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You know how Fox Newsies are such champions of the First Amendment that they are always on the lookout for attempts to stifle diversity in the press? That zeal for free expression has flown out the window with the news that Al Jazeera English plans to expand in the United States. And whether out of fear or just because they love their hateration, Fox pundits are doing their best to make you think that Al Jazeera is nothing less than an Al Qaeda sleeper cell.

Yesterday, a Fox News contributor blatantly suggested that Al Jazeera was somehow (without bothering to give the details or evidence about how) connected with Muslim sleeper cells in Detroit. This morning, Michelle Malkin called the Qatar-based network “a half-billion dollar Trojan horse for Terror TV.” Host Steve Doocy thought it was not a matter of if, but how overtly the pro-Islam/anti-American agenda would be promoted.

As Malkin spoke, the screen conveniently split to show a photo of Al Gore, whose sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera is bringing about its expansion, standing under an Al Jazeera logo. (Just in case we had failed to associate Gore with these ENEMIES OF AMERICA!!!)

Malkin’s eyes bulged as she urged viewers to beware of the jihadism on its way to our shores under cover of objective reporting:

They’re hiring so-called investigative reporters now at all of these bureaus and they’re going to have an expansive reach into American homes. And I think it’s incumbent upon those of us who are very familiar with how Al Jazeera abroad has cheerleaded for terror that has taken American lives that they know who these people side with.

…Inevitably the mask will slip and we can all put on our shocked faces when it does.

Doocy added, "It’ll be interesting to see exactly when you turn it on, what it’ll feel like. I mean, will it feel like the Al Jazeera that you watch over in the Middle East or will it just be some homogenized thing that has a very subtle message?"

If you think there’s even a shred of honest concern being voiced here, then you must check out the anti-American screed Jon Stewart found from Rotana – the Saudi conglomerate connected to - you guessed it, Fox News.

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If you're Al Gore and you own 20 percent of Current TV, and Current TV is sold to Al Jazeera, which is owned by Qatar's royal family, and Qatar's royal family also profits from oil trading, have you sold out the cause of global warming?

That's the question Howie Kurtz brought up on Reliable Sources this morning. I think it's a manufactured issue, but Dana Milbank begs to differ, saying "[H]e's been a big spokesman on global warming, a principled man and now he is this big, fat target." Continuing his rant, Milbank said Gore is "worth $300 million more than Mitt Romney and basically he's seen as a guy now who enriched himself, rather than advancing his cause -- opening up to the criticism of people like this global warming denier."

The Blaze writer Amy Holmes was predictably banal in her response, claiming Gore has "been telling the rest of the world to, you know, restrain and constrain our spending while he personally is becoming a wealthier man through, you know, his attack on Mother Nature."

What does that even mean? Does anyone think Al Gore bought Current TV in order to further his cause around global warming --so he could make a boatload of money on climate change? Really?

Finally, what does Mitt Romney's wealth have to do with it, anyway? Gore's wealth has come from sitting on the boards of Google and Apple after he left public office. He cashed in. Did anyone decide he was insincere about global warming because of those affiliations?

Gore and his partner Joel Hyatt bought a struggling cable network for $70 million in 2004. When Current was sold in 2013 for a price reported to be about $500 million, Gore's profit would be 20 percent of that sale price, less any financing that may have been obtained between 2004 and 2013. I have no idea what those financing arrangements might have been, but they either financed or else put their own funds in over the years in order to keep the doors open on what wasn't a particularly profitable enterprise.

For its part, Al Jazeera needed a channel with carriers. They have online traction, but were having difficulty finding cable carriers that would include their channel. By purchasing Current, they hoped to use Current's position as a channel already carried to build a news network competitive with CNN, which might explain why Time-Warner cable dropped Current the day the deal was announced.

I'm sure Comcast will follow suit, because when you own everything from cable to internet to pipeline to content creators, why bother with any voices you don't like?

At any rate, I'm having a great deal of difficulty connecting his sale of Current TV to Al Jazeera with a sellout of his credibility on climate change. I also don't view him as the sole authority on the question, but he is one who has credibility simply because he has been passionate and has put his money where his mouth is.

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I'm torn, because I really like Current and was hopeful they'd continue to expand the progressive market. But I do like Al Jazeera's coverage, and I'm happy that a deep-pockets company will be challenging the corporate pap that makes up so much of cable news. Some real coverage of Israeli/Palestian issues sure would be a change of pace:

Al Jazeera on Wednesday completed a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore and his business partners seven years ago.

Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms. Current is available in about 60 million of the 100 million homes in the United States with cable or satellite service.

Rather than simply use Current to distribute its English-language channel, called Al Jazeera English and based in Doha, Qatar, Al Jazeera will create a new channel, called Al Jazeera America, based in New York. Roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States, while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English.

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Lock the doors. Pull down the shades. Bring in the exorcist, stat.

As I write this, my humble abode is being transformed into a puppet-occupied den of anti-democratic sin. Yes, my kids are watching the Muppets, with some newly-discovered zeal since the theatrical release of the film by the same name.

That is only part of the agenda, of course. Upon finishing and chowing down on some premium Borscht and Beluga, the plan is a mixture of Marxian performance art, Che Guevara hat fitting & then the coupe de grace (that's right, I used the language of the land of non-freedom fries!), finger painting images of Fidel Castro throughout the house in cigar-ash.

I know, I exaggerate. Slightly. But as the supremely hypocritical again begin what seems like a yearly ritual of complaining that kids' movies or tv shows are detrimental to their emotional or physical health (think of the children!), it is hard to respond with much other than contempt.

This time it is the right-wing Media Research Center going for the gold, with their Vice President For Business And Culture (redundant, judging by his belief system) Dan Gainor, making television appearances just freaking out about how "Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry. They hate corporate America."

Gainor also throws Cars 2 (released recently) into the witch's brew of corporate-hating cacophony endangering our children, and then somehow moves onto railing about Syriana and There Will Be Blood--which presumably he screens for his kids just before the good stuff starts on Cinemax after midnight.

What is rather unfortunate about Mr. Gainor's argument--besides almost everything--is that Cars II and The Muppets were both released by The Disney Company.

See that word company, as in corporation, or in The Media Research Center's world, "an organization that enjoys all the benefits of being a person but none of the liabilities?" Yup, that kind of makes it hard for them to "hate corporate America." But, hey, let's not let facts get in the way of a good story.

This sentiment is consistent, however, with a long line of cultural and political hypocrisy served up by those on the Right. Whether it was the Late Reverend Jerry Falwell's cruelly criticizing that innocent and lovable Teletubby, Tinky Winky. Or Dr. James Dobson's crusade against that yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea, for not openly and loudly declaring his lust for Sandy Cheeks or another of her gender.

The key thing to keep in mind, however, is that its the very same people who constantly bellyache about how kids might be brainwashed by making an oil baron not so cuddly in a movie, who through vocal support or their vote, deprive children of health care. It is these same pearl-clutchers who deny financial aid to the 15 million children living in poverty, or just keep the environment in which they live buried in a Miss-Piggy-sized stew of toxins.

Because, you know, while your kid is gasping for air and looking for a sawdust snack, it's definitely the Swedish Chef you want to watch out for. My God, that Scandinavian culinary maestro must be a Socialist!

This is not to say our culture hasn't become a mess--it sure has. And that parents such as myself are not concerned about some of the things we see on television. We are.

But it is not movies like The Muppets that those of us in the reason-based community fear, but the values of selfish, rampant consumerism and corporatism pushed by organizations, like say, the Media Research Center. Groups that try and teach our children that there is no value in respect and virtue for its own sake. That everything is to be judged by its dollar value, and not its contribution to society.

This is what endangers our children, as it has increasingly, since the economic counterrevolution back in the 1980s. Ironically enough, conservatives used to get this. It might be why none other than Herbert Hoover once said "The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists - they are too damn greedy."

While even I wouldn't go that far, too-big-to-fail corporations and their hand maidens in Congress (and the conservative echo chamber) most certainly pose a far greater danger to our children than a green frog-like puppet.

This column was originally published at Al Jazeera English

Although when it comes to the specific date of our mass death, Harold Camping might as well be talking Chinese nuclear development with Herman Cain, it seems a little bit harder to doubt his general prognostication of doom in the weeks after 56 exotic animals were released into the countryside by the owner of a "private zoo" in Ohio.

Just before he shot himself to death.

If you don't know the whole story by now, to quickly summarize: In a scene that Director Emeritus of the Columbus, Ohio Zoo and television personality Jack Hanna compared to "Noah's Ark", endangered Bengal tigers, grizzly bears, monkeys, and a variety of other animals - 49 in all - were killed en masse by law enforcement.

Make no mistake - this happened because Ohio is one of a handful of states that does not regulate the sale and ownership of exotic animals, and it has been purposefully made that way. Tea Party-sympathiser-cum-Governor John Kasich, upon his election to that office, began his assault on government by letting an executive order expire that had provided actual restrictions concerning who could own and sell these animals in the Buckeye State.

To Kasich, this kind of crazy Hobbesianism would "hurt small business", which presumably includes the particular lunatic who had done jail time for illegal possession of firearms and was cited multiple times for animal abuse - but still had his Animal Farm up and running in Ohio - until he granted his boarders amnesty. Because of the anti-regulation zealots who have taken control of our political culture and institutions, this was the profile of someone still fit to continue to lord over a coterie of dangerous and endangered species, in his own little Jurassic Park.

As Darth Vader would say, "Impressive. Most impressive."

Now if you were to ask the Don King of pizza, Herman Cain, I'm sure he'd have a simple plan to solve this problem, which would probably include a number of 9s and the assumption that Zanesville, Ohio is somewhere in the vicinity of Chiang Mai. But for those of us with a beyond-Perry intellect, the story is as simple as it is sadly quotidian. What led to the death of these exotic animals is the same insanity that crashed Wall Street and allows drug companies to lie to people while killing them: the mass deregulation of America.

If you think the animals have run wild in eastern Ohio, then take a look at what a-not-quite-as-evolved species did on Wall Street, resulting in thousands of zookeepers finally showing up to occupy this land those on "The Street" thought was theirs to defile and despoil.

From the 1980s onward, when we started to "get government of our backs", as Ronnie liked to say, we created a mess that now has awoken 99 per cent of the people who generally can't spare the pocket change for a $10,000 Tiffany towel rod. The apogee of this idiocy was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which in 1999 repealed one of the great accomplishments of the New Deal, the Glass-Steagall legislation separating commercial and investment banks.

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On September 11th, 2001, on what was a perfect morning -- right up until the very moment a Boeing 767-223-ER slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center -- I stood on the corner of Delancey and Ridge Streets in downtown Manhattan.

I was working on an election campaign – it was primary day in New York – and little did I realize that politics, culture and our entire trajectory as a nation was about to change forever. I had been alerted to the first crash by a friend calling my cell phone, but it was as I was staring at the gaping hole in this New York City landmark, in horror, shock set in as I saw a second plane approaching.

I can see it all in slow motion these days – the airplane seemed to glide in almost effortlessly, and as I and others around stood unable to move, a loud explosion echoed through the canyons of lower Manhattan as a fireball erupted that almost seemed to reach where I was standing. It was, for lack of a better term, surreal.

For me, the journey forward from that day would be a difficult one. I was born and raised in Manhattan and was young enough that I couldn’t remember the city without those two awe-inspiring landmarks. It is what I would use to figure out where I was going whenever I came up from the subway system.

I had to process the knowledge that I had been in the North Tower only 16 hours before the attack. Because I had been delivering campaign literature to a volunteer who lived in the neighborhood and thought to myself, “I haven’t been in the Twin Towers for a while.”

What sticks with me most, though, is that after seeing the second plane hit, a lanky, salt-and-pepper-bearded man standing next to me who was holding his bike at his side, saying, “this is terrible; we’re going to be at war tomorrow.”

He wasn’t far off the mark. He only underestimated the wars.

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The recent war over the federal budget and debt ceiling were simply the latest in a long line of skirmishes where Democrats - the self-described practitioners of "good faith" and seekers of compromise - found themselves in a pitched policy battle with recalcitrant Republicans. Right-wingers so high on radical, Randian, tea-party-brewed, Kool Aid, that anything short of dismantling the Federal Government and requiring universal tattooing of Milton Friedman where-the-sun-don't-shine was treason.

After its humble beginnings as an astroturf, Koch-Brothers-funded revival aimed at mobilizing ill-informed, reactionary, mostly older white Americans against health care reform and psychologically-constructed monsters under the bed, the tea party has become an malignant force that now holds the Republican Congressional Caucus - and with it the country - hostage.

While the Stockholm Syndrome may not have quite set in yet among all Republicans, the tri-corner-hat crowd seems to behave much like the giant Brain Bug in the movie Starship Troopers, jamming a claw into the heads of their fellow GOPers and slowly sucking out cerebral tissue until only the brainless body remains.

Most problematic, most of the tea partiers, private citizens and elected officials alike, seem to possess just slightly less understanding of the Federal budget or tax code of than say, Mater from Cars. Yet, these are the people in the driver's seat as the country heads for what might be Act II of the Great Recession, unless progressives, centrists, and others edified with high school civics adopt a new strategy to counter them.

And counter them we must, for they and their ilk are nothing new, but representative of a recurring and quite dangerous political strain that has always been with us. Their undermining of the traditions, culture, and give-and-take necessary for any democracy to function has had destructive results on free societies in the past, and taken down a Republic or three.

This is what President Obama seems constitutionally unable to grasp. That even if they are a sometimes useful foil, and (sadly) sometimes equally useful in getting him the policy results he wishes, by definition the Tea Party brigade sees any compromise as evil, because everyone to the left of Pat Buchanan is viewed as a mortal threat to their imagined perfect society, which looks a lot like Utah.

With fewer minorities. And a lot more Jesus.

None other than former Secretary of State and one-time Republican wunderkind Henry Kissinger understood this to be true. In his first book on the Napoleonic wars, Kissinger offered an almost perfect description - on the international stage - of what can happen when an entity with no interest in compromise and no problem destroying the current order gains control of major political party or country:

"It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is 'good faith' and 'willingness to come to an agreement'"; in a revolutionary situation "each power will seem to its opponent to lack precisely these qualities. In such circumstances many will see the early demands of a revolutionary power as 'merely tactical' and will delude themselves that the revolutionary power would actually accept the status quo with a few modifications."

Kissinger concluded that, "Coalitions against revolutions have usually come about only at the end of a long series of betrayals ... for the powers which represent legitimacy ... cannot 'know' that their antagonist is not amenable to 'reason' until he has demonstrated [that he is not]."

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Al Jazeera English, posted this documentary today about wealth inequality in America. The highlight of the clip above is Congressman Paul Ryan being asked if his budget plan isn't undemocratic because the majority of Americans don't like it. He bolts from the reporter and tells her, her question is "rude."

Al Jazeera English does some good work. The piece also features economist Jeffrey Sachs stating flatly, "The rich not only became richer they became politically more powerful."

**The Right: Very Respectful Of Human Rights

Yesterday, I pulled up to a drive-through ATM, and sitting in front of me in the line was a car with a license plate that simply stated, "Choose Life".

Who can argue with that? I support life, don't you?

The problem, of course, is the relationship between that phrase and the US right wing. You know, the ones who are petrified of everything from black presidents to black helicopters to Black Sabbath.

Yes, they piously claim to be "pro-life", but it is a simple platitude, for - to paraphrase Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride - I do not think that word means what they think it means.

To those not steeped in US politics, being pro-life might seem like it means what one would expect - to oppose policies and endeavours that duly result in a loss of human life. But, in the US political arena, it means something quite different. Generally, it is a way of telling everyone that it's your business to give a woman her marching orders - that she must eventually carry a three-day-old embryo to term, even if it's the result of rape or incest.

Or its corollary, that you're some kind of Nietzschean Superman for ensuring that 91-year-old patients in terrible pain due to pancreatic cancer must stick a tube in any empty orifice to force themselves to stay alive and suffer, even against their own wishes.

The sad reality is that, to be pro-life in the US today, which is to be conservative in almost all cases, is to love thy enemy by supporting illegal wars - or just plain stupid ones - that kill hundreds of thousands of innocents, cutting health-care benefits and nutrition programs for children and the poor, and turning the other cheek … of the person you're torturing.

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