CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

Hannity and Bachmann Almost Apologize

The Nation Fri Nov 13, 3:14 pm ET

A fundamental tenet for both rightwing politicians and their media pilot fish is: Never, ever, apologize for the crazy. If you get caught exaggerating or even lying outright, simply respond by saying, "The left sees it differently" or "The mainstream media take their cues from liberals" or some such weasel-bite, even if the dispute is over widely accepted facts.

Yet in just the past couple of days, two of the loudest and most obdurate voices on the right have had to apologize, or at least feign doing so, for major bloopers concerning Rep. Michelle Bachmann's Tea Party rally held on Capitol Hill on November 5.

The most slippery mea culpa came from Fox News's Sean Hannity. On the day of the rally (a/k/a "the Super Bowl of Freedom"), he used fake footage to bolster Bachmann's absurd claim that the protest drew a crowd of 20,000 to 45,000--when reliable estimates stretch from 4,000 to 10,000, tops. Hannity's producers spliced scenes from the much larger 9/12 rally sponsored by Glenn Beck in between shots of Bachmann's much smaller turnout on 11/5, suggesting that her group had spilled out onto the Mall.

Journalistically a mortal sin, but in context the subterfuge was even worse, because Fox had been gaming Teabagger crowd sizes for months. Reliable crowd estimates for that earlier Tea Party of Beck's were around 70,000, though Beck and sympathizers willfully kept up a running dispute about police crowd counts, asserting at different times that there were 100,000, a million, 2 million (and counting!) protestors out there last September.

Hannity's film-flam probably would have gone unnoticed, adding yet another drop to the vast sea of fictions the rightwing media float upon, had not Jon Stewart's eagle-eyed staff found an oddity: In some of Hannity's clips verdant late summer greenery graced the November rally, while others were framed by the yellow and orange foliage of fall.

Whoops!

On Wednesday night, wagging his lantern chin as if to say, "Go ahead, take a poke at me," Hannity delivered a classic nonapology apology:

What a goof! "We screwed up." He "played some incorrect video." It was an "inadverent mistake."

It's curious, though, how inventoried video can click its way into a night's news some two months later.

But let's say it did. Hannity sleazed right through his "Sorry, folks!" without ever owning up to what was so misleading about flashing shots of a large rally for a smaller one in the first place: That without injecting the 9/12 footage like silicon into a boob job, it would have been much clearer that he and Bachmann were wildly inflating crowd size. Or that, as Stewart said in his hilarious follow-up to Hannity's apology, a truly honest Fox News slogan would be: "We alter reality. You are sold a preconceived narrative."

The day before Sean's nothing apology, Michelle confessed a little something too, though not about crowd inflation. Instead, she had been forced to admit that it was "wholly inappropriate" to use images of naked corpses from Dachau to symbolize Obama's health care reform, as a poster lofted right in front of her throughout the rally did.

Bachmann's admission, however, came a full five days after her rally and only after Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) embarrassed her in a YouTube video, saying, "I can't believe that Congresswoman Bachmann would stand where she stood, and see those images, and not have the common decency to say, 'I disagree with the use of those images.' I think that she owes the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust an apology." (Earlier and without a YouTube push, Minority Whip Eric Cantor, the House's only Jewish Republican, found it in himself, or rather in a spokesman, to call the sign "inappropiate.")

Of course, offensive posters, switcheroo video, and connivingly cropped quotes are nothing new, especially on Fox. Media Matters has assembled a small encyclopedia of Fox's cut-and-paste reality.

All this should make us consider the motive for the 50 or so townhall meetings that Republican lawmakers say they will sponsor this month. They obviously want to communicate the anger of astroturfized populism, but even more, they need a fresh supply of clips that can be sliced and diced into the rightwing noise machine.

But just as each Planet of the Apes sequel was worse than the previous one, the coming Townhall sequel (perhaps titled Townhall II: Escape from Obama's Tyranny) is likely to disappoint. After this round of apologies for overreaching, rightwing leaders are going to have to tell their people to go only a little bit crazy, maybe even to forfeit the Hitler mustaches. It's a difficult balance to strike; the tea parties may loose their cheery spontaneity.

And, though it may pain Sean Hannity, it may also become more difficult to lie about the size of crowds.

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Friday, August 28, 2009
From The Art Of Manliness

Ernest Hemingway Motivational Posters

Despite Hemingway’s flaws, he spent his life engaging in all manner of bad assery. I was so inspired by Chris Hutcheson’s article, “The Hemingway You Didn’t Know: Papa’s Adventures”, I decided to put together some Papa-themed motivational posters. Enjoy.

LM

IDIOCRACY

Packing Heat Near the President

By Stephen Stromberg

From the National Rifle Association’s Web site: “At the NRA, we're dedicated to the lawful, effective, responsible and above all safe use of firearms.” If the NRA were to take that commitment seriously, why wouldn’t the organization loudly discourage gun owners from, say, bringing loaded weapons to a presidential town hall, as several did recently? Or from threatening the president while wearing a packed leg holster?

Each incident happened this month, and they’re scary -- even putting aside the fact that we're talking about disgruntled activists brandishing guns near the president. I'm an Eagle Scout trained in firearm use, and I can’t count the number of possible accidents that could result from lugging a heavy semi-automatic into a large crowd. That’s why one of the first lessons I learned about gun safety is that you never bring out your weapon unless you have to -- and, given that there’s no need to hunt game or defend oneself at a heavily policed political rally, none of these gun owners can argue that they had to. Perhaps the NRA’s directors need a refresher course.

True, the NRA probably can’t persuade the nutjobs to leave their guns at home, in their cars or, in some cases, even in holsters. But the organization can and should scream that this isn’t appropriate firearm use, regardless of whether it is legal. And if promoting responsible gun ownership were a priority, the NRA could use one of its most influential tools -- the scores it gives to politicians -- to get more of our leaders to repudiate such carelessness, or at least assure political figures their standing with the NRA won’t be hurt if they do so. That’s not an infringement or even a criticism of the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. It’s merely an exhortation to treat rightful gun ownership with responsibility.

Instead, though, the NRA uses its scores to do such things as drum up opposition to Sonia Sotomayor. Meanwhile, its implied position on the town-hall toters has cowed even the White House, which just defended the activists’ right to pack heat near the president.

HEY DEMOCRATS : Show A Little Backbone Will Ya ?

Democratic leaders should stop backpedaling, stop apologizing .

By Eugene Robinson

Here's the least surprising news of the week: Americans are souring on the Democratic Party. The wonder is that it's taken so long for public opinion to curdle. There's nothing agreeable about watching a determined attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center reports that just 49 percent of respondents have a favorable view of the Democrats, compared with 62 percent in January and 59 percent in April. This doesn't mean, though, that Americans look any more kindly upon the Republican Party -- favorability for the GOP has been steady at 40 percent throughout the year, according to Pew.

What it does mean, however, is that Republican efforts to obstruct, delay, confuse, stall, distort and otherwise impede the reform agenda that Americans voted for last November have had measurable success. And it means that Democrats, having been given a mandate -- one as comprehensive as either party is likely to enjoy in this era of red-vs.-blue polarization -- don't really know how to use it.

That the Democratic Party is no paragon of organization and discipline is almost axiomatic. That's not the problem. The Pew poll suggests that the Democrats' weakness is neither strategic nor tactical but emotional. To quote the poet William Butler Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

There's not enough passion on the Democratic side, not enough heat. There's some radiating from the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, too little emanating from the Democratic majority in the Senate, and not nearly enough coming from President Obama. Republicans, by contrast, have little going for them except passion -- but they're using it to impressive effect.

Step back from the health-care debate for a moment and survey the landscape. Democrats are within sight of a goal that has fired the party's dreams for half a century. They have the power to enact meaningful reform. Polls show that Americans are hungry for reform. The solid wall of opposition once presented by big business has crumbled. Even the insurance companies and Big Pharma are ready to deal. Yet somehow we've gotten sidetracked onto an argument about "death panels," while a provision that many advocates believe is central to effective reform -- a government-run, public health insurance plan -- is suddenly in doubt.

How could this happen? The Pew survey suggests, basically, that Republicans are more passionate about the health-care issue than Democrats.

According to Pew, those who would be "pleased" if health-care reforms proposed by Obama and Congress are enacted outnumber those who would be "disappointed." But when you look at those who feel most passionately about the issue, just 15 percent say they would be "very happy" if the reforms go through, while 18 percent say they would be "angry." Among Republicans, a full 38 percent would be angry if health-care reform finally passes -- but among Democrats, just 13 percent would be angered if it doesn't.

It's hard to argue that anger, per se, is something we need more of in American politics. But passion -- which sometimes, yes, finds expression in anger -- is a powerful and legitimate tool. Health-care reform is something the Democratic Party has been trying to achieve since the Truman administration, and only 13 percent of Democrats would be angry if it fails? Only 27 percent of Democrats would be "very happy" if reform passes, according to Pew, while 42 percent could only bestir themselves to feel "pleased" that the grail long sought by the most beloved Democrat of all, ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy, has finally been attained?

One reason for this imbalance of passion about health-care reform, I believe, is that there is no single piece of legislation around which Democrats -- and others who see the need for reform -- can rally. But it's impossible to deny that the Republican strategy of generating anger and fear has also been a major factor.

Where are the millions who so passionately chanted "Yes, we can!" at Obama's campaign rallies? Where are the legions who cried tears of joy on election night and tears of pride on Inauguration Day? Is Sarah Palin now the only politician capable of inspiring "passionate intensity"?

Democratic leaders should stop backpedaling, stop apologizing and show their followers -- by words and deeds -- that the principle of universal health care is worth fighting for. They should even allow themselves to raise their voices at times -- not motivated by anger but by conviction.

Passion finds expression in anger, but also in hope. Democrats knew and felt that during the campaign. If they forget it, they might as well also forget about achieving the kind of fundamental change that the country sorely needs.

Republicans, Religion and the Triumph of Unreason

By Johann Hari


Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarized by the comedian Bill Maher: "The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital."

The election of Obama -- a center-left black man -- as a successor to George W. Bush has scrambled the core American right's view of their country. In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin. When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn't compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of "Drill, baby, drill" have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right's world-view -- to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm of their own creation -- has swollen. Now it is all they can see.

Since Obama's rise, the US right has been skipping frantically from one fantasy to another, like a person in the throes of a mental breakdown. It started when they claimed he was a secret Muslim, and -- at the same time -- that he was a member of a black nationalist church that hated white people. Then, once these arguments were rejected and Obama won, they began to argue he was born in Kenya and secretly smuggled into the United States as a baby, and the Hawaiian authorities conspired to fake his US birth certificate. So he is ineligible to rule and the office of President should pass to... the Republican runner-up, John McCain.

These aren't fringe phenomena: a Research 2000 poll found that a majority of Republicans and Southerners say Obama wasn't born in the US, or aren't sure. A steady steam of Republican congressmen have been jabbering that Obama has "questions to answer." No amount of hard evidence -- here's his birth certificate, here's a picture of his mother heavily pregnant in Hawaii, here's the announcement of his birth in the local Hawaiian paper -- can pierce this conviction.

This trend has reached its apotheosis this summer with the Republican Party claiming en masse that Obama wants to set up "death panels" to euthanize the old and disabled. Yes: Sarah Palin really has claimed -- with a straight face -- that Barack Obama wants to kill her baby.

You have to admire the audacity of the right. Here's what's actually happening. The US is the only major industrialized country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves -- and just under 50 million people can't afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can't access the care they require. That's equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being "killers" -- and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive.

The Republicans want to defend the existing system, not least because they are given massive sums of money by the private medical firms who benefit from the deadly status quo. But they can't do so honestly: some 70 percent of Americans say it is "immoral" to retain a medical system that doesn't cover all citizens. So they have to invent lies to make any life-saving extension of healthcare sound depraved.

A few months ago, a recent board member for several private health corporations called Betsy McCaughey noticed a clause in the proposed healthcare legislation that would pay for old people to see a doctor and write a living will. They could stipulate when (if at all) they would like to be withdrawn. It's totally voluntary. Many people want it: I know I wouldn't want to be kept alive for a few extra months if I was only going to be in agony and unable to speak. But McCaughey started the rumor that this was a form of euthanasia, where old people would be forced to agree to death. This was then stretched somehow to include the disabled. It was flatly untrue -- but the right had their talking point, Palin declared the system "downright evil", and they were off.

It's been amazingly successful. Now, every conversation about healthcare has to begin with a Democrat explaining at great length that, no, they are not in favor of killing the elderly -- while Republicans get away with defending a status quo that kills 18,000 people a year. The hypocrisy was startling: when Sarah Palin was Governor of Alaska, she encouraged citizens there to take out living wills. Almost all the Republicans leading the charge against "death panels" have voted for living wills in the past. But the lie has done its work: a confetti of distractions has been thrown up, and support is leaking away from the plan that would save lives.

These claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Steven Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS." Frank Laffer, the right-wing economist lauded by David Cameron, claimed on CNN that it would be a disaster if the government got its hands on Medicare, the program providing healthcare for the elderly, paid for entirely by... the government.

This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy-world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear Saddam Hussein had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed, as one Republican congressman put it, that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

It's a shame, because there are some areas in which a conservative philosophy -- reminding us of the limits of grand human schemes, and advising caution -- could be a useful corrective. But that's not these what so-called "conservatives" are providing: instead, they are pumping up a hysterical fantasy, that is only a thin skin covering raw economic interests and base prejudices.

For many of the people at the top, this is mere cynical manipulation: one of Bush's former advisors, David Kuo, has said the President and Karl Rove would mock evangelicals as "nuts" as soon as they left the Oval Office. But the ordinary Republican base believe it. They are being cruelly manipulated into opposing their own interests through false fears and invented demons. Last week, one of the Republicans sent to disrupt a healthcare town hall started a fight and was injured -- and then complained he had no health insurance. I didn't laugh; I wanted to weep.

Indeed, if you spend any time with American right-wingers -- as I have, reporting undercover on events like the National Review cruise and the Christian Coalition Solidarity Tour of Israel -- you soon find that your arguments don't center on philosophy. You have to concentrate on correcting basic factual errors about the real world.

They insist Europe has fallen to Islam, since Muslims immigrants are becoming a majority and are imposing sharia law. In reality, Muslims make up 3 percent of the population of Europe, and most of them oppose sharia law. They insist Franklin Roosevelt caused the Great Depression, and should have cut government spending. In reality, whenever he did cut spending -- as he tried periodically throughout the 1930s -- the economy began to tank. But explain this patiently -- with a thousand sources -- and they simply shriek that you are lying, and they know "in their heart" what is true. They insist gay marriage would cause the institution of the family to collapse. In reality, where it has already been introduced in Europe, heterosexual families continue just as before. On the list goes: evolution is a lie, a blastocyst is akin to a baby, torture produces actionable intelligence...

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have "faith" -- which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" Australia exists, or fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.

Up to now, Obama has not responded well to this onslaught of unreason. He has tried to conciliate the elite economic interests, and joke about the fanatical fringe they are stirring up. He has shamefully assured the pharmaceutical companies that an expanded healthcare system will not use the power of government as a purchaser to bargain down drug prices, while wryly saying that he "doesn't want to kill Grandma." Rather than challenging these hard interests and bizarre fantasies aggressively, he has tried to flatter and soothe them. His healthcare plan is weaker and harder to explain as a result.

But this kind of mania can't be co-opted: it can only by over-ruled. Sometimes in politics you will have enemies, and they must be democratically defeated. The political system cannot be gummed up by a need to reach out to the maddest people with the maddest fears. There is no way to expand healthcare without angering Big Pharma and the Republicaloons. So be it. As Arianna Huffington put it, "It is as though, at the height of the civil rights movement, you thought you had to bring together Martin Luther King and George Wallace and make them agree. It's not how change happens."

However strange it seems, the Republican Party really is spinning off into a bizarro-cult who believe Barack Obama is a baby-killer plotting to build death panels for the grannies of America. Their new slogan should be -- shrill, baby, shrill.

Is Glenn Beck too right wing for Fox ?

By David Usborn

Walmart and other leading US brands pull ads from Beck's show.


It may in the end have little impact on the bottom line of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, but a fast-gathering boycott by some of America's best-known conglomerates of Glenn Beck, a conservative commentator on his Fox News channel in the US, is beginning to take on embarrassing proportions.

The baby-faced Beck joined Fox News in January and has quickly established himself as one of the network's stars by feeding the political prejudices of its mostly conservative audience. Indeed, his daily assaults against President Barack Obama and, in recent weeks his healthcare plans, have helped Fox achieve record ratings.

But Beck, who moonlights on the comedy circuit, stepped on too many sensibilities a few weeks ago, however, when he suggested that Mr Obama has a, "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture". He went on: "I'm not saying that he doesn't like white people. I'm saying that he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist."

Spearheading the advertisers' boycott of his daily programme is an African-American online political group called Color of Change. Some 145,000 of its members signed a petition asking Beck's advertisers to stop supporting him and the response has been impressive.

On Monday alone, eight new top-brand companies said they were joining the already long roster of firms no longer willing to have their spots aired during Beck's show. They included Wal-Mart, the discount retailing chain, as well as two other big national retail giants, CVS and Best Buy.

"While advertising on Fox is part of our communication plan, we had not requested time on Glenn Beck's show specifically," a spokesman for the chemist CVS confirmed to the Huffington Post website. "We have instructed our advertising agency to inform Fox to ensure Glenn Beck's programme is not part of our advertising plan."

Glenn Beck: 'Our health care is better than Europe's

Other companies that had already agreed to spurn the show included Procter & Gamble, Radio Shack and Geico. None of these advertisers have said they will boycott the Fox channel entirely and thus are likely simply to shift their dollars to other programmes on the network's schedule. But their actions are beginning to resonate on the national stage, if only because it is proving to be remarkably successful.

It also comes at a time when the tone of public debate may have become more acerbic than ever before as opposing sides squabble over healthcare. Beck and some of his rivals, including Lou Dobbs on CNN, seem to be competing over whose insults about the President, liberals and Democrats are the most outrageous and rude. Dobbs distinguished himself this summer by supporting claims that Mr Obama is not, in fact, an American. "It's rare for a campaign directed at a TV show's advertisers to be this successful," said Color of Change founder James Rucker. "But we won't stop here. We're going to continue reaching out to Beck's remaining advertisers."

Glenn Beck: 'The radicals on the left want you to shut up'

Fans of Beck – and they are legion – are fighting back. They offer solace to their brethren and the broadcaster himself with a newly minted website. Called DefendGlenn.com, it boasts a "Turncoat List" of boycotting companies and urges visitors to contact them. "Tell them how big your family is and what you buy, and how much you used to spend on their products each month... and how you bought their competitor's product today," it advises.

Glenn Beck: 'Where the tough questions about health care reform?'

Fox News itself has had little to say of the boycott. It did however issue a statement soon after Beck made the allegations of racism, not on his regular show but on a morning programme called Fox and Friends, saying Beck had "expressed a personal opinion, which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel".

Beck made the remarks after the President suggested that a white policeman who had arrested the black Harvard law professor Henry Louis Gates had acted "stupidly".

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - Glenn Beck

THE TIN MAN OF HATE

Last week, on his Fox News Channel show, Glenn Beck outed an Islamic private school in Northern Virginia when the school's sole newsworthy trespass was that an application to expand its campus was approved by the local zoning board. But Beck went on an extended googly-eyed, sarcasmo rant (lots of "maybe it's just me") about the school being a de facto training camp for would-be terrorists, and even invoked September 11th imagery -- collapsed buildings and the like -- in the process.
It's a grade school ! You know, where large groups of children go for seven hours a day. And Beck risked stirring up the knee jerk vitriol of his itchy-trigger-fingered wing nut vigilante audience while also calling attention to the school's existence and general location, all because the school's zoning application was approved. Way to go Jackass.
If you want to worry about ' de facto training camps for would-be terrorists' , let's take a look at the homegrown terrorists in our own back yard.

Click on the map below for a listing and location of active hate groups in your area.

CAUTION: You may lose sleep over some of these.

So why isn't Glenn Beck worried about outing these groups that pose more of a threat than an elementary school full of kids being taught a religion which at it's core teaches peace ?
Because they are his demographic.
Would he be appalled at the same demagoguery being directed at his kids' Mormon school and characterizing all Mormons as funny bearded polygamists who think the Garden Of Eden was in Missouri ?
If he wasn't, he would be something less than human - which I am not so sure he isn't.

LM

CLOWN CAR HONK ! HONK !

WhO'S iN tHe ClOwN CaR ?!

WHO : ALL OF US

Inciting an obviously gun-toting audience to pursue adult politicians is, obviously, dangerous and irresponsible .
You may have heard that a man appeared near the president's New Hampshire town hall event carrying a loaded firearm and a placard that implied the necessary assassination of the president. Not only was he left alone with his piece and his dreams of assassination, but he was invited to appear on Hardball to talk political science later that day. The takeaway? Bring a gun, get on TV.
In the end, all Americans , on both sides and in the middle, looked like ass clowns .

I am not anti-gun. I own guns, I respect guns, and I am a pretty damn good shot. However, guns are not my identity, and I certainly know enough not to carry one to a Presidential event, unless I want an impromptu colonoscopy from the Secret Service.

Regardless of their first amendment right to assemble and to blurt out loud noises, the far-right, whether or not they're honest enough to admit it, represents the reactionary wing of American political ideology. That's a fact. They dig weaponry and they endorse violent solutions to conflicts (war, torture and the like).
Contrastingly, no matter how loudly many liberals protested the Bush administration, I never heard of a liberal bringing a loaded weapon to a Bush rally. You know, because of the general message of pacifism and peace and such. Besides, as Cenk Uygur observed, if any liberal had stepped within a mile of George W. Bush while brandishing a loaded weapon. They would've been arrested -- perhaps indefinitely detained -- given a cutesy nickname like the "Shoe Bomber" and vilified by Michelle Malkin and the establishment media as a terrorist.

It's become evident this week that, unless cooler heads prevail, this modern breed of Fire-Eaters are lurching ever closer to an armed assault of some sort and we may all be
semi- innocent bystanders.

HEALTHCARE HOO HA !

MICHELLE MALKIN STALKING CHILDREN... AGAIN

' Wing Nut Barbie' - Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin and Fox News Channel have finally blown the lid off the biggest conspiracy of our time. No, it's not the one about how the Obama administration is going to take over your computer, banish white people to FEMA camps, poison your tap water, murder your special needs children and strangle your grandmother with its government robot claws ("because they're made of metal and robots are strong").

It's a brand new conspiracy involving President Obama and an 11-year-old girl. The plot? To ask a question at a town hall meeting.

Scary. Run for your lives and all that.

Rewind to Tuesday afternoon when an 11-year-old girl asked President Obama a question about the "mean things" she observed on various protest signs outside. Malkin and other wingnuts swooped into action, investigating and exposing the girl's parents as -- shock, horror! -- supporters of the president. The girl's parents even donated some money and volunteered on the campaign.

Mind blowing, I know. It's like the Donald Sutherland scene in JFK.

But considering that there were literally millions of volunteers associated with the president's campaign, and considering that tickets for the event were available online where millions of supporters of the president typically hang out, it stands to reason that a few actual, you know, supporters would manage to acquire tickets.

Yet beyond this earth-shattering information uncovered by Malkin that Obama supporters attended an Obama event, there isn't any evidence whatsoever that the 11-year-old girl was coached or scripted by the White House. None. And, it goes without saying that Malkin and Fox News Channel are entirely ignorant of the fact that similar Bush events were revealed to be literally and entirely staged and scripted with attendees having to sign loyalty oaths.

Nevertheless, given that Republican hero Sarah Palin just recently warned everyone about attacking her kids, and given that there's no evidence of any White House meddling in this case, you would think both Malkin and Fox News Channel would back off and avoid the story, especially considering that the target was an 11-year-old child without any relationship to a public figure. Naturally, this would be the decent thing to do since there's no story here.

But decency never stopped Malkin and Fox News Channel from targeting civilian children in order to satisfy their ignorant viewers and to substitute for their utter lack of integrity, rationality and reason.

You might recall how Malkin famously stalked 12-year-old accident survivor named Graeme Frost after he appeared in a commercial supporting SCHIP, the children's health insurance program. (Incidentally, we can only assume that since they claim to hate socialized health insurance, there aren't any conservative Republicans who have received SCHIP benefits for their children. Nope. None. Right?)

Perfect time to demagogue children, right?

As the ring leaders migrate into the arena of targeting children within the context of the increasingly hot war over healthcare reform, Malkin, Fox News and other wingnuts who orbit the right-wing satellite of crazy has evolved from being a silly, almost campy assembly of sore losers to an ignorant, dangerous posse -- a rabble of misinformed cranks who have no problem with pinning large red targets on the backs of children.

Put another way: they have identified an 11-year-old girl as a co-conspirator in this horribly misperceived socialist-fascist-Nazi-Marxist-communist-leftist-rightist-and-brown "insurgency." They have broadcast her name and her home town to every hairless wingnut freakdog who's holed up in his bunker with Glenn Beck on TV, Alex Jones on the radio and The Gimp locked inside a steamer trunk. They have defined this child as another enemy standing in the way of getting "their country back."

And she only asked the president a question. (I hasten to add that she did so with a tone far more mature than many of the easily-misled hollering goons who are upwards of 70 years her senior.)

If Fox News Channel and Michelle Malkin had any dignity or integrity left in their souls, they would personally offer to finance a private security detail to protect this girl and her family until the worst of this insanity blows over. But we probably shouldn't hold our breath. At the very least, I sincerely hope that fewer and fewer voters and politicians take these maniacs seriously, especially when it comes to healthcare reform.

* Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

HEALTH CARE HOO HA

CALL TO ACTION : FOILING THE FOIL HATTERS

On Tuesday August 11, in what seemed to be a cross between bull riding and 'Whack A Mole', two U.S. Senators and a President brought civil discourse back to ...well...civil discourse. Senator Arlen Specter (D) of Pennsylvania, Senator Claire McCaskill (D) of Missouri, and President Barack Obama all held Health Care Town Halls in seperate locations. All three managed, with a great deal of effort, to bring the Town Hall format back to it's original intention- freedom of expression for ALL.
The primordial soup of "protesters", consisted of Tea Baggers ( Do they really know what that means ?), Birthers, Deathers, and the all purpose ' Kook For Any Cause' Foil Hatters , or
'Foilers' for short. The organized right wingers were there in droves expressing their hatred, vitriol and racism, all of which was " mercifully free from the ravages of intelligence " (Time Bandits), yet was deftly wrangled into a coherent exchange where citizens were allowed to ask questions from the printed script they held in case the bile they were spewing forth distracted them from what they were supposed to ask. all was well again in America - unless you stepped outside the building.

Outside were posters of Obama as Hitler, the Democratic Nazi Party, Keep Your Laws Off My Body (except for abortion – I asked) and various and sundry examples of ugliness. Some Lyndon LaRouche supporters along with anti-immigration and tort reform. Also a lot of “killing the elderly, euthanasia” type signs. And of course, my favorite – “No Socialism ”.
Evidentlythey don't make the connection that Law Enforcement, Fire Rescue , Public Schools, and Medicare are all socialized.

Folks, this is NOT about healthcare or anything remotely resembling policy or any particular issue. This is about the naked anger of the right wing being out of power and not accepting a black man as President combined with their own racism – it’s thinly veiled at best, but it’s racism. I venture to say that this is the least thinly veiled racism I’ve seen for a long time – they have taken those gloves off.

When people say “I work, I’m not paying for anyone else” – that’s about African-Americans and Latinos - period.
I once asked one woman very calmly – she was calm herself – if she cared about other people besides her own family and loved ones. She looked me in the eyes and said “NO, I don’t”.
I was lost for words, because most of these protesters call themselves "Christians". Can you imagine Jesus saying he didn't give a damn about anyone but his own family? He considered the whole world his family. He was champion of the sick and poor. These "protesters" are champions of rich insurance company CEOs... and some of them don't even know it! Instead of defending everyone's right to be heard, these guys shout down legitimate debate and try to scare and intimidate people. Some are even bringing guns to these events. How is that for following "The prince of peace"? If anti war protesters during the Bush administration had done that they would have been immediately handcuffed and hauled off to jail. And if we hauled them to jail they'd say we were violating their free speech rights. These 'Foilers' are not about defending free speech, they are about destroying it. They are not about defending the poor or the sick., they say "To Hell with them." They are certainly not following the teachings of Jesus or defending the United States constitution or our freedoms.

In my opinion, we (i.e. The Rest Of Us ) are making a mistake by ignoring these people. This is not about the people at these events; it’s about who is controlling them. And that is the wealthy elites who will do anything, including destroying what is left of the democracy we remember, to protect what they have, the corporations who control Congress and who actually rule this country and the extremists who are driven by hatred and racism. They are working together and if we do not develop an effective strategy and new tactics to counter them, this country – and all of us – are doomed. We better pay attention to what is happening right underneath our noses. And then keep in mind that over 100 million people a day are saturated in low-brow, belligerent, junk radio, and think they are listening to "news"....then they show up at Town Halls.
Who is behind the town hall riots ?
The answer is Conservatives for Patients' Rights. Conservatives for Patients Rights, or the CPR, is headed by one Rick Scott – who isn't a doctor – but used to be the CEO of a hospital, and under his watch, his medical administration defrauded Medicare of $1.7 billion through a practice called upcoding, wherein a Medicare patient gets treated, but Medicare is billed for additional tests that never took place. (That's fraud.) Realistically, Conservatives for Patients Rights and Mr. Scott will never need short term loans, and the only reason why they oppose the bill is that they want the money from the program for themselves.

It might be reassuring to say that these people are fringe, the minority, etc. But it’s not just them – it’s the most powerful moneyed interests in this country who are bankrolling and controlling them. The angry mobs are the storm troopers and they are the angriest people I’ve ever seen. They are happy to be controlled and happy to do the bidding of their masters. In my opinion they would be happy to do away with the likes of us, otherwise known as ' you people'.

I urge all of us to rethink our strategy and tactics. Here are a few suggestions:

• We need to do is call call out the corporations and bad actors who are bankrolling these people.

• Instead of trying to debate with extremists who don't want to face facts, our Democratic reps need to rally our own troops. When we held rallies before the election, we did not attract just a few hundred or even a thousand hate-filled screaming malcontents. We brought out hundreds of thousands of Progressives, Independents, and Moderates of all political persuasions who displayed a calm, confident spirit. We must do it again. Our Democratic leadership must stage rallies. We must ask the people who voted for this President to support him again. It's time to counter this hate-filled movement. All these Foilers want to do is dominate others and confuse the issue not fix problems that have been neglected for decades. We must come out in vast numbers to declare that we will not be moved by little tyrants staging temper tantrums nor will we allow them to demonized us. They cannot reverse an election. We must overwhelm them and, yes, dominate them with the facts.
  

• We must cut their numbers in Congress by defeating them again in the Midterms next year.

This must be a wake-up call to us – not something to ignore. This will not go away and indeed will only get worse. But, keep one thing in mind, they're playing Checkers, and we're Playing Chess.

Stay Vigilant. Stay Strong.

LANCE MACHO

Health Care Hoo Ha

BEHIND THE RAGE, A COLD REALITY

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Could it be the heat that's making people so angry and unreasonable at those town hall meetings on health care? Might it just be the effect that Raymond Chandler described so brilliantly in the opening lines of his 1938 short story "Red Wind":

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen."

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Red-faced retirees are railing against "government-run" health care and "socialized medicine" -- with Medicare cards tucked in their wallets. They could have just stayed home and harangued themselves. The August heat is punishing, but not enough to induce mass delirium.

We know that there are crazies in the town hall mobs -- paranoid fantasists who imagine they hear the whop-whop-whop of the World Government black helicopters coming closer by the minute. We know that much of the action is being directed from the wings by cynical political operatives, following a script written by Washington lobbyists. But the nut jobs and carpetbaggers are outnumbered by confused and concerned Americans who seem genuinely convinced they're not being told the whole truth about health-care reform.

And they have a point.

Just so there's no misunderstanding, I'm a true believer. It's scandalous and immoral that the richest, most powerful nation on Earth callously ignores the fact that 47 million Americans lack health insurance. I feel strongly that there should be a public option to keep private insurers honest, and I want the government to be able to negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies.

Whatever reform package finally emerges -- after it's been mauled by those snarling Blue Dogs -- probably won't go nearly far enough. But I'll almost certainly support it, on the theory that something is better than nothing. I'll worry about the cost, but I'll reason that it's worth it to save children's lives and keep working-class families out of bankruptcy.

But reform is being sold not just as a moral obligation but also as a way to control rising health-care costs. That should have been a separate discussion. It is not illogical for skeptics to suspect that if millions of people are going to be newly covered by health insurance, either costs are going to skyrocket or services are going to be curtailed.

The unvarnished truth is that services are ultimately going to have to be curtailed regardless of what happens with reform. We perform more expensive tests, questionable surgeries and high-tech diagnostic scans than we can afford. We spend unsustainable amounts of money on patients during the final year of life.

Yes, it's true that doctors order some questionable procedures defensively, to keep from getting sued. But it's a cop-out to blame the doctors or the tort lawyers. We're the ones who demand these tests, scans and surgeries. And why not? If a technology exists that can prolong life or improve its quality, even for a few weeks or months, why shouldn't we want it?

That's the reason people are so frightened and enraged about the proposed measure that would allow Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling. If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending. It's irresponsible for politicians, such as Sarah Palin, to claim -- outlandishly and falsely -- that there's going to be some kind of "death panel" to decide when to pull the plug on Aunt Sylvia. But it's understandable why people might associate the phrase "health-care reform" with limiting their choices during Aunt Sylvia's final days.

We should be having two debates. One should be about the obligation to ensure universal access to health care, which will directly benefit millions of struggling families and make this a better society. The other -- a more complicated, difficult and painful discussion -- should be about the long-term problem of out-of-control health-care costs, which would be a looming crisis even if President Obama had never uttered the word "reform."

Conflating the two has made the nation's nerves jump and its skin itch. And now, anything can happen.

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Worth A Thousand Words

HEALTH CARE HOO HA

"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!"

Receiving Medicare benefits while shouting about "government-run health care"

At the risk of bringing down the digital wrath of blog-savvy oldsters, I've noticed that a considerable number of the anti-reform Republican "hooligans," as Rachel Maddow describes them, who turn up at various town hall meetings to shout incomprehensible loud noises just happen to be senior citizens. And while the old people who turn up to protest health care reform are, to some extent, victims of the usual Republican lies and disinformation, they're still adults and therefore responsible for their opinions, their actions and their ziplock baggies filled with crazy.

Yes, they've been tricked by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh into believing that health care reform will somehow involve golden-grilled ACORN thugs showing up at bingo with a tray of syringes filled with black liberal death juice. Yes, they've been tricked by Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs into thinking that this "halfrican American" president with his terrorist pals and Kenyan birth certificate is trying to supplant God's U.S. government with a liberal fascist homocracy.

But failing to grasp the extraordinary contradiction evident in receiving Medicare benefits while simultaneously shouting nonsense about "government-run health care" is quite simply inexcusable.

President Obama at a town hall meeting last week described a letter he received from a Medicare recipient:

"I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare.'"

At a town hall meeting held by Rep. Robert Inglis (R-SC):

Someone reportedly told Inglis, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare."
"I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,'" Inglis told the Post. "But he wasn't having any of it."

It's no wonder with "very serious" analysts like Arthur Laffer are appearing on CNN and saying things like this (and getting away with it unchallenged):

"If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government."

Yeah, just wait until the government gets its mighty robot claws on Medicare and Medicaid -- snatching control away from, you know, the government. (Incidentally, the post office is amazing. As Maher said recently, anyone can drop a letter into a blue metal box on the sidewalk and in a couple of days it arrives at the place listed on the envelope. For 44 cents. Off the top of your head, can you name anything that costs 44 cents and actually functions exactly as advertised?)

I can only hope that the Keep your goddamn government hands off my Medicare! people are exceptions and that a vast majority of Republican seniors understand that Medicare is a government-run health care system. Put another way: they're actively and willingly participating in socialized medicine. So the seniors who understand the facts about the Medicare system and yet are screeching at town hall meetings about government-run health care are, well, insert your favorite colorful synonym for "freakishly colossal hypocrites" right about here.

Either these people have been so kerfluffled and enraged by the wingnutty "reparations" and "killing old people" lies they're hearing on AM radio that they've forgotten about the source of their current health insurance coverage, or they're fully aware of the fact that they are, indeed, beneficiaries of socialism, but they refuse to allow anyone else to participate in a similar program. You know, because socialized medicine is bad. Except for them.

Take this guy for instance:

He's one of several elderly protesters shouting in tongues at a town hall held by Rep. Steve Kagan (D-WI) this week. And based on his obvious age and USMC cap, we can deduce that he's very likely receiving medical coverage from the government in the form of Medicare or the Veteran's Administration or both (you can do that). I'd wager, too, that he'd be totally unwilling to give up his coverage. He'd be *cough* crazy to do that.

Or, to paraphrase various wingnut emails I've received, perhaps this old timer ought to get a job instead of freeloading off the system. I mean, why should I pay taxes to finance this guy who refuses to work? Of course the realistic answer is that healthy Americans of any age who aren't spending thousands of dollars a month on gouged health care premiums tend to strengthen both our communities and our broader economy -- including my best interests as well. Rising tides, lifting boats and all that. Another argument I've heard, by the way, is that seniors and veterans have earned their socialist health care. To which I usually respond: I see. So socialized health care is a reward for a job well done? Can I quote you?

I don't claim to know the full stories behind the variety of senior citizens who have been recruited to disrupt these town halls, but one thing is clear. They're participating in a corporate lobbyist-driven campaign to prevent the rest of us from acquiring the same affordable, reliable public health care they enjoy. In other words, their government-run health care is excellent. So excellent that it can't be shared. And they're so intensely motivated in this selfishness that they're volunteering their time to infiltrate town hall meetings and loudly ambush public officials at the request of lobbyists who are very simply lying to and exploiting them.

With all due respect to their chronological age, shame on them.