As the fights in Wisconsin and Ohio rage on over efforts to strip workers of their rights, everybody has an opinion. It’s interesting to see the difference. Rich Lowry’s op-ed in the Columbia Tribune was most representative of the disdain the right has for union workers. Here’s a taste: No, the most important measure at stake in Wisconsin is the governor’s proposal for the state to stop deducting union dues from the paychecks of state workers. This practice essentially wields the taxing power of the government on behalf of the institutional interests of the unions. It makes the government an arm of the public-sector unions. It is a priceless favor. Wisconsin doesn’t collect dues for Elks lodges or the NRA. What makes these organizations different from public-sector unions is that people freely choose to join them and freely choose to pay their dues. They are truly voluntary organizations that don’t rely on the power of the state for their well-being. Walker wants to give members of public-sector unions a measure of this same autonomy. Public-sector unions are a creature of government, and the Democrats are the party of government. The two of them have identical interests and worldviews, and both want to leverage government to swell their campaign coffers. How to characterize this? The word “shame” comes to mind. Lowry of course fails to note that unions must disclose each and every penny they spend on campaigns, independent ad expenditures, and other political activity. That doesn’t seem to faze him as much as the outrage that union dues are collected by payroll deduction. Is he also outraged that insurance companies’ coffers are fattened by private corporations who take payroll deductions for their employees’ health insurance? Of course not. Now here’s the view from the left side of the aisle, via Thos Payne at MyAuburnJournal : The fact that Americans for Prosperity is now going on the air makes it clear that this is about something far larger going on than getting Wisconsin’s finances under control; it underscores the degree to which this has become, for the Republicans, an ideological battle of elite corporatism verses the working class – oil industry billionaires are pitted against union workers; their ideological ally a rented governor who is intent on destroying trade unions. This kind of struggle needs to be called what it is – class warfare. What’s happening in Wisconsin is no accident. Class warfare depends on the suppression of democracy. The Koch brothers depend on corruption within the Supreme Court. The extreme right-wing judicial activism that was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was just the opening salvo. Buying elections didn’t stop in Wisconsin and the agenda isn’t confined to the Koch brothers. It’s the entire Republican agenda – an agenda that is threatened by America’s demographic evolution. This agenda has always has depended on suppressing the vote, and now it depends on the suppression of democracy itself. Make no mistake, this is class warfare. It’s a war on democracy itself, and Wisconsin is just the first battle. Wisconsin is symbolic to both sides. To the right, it’s an effort to weaken the power of collective voices by de-funding unions. To the left, it’s a class war. The right wing takes away. The left wing gives back. In Wisconsin, they’re looking to take away people’s voice and their power. The left (and most independents, too) are giving back that voice and power by the only means available to them — protest. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise you to discover that Jim DeMint is hedging Governor Walker’s bet by introducing a federal right-to-work bill. Evidently states’ rights only matter when they’re exercised to rob ordinary people. “No American should be forced to join a union and pay dues to get a job in this country,” said Senator DeMint. “Many Americans are already struggling just to put food on the table, and they shouldn’t have to fear losing their jobs or face discrimination if they don’t want to join a union. Forced-unionism shields unions from member accountability and has a detrimental effect on the economy. In states where companies are forced to hire only union workers, businesses have struggled to compete while they deal with counterproductive work rules.” Funny thing. Statistics prove that workers in states which are not right-to-work states have more job security, and those states have lower unemployment rates, which means Senators DeMint, Coburn, Hatch, Lee, Paul, Risch, Toomey and Vitter are big fat liars. But we knew that.
Continue reading …Click here to view this media If you want to see conservatives get all twisted into knots, try asking them why, if it makes sense for Peter King to hold his Islamophobic hearings on the supposed threat of domestic terrorism from Muslim Americans, we shouldn’t hold similar hearings examining why we’re seeing a real surge in domestic terrorism by right-wing extremists. Take, for example, Bill O’Reilly last night. He got all bent out of shape over Mark Potok’s exchange with CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux earlier this week: MALVEAUX: If you can from your study of tracking radical groups, potentially hate groups, what do you think of this hearing? Is al Qaeda radicalizing Muslims? Is that our biggest homegrown terrorism threat right now? POTOK: Well, I think it’s not our biggest domestic terror threat. I think that pretty clearly comes from the radical right in this country. Although I would certainly not minimize the threat of jihadist terrorism in this country. Obviously, we have seen a fair amount of it. Of course, O’Reilly deceptively edited out the last two sentences, and then replied: O’REILLY: Are you kidding me? The radical right? The last terror act assigned to them was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. I mean, think about what the guy just said. Muslim terrorists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world, correct? How many people have the radical right killed? Well, Bill, just to get you up to speed: There have been many, many more right-wing terrorist acts on American soil since 1995 — including the bombing of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, just for starters. All told, there were over 60 major cases of right-wing domestic terrorism in the ten years after Oklahoma City. Even more important, let’s talk about just the past two and a half years: We’ve documented, to date, 22 cases of domestic terrorism since July 2008 involving right-wing extremists of various stripes, all inflicting (or attempting to inflict) violence on a variety of “liberal” and government targets. Which not only raises the question, “Why not hold hearings to explore the growing radicalization of far-right extremists?”, but a similarly pertinent: “Where are the media?” This is especially the case, given that the SPLC recently released a fresh report finding that the number of hate groups in America, for the first time ever, now exceeds a thousand. This was a key point Potok discussed in his appearance on Cenk Uygur’s MSNBC show . Potok also had the audacity to point out that if a Muslim lawmaker were to hold hearings on right-wing fundamentalist Christians’ roles in the radicalization of far-right extremists, the pitchforks would be out en masse. Of course, Dana Perino disagrees, claiming (in the source of this week’s biggest belly laugh): “If there was a hearing on radicalization amongst Christianity, there would have been no protesters”. Yeah, those of us who remember the endless right-wing shrieking over the Department of Homeland Security’s bulletin for law enforcement about the threat of increasing right-wing extremism — they were insulting mainstream conservatives and veterans and calling them terrorists! — got a good long laugh over that one. Exhibit A that Potok was on the money was O’Reilly’s outrage — which bubbled up beyond his opening Talking Points Memo segment, attacking both Potok and Ezra Klein for bringing up Christian extremists (though frankly, Klein’s remarks about “Christian kids” supposedly involved in school shootings as part of the domestic-terrorism picture was in fact off-base). But O’Reilly thought it was outrageous, just outrageous, that anyone would think the radical right still posed a significant terrorist threat to Americans, and had on both Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley to talk it over some more. Click here to view this media [H/t Karoli] It is not to conservatives’ credit that they so eagerly and adamantly try to whitewash away the existence of right-wing extremism — even though such hysterics have demonstrably made law-enforcement officers less safe in the field, because it short-circuits the flow of needed intelligence. And it’s really shameful on O’Reilly’s case, because one of the more vivid terrorist acts of the past couple of years committed by a right-wing extremist was the assassination of Dr. George Tiller by in Kansas — a murder for which O’Reilly bore no small chunk of culpability. But then, it has since become an article of faith among right-wingers that domestic terrorists who assassinate abortion providers are not terrorists at all. Sarah Palin, we recall, refused to acknowledge that abortion-clinic attacks were domestic terrorism. Along similar lines, there was Palin this weekend, claiming that Gerald Loughner’s lethal attack on Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January was in any way related to terrorism: Click here to view this media [H/t Digby ] PALIN: Why is the administration so naive in assuming the American public is going to accept a comment like P.J.’s that essentially equates a crazed maniac in Arizona, shooting Gabbie Giffords to this terrorist who tried to and was successful in gunning down our servicemen overseas as he did yell out Allahu Akbar? O’Reilly and Crowley similarly dismissed such notions. But the reality is that Loughner’s act was clearly terrorist in intent, and it’s similarly clear that his twisted worldview came straight out of the radical right, including most notably the paranoid alternative universe of Alex Jones. It seems that conservatives’ mania for whitewashing away the existence of far-right domestic terrorism is reaching a fever pitch just at the same time that it’s actually becoming resurgent — and it never seems to occur to them that they in doing so, they are creating cover and giving them implicit permission to proceed apace. Funny how that works.
Continue reading …Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. It was supposed to be another grandiose performance for United States President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. But standing underneath America’s forty-three presidents, each one a white male, and for those who still have critical eyes to see with and a heart of empathy, it was a theater of the absurd. President Obama asked if their were any questions for Australia’s visiting prime minister. Students eager to ask questions raised their hands. But as usual, and in the tyranny of momentary thought and shallow reflection, one student asked Gillard about Vegemite. Another Advanced Placement U.S. History classmate claimed…
Continue reading …Click here to view this media I’m not sure what “LessGovernment” has to do with Al Jazeera, but Judge Napolitano and Glenn Beck’s bookers took the opportunity to let their spokesmouth, Seton Motley (yes, that IS his name), come on and “analyze” them after Hillary Clinton’s remarks and praise of their broadcasts. Mr. Motley starts out with some incoherence about campaigning in prose and broadcasting in Arabic before launching into an indictment of Hillary Clinton as a “leftist” who likes “leftist reporting”. Oh, and then there’s that thing about how Al Jazeera is no different than any US mainstream outlet because they all bash the Tea Party. NAPOLITANO: …can get real news around the clock. Is Secretary Clinton right? Is Al Jazeera one of the few sources left for real news and should we welcome it here in America? Here now to discuss is Seton Motley, president of Less Government. Well that’s a great name for your organization – Less Government. Seton, welcome back to the Glenn Beck program. What is she talking about? Is Al Jazeera to be trusted? In English? Or in another language? MOTLEY: Well, there’s an old campaign saw. You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose, and Al Jazeera campaigns in English and governs in Arabic. And if you’re watching Al Jazeera Arabic you get a whole different perspective on what’s going on over there than what you do over here. Part of the reason it hasn’t taken off greater here in America – the English version – is because it’s just like ABC, NBC, CBS. I watched segments today where they’re just bashing the Tea Party just like NBC does, ABC does, so there’s no difference. Alrighty then. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with the refusal of all cable providers to actually CARRY Al Jazeera, right? No, it’s just because they’re no different than the others. I’m truly not sure that this guy has ever really watched Al Jazeera for any length of time, but get a load of his next “analysis”. NAPOLITANO: All right, but do they have a message that they convey about behavior that goes over there that either we don’t get from our own home-grown media — Fox or CNN or whoever might be there — and are they trustworthy? Or is this a propaganda arm of some government? MOTLEY: I get this — there’s station Qatar and there’s station Kuwait and they’re based out of those two countries. And I — I think it’s a propaganda arm. I mean if you watch — uh, there’s a great website, MEMRI.org, Middle East Media and Research Institute — If you watch Al Jazeera’s Arabic language clips, it’s presenting all kinds of crazy. You’ve got people saying jihadist things all the time, they reported on a British citizen who joined the Taliban and said “death to Americans”. If they presented that here, I think they would get ratings, I think they would get viewership, I think there would be a clamor for what they’re doing. But they’re not presenting that over here. They’re presenting it over there and not giving it to us here. So that I understand him, I read it twice after I transcribed it myself. I think he is saying that IF they presented video that painted Arabs as crazy people who are out to kill Americans they’d get ratings. But because they don’t do that on AJE, they’re not viable? Is that really what he’s saying? Well, it takes a propagandist to know one, after all, but I think he should actually WATCH what they do on both. I’ve watched AJE and AJArabic, and when it’s live, it’s often the very same video. One in English, the other in Arabic. While I don’t speak Arabic, I’m not really inclined to believe the Arabic version is a propaganda version that Americans would love, are you? And finally, all Fox/Beck viewers are admonished to beware that raving leftist, Hillary Clinton. NAPOLITANO: All right, last question since we have 30 seconds. Why is Hillary Clinton saying this? Why is she, of all people, telling Americans to watch it? MOTLEY: Because I think they have a similar agenda to what leftists like Hillary Clinton want to see advanced here. So this is another network that does what MSNBC, CNN and ABC does. NAPOLITANO: Got it. I’m glad Napolitano got it, because I’m still scratching my head. There’s propaganda all right, but it’s not being aired on Al Jazeera. I’m starting to think maybe I should’ve stayed with the whales and fish another week.
Continue reading …The conflicts that are erupting in the Middle East are being blamed for the rising costs of gas at the pumps — notably the biggest two-week jump ever. Republicans are on the warpath to find anything to attack President Obama with, so now they are pulling out their dusty 2008 playbook tactic of crying to America that we need to “Drill, Baby Drill,” as if that could solve anything. They are so deep into the pockets of big oil that the only solution they can come up with is a meaningless slogan that does nothing to solve our energy problem. On MSNBC earlier today, Republican talking head Doug Heye, who used to be at the RNC and was involved in their damage control over Stripper Gate, used that tactic along with their age-old assault on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to try and spin what’s happening. To me this signals new attacks to try to open up the ANWR region to oil drilling, a fight they’ve been losing for years and which is inconsequential in the great oil debate. But reality doesn’t really matter to them anyway. Contessa Brewer was the host and Heye’s opening shot was both revealing and typically stupid. Brewer: We’re talking about production shutting gown there, how can you blame the president for that? Heye: I think the blame goes back 30 years — goes back longer than we are in talking about getting off foreign oil, but we know what we need. We need to drill. We need to explore. You look at what we see in the Gulf right now, it’s not really a moratorium right now, it’s an Obamatorium because we’re not allowed to go in and press for new oil. We’ve been talking about this for so long and if you keep talking about doing something and don’t do it. Nothing gets done. I remember In 2003, I was in ANWR. Democrats said we couldn’t explore for oil in ANWR because it wouldn’t be ready by 2011. Yes, Heye, Jimmy Carter approached the subject about getting off of oil, but was rebuked by the Republican Party and everyone else who was on the Big Oil dole. Everyone knows ANWR doesn’t have enough oil to do anything except upset progressives. When oil prices rose to 5 dollars a gallon under George Bush, there wasn’t an outbreak of revolution throughout the Middle East, so why was there an incredible rise in price back then? John McCain and Sarah Palin shouted “Drill, Baby Drill,” but that had nothing to do with gas prices. Oil speculators, on the other hand, did — and it’s happening again. Jamie Court: Speculators & Oil Cos Are To Blame For Gas Prices, Not The Middle East While skirmishes in Libya and uncertainty in the Middle East are nice cover for outrageous gasoline prices, the fact is the same old suspects are making a killing from sky-high gas prices approaching $4 dollars per gallon in California: big oil companies and greedy speculators. The speculative market may have driven crude oil prices up, but that’s not the price oil companies pay for the crude oil that goes into our gasoline. America’s big oil companies use crude oil that they have harvested from the ground or bought much cheaper on long term contracts to refine into gasoline. You’ll see the results in next quarter’s profit statements: big profits from both crude oil sales and refineries that make gasoline, what’s called “upstream’ and “downstream” operations in profit reports. Consumer Watchdog has for years both tried to curb the opaqueness of the volatile speculative market for oil and to regulate supplies at gasoline refineries because oil companies game both systems, creating artificial shortages in the markets to jack up prices or exploiting historical events to justify obscene profits. Today’s sky high gasoline prices are the result of oil companies shutting down refineries and playing the speculative markets for big gains… read on Will the GOP use ANWR as a bargaining chip to try and get President Obama to make a deal with them as the year progresses? Americans get angry when gas prices rise, and it would be helpful if the administration called out Big Oil and Wall Street instead of letting Republicans once again win the war of words.
Continue reading …Click here to view this media I’m becoming more and more convinced that Newt Gingrich is the Glenn Beck of 2012 Presidential candidates. Knowing he cannot hope to be a viable candidate, Newt just spews the crazy to make the others look sane. From last night’s appearance at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Forum, we get this gem. Keep in mind, this forum featured Herman Cain, Newtie, Tim Pawlenty, Buddy Roemer and Rick Santorum. With the exception of a few nods toward faux populism by Roemer, the others said the same thing in a sort of boring and predictable way. But Newt kicked it up and out a few notches. Transcript of the clip above: But for me, the real turning point was when the 9th Circuit court decided in 2002 to…that it was unconstitutional to say “one nation under God” as part of the Pledge of Allegiance in a school. And I decided — in some ways it was very parallel to Lincoln responding to the Dred Scott decision about slavery. I decided that if we now have judges so fundamentally out of touch with America that they have no clue what this country was based on, we need a political change so deep and so profound that nothing we have seen in our lifetime is comparable to the level of depth we have to go to get this country back on the right track again. [applause] Let me be very clear about this. Since 1952, we have won 9 presidential elections for Republicans and Democrats won 6. But despite the fact that Republicans were in the White House for 50% more time than Democrats, we did not at a fundamental level change the power of the left. We didn’t change the bureaucracies, we didn’t change the biases of the judiciary. And over that period, they have all gotten worse, moved further to the left and become more alienated from the American system. There’s so many dogwhistles in that little clip it’s a veritable symphony. He sort of drops the thing about Dred Scott in there, which of course led to the Civil War just before saying we need political change so deep and profound it hasn’t been seen in our lifetime? And then for good measure, claims the judiciary and bureaucracies have moved farther left? In what world? Yes, of course a ‘secular socialist left’ judiciary gave us Citizens United. Of course it did. And it was that secular socialist left that dropped troops in Iraq, too. Sure it was. But wait, there’s more. Here’s Newt describing the first day of his fantasy Presidency. Click here to view this media I was accused of overreacting to this on Twitter last night when I said “These people really want a dictatorship.” Tell me if you think I was. Here’s the transcript: Now how fast could we in fact turn the country around if we had a President who shared our values instead of the values of the secular socialist left ? Start on the very first day. There’s a system called an executive order which allows the President to interpret the application of the law. Imagine just four examples. What if, on the very first day, we had a President who said, we are now abolishing as of this minute every single czar in the White House and their offices, including spending? [applause] What if we said, on the very first day, we are reinstating Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City policy and no American tax money will go to any abortion anywhere outside the United States, period? [louder applause] What if we said, on the very first day, that George W. Bush’s implementation of conscience protection will be reinstated so the government will actively protect those who as a matter of conscience refuse to do things that the left wants done? [applause] And finally, what if we said on the very first day that the State Department will be instructed as of this date to recognize the right of every sovereign nation to define its own capitol and the United States embassy will be in the capitol of the country that defines it, which would mean that for the first time we would put the capitol in Jerusalem. The only country — think about this — the only country in the world where the United States government refuses to allow the local government to define its capitol is Israel, which is a democracy, an ally of ours, and it is profoundly wrong to discriminate against Israel, the government of Israel, the people of Israel and we should stop it on the very first day. [wild applause] Now, I’m not yet a candidate, I’m in the process of exploring as you know, and you can go to newtexplore.com — I thought I’d put that plug in — but let me say that every person who’s going to speak tonight is a friend of mine. We’re all going to have to be on the same team after this is over. It’s going to take all of us to defeat the left because — and I agree with what Steve said — we can’t just defeat the left in Washington. We need 40 more house seats in Washington, we need a dozen more US Senators, we need to pick up the State Senate here, we need to strengthen the hand that the governor has, we need to across the board recognize there are 513,000 elected officials at the state and local level and only 537 at the federal level. We need, for the first time in 80 years to replace the governing structure of the left with a governing structure that is center right and then we need, from the very first day, to implement decisively the re-establishment of an American exceptionalism that recognizes that the power starts with you and eventually goes to Washington when necessary. Power does not start in Washington with a bunch of judges and bureaucrats dictating to you what you do. Thank you, good luck and God bless. Ignore the reference to center right. That’s just silly. There is no center right, only hard John Birch-style right now. The center is dead. If that’s not a call for a right wing revolution, I don’t know what would be. Newt Gingrich knows he won’t get elected. He has way too much baggage. But he managed, in this short little speech, to further de-legitimize President Obama ( “…if we had a President who shared our values… ) and to push all the buttons stoking far-right morals voters’ anger while making the Santorums, Pawlentys and Cains look like sane human beings. 2012 will be all about wedge issues if we “secular socialist leftists” can’t manage to put together a message and enough unity to push forward. Last night’s speakers made that abundantly clear.
Continue reading …Click here to view this media I’m becoming more and more convinced that Newt Gingrich is the Glenn Beck of 2012 Presidential candidates. Knowing he cannot hope to be a viable candidate, Newt just spews the crazy to make the others look sane. From last night’s appearance at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Forum, we get this gem. Keep in mind, this forum featured Herman Cain, Newtie, Tim Pawlenty, Buddy Roemer and Rick Santorum. With the exception of a few nods toward faux populism by Roemer, the others said the same thing in a sort of boring and predictable way. But Newt kicked it up and out a few notches. Transcript of the clip above: But for me, the real turning point was when the 9th Circuit court decided in 2002 to…that it was unconstitutional to say “one nation under God” as part of the Pledge of Allegiance in a school. And I decided — in some ways it was very parallel to Lincoln responding to the Dred Scott decision about slavery. I decided that if we now have judges so fundamentally out of touch with America that they have no clue what this country was based on, we need a political change so deep and so profound that nothing we have seen in our lifetime is comparable to the level of depth we have to go to get this country back on the right track again. [applause] Let me be very clear about this. Since 1952, we have won 9 presidential elections for Republicans and Democrats won 6. But despite the fact that Republicans were in the White House for 50% more time than Democrats, we did not at a fundamental level change the power of the left. We didn’t change the bureaucracies, we didn’t change the biases of the judiciary. And over that period, they have all gotten worse, moved further to the left and become more alienated from the American system. There’s so many dogwhistles in that little clip it’s a veritable symphony. He sort of drops the thing about Dred Scott in there, which of course led to the Civil War just before saying we need political change so deep and profound it hasn’t been seen in our lifetime? And then for good measure, claims the judiciary and bureaucracies have moved farther left? In what world? Yes, of course a ‘secular socialist left’ judiciary gave us Citizens United. Of course it did. And it was that secular socialist left that dropped troops in Iraq, too. Sure it was. But wait, there’s more. Here’s Newt describing the first day of his fantasy Presidency. Click here to view this media I was accused of overreacting to this on Twitter last night when I said “These people really want a dictatorship.” Tell me if you think I was. Here’s the transcript: Now how fast could we in fact turn the country around if we had a President who shared our values instead of the values of the secular socialist left ? Start on the very first day. There’s a system called an executive order which allows the President to interpret the application of the law. Imagine just four examples. What if, on the very first day, we had a President who said, we are now abolishing as of this minute every single czar in the White House and their offices, including spending? [applause] What if we said, on the very first day, we are reinstating Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City policy and no American tax money will go to any abortion anywhere outside the United States, period? [louder applause] What if we said, on the very first day, that George W. Bush’s implementation of conscience protection will be reinstated so the government will actively protect those who as a matter of conscience refuse to do things that the left wants done? [applause] And finally, what if we said on the very first day that the State Department will be instructed as of this date to recognize the right of every sovereign nation to define its own capitol and the United States embassy will be in the capitol of the country that defines it, which would mean that for the first time we would put the capitol in Jerusalem. The only country — think about this — the only country in the world where the United States government refuses to allow the local government to define its capitol is Israel, which is a democracy, an ally of ours, and it is profoundly wrong to discriminate against Israel, the government of Israel, the people of Israel and we should stop it on the very first day. [wild applause] Now, I’m not yet a candidate, I’m in the process of exploring as you know, and you can go to newtexplore.com — I thought I’d put that plug in — but let me say that every person who’s going to speak tonight is a friend of mine. We’re all going to have to be on the same team after this is over. It’s going to take all of us to defeat the left because — and I agree with what Steve said — we can’t just defeat the left in Washington. We need 40 more house seats in Washington, we need a dozen more US Senators, we need to pick up the State Senate here, we need to strengthen the hand that the governor has, we need to across the board recognize there are 513,000 elected officials at the state and local level and only 537 at the federal level. We need, for the first time in 80 years to replace the governing structure of the left with a governing structure that is center right and then we need, from the very first day, to implement decisively the re-establishment of an American exceptionalism that recognizes that the power starts with you and eventually goes to Washington when necessary. Power does not start in Washington with a bunch of judges and bureaucrats dictating to you what you do. Thank you, good luck and God bless. Ignore the reference to center right. That’s just silly. There is no center right, only hard John Birch-style right now. The center is dead. If that’s not a call for a right wing revolution, I don’t know what would be. Newt Gingrich knows he won’t get elected. He has way too much baggage. But he managed, in this short little speech, to further de-legitimize President Obama ( “…if we had a President who shared our values… ) and to push all the buttons stoking far-right morals voters’ anger while making the Santorums, Pawlentys and Cains look like sane human beings. 2012 will be all about wedge issues if we “secular socialist leftists” can’t manage to put together a message and enough unity to push forward. Last night’s speakers made that abundantly clear.
Continue reading …Conservatives have an easy time of procuring a gig on cable news TV. Promoting uneducated, bigoted, misogynistic and racist ideas is very helpful for gainful employment on the airwaves. David Neiwert tackled CNN’s promotion of an organization that David Duke would be proud of on 03/05. CNN tries to tackle white anxiety — by treating white nationalists as credible sources This was the headline yesterday at CNN: Are whites racially oppressed? “We went from being a privileged group to all of a sudden becoming whites, the new victims,” says Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at La Salle University in Pennsylvania who researches white racial attitudes and was baffled to find that whites see themselves as a minority. “You have this perception out there that whites are no longer in control or the majority. Whites are the new minority group.”… read on Enter Erick Erickson on CNN, spewing example #1,347,976 of the type of lunacy that lands you a job on CNN: Supporting a White Male Scholarship CNN drew criticism last Friday for an article headlined “Are whites racially oppressed?” In addition to legitimizing “pro-White” commentators James Edwards and Peter Brimelow , the article quoted the president of a Texas group called “Former Majority Association for Equality” that exists solely to provide college scholarships to white men. FMAE president Colby Bohannan told CNN, “There was no one for white males until we came around.” As it turns out, that wasn’t the first attention CNN gave Bohannan and the Former Majority Association for Equality. On Tuesday, March 1, CNN posted an interview with Bohannan on its web page , then devoted two segments to it during that day’s edition of CNN Newsroom . During that coverage, CNN contributor Erick Erickson endorsed the FMAE’s white-men-only scholarships: CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: What do you think, Erick? Isn’t this just another in a multitude of specific scholarships for lots of different kinds of people? ERICK ERICKSON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, absolutely. It is. If we’re going to get rid of scholarships for African-Americans and get rid of scholarships for Hispanics and get rid of scholarships for Asians and get rid of scholarships for women, then let’s get rid of the scholarships. But if we’re not going to get rid of those, then let’s keep this one. Erickson then suggested that women, Hispanics, and Asians have not been historically disadvantaged in America: ROMANS: But Erick, don’t you think — this is a little bit different. Because we have a history that’s tortured and painful in this country that makes, even today when you start talking about a white-male only scholarship it makes people kind of cringe. Because there was a time when white men frankly ruled this country and had all of the access, and the reason why we have all of these — (CROSSTALK) ERICKSON: Absolutely. But they don’t anymore. You can justify that, for example, a scholarship for African-Americans, given the history of this country. But can you for Asians or Hispanics or for women? Now we’ve reached the point in Texas, at least, where the white men are no longer the majority in Texas. Pat Buchanan would be proud. This is supposed to be a rational Conservative position. You can deconstruct the lies, but I guess EE sees “brown people” everywhere and it scares him.. And I think he forgot that women had to fight for the right to even vote in this country not too long ago in our history. Digby writes: I suppose it’s progress that he admits that there has historically been discrimination against African Americans. Haley Barbour would have us believe that Jim Crow wasn’t “all that bad.” )But evidently he looks around him and sees a world in which Hispanics, Asians and females are in positions of social and professional dominance. That may, in fact, be true on camera at CNN. But if you look at the power structure behind it and every other corporation, university, government agency and elected body, I think he can feel safe in assuming that the white male isn’t in any immediate danger of having his power usurped. It looks like the GOP Congress members have used up their allotment of White Male scholarships for the next 1000 years.
Continue reading …Old People Post of the Day: Above: Republican Alan Simpson, co-chairman of President Obama’s deficit commission and stereotypical old person, took a short break from supposedly trying to keep the US around for future generations to tell America’s youth to get off his lawn with their low-hanging pants, and their backwards cap, and their Enema Man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg (AKA Eminem and Snoop Dogg)…. Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Daily What Discovery Date : 08/03/2011 15:45 Number of articles : 5
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