Playing the conservative victim is something Malkin does very well. For some reason the media really doesn't mind their hissy fits. Anyway, you can assume when she rants it's with unsupported facts.
This time she has focused on a little "public school lunacy." She screams about religious persecution when there is none. Are you surprised?
The man responsible for trying to make torture a moral imperative for America now gets the opportunity to produce an eight-hour miniseries about the Kennedy family.
Joel Surnow is swapping “real time” political intrigue for historical realism. The “24″ co-creator is executive producing “The Kennedys,” an eight-hour miniseries about one of America’s most iconic political families, for the History Channel. Unlike “24,” however, “The Kennedys” will be as historically accurate as possible and not feature any gimmickry.
“We’re not trying to be too clever about it,” said Surnow, who developed the project with Muse Entertainment for the Network. “We’re just telling the story on an episode by episode basis.”
Surnow says he and series writer Steve Kronish were most interested in cobbling together a dynastic story about family ambition. “That some of the most important events of the 20th century, such as the Bay of Pigs or the civil rights movement, is in the background, is almost besides the point,” he said. Focusing on the idea of a father living out his ambitions through his sons (”primarily Jack and Bobby, though Teddy was in the mix”), the series — which Surnow likens more to a season of the “Sopranos” than a traditional miniseries — will take place between the years of 1960 and 1968, but with plenty of flashbacks, such as Joe Sr. being rejected by a Harvard club.
He's not a partisan hack at all. He simply makes the case that the Kennedys are just like the Sopranos, who made sure to whack as many people after they ate their cannolis and espresso as possible.
He also decries anyone who may try to tie his conservative politics into the project. “My politics have never guided my interest in stories and movies,” he said. “I completely understand where critics are coming from, because of my creating the ‘1/2 Hour News Hour’ show for Fox News and the issue over torture on ‘24.’ But it’s honestly not going to have much play in terms of where this story comes out. Steve Kronish is politically different from me, and at the end of the day, we’re telling a story about a family. So it’s not about the politics.” (Fox News is owned by News Corp, as is the Wall Street Journal.)
Now why would we think Surnow is a right-wing hack simply for creating a TV show that had to scale back the amount of torture he depicted and a comedy show for FOX News that attacked progressives and Democrats entirely.
Using Limbaugh and Coulter as your stars was just in good fun for Joel.
How stupid are we to think his politics would ever seep into this production?
Without a doubt, one of the worst aspects of watching health-care reform crumble before our eyes is dealing with gloating of the wingnuts who made it crumble -- and especially watching them lying again and again and again as they do so. It's just in their nature to lie, and to do it repeatedly.
Case in point: Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Outer Wingnuttia, went on Fox News last night with Sean Hannity and talked about how she hoped the health-care reform was dead and finished, and both she and Hannity were obviously gleeful at the prospect. At every corner she was a font of disinformation and false "facts". The topper came at the end:
BACHMANN: We need bipartisan reform, and we Republicans are there ready, willing, and able. We want bipartisan reform. Let's scrap what we have and let's move forward, because President Obama's bill will mean 5.5 million jobs lost, and that's according to his own economist, Christina Romer.
Well, as Media Matters explains, there's simply no such figure anywhere in anything Romer has ever said -- indeed, she has said that "health care reform is an economic necessity," and that it will "allow lower unemployment".
Politifact seems to have uncovered the source of Bachmann's "5.5 million" figure, other than the nether regions of her posterior:
Obama's economic adviser -- Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers -- has never said that a tax in the health care bill would cost up to 5.5 million jobs. Republicans have used her 2007 research to develop a calculation for job losses for any type of tax increase. If you have a number for tax revenues generated, then this model will give you a number of jobs lost. But there are factors that make this type of analysis troublesome when it comes to the health care bill. Romer's 2007 research, for example, said that tax increases that fund spending for social programs tend to balance out, and economic growth stays on an even keel. Another problem is that the Republicans take tax increases that happen over 10 years and treat them as if they happen in one year, which inflates the numbers of jobs that might be lost. Finally, this particular Republican analysis includes more taxes than just the surtax of page 336; it also includes the employer mandates of page 313. We find this analysis to be problematic and contrary to how Obama's economic adviser said the model should work.
Ah, but being truthful would not be as much fun as going on national television and lying.
I think we've all noticed the increasing tendency of right-wing pundits to openly indulge in racist stereotyping these days as somehow an acceptable form of discourse -- because, you know, they're just jokes! C'mon, dontcha have a sense of humor that includes hating on people different than you? It's all for the sake of ratings, you know. Jeez, don't be such a stiff!
Andrea Nill over at ThinkProgress' WonkRoom came across this one:
This weekend, Human Events posted an offensive parody of the famous Christmas song, “Feliz Navidad,” entitled “Illegal Aliens In My Yard.” Besides repeatedly referring to undocumented immigrants as “illegals,” a term that’s considered pejorative and offensive by immigrants rights organizations, the song primarily focuses on spreading false and hateful stereotypes about Latinos who are portrayed as bug-carrying invalids:
Illegals in my yard.
Illegals in my yard.
Illegals in my yard.
Sixteen arrive in a stolen car[...]They’re getting free organ transplants this Christmas.
They’re going to have anchor babies this Christmas.
They’re going to scream “sí, se puede” this Christmas.
Those illegals in my yard[...]They’re going to spread bubonic plague this Christmas.
They’re going to bring me lots of bed bugs this Christmas.
They’re going to pass tuberculosis this Christmas.
Those illegals in my yard.
Bad enough that they reflexively dehumanize immigrants by calling them "illegals". But the plague? Bed bugs? Tuberculosis?
That's Lou Dobbs territory and beyond. Disease carriers and criminals, that's what Latino immigrants are.
No wonder the Republican Party keeps shrinking into itself.
You can always count on Congress to do the wrong thing when conservative hissy fits come into play, but at least a judge saw the light.
A Brooklyn judge Friday delayed enforcement of a new federal law that cut off funding to the controversial community organization ACORN.
Judge Nina Gershon said the government violated ACORN's right to due process before enacting a law that threatened to financially destroy the organization.
"The question here is only whether the Constitution allows Congress to declare that a single, named organization is barred from all federal funding in the absence of a trial," Gershon wrote in a 21-page decision.
She said ACORN had proved it would suffer "irreparable harm" if the money was cut off.
ACORN lawyers expect the feds to open the purse strings soon. The Justice Department said the decision is under review.
Here's the pdf of the ruling.
On another matter, ColorofChange threatened to sue the defamatory website that was started to defend "phony tears" Glenn Beck because they used false information supplied by extremist sites like NewsMax. DefendGlenn was forced to post an apology on their website stating that they used patently false information -- lies, basically, to attack their opponents.
After ColorOfChange.org took on Glenn Beck for his race-baiting and fear-mongering, Beck's supporters fought back using lies, distortions, and more race-baiting to defend him. DefendGlenn.com was the worst, mounting a campaign to scare advertisers into staying on his show.
After we threatened them with a lawsuit, DefendGlenn.com has backpedalled. It should make clear to advertisers who have pulled their support that they've done the right thing...read on
Conservatives will say and do anything to smear and destroy a contrary belief. It's right out the Nixon "dirty tricks" book club.
Take a look at a screen grab of their apology below to Color of Change.
The sickness known as "teabaggers" are preparing another shameful display of their utter contempt for the American people.
So here’s the plan. On Tuesday, December 15 at 8:45 AM thousands of us will meet in Washington, DC at the fountain in Upper Senate Park. From there we will march to the Senate offices, go inside, and demonstrate our opposition to the government takeover of health care. We call this plan “Government Waiting Rooms”. The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave. A backup location for this demonstration will be announced if they block us from entering the offices.
We need as many of you as possible to be there to make our point loudly and clearly. Please make plans to attend. We know it’s a sacrifice to do this right before Christmas. But throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty. Now the burden (and the honor) falls on us.
Of course, they don't actually have to stage some demonstration of the horrors of health care rationing. We have examples of exactly that happening in real life right this minute. Here's one in Kansas City
--
Maybe these teabaggers think that those people don't count and that somehow they'll personally all be spared from these circumstances if they lose their jobs or get sick. I hope for their sake it's true. But the truth is that among those who are staging this little stunt, it's extremely likely that a percentage of them are going to be participating in this rationing in real life at some point. And there is no way of predicting which ones it will happen to. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...
When karma hits, these psychos will surely face the same fate as all those Americans who went to the Kansas City Free Clinic. Someday they will witness the health of people they care about collapse, and without decent insurance, and they won't be laughing about it. But they are so hypnotized by the wingnut propaganda that when their own loved ones face the same fate at a later date, they then will blame the federal government for doing nothing. These are dangerous idiots.
What hath Republicans wrought?
Sure, they believed, as John noted the other day, that when they were unleashing what Bill Kristol likes to call "guided populism", they were in fact opening the gates for right-wing populism. And now they're looking not only at a a phenomenon much more popular than the standard Republican brand, but a movement that is about to swallow them whole.
And the Tea Party organizers -- notably the Astroturf outfits that originated the Parties, such as FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity -- are making that perfectly clear. Two spokesmen for those groups -- Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and the AFP's Tim Phillips, went on Hardball yesterday and made this explicit:
MATTHEWS: Matt, how about third party? What about the Tea Party? Sarah Palin is kind of hard to read. She is fascinating. Let‘s face it, we‘re all fascinated with her, because she‘s exciting as a political figure right now. But she‘s talking third party. I mean, she answered the question of Lars Larson. Maybe it just came to mind, but she said, yeah, I might go third party, something like that. Would you guys knock off an incumbent Republican by going third party? You know how the vote splits. Split the right, the Dem wins.
KIBBE: The better way to do it is to take over the Republican party. Frankly, that‘s what our goal is. We need to replace the Republican establishment with fiscal conservatives that are actually willing to cut spending.
All this talk about a "third party" is just so much smokescreen. What's actually happening is that the GOP is fast becoming a full-fledged right-wing-populist entity. Which means that the latent extremism lurking out on the right's fringes for so many years is becoming its new lifeblood, such as it is.
Funny thing is, as Matthews managed to point out early in the segment, not even the Tea Partiers' supposed hero -- Ronald Reagan -- can live up to their standards:
MATTHEWS: Has there ever been a strong conservative president, for example, in your lifetime or anybody—your grandfather‘s lifetime? Who do you look to as a good role model for the tea party people?
KIBBE: Well, obviously, Ronald Reagan is the closest thing we have.
MATTHEWS: What did he do in terms of fiscal policy?
KIBBE: Oh, he—he said that we shouldn't spend money we don‘t have, and he said that the government shouldn't get involved in things that it‘s not very good at doing.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Yes. Have you ever checked the numbers with Reagan?
KIBBE: Well, I understand. I understand...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: The national debt went from under $1 trillion to $3 trillion. He did more to increase exponentially the size of the debt of any president in history.
And he's your role model.
KIBBE: Well, President Obama is...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you. I have asked you one president that you can look up to who was good at tea party politics and ideology.
KIBBE: Right. Right.
MATTHEWS: If it's not Reagan, because he clearly didn't do it, who do you look to? Coolidge? How far do you have to look back?
KIBBE: I think we need to find somebody that can meet that standard.
MATTHEWS: So, nobody has recently?
KIBBE: No, certainly not.
Ah well. Blowing off cognitive dissonance is a special teabagger trait. It just adds to their "insane" mystique.
Republicans may have thought these guys had their backs. But now they're looking with increasing worry back over their shoulders. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, dudes.
Rick Santorum is very concerned that President Obama is not handling the "Muslim threat" well enough and is considering a run in 2012. He was asked if Palin was qualified to be president some day and he told the press that Sarah Palin has some 'splainin' to do.
Asked if he thinks former Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska, is qualified to be president, Santorum demurred:
"No, I'll let the people decide that," he said. "I think, you know, she's done a lot to draw attention to herself that's positive. She's done some things that, you know, certainly are going to cause her to have to do some explaining if she runs for president. But right now I think she's on a roll, she's having a good time, she's having an impact, which look -- if you're sitting here out of office, the thing you want to do is have an impact on the direction of the country right now, if you're not governing things. And she's having an impact."
Palin is so entertaining for Man-Dog Rick. What a joker that Sarah is. He says that he'll be of great help in the 2010 midterms and he wants to weigh in on the important matters. You see, conservatives like Santorum destroyed the country for eight years and want another crack at finishing us off.
Though Santorum has publicly sidestepped questions about his intentions, his friend and political adviser, Deal Hudson, told me that Santorum has informed his closest associates that he is very likely to declare his candidacy.
“[Santorum] said he was not considering running a few months ago,” Hudson said, “but he has grown so concerned about the direction [President Barack] Obama is taking the country that he told me he wants to get involved.” Santorum “believes that Obama is weak on the Muslim threat and he is convinced that it’s going to turn around and bite him badly,” said Hudson.
Hudson, who has advised President George W. Bush and Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain on Catholic issues, and who maintains close ties to leaders of the evangelical right, told me Santorum has become preoccupied with issues of national security. “He believes that Obama is weak on the Muslim threat and he is convinced that it’s going to turn around and bite him badly,” Hudson said.
No doubt Santorum will bring to a 2012 national race the same kind of success he had as a Senator from Pennsylvania in 2006.
Republicans are already deluded enough as it is. Santorum's on another level, where someone who was recently turned out by voters and currently holds no office can convince themselves they'll be attractive to voters on a national scale.
The latest Rasmussen Poll has disastrous news for Republicans -- and disquieting news for for the rest of us too:
In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.
Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.
The look on Eric Bolling's face, filling in for Neil Cavuto yesterday on Fox News, contemplating this news said it all: He thought the Tea Party and Republicans were one and the same thing! In fact, he spills as much:
Bolling: Isn't the tea party just another wing of the Republican Party? ... Aren't we just splitting the party?
Well, not exactly. Like Republicans, the Tea Party folks are fervently anti-Obama. But as Republicans like Lindsey Graham are discovering, the Tea Partiers are so arch-conservative they hate BOTH parties, and consider Republicans to be sellouts of their true-blue conservative ideals.
Now, this may appear to be good news for Democrats, since it means the Right is splitting its vote. And over the short term, as we saw in the NY-23 race, it may well be. But there is an ominous quality to this that should be disturbing to everyone.
The GOP thought it could unleash this tide of right-wing populism and prosper -- but are discovering that it's not such an easy thing to control.
And what they're unleashing is a flood of right-wing extremism in the process. Because as the "Tea Party" gathering we saw this past weekend in Spokane made crystal-clear, the "Tea Parties" are one of the most massive conduits for mainstreaming extremist beliefs in our history:
More than 1,000 people, including local sheriffs, state representatives, lawyers, families and blue-collar workers, gathered in Post Falls last month to hear a former Arizona sheriff blast the federal government. About 500 met last week in another event organized by the Campaign for Liberty – a coalition of about 10 Inland Northwest groups hoping to create a forum to share ideas and create a louder voice in politics.
Some aren’t afraid to use the word militia.
“We need to rob that word back from the people who villainize it,” said Schaeffer Cox, a 25-year-old from Fairbanks, Alaska, eliciting a roar of approval from the crowd in Post Falls Wednesday night.
Check out how William Shatner questions the head of the GOP about what he thinks about you and health care.
Shatner: If you have money, you're going to get health care. If you don't have money, it's more difficult.
Limbaugh: If you have money you're going to get a house on the beach. If you don't have money you're going to live in a bungalow somewhere -- that's -- that's...
Shatner: Right, but we're talking about health care.
Limbaugh: What's the difference?
Shatner: The difference is we're talking about health care.
Limbaugh: No...
Shatner: Not a house or a bungalow.
Limbaugh: You're assuming that there's some morally superior aspect to health care than there is to a house or a bungalow.
Shatner: No, not moral at all. I want to keep the subject for the moment on health care.
In RushBo's world, houses on the beach are old school, man. Why don't you have one already? If you got no cash -- too bad. Rush makes Alan Grayson's point for him. Don't get sick. You've got to be a rich conservative to make it in America. Or so Limbaugh says.
And Digby sez:
He's really just being honest. That's how they feel, which is why anyone who calls themselves conservative who isn't a millionaire is a fool.
You'd think rape would be one issue Republicans would be smart enough not make into a partisan issue, but no. They couldn't help themselves.
Franken passed an amendment that was attached to a defense bill that would withhold government contracts from companies that refused to let employees bring rape cases before the courts. It should be tough voting against rape, but thirty Republicans did just that and now they are whining the night away because bloggers and some MSMers have highlighted their atrocity. And in their usual silly reality, they are blaming Sen. Al Franken because they are getting hammered over their malfeasance.
Al Franken fallout has GOP fuming
The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.
“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.
“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”
--
Franken, who declined to be interviewed, has said previously that the measure was inspired by the story of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, who alleges that she was drugged, beaten and gang-raped at age 19 when stationed in Baghdad. She fought the arbitration clause in her contract, and in September the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Jones’s sexual assault allegations were not “related to” her employment, allowing her to proceed in court. KBR is fighting the ruling.
--
“I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in the Senate Republican leadership. “I think hopefully he’ll settle down and do kind of the serious work of legislating that’s important to Minnesota.”
Aides point out that despite attacks on Republicans by liberal commentators like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and on blogs such as Daily Kos, Franken never appeared on any of the shows or on the blogs to make a partisan argument about the matter, saying that the senator turned down entreaties to do so.Also, they point to the 10 Republicans who voted for the amendment as proof that it wasn’t a partisan measure.
“Sen. Franken has been proud to partner with both Republicans and Democrats to find common-sense solutions to the problems we face,” said Jess McIntosh, his spokeswoman. “He’s been working hard for Minnesota since he got here five months ago and has already introduced 10 bills — four of which were introduced with Republican co-sponsors, and two already passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support.”
Cornyn should be embarrassed by the Republicans, but instead tries to say they were misrepresented. Really? Did he vote yes or no? That's the only question that should be debated. All the Republicans who voted against Franken's measure have a lot more to answer for. Bad PR is just the beginning.
Dave Neiwert and I have been writing a book for over two months now and in my research I discovered how easily manipulated movement conservatives from the 70's and 80's are when it comes to characters they see in film and television. It also extends to today, since we've seen how the torture scenes in 24 have also had an impact on right-wingers.
I never believed previously that music or TV shows could really influence people in their thinking because we can discern the difference between reality and fiction, but not so for conservatives. After right-wing extremist conservatives like Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist watched the movie Patton, they totally flipped out over it and became obsessed with the anti-communism and pro-military stances it championed. They believed Scott was real.
In Nina Easton's book, Gang of Five, she detailed Ralph Reed and other College Republican leaders' reactions to George C. Scott's performance in the movie:
Several hundred college students cheering a call to arms is something I shall not forget. In short order, gruesome Patton guerrilla talk became Ralph's forte: "I paint my face and travel at night," he infamously explained to a reporter ten years later. "You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag."
--
One year, the College Republicans Christmas card featured a photo of Patton standing on a stone, binoculars in hand, under the words, "Merry Christmas from the front." Abramoff, who cultivated an image of a reasonable adult, forswore Patton's gutter language (though he got a thrill out of the fact that screen writer Francis Ford Coppola had intended his audiences to be horrified by Patton's antics, when in reality young conservatives fell in love with the tyrannical general.)
So I fell off my couch laughing when Bill O'Reilly inserted scenes from Patton to attack President Obama's Afghanistan speech with the other night. Movement conservatives obviously view war as a fictitious movie, explosions and intense battles used for nothing more than dramatic effect. And the lives lost are but mere props.
They actually believed that George C. Scott was General Patton, and so they want Democratic politicians to live up to an Oscar-winning actor's performance rather than the reality we actually face. Whenever progressives pointed out Bush's awful communication skills, they defended him at every turn. Conservatives often criticize Obama's speeches because he's too mesmerizing and effective for them and they hate that, because George Bush failed miserably when he tried to communicate with the public.
O'Reilly: Talking points believes the bigger problem is Mr. Obama's lack of passion for victory. What the nation needed to hear last night was a little General Patton...
No matter how you feel about the speech (I want out of Afghanistan)this illustrates the kind of delusional reality conservatives labor under on a daily basis. BillO is looking for Obama to be George C. Scott instead of the president of the United States. Simply amazing. We want action not words.
Over in the Alan Keyes quadrant of Planet Wingnuttia, Pastor J. Grant Swank foresees the forces of the apocalypse, good and evil, lining up respectively behind Sarah Palin and President Obama in some looming global showdown.
According to the good pastor, Obama's real religion is Islam:
Obama's so-called holy writ is the abominable Koran. His hope for eternity is unknown; but if he becomes a suicide bomber for Allah, he will be guaranteed pronto a score of virgins for everlasting. His hope for the present seems to be his reliance upon Islam's Koran furthered by his clandestine support of Islam World Rule via czars and a shadow government given to overthrowing our Republic.
Of course, out comes the eliminationist rhetoric -- followed by the balm that is Sarah Palin:
This cancer sore Obama is the most dangerous occurrence ever in all the Republic's history for it promises us our doom.
Then comes along Sarah Palin. What does she hold out for the populace?
She speaks of common sense politics, a Christian heritage history continuance, reliance upon the God of Scripture, actual hope in prayer and the Holy Spirit's guidance in one's personal faith life.
She comes from a biblical base regarding worship gatherings. It is not theological liberalism as touted in the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, Anglican Church, United Church of Canada, Unitarianism, Evangelical (a misnomer) Lutheran Church of America and other anti-Christ labels.
She worships with Christians who seek to live out the Bible, confess to following Christ as personal Redeemer, pray daily, conduct family devotions, believe in miracles, repent of their sins and then yearn to go forth in holiness.
Palin is the antithesis to Obama. Palin represents a biblical way of life. Obama represents a satanic cult.
America is now faced with the choice of Palin or Obama. Of course, in weeks and months to come, someone else may log in to sideline Palin. But at the moment, it is Palin versus Obama.
Wonder if Sarah will give this a shout-out on her Facebook page.
Pastor Swank has a, um, thing about Islam. Check out Jesus' General's recent post about some evil Muslims the pastor found sacrificing goats on Black Friday.
...why do Americans care if taxes are raised at all? And why should Americans care about tax cuts also?
As you guys know, I watch the mind numbingly sophomoric Fox Saturday block of Stock Shows that goes by the name of "The Cost of Freedom." They consist of four 30-minute shows, and every single week there's an idiot on who says the only people that pay taxes are the richest members of our society.
OK, let's say I agree. Then why should 290,000,000 Americans more or less give a rip about the ramifications of raising taxes? They make the argument for us that taxes should be raised since only the very rich pay them.
Dave Neiwert wrote about this in one of his earlier posts: Populism: It's all the right-wing rage these days
The Tea Parties, in every incarnation -- from the Tax Day protests to the health-care town halls to the "Tea Party Express" and the "912 March on Washington" to Michele Bachmann's lame "Super Bowl of Freedom" -- has been all about populism, and it is distinctly right-wing populism.
A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity's April 15 evening "Tea Party" broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:
Hannity: And I'm going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we're nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don't pay anything in taxes! Nothing!
[Crowd boos]
Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.
That's right -- it's the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama's targeting, right? So at least they're being upfront about just who "the taxpayers" are whose interests they're out marching to defend...read on
Don't you feel sorry for these poor rich bastards? If this is their argument, then I say President Obama should impose immediate tax increases like a war tax, a health-insurance tax and a jobs creation tax on the top tier of Americans. Make it a payroll tax and take it right out of their checks every pay period. That would immediately satisfy the deficit scolds.
After all, who will care if it's only the Fox Noise demographic? In the end all conservative policies do is destroy the least of us. They treat the American worker like trained seals, whose only function in life is to fuel their wealth.
I think they tend to make their judgments about the upper and lower classes based as much on tribalism as anything else. (Recall that the populist hero Ross Perot was a billionaire who made his fortune from government contracts -- but he sounded like a good old boy.) These things never play themselves out exactly the same ways but the fundamental appeals remain the same. The upper levels of society usually find a way to pull the strings and control these people, but the more vulnerable often suffer quite a bit at their hands. Neiwert's piece is a very important primer for those of us who are trying to understand where this Palin-Beck teabag phenomenon comes from and how it relates to other right0wing philosophies like Randism and militias. At the end of the day it all translates into ugly know-nothingism that lashes out at everyone but the adherents themselves, who see themselves as the defenders of the Real America.
I get the impulse and I feel the same frustrations. But their solutions are always worse than the problems they seek to solve.
Gee, for some reason, this story hasn't managed to make it out of the local news and into the national headlines:
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio – Following a pipe bomb explosion Monday night, police and federal law enforcement officials are trying to figure why a Center Avenue man turned his apartment into a bomb factory.
Police said no charges have been filed against Mark Campano, 56. Police found 30 completed pipe bombs in his apartment along with components to make more, plus 17 guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Campano is in an Akron hospital with injuries received when one of the bombs exploded.
As police and federal authorities puzzle over Campano's past and what he planned to do with the bombs, a former neighbor said Campano often railed against the government.
Barbara Vachon lived next door to Campano at the Center Park Place Apartments for several years and said he was a big reason she moved.
"He was always trying to get me and another neighbor to listen to anti-government tapes and watch anti-government videos," said Vachon. "I would never watch them. He was some kind of radical, and he didn't believe in the government."
She said there were other warnings.
"There were a few times I heard minor explosions from outside the apartment building, and he would scream that he had hurt himself," she said. "I never knew what he was up to."
Vachon said Campano seemed to be most active at night.
"There was a steady stream of creepy visitors going in and out of his apartment," she said.
The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms is also investigating the case.
Of course, if this had been a Muslim extremist caught with such an arsenal, we'd be getting talk-show panels on Hannity featuring Michelle Malkin ranting at length about the threat of Islamic jihad, blah blah blah. Not to mention chatty discussion on Fox and Friends and Morning Joe.
But instead, because he's just a white anti-government extremist, hey, let's just give it a big shrug.
More on the case here and here.
[H/t Susie.]
