Rep. Steve Cohen Not Backing Down on Comparing GOP ‘Government Takeover’ Lie to Goebbels’ Propaganda
January 20, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Despite some brow-beating from CNN’s John King, Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen didn’t back down or apologize for his statements on the House floor that the lie by Republicans that the Affordable Care Act is a “government takeover” of health care is similar to the techniques used Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Dem Rep: No apology for saying GOP mendacity is worthy of Goebbels : Uh oh. Dem Rep. Steve Cohen has no intention to apologize for insisting in a controversial broadside on the House floor that GOP lies on health reform are worthy of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. In a lively interview with me just now, he doubled down on the claim — hard. “I don’t think calling out liars is uncivil,” Cohen told me. “No reason to apologize. You have a duty to respond. if they were telling the truth and I said they were lying, then I would apologize,” Cohen continued, referring to Republicans. In case you missed, it, on the House floor last night Cohen unleashed a head-turning series of claims , arguing that the “government takeover” claim by Republicans is “a big lie, just like Goebbels.” He added: “The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it — and you had the Holocaust.” Conservatives have expressed outrage today and demanded that Dems condemn the comment, but Cohen has no intention of backing off. In our interview he rejected the idea that he had compared Republicans to Nazis. “I said Goebbels lied about the Jews, and that led to the Holocaust,” Cohen said. “Not in any way whatsoever was I comparing Republicans to Nazis. I was saying lies are wrong…I dont know who got everybody’s panties in a wad over this statement.” Cohen insisted that the invocation of Goebbels was legit, given the larger context: He said that Repubicans had, in fact, repeatedly used a big-lie technique on health care. “There have been so many lies about the health care bill,” Cohen said, citing “death panels,” the GOP rejection of the Congressional Budget Office’s finding that repealing reform would hike the deficit, and the claim that health reform represents a “government takeover.” “You can’t stop them from saying that lie,” Cohen said of the “government takeover” line. “It’s their mantra. They go to bed with it. They do Yoga with it.” As one would expect, this has the right wingers going crazy . I think most liberals who follow politics were already more than aware of the amount of propaganda we’re being exposed to from Republicans and their enablers in the corporate media without Rep. Cohen pointing it out to us. I also don’t believe he meant to literally call Republicans Nazis by giving some historical context to the tactics they’re employing. Here are Rep. Cohen’s remarks on the House floor. UPDATE: Cenk Uygur weighed in on Rep. Cohen’s statements on The Young Turks as well. While I can understand criticism of Cohen’s remarks as hyperbolic, that doesn’t mean his point about the propaganda and how dangerous it is for society isn’t truthful. Cenk has more on the feigned outrage and extreme hypocrisy we’re seeing from the right on this. UPDATE 2: Rep. Cohen defended his remarks on Anderson Cooper’s show as well and explained that in no way was he trying to literally call the Republicans Nazis. He also said even though he was right to say what he did, he won’t be bringing it up again again. I won’t be surprised if we see him a apologize if the brow beating continues. That said, I’ve really got to wonder what kind of shelf life this latest dust up has because I’m not quite sure either the Republicans or our corporate media want to go there if you really want to get into a prolonged discussion about how terrible both have been with propagandizing the public in America. You can make a lot of other comparisons to other propaganda campaigns and what the Republicans have been doing and they’re not a whole lot more flattering than the Goebbels analogy. I’m pretty sure that’s a topic our corporate media would rather not spend a lot of time covering due to the fact that our they have been complicit in promoting the GOP’s lies and propagandizing the public as well, but who knows. I guess we’ll see how this gets spun shortly and to what degree. Click here to view this media
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Click here to view this media ( Sargent Shriver and Peace Corps Volunteers – an abundance of optimism ) Editors Note: As way of tribute on the passing of Sargent Shriver today at the age of 95, I am reposting this entry, originally from August of 2009 – Gordon The Peace Corps came about as the result of The New Frontier – the brainchild of the Kennedy administration. In 1961 a program was set up to get Americas youth involved in the world by going overseas to help set up schools, libraries, infrastructure – anything to be of service where it was needed. A nice idea, and one which captured the imaginations of thousands of young adults wanting to be part of the optimistic change that was so prevalent in the 1960s. R. Sargent Shriver was given the task of setting the agency up. He was its first architect. He was also given the task of having to explain just what it was he planned on doing. And so he went on the talk show circuit to lay out in plain terms, just what the Peace was and what it wasn’t.One of those talk shows was CBS News’ Capitol Cloakroom from October 1961. Nancy Hanschman (CBS News) : “Are your Peace Corps men expected to proselytize to Democracy in any way at all? What is the briefing you give them on this? Sargent Shriver: “ Well we give them a lot of instruction in American history and government and theory in government and political life and we expect that when they’re asked questions by the people in their foreign country they’ll be able to give them intelligent, informed answers. We don’t go out there and tell them ‘now here is Course Number 101 in American Government – sell this, if you can to the people in the Philippines.’ They’re not out there as traveling salesman, they’re not out there to get up on a soapbox and give a speech. But they are supposed to be out there as well informed, intelligent Americans, able to respond to questions, and even to tough questions from people in foreign countries.” The Peace Corps became a great success and did a lot to improve our somewhat sagging reputation throughout the world. And considering the number of “yanqui go home” placards from demonstrations around the world that graced most newspaper front pages and nightly newscasts through the 1950s, that was a good thing.
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Click here to view this media I had heard that Glenn Beck had been quite muted after the president’s speech last week. But today the dam broke. He just couldn’t hold it back any longer, and let fly with a segment worthy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . Jack Nicholson couldn’t do it any better. He aims at CNN’s John King, who discusses a conversation he had about the Chicago mayoral race, where a colleague used the term “in the crosshairs”. King says they’re trying to get away from that language, but sometimes falter, and for viewers to “hold us accountable when we don’t meet your standards.” This is all it takes to push Beck over the edge. For the next 5 minutes, 49 seconds, he completely loses whatever tenuous hold on sanity he may appear to have. Citing old Bugs Bunny cartoons, he goes on and on about how we’ve raised an entire generation who understand the difference between make-believe and reality. Well, no. What Beck intentionally misses here is the obvious, which is that most people are attuned to what is rhetoric and what is real, and are smart enough to separate them. It’s that group who live on the unraveling edges because of their own mental health state who may not be able to. But of course, that would sort of intrude on Beck’s own stroll down the river of illogic and venom. I do have one observation of my own on his casual dismissal of violent rhetoric. There is a desensitizing effect on sane people. Crosshairs the first time can become a shrug the sixth or seventh time. That doesn’t mean it’s not deleterious. It just means people become that much less sensitive to expressions of harm and violence toward others. I don’t view that as a good thing, even if they don’t act upon the idea. I don’t take Glenn Beck seriously. I know most people here don’t, either. I also don’t believe we have to sugar-coat everything we say, but surely there’s a place for reasonable, respectful verbal exchanges that don’t involve wishing some form of death upon those with opposite viewpoints? (h/t C&L community member PissedOffPatricia )
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Click here to view this media After yet another pathetic performance on the Sean Hannity show the other night, where both Hannity and Palin were trying to paint her as the victim of this Tucson madness, The Daily Show decides to lower the boom on the thing that is known as Sarah Palin. After complaining (actually whining is more accurate) about the politicization of the shootings, Palin a few minutes later refers to Loughner as “an apolitical or perhaps even left-leaning criminal. “There must to be a word for complaining vociferously about a wrong being done to you whilst casually committing said wrong without even realizing it,” Stewart said. “For now let’s call it an ‘Anchorage Steamer.’” Stewart ends with what the rest of us had concluded long ago: “You have become a lighting rod less for your clarity of vision, but more for your ability to turn any criticism of you of into persecution of you.”
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Say what you will about NBC's Today show but they recognize a ratings winner when they see one and they demonstrated that, when they invited Fox News host Glenn Beck back for a second appearance on Wednesday's show. However with that second guest spot came another opportunity to accuse him of fomenting hate. In the 7am half hour Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira accused Beck of contributing to “a dialogue of hate ” that led to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and in the 9am hour it was her colleague Natalie Morales' turn to make that ugly inference as she pressed Beck: ” How do you respond to the accusations…that people make” since the Tucson shooting “that you maybe somewhat to blame?” This time around, Beck took a back seat to his co-author psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow who offered this professional diagnosis for those critics that blame Beck and other conservatives like Sarah Palin for the tragedy in Arizona:
Continue reading …Bill O’Reilly dismisses evidence linking Beck to Byron Williams — but Arizona shouting incident is a bigger deal
January 19, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Bill O’Reilly thinks the Eric Fuller story is a Big Fracking Deal, revealign the depths of depravity of the “far left” and their use of violence — so much so that he devoted his opening “Talking Points Memo” segment to this thesis. A little later in the show, he brought on Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley to talk it over. Crowley, predictably, complained that the “story was buried” by the rest of the media. That’s because, in fact, it was rather more similar to the right-wing O’Reilly fan’s arrest last week for threatening Rep. Jim McDermott — which is to say, the story dealt with a threat and not actual violence. Did anyone happen to notice Fox News covering that story? I sure didn’t. But then Colmes started in with some serious points: COLMES: Look, I object to something you said in the opening talking points. You said that the logical argument could be made that the far left encouraged an unbalanced guy. There’s no more evidence of that than that the far right encouraged this guy Loughner to do what he did. O’REILLY: Wait. There is evidence in the specificity of what the man said. The names that he used in the context of the threat. Hmmmmm. Well, using that same criteria, we can definitively connect the man who threatened Jim McDermott to Bill O’Reilly now. Because not only did he call and threaten McDermott on the very same day that O’Reilly’s column attacking him was published, but the caller specifically threatened McDermott over the very same issue for which O’Reilly attacked him. But then it got really serious: O’REILLY: Loughner had no — and testimony now has revealed — that he didn’t watch cable TV. He didn’t listen to talk radio. COLMES: There is no evidence — look, you could make the case that Byron Williams went to attack the Tides Foundation and shot up the California Highway Patrol because of stuff that Glenn Beck said about the Tides Foundation. O’REILLY: You can’t make that case. COLMES: Sure you can. That’s just as much equivalency there as what you’re talking about! O’REILLY: No, there isn’t, because the overwhelming debate last week was about this story. It wasn’t one guy. It was everywhere. COLMES: But when a guy goes and wants to go attack the Tides Foundation and shoots up the California Highway Patrol because Beck is vilifying them and the ACLU — there’s equivalence! O’REILLY: All I’ll give you is it’s circumstantial. But the evidence is far more compelling — COLMES: You are doing, Bill, the same thing you are accusing the left of doing, by accusing the left of violent rhetoric. O’REILLY: No I’m not. No I’m not. I’m only dealing in the facts. And the facts as we know it were presented. O’Reilly is just flat-out lying. Because it was three months ago that a devastating story from Media Matters provided all the evidence you need to make that connection — since Byron Williams himself went on the record and explained quite ineluctably that he was directly inspired by Glenn Beck. Here are some of the things Williams said: “I’m not gonna say anyone is worthwhile,” he replies. “I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind. I said, well, nobody does this.” … Byron says he thinks Beck has improved in recent months. “I don’t think he’s a natural newscaster, you know what I mean?” he says. “I look at it more like a schoolteacher on TV, you know? He’s got that big chalkboard and those little stickers, the decals. I like the way he does it.” … “You know, I’ll tell you,” he says, “Beck is gonna deny everything about violent approach and deny everything about conspiracies, but he’ll give you every reason to believe it. He’s protecting himself, and you can’t blame him for that. So, I understand what he’s doing.” … “And I’d say, well, you know, that’s the thing. It’s that anything you do is going to be considered promoting terror attacks or promoting violence. So now they’ve got Beck labeled as this guy that is trying to incite violence. And what I say is that if the truth incites violence, it means that we’ve been living too long in the lies.” I don’t believe O’Reilly is actually ignorant of these facts — in fact, they read Media Matters almost obsessively over at Fox. O’Reilly is simply lying baldfacedly and pretending not to know these facts exist. And Monica? Perhaps when your channel actually reports anything on the Byron Williams matter or Charles Habermann’s threats , or for that matter any of the litany of threats and violence against liberals and the “government” perpetrated by right-wing extremists over the past two and a half years — threats Fox either ignores completely or dismisses as “isolated incidents” — then we may begin to take your complaint that no one reported much on the Fuller case seriously.
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Click here to view this media Unfortunately for the rest of us, Sarah Palin announced she’s not going to sit down or shut up any time soon during her interview on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox. Lawrence O’Donnell doesn’t think Palin is going to run for President and just wants to keep her profile up so she can keep making lots of money. David Frum and Howard Fineman were not impressed with her performance on Fox and relayed as much during this interview on MSNBC’s Last Word. Here’s more from CNN’s Political Ticker on the interview: Palin: ‘I am not going to shut up’ : In her first interview since the Arizona shootings, Sarah Palin Monday sharply beat back critics who have suggested her at-times charged political rhetoric and use of a graphic featuring crosshairs may have contributed to the shooter’s motivations. “The graphic that was used was crosshairs. That’s not original. Democrats have been using them for years,” Palin said in the interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, where Palin is a paid contributor. “For many years maps in political races have been used to target certain districts that people would feel that they can get into those districts to whom they believe would represent the constituents’ will better than the incumbent,” she added. The map in question – created by Palin’s political action committee last spring – featured the crosshairs of a gun over the congressional districts of 20 Democratic candidates – including that of Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman who was shot in Tucson nine days ago. Last week, Palin aide Rebecca Monsour defended the graphic, saying the crosshairs were not those of a gun but rather “a surveyor symbol.” But Palin’s PAC quickly scrubbed the graphic from its website after the shootings, a move Palin said she found appropriate. “The contract graphic artist did take it down and I don’t think that was inappropriate,” said Palin. “If it was going to cause much heartburn and even more controversy I didn’t have a problem with it taken down.” In the 30 minute interview, Palin also addressed the criticism she has faced for her video response to the shootings posted last week on Facebook. Critics particularly took issue with the former governor’s use of the term “blood libel,” a phrase that for many conjures anti-semetic connotations. “Blood libel obviously means being falsely accused of having blood on your hands. In this case, that’s exactly what was going on,” she said, adding later, “Just two days before an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal had that term in its title. And that term has been used for eons.” The phrase, which traditionally refers to a long-standing anti-Semitic myth that Jews murder children for religious rituals, drew fire from the Anti-Defamation League and others. But Palin insisted critics were taking issue with the phrasing in hopes of derailing her overall message. As they noted, Palin claimed that this was not all about her and that the left just wants to destroy her. I think she’s doing a pretty good job of that all on her own. And way to stay classy Sarah with doing exactly the opposite of what you claim and making this day where we should have been celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. all about you instead of Dr. King for the viewers of Hannity’s show on Fox. Second half of the Last Word interview with Frum and Fineman below the fold. Click here to view this media
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OK, so conservatives have to be accused of fostering hatred with our alleged vitriol, the kind of vitriol which fuels the flames of violence, like we witnessed in Tucson except – well, except there wasn’t, and isn’t, a shred of evidence that the killer was influenced by any conservatives since a) he didn’t listen to or watch conservative programming and b) isn’t a conservative. There is the hypothetical question: What if the perpetrator of violence were liberal? How would the media react then? How many would put Chris Matthews, Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann and Co. on trial for creating the “atmosphere” of “hatred” so often ascribed to conservatives only? In fact, it happened. One of Jared Loughner’s shooting victims was a local leftist activist, Eric Fuller, who last week was invited to ABC’s taping of an “American Conversation.” There, in front of all the cameras, he interrupted a local Tea Party activist by uttering what should be considered in this atmosphere to be a blood-curdling threat:
Continue reading …Right-wingers want to make Obama’s message in Tucson into vindication for their hatemongering
January 19, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media You just knew that when President Obama issued his call for a return to civility last week in Tucson , folks on the right would happily embrace the simple standard he elucidated — “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds” — to everyone but themselves. Sure enough, there was Bloviating BillO last night on Fox, complaining because that evil liberal Richard Cohen had called Sarah Palin stupid, and Bill Maher said that the Founders would despise the Tea Partiers: Delightful. Now, I don’t hold Mr. Maher to the same standard as The Washington Post because he’s a comedian, a man who makes a living expressing a point of view. But apparently the president’s point of view, more civility, is not being embraced by Mr. Maher. Also, I’ve gotten a lot of mail asking me why I don’t come down on right-wing talk radio, and it’s the same thing: Talk radio is entertainment. People on there make a living expressing opinions. It’s not a news forum; therefore the standards are not the same. Of course not — they exist in the zone known as the Fox Double Standard: If it attack liberals and Democrats, it’s OK. Otherwise not. And then he gets into outright projection: Immediately after President Obama’s speech last Wednesday, “Talking Points” said that the call for civility would most likely not be answered, and we pointed to the money train as the primary reason. Once again, there is big money in the hate industry, and it’s easy to attack people. Indeed there is — after all, look at all the dough Fox is rolling in. And he’s right: Obama’s call to civility most likely will not be answered … by ANYONE on the Right. They’re too busy pretending their vicious, violent and eliminationist rhetoric has no effect on people. Especially rhetoric that singles out people for demonization and elimination. Rhetoric like this: Click here to view this media O’REILLY: So you would like to see the same kind of situation that happened after 9/11 attack now, where they would all come out and say, “Enough with this crap”? BECK: Of course. O’REILLY: Right. BECK: Every American wants that. What I… O’REILLY: Not every American. George Soros doesn’t want that. BECK: Frances Fox Piven doesn’t want that. O’REILLY: Who is Frances Fox Piven? BECK: Cloward-Piven, from the 1960s. That’s a theory that was inspired by the Watts riots and is being used right now. And she is actively, actively — Columbia University professor used to be. I think she’s — at CUNY now. But she is actively saying, “Rise up, embrace your anger. Turn on your bosses, turn on the politicians.” O’REILLY: All right. She’s Black Panther. Overthrow, kill the pigs. BECK: She is — she stands with the Clintons. Signing. She’s very… O’REILLY: Still around? BECK: Oh, yes. Yeah, that’s some civility standard. Oh, but I forget — O’Reilly obviously operates inside the Fox double Standard Zone too.
Continue reading …Just another ‘isolated incident’: Lethal bomb at MLK Day parade in Spokane spotted and disarmed before it can go off
January 18, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media So much for civility … Bill Morlin reports for the SPLC : A backpack bomb with the potential of killing or injuring dozens of people was found Monday along the route of a Martin Luther King Day “unity march” in downtown Spokane, Wash., authorities said today. “It was a device that clearly was intended to harm or kill people,’’said Frank Harrill, a senior FBI agent and spokesman for the bureau’s Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force. The FBI posted a $20,000 reward Tuesday and released three photographs, including one of the black Swiss-Army backpack that contained the destructive device. Harrill would not discuss the type of explosive or its construction, including whether the backpack contained an explosive shield intended to spray shrapnel toward potential victims. He also declined to say if the device was intended to be detonated remotely or by a timer. “It was set to detonate during a unity march on the King Holiday, so, obviously it had political or social overtones,’’ Harrill said. There was no threat made before the device was discovered by three construction workers about a block from the city’s Opera House and Convention Center where various speakers, including Spokane Mayor Mary Verner, spoke after the march. Here’s the pictures of the backpack: enlarge Credit: Source: FBI As KREM-TV reports, the bomb also disrupted the march temporarily, forcing it to take another route: A witness found the backpack around 9:30 A.M. and called police. The witness told KREM 2 News the backpack appeared to have wires sticking out of it. Police secured a safety zone around the device when they arrived on scene. Spokane City-County Explosives Disposal Unit used a robot to set off a charge on the bag to disrupt the device. Roads remained closed in the area most of the day while authorities continued their investigation. But I’m sure this just another isolated incident . Right? We’re up to 20 and counting over the past two and a half years, for what it’s worth. The Spokesman-Review has more.
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