A DISGRUNTLED VETERAN

This man, Jason Eugene Bush, took part in a home invasion during which a 9-year old girl and her father were murdered. This is what the DHS report was warning us about:

We are honored to have Gunny aboard. He served 6 tours over seas, where he has several medals. He received a Purple heart, Silver and Bronze star, Combat Infantry Badge and a Presidential citation for his actions in the Special Forces. He will be in charge of all operations along the Southern Border, assisting in command decisions, Recon and Tactical training. Gunny will be permanently located at MAD'S new 40 acre Base Camp, located somewhere on the Southern Border.

BREITBART MAKES A FUNNY

Andrew Breitbart left a message at Gawker that claimed that Von Brunn, the white supremacist who murdered the guard at the DC Holocaust Museum, is a "multi-culturalist." I think he deserves a Jonah Goldberg Award for the best Orwellian statement of the month.

A MAN OF god

This is much, much worse than the comments by an obscure college professor (Ward Churchill) and is even worse than the post 9-11 remarks by Falwell and Robertson.

Pastor Drake Prays For Obama's Death. I'm not kidding you

By John Amato
Friday Jun 12, 2009 6:31am

Colmes: ...you then said, I asked for whom else are you praying in that fashion and you said President Obama. Are you praying for his death?

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States?

Drake: Yes. Are you concerned that by saying that you might find yourself on some secret service call or FBI most wanted list. Do you think it's appropriate to say something like that or even pray for something like that?

Drake: I think it's appropriate to pray for the will of God. I'm not saying anything, what I'm doing is repeating what God is saying, if that puts me on somebodies list then I'll just have to be on their list.

Colmes: You would like for the president of the United States to die?

Drake: If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around I am asking God to enforce in imprecatory prayers throughout the scripture that would cause him death, that's correct.

WINGNUT PARANOIA

The wingnuts often tell some news story that reflects positively on conservatives and then claim that "you'll never get this from the mainstream media." They seem to think there's a giant conspiracy to keep this sort of news from the general public. I've debunked this claim before and this post on Politico...

mvpeach10

Member Since: Jan. 13, 2008

Party: Independent

Last Visited: Jun. 13, 2009 - 11:57 AM EST

#2451

Jun. 13, 2009 - 11:28 AM EST

You'll never see this on any mainstream media outlet:

Pipeline, Not Pipe Dream: Credit Palin

provides another opportunity. Here's the reality, courtesy of LexisNexis:

1.	Exxon, in Switch, Joins Plan to Build 1,700-Mile Natural Gas Pipeline From Alaska The New York Times, June 12, 2009 Friday, Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 7, 713 words, By JAD MOUAWAD
2.	TransCanada, Exxon Mobil Join in Alaska Pipeline Plan The Washington Post, June 12, 2009 Friday, A-SECTION; Pg. A07, 283 words
3.	Exxon brought in on Alaskan pipeline project Associated Press Financial Wire, June 11, 2009 Thursday 11:32 PM GMT, BUSINESS NEWS, 743 words, By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer

OH NOES! TBOGGSY IS EVUL

Tbogg is a well-lnown liberal blogger and for some wingers, that means he's beyond the moral pale. The freakshow Donald Douglas at the blog American Power and a commenter agree on this point:

Mark Harvey said...

tbogg...an evil, vindictive lying futz if there ever was one.

June 12, 2009 11:53 AM

Donald Douglas said...

He's evil, Mark. Thanks for commenting.

June 12, 2009 11:56 AM

ETHNIC STUDIES STUPIDITY

In the State legislature, there's a move to

Bill aims to rid TUSD of ethnic studies
'Racial agenda' decried by Horne; Paton is sponsor
By Daniel Scarpinato
arizona daily star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.13.2009

There may be some merit to having this program but this comment by a defender is a FAIL:

"What we do is we ask our students to be critical of their reality," said Augustine Romero, the district's director of student equality. "Whatever lens they choose to look at the issue through, we help them look at the issues through that lens."

That means eventually expanding the program into math, with algebra and calculus taught through an ethnic lens.

"You use social reality to teach math," Romero said.

COME TO THINK OF IT, VON BRUNN IS CLOSE TO MARK LEVIN

In 2008, I recall Mark Levin stating that the anti-war protesters shouled be "rolled" and months later saying that conservatives must "crush the moderates and then crush the socialists."

VON BRUNN AND POLITICAL CATEGORIES

The wingers have been trying to claim that the white supremacist who murdered the guard at the Holocaust Museum in DC is a leftist. I first came across this in comments on Politico and thought it might be just some more Freeper nonsense but this claim is now part of mainstream conservatism. The tactic seems to be a deliberate mingling of concepts to make conservatism appear to be blemish-free, something that started with Jonah Goldberg.

LOCAL FAUX NEWS OUTLETS ALSO LIE

This is from a FAUX station in Green Bay.

Hundreds protest Obama's visit
Updated: Friday, 12 Jun 2009, 1:42 PM CDT
Published : Thursday, 11 Jun 2009, 5:16 PM CDT

Reporter: Lou Hillman


President Obama has said he wants to model American health care reform after the Canadian system.

DRUDGE MAKING A COMEBACK?

Before the November election, I remember reading an article that said Matt Drudge no longer ruled our world (to use Atrios' phrase) and that seemed true at the time. This year, I've been hearing a lot more references to the Drudge Report by both Fats Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, so he may be making a comeback.

DUMBER THAN POSTS

I've been on a Politico board on reforming health care and one winger is a real hoot. I posted that he didn't seem to know what "liberal" meant and this is part of his reply:

I really could care less what liberal means to you liberal, I know what it means to me, and that's all that matters.

This immediately came to mind:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."

Through the Looking Glass.

MARK LEVIN AND INCITING VIOLENCE

First, a real definition:

Main Entry: fifth column
Function: noun
Etymology: name applied to rebel sympathizers in Madrid in 1936 when four rebel columns were advancing on the city
: a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage within defense lines or national borders

Yesterday, Levin said several times that Pres. Obama was the "leader" or "commander" of the fifth column in America.

SEN. GREGG (R- NH) SEEMS TO GET IT

At least on health care. He has an op-ed on Yahoo that includes this:

Reform starts with paying for quality, not quantity. According to a study at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, as much as $750 billion is spent each year on procedures or health-related services that don’t necessarily help patients get better.

Gregg here seems aligned with the informed opinion on this topic.

GLENN BECK IRONY MOMENT

Today as he was talking about the attack at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. and extremist violence in general, he came out with this beauty:

"Get away from unstable people"

FOOLED BY NUMBERS?

(h/t Atrios)

I noted before that the talk radio gasbags aren't really very popular because all they need to be a hit is 5-10% of the listening audience. I've also noted that some of their appeals to listeners have fallen far short of even modest goals. Now it seems that the crowds that turn out for Gov. Palin and the love shown here by the radio gasbags are not a sign of her support among the wingers. Greg Sargent found that out of 1,015 people in a Gallup poll, less than 5 chose Palin as a party leader.

PINNING THE BLAME

The crazy old man who opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in DC certainly had a lot of hate in him and it wouldn't be fair to strongly link him with the hateful radio gasbags but there are some links. For example, like a lot of the wingers, he's a birther. In fact, so are at least a couple of GOP members of the House, Bill Posey of Florida and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.

KRAUTHAMMER PRAISES ONTOLOGICAL RELATIVISM

Which is another way of saying he thinks the lies of FAUX News are valuable.

HOW FOX NEWS OPENED AMERICA
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Last updated: 8:27 am
June 10, 2009
Posted: 2:14 am
June 10, 2009
NY POST

What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

AN OLD WHITE GUY MURDERS A GUARD

And who are the most well-known GOP spokesmen? From USA Today:

A 52% majority of those surveyed couldn't come up with a name when asked to specify "the main person" who speaks for Republicans today. Of those who could, the top response was radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh (13%), followed in order by former vice president Dick Cheney, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Former president George W. Bush ranked fifth, at 3%.

So the dominant faces of the Republican Party are all men, all white, all conservative and all old enough to join AARP, ranging in age from 58 (Limbaugh) to 72 (McCain).

DUMB AND DUMBER

(h/t Taegan Goddard)

That would be Hannity and Palin, or maybe Palim and Hannity - it's hard to tell. Anyway, Palin turns in these two segments during her interview by the Baby Jesus:

(1)
Palin: We are the only state with a negative tax rate where we don't have any income, sales or property tax statewide, and yes we have a share of our oil resource revenue that goes back to the people that own the resources. Imagine that.

(2)
Palin: If Americans aren't paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize. Certainly that is so far from what the founders of our country had in mind for us.

Hannity: Socialism?

Palin: Well... that is where we are headed.

Speading the wealth, AKA socialism, is just fine for Alaska but just terrible for the rest of us.

FATS LIMBAUGH & REUTERS

Today Fats referred to Reuters as part of the "government-run media." Although acquired by Thomson in 2008, Reuters was located in Europe and Asia, thus not part of the American government.

REV. WRIGHT SEEMS TO BE AN ANTI-SEMITE

Fats Limbaugh and Baby Jesus Hannity are giving this story some air time today, so I expect the wingnuts will follow en masse.

Rev. Wright says he doesn't regret severed relationship with president
By DAVID SQUIRES 757-247-4639
11:00 PM EDT, June 9, 2009

HAMPTON – - The Rev. Jeremiah Wright says he does not feel any regrets over his severed relationship with President Barack Obama, a former member of the Chicago church in which Wright was the longtime pastor.

Asked if he had spoken to the president, Wright said: "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ...

"They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. ... I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

Wright also said Obama should have sent a U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Racism held recently in Geneva, Switzerland, but that the president did not do so for fear of offending Jews and Israel.

"Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing (by) the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel," Wright said.

THE CASUAL CONSERVATIVE

I've been trying to find the historical roots of our modern wingnuts and I think Russell Kirk provides a little insight about their relative indifference to the sufferings of people who aren't like them. This passage is from Russell's "The Roots of American Order," an attempt to trace the sources of cohesion in America.

From the Declaration and the Constitution onward, the American order stood open to newcomers from Europe. The Irish laborers who crowded into New York and Boston and many other cities during Brownson's lifetime were only the first great wave of post-Revolutionary immigration. In their hundreds of thousands the Irish and the Germans came, and presently millions of immigrants from southern and central Europe, and farther afield. Except for the Irish, English, Scottish, and Welsh newcomers, few of these spoke English on arrival, or knew much of Anglo-American civilization; most were Catholics, many were Jews.

Yet with surprising speed these masses of immigrants made themselves members of the American moral and social order. Only here and there, in city or countryside, did little islands of dissent resist the attraction of the predominant American order. The new citizens accepted Declaration and Constitution, and the whole complex of social and political institutions, with readiness; sometimes they surpassed the native Americans in their knowledge of the fundamental documents of American order, and even in their new-found attachment to American principles. The Negroes, emancipated during the Civil War, labored under greater social and economic handicaps than did the immigrants, but not until the 1950's would there arise among America's black citizens any nation-wide strong protest against their condition. America's society was pluralistic and tolerant enough, generally, cemented by willing allegiance to the written and unwritten constitutions. (from Page 469)

First of all, the Irish were discriminated against and the phrase on the job poster below is now famous for those who know something about American history.

Second, even Kirk himself notes on page 434 that the established churches in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire did not allow "Papists" liberty of conscience. As for the Jews, anti-Semitism exists to this day.

Finally, Kirk's remark about the plight of blacks in America is obviously callous but not surprising considering some of the opinions in the National Review.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE ANOTHER BAD GOP CALL

Newt the Loudmouth sez "FAIL" -

Gingrich at Fundraiser Says Obama’s ‘Already Failed’ (Update1)
By Heidi Przybyla
June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said President Barack Obama’s plan to fix the economy through stimulus spending and government intervention to boost companies like General Motors Corp. has “already failed.”

AN IMPRESSIVE STATISTIC

I heard Mark Levin claim that 16.2% of total personal income in America in the 1st quarter of 2009 came from government payments and I was suspicious. Levin cited the BEA and I finally found that he is correct. (USA Today also reported this)

Here's a graph of how transfer payments have increased as the recession worsened.

THE PARTY OF "JACK BAUER"

The GOP held a fundraiser in DC and Jon Voight, a cast member of the idiotic show '24,' was the emcee. He seemed just like Sean Hannity:

Actor Jon Voight, an outspoken conservative who stars in the popular television series "24," emceed the event. In his opening comments, Voight blasted President Obama as "a false prophet" and "a soft-spoken Caesar" who bullies Israel and employed pleasant-sounding language to dupe the country into voting for him last November.

"Ayers, Wright, Pfleger, Alinsky," he said, listing some of the liberal figures who became flash points in the 2008 race. "It didn't matter one iota. Obama portrayed himself as a moderate, but turned out to be wildly radical."

WHY IS DAVID BROOKS SO SHALLOW?

He writes in his NYT column "Sonia Sotomayor had bad timing. If she’d entered college in the late-1950s or early-1960s, she would have been surrounded by an ethos that encouraged smart young ethnic kids to assimilate."

If she HAD done that, she couldn't have gone to Princeton, which did not admit women until 1969.

SHE'S STILL STUPID

Caribou Barbie hasn't gotten any brighter since the election. She still employs a "word salad" when discussing issues she clearly doesn't understand. This is from her interview with Baby Jesus Hannity:

We’re borrowing more to spend more ... it defies any sensible economic policy that any of us ever learned through college … We’re borrowing from China, and we consider that now we own 60 percent of General Motors – or the U.S. government does … But who is the U.S. government becoming more indebted to? It’s China. So that leads you to have to ask who is really going to own our car industry than in America.

Caribou went to 5 colleges on her way to a degree in communications and I find it hard to believe that she came across only Milton Friedman's version of economics. Her next sentence jumbles together Chins, the National Debt and the GM bailout, 3 distinct issues.

RADIO TIDBITS

Talkers magazine held a 2 day convention in NYC to honor people in the industry. War Whore Laura Ingraham was invited to introduce one of the awards:

The Judy Jarvis Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions to Talk Radio by a Woman will be presented to WTKK-FM, Boston program director Grace Blazer. She is being honored for her achievements in talk programming management. Grace Blazer rose through the ranks to become program director at CBS O&O WPHT, Philadelphia where she served successfully as one of only a handful of females to hold that position in the nation. She then assumed the same position at Greater Media’s WTKK-FM, Boston where she is now at the forefront of pioneering a new localism in talk radio as well as being a field general in the news/talk invasion of the FM band. The award will be presented to Grace Blazer by last year’s recipient, Talk Radio Network superstar Laura Ingraham, at the Friday evening opening cocktail reception.

According to Stephanie Miller, WWI's speech didn't go over well. It was too long and wasn't about the award. Apparently, some of the attendees in the back of the room started talking during the speech and Ingraham called them out. I guess this resulted in a few boos for her.

Today, Hannity was ranting again about nationalized health care and the destruction of the American economy. He asked a rhetorical series of question, one of which was "Has the stock market rebounded?" Here's one answer -


Hannity and Glenn Beck had Daniel Hennan on. He's a British Member of the European Parliament and from what I heard, is eager for the second coming of Margaret Thatcher. He also was a writer to the wingnut Daily Telegraph.

Mark Levin decided that Newt Gingrich is no longer a member in good standing of the movement conservatives because Newt didn't come to the defense of Fats Limbaugh in a Face the Nation interview:

SMITH: Well, but you also have a voice of ideological purity out there that, unless people kowtow to...

GINGRICH: Yes, shrug them off.

SMITH: Shrug them off?

[snip]

SMITH: So your advice to other Republicans is shrug off Rush Limbaugh?

GINGRICH: My -- my advice is that -- that Colin Powell is a great American. I'm proud that he's Republican. And, you know, Dick Cheney is a great American. I'm proud he's Republican. I'm glad both of them are Republicans.

Finally, Mike Gallagher echoed the hysteria about government-run health care and about Judge Sotomayor, who he accused of being a racist and a sexist.

WHY WAS THIS PUBLISHED?

A visiting hack at the Hudson Institute gets not only to publish an article in Slate, he also gets to include this horrific line:

Nonetheless, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's one-time point man for Middle East democracy, is one among many across the political spectrum who are concerned that by choosing an authoritarian police state for his podium, Obama may be signaling that the United States is ditching democracy promotion.

Let's recall that Wolfowitz didn't include democracy promotion among the 4 reasons he gave for the Iraq War.

PHOTO QUIZ

The top photo is from Pres. Obama's trip to Egypt, the bottom is from his trip to 5 Guys. Looks like a "regular guy," the kind that Chris Matthews and the wingers thought Pres. Fredo was. Unfortunately, Pres. Obama is a Democrat, so War Whore Ingraham was all upset that he wasn't wearing a suit.

NEWT SEZ "WOE IS US"

Newt Gingrich has been hitting the Fundie lecture circuit and that means he's sucking up to them. He recently attended an event in Virginia Beach and pandered thusly:

"I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history," Gingrich said. "We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism."

Doesn't this mean that over 30 years of whining by the Religious Right has been a big FAIL?

IS LOU DOBBS A NEO-CON?

He sounded like one last week when he talked about Israel. First he claimed Israel was "a beacon unto the world." This phrase seems to adapted from the Old Testament:

Isaiah 42:6
Revised Standard version
I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.

He next repeated a familiar wingnut refrain: Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East." Here we have another example of a conservative narrative breaking down because conservatives claim as one of the justifications for the Iraq War the bringing of democracy to the Iraq people.