capitol to help the GOP craft part of its America Speaking Out policy agenda.

After reports of the business and trade group meeting surfaced, Democrats predictably went on the attack -- in a release, the DNC chided Republicans for holding a "Lobbyists Speaking Out" forum.

Republicans appeared to buckle somewhat from the latest round of pressure. Shortly after news first broke of their initiative, GOP leaders announced plans to livestream the meeting, rather than hold it behind closed doors.

In recent months, Democrats have been relentless in their attacks on Republicans for coordinating their efforts -- political and policy -- with business leaders.

Really? They have? Where have I been? Not only have I not seen relentless attacks from anyone, I certainly haven't seen it on this front. Not even a little bit. But let's just say Jared and I have a different idea about what the term "relentless" means, and move on to the next square.

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We can't promise that Amato and Neiwert's new book will get you lucky with the ladies, but listening to the Right Wing Noise Machine will most def get you unlucky. Plus, reading GOOD political writing makes you smart, and as I always say, intelligence is an aphrodisiac.

Please note that buying at that link directly contributes to C&L, too. Thank you!

As crazy as the tea party movement is over taxes along with Limbaugh/Palin/O'Reilly and the rest of the teabaggers, a new survey by the very conservative American Enterprise Institute says that Americans feel they are paying just about the right amount of taxes and that Bush's tax cuts only helped the rich and Big Business and should be ended.

Dan Froomkin:

For all the grousing about taxes these days, a new survey concludes that it's doing taxes rather than paying them that really rankles.

A plurality of Americans think they're paying about the right amount in taxes, and a significant majority say they're paying the fair amount.

There is widespread agreement that the rich and corporations are paying too little in taxes. And a majority of Americans think the Bush tax cuts helped the rich the most and should be eliminated

Americans are also vastly more concerned right now about unemployment and the economy than they are about taxes -- or deficits, for that matter.

A troubling answer that Dan highlights is that Americans, by a slim margin, prefer Republicans over Democrats when it comes to taxes. We can thank the right wing noise machine for that. Only in America can a president like George Bush screw up the country for almost a decade and in a blink of an eye it's lost on most people that all these conservatives acting like racist sore losers stood by every one of Bush's economic policies.

The right-wing noise machine can really come up with some good ones.

Right-wing media figures have criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for carrying a gavel while walking to the Capitol to vote on health care reform, claiming she sought to incite Tea Party members protesting the legislation. Glenn Beck said Pelosi was "inciting" the tea partiers and "slapping them across the face," and Rush Limbaugh said Pelosi tried to "provoke" tea partiers by "carrying that big gavel" with an "excrement-eating grin on her face."

Did you know the gavel had that kind of power? Man, it turns people into racists and douchebags.

Beck: "If [Pelosi] was really worried about violence and she thought these people were violent, why would you grab a big hammer and walk into a sea of these people?" He later asked, "Did anyone say to Nancy Pelosi, 'You're inciting these people. You're slapping them across the face'?"

I would say she had to protect herself from the teabaggers and the gavel was all she had at her disposal, but that's absurd too. I thought there were not too many conservative comics around, but they keep proving me wrong.

Their big problem: They are the opposite of funny.

The right wing noise machine is gearing up to promote the Oath Keepers as much as possible. I think this is actually a very good thing. The more crazy that get up there the better. Bill O'Reilly will do his part by having them appear on The Factor too.

O'REILLY: Is there one group in America right now that you guys believe is dangerous, is growing fast, and that the folks should know about?

MARK POTOK (editor, Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report): Well, let me give an example. I'm not going to say this group is dangerous and, you know, these people are going to blow up federal buildings -- that's clearly not true -- but there is a new major group called the Oath Keepers. It was started, if I recall, in February of last year. This -- it has grown fairly explosively. It's well over a thousand members. What's interesting about the group is it's composed mainly of military and law enforcement personnel, officers of the law. The thing about the group is what they say is, you know, "What we're all about is simply pledging allegiance -- or re-pledging our oaths to defend the Constitution," which of course is well and fine. But the reality about the group is that what it's really about is the fear that martial law is about to be imposed, that Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps, that foreign troops are going to be put down on American soil. The Oath Keepers says specifically, we will not obey these orders, we will refuse orders to put Americans into concentration camps. Now, is that dangerous? It seems to me the danger is that these are men and women, in the case of police officers, who are given a real power over the rest of us, sometimes the power of life and death. They make very important decisions. And if these men and women are animated by the idea that, you know, foreign forces are about to come into this country and put us under martial law and throw us all into concentration camps, I think there is a certain danger associated with that.

O'REILLY: All right. Well, it's certainly not rational.

POTOK: They're operating on the basis on crazy theories that may cause one of them to draw a gun one day.

O'REILLY: All right. You know what I'm going to do, Mr. Potok? Because it's a very interesting topic. I'm going to invite somebody from the Oath Keepers to come on the Factor tomorrow and give forth their point of view. I think it's a fascinating topic, and we appreciate your time very much.

David Neiwert has some really great posts up on C&L about the Oath Keepers since we are one of the first blogs to expose this group and what they believe in.

Their values and some of their members are very scary indeed. And they are linked to the Beck's 9/12 Project as well.

Oath Keepers in coalition with John Birch Society, 9/12 Project branch. Oath Keepers is listed as a member of Friends for Liberty, a coalition that, according to its website, includes the right-wing John Birch Society, the Spokane, Washington, branch of the Glenn Beck-associated 9/12 Project, and Vaccination Liberation, a group that claims as part of its mission to "reveal the myth that vaccines are necessary, safe and effective."

Barney Frank took the gloves off on the floor and called John Fund out for making up a story about a phony bill and then he outlined how the right wing noise machine works as a propaganda arm of the republicans to push that narrative into the mainstream.

Frank: You are entirely wrong about me and in the absence of your being able to show any basis which you made such a statement to ask you to acknowledge that fact. He's not only a liar, he's a coward. He wouldn't do it. My staff member asked him, called him up and said, what was this based on? Well, I made a mistake. Well, have you made a retraction? Oh, yeah, he said. Can we see it? "I told a couple of people." Mr. Fund makes it up. It's a lie, it's a myth. There was nothing there and it's to discredit all democrats.

His right-wing cohorts echo it and echo it. The next thing is it will be on the floor in the next two weeks. This is the democrat disregard for the electoral process. And when we call Mr. Fund's attention to the fact that this was a lie, what does he say? Whoops. but he's not going to tell anybody about it. Mr. Speaker, this is not the only case of this and I know this has happened before. But because I was directly involved here, I was in position to document this. It begins with a lie from this editorial writer from "the Wall street journal." it is then a lie repeated by his right-ring colleagues. He refuses to do anything about.

It doesn't get any clearer than that. Frank posted the entire story on the web.

Frank responded to fabricated accounts of his supposed plans to introduce a bill on “universal voter registration.” The story began in November at the conservative Restoration Weekend conference in Palm Beach, Florida, where for $1,700 per person activists were able to hear talks by conservative opinion leaders on the theme, “Defending our Country and Culture.” At one session, John Fund, a writer for the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, claimed that Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chuck Schumer had hatched a plan to game the election system by registering felons, illegal aliens and others to vote:

Democrats were very rattled by the November 3rd election results. What do liberals do when they lose elections? They change the rules. In January, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank will propose universal voter registration.

What is universal voter registration? It means all of the state laws on elections will be overridden by a federal mandate. The feds will tell the states, “Take everyone on every list of welfare recipients you have, take everyone on every list of unemployed you have, take everyone on every list of property owners, take everyone on every list of driver’s license holders, and register them to vote regardless of whether they want to be.”

The allegation against Congressman Frank is absolutely false and has no basis in reality. The Congressman in fact heard about it for the first time after the story was launched in the conservative media.

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