GOP Ties to Terrorism, FOX's Hypocrisy, and The Daily Show

It's tempting to use it as an example of just how blowful our media has become. I've said for some time that Comedy Central's The Daily Show offers some of the best media criticism out there. Sure, there's Media Matters for America and Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (where I'm sure TDS gets a lot of their ideas), but no one seems able to explain the problems quite so neatly and understandably.

But, in this case at least, it's not that most of the media is so bad, but that Stewart and his writers are so good. Comedy is the perfect outlet to deal with subjects like hypocrisy or corruption, since these subjects lead to outrage. The outrageous is the absurd is the funny. People can suffer from outrage fatigue, but no one ever gets tired of laughing at morons. As a result, the staff at The Daily Show can keep our attention when other media outlets have us reaching for the remote. At the same time, they can draw revealing parallels that are not only instructive, but are the payoff to the setup -- the lede becomes the punchline.

For example, earlier this week, TDS looked at FOX News' coverage of the US Chamber of Commerce's foreign funding scandal and compared it to their coverage of funding for the proposed Muslim community center in Manhattan.

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Getting Serious About the Deficit

If there is a rogue missile aimed at our country, we have 33 minutes to figure out what we're going to do. We are sitting with the only technology in the world that works and it's laser technology. We need 1,000 laser systems put in the sky and we need it right now. That is [of] paramount importance.
-John Raese, West Virginia Republican candidate for the US Senate

So much for fiscal sanity from the Republican Party. Raese's -- oh, let's be generous and call it a "plan" -- would cost the taxpayers $20 billion. At least, that's what he says it would cost; it's clearly a figure from the Republican Ministry of Made-Up Numbers. Who knows what it would really cost?

Would it work? Well, no. See, if it worked we'd be doing it now. Our last president was a big fan of crazy stuff like this, after all. But, according to even missile defense advocates, it "could take two decades to develop." What Raese calls "the only technology that works" doesn't actually work -- not in the real world, anyway. So we're talking about spending a made-up amount of money on nonexistent technology, to counter a threat that doesn't actually exist -- Iran doesn't actually have nukes and North Korea struggles to even get a missile off the pad. And why 1,000 of these orbital deathrays? There's another made-up number for you.

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The Terrorists Among Us

America is under attack from violent religious extremists with no respect for human life. They hate our freedoms and stand against liberty. They do not respect our laws and would dismantle our Constitution. They commit crimes against Americans regularly, speak out against our system of law daily, and spread their hatred through internet chatter every minute of every day. They seek nothing less than the takeover of our nation, so they can force us all the live under the oppression of their religious laws.

Damned Christians.

Look, I'm willing to accept that there are moderate Christians. Good people who just want to live their lives the way they want. But it's hard to believe that the extremists don't speak for them when they're all so silent on their brethren's crimes. Our wake-up call actually came back in May, when a mosque in Jacksonville, Florida was firebombed by radical Christian extremists. It was overlooked -- called an isolated incident -- and we all moved on, foolishly believing that it wouldn't happen again. We aren't some backwater third world nation, we thought, surely our Christian population is civilized.

Then came the cowardly attack on a Muslim cabbie, the desecration of a mosque with urine, a suspected case of arson, and shots fired near those picking through the wreckage of that arson. Not enough? David Gibson has more:

A brick was thrown through the window of a California mosque last week and a few days earlier signs were left at the mosque that read, "No temple for the god of terrorism at Ground Zero." Earlier this month, a plastic pig inscribed with messages such as "Remember 9-11" and "MO HAM MED the Pig" was stuffed into the mailbox of another Islamic center in California. (Like Jews, Muslims have a prohibition on eating pork.)

Clearly, they hate our First Amendment freedoms. So far, I've come across one prominent Christian leader willing to speak out against this hate-wave, but even then, the condemnation was conditional.

"The First Amendment guarantees people the right to worship where they live," [Southern Baptist leader Richard Land] said. "I am calling for all people of faith and good will to stand up for the rights of our Muslim fellow citizens."

Land has criticized plans to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, saying it was too close to the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"This is different," he said. "There's no Ground Zero in Murfreesboro."

The message is clear. The jihad against the mosque in Murfreesboro is getting too much attention, so cool it off for a bit. But the fatwa against a Muslim community center in Manhattan still stands. Incredibly, this terrorist leader was allowed to go free and remains at large. Already, fellow Christians openly discuss carrying out terrorist attacks on their extremist websites.

Some Christians may find being tied to the extremists in their midst offensive, but I'd just point out that I'm only applying the unassailable logic of the Christian right to the Christian right. For example, toward the middle of August, jihadi talk show host Bill O'Reilly ran with the familiar theme. In defense of building Christian and Jewish houses of worship, Bill said, "Nobody would be complaining because Christians and Jews weren't involved in the 9/11 attack. Radical Muslims were. And you may remember the Muslim world largely did not condemn the al Qaeda action, while most Christians and Jews did."

But the Muslim world did condemn the 9/11 attacks. They did it right away. So I can only assume that the condemnation must either be universal or come from the leaders of his choosing before O'Reilly would accept it. We must also assume that these leaders have to actively seek out O'Reilly to make those condemnations in person, since it's clear that he couldn't be bothered to actually look for them in news stories. So I'm just holding O'Reilly to the same standard; I've chosen you, Bill. Come over to my house and condemn Christian terrorism or I'll be forced to assume you're a jihadist yourself. Really, it's the only safe assumption I could make. We can't be too careful in these dangerous times. The only wise thing to do is assume a Christian is terrorist until it's proven otherwise.

Think I'm overreacting? Consider this chilling passage from their holy book, "The Bible":

Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."

Obviously, their holy book calls for the destruction of all infidels, as well as their cities and buildings. The arsonist in Murfreesboro was only obeying his insane god's edict. Unless people like Bill O'Reilly renounce this passage, we can only assume he supports it as well -- as all observant Christians must. Again, it's right there in their holy writings. They cannot deny it.

We mustn't let down our guard, even for a moment. Because if we do, the Christian jihadists will surely see it as a sign of weakness. We are at war with terror, no matter what form that terror takes. If we ignore the fact that we're the target of Christian terrorism, Christians will take advantage of it. It's the logic their leaders apply to the War on Terror, so it only makes sense that we apply it to them as well.

-Wisco


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Glenn Beck, Free Speech, and How Hurt Feelings Trump the First Amendment

It makes me feel sad, so of course, they shouldn't be allowed to do it. Glenn Beck and his racist, anti-government forces will gather in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial -- a memorial to a president killed by a racist, anti-government nutjob -- on the anniversary of Martin Luther King jr's "I have a dream" speech. A speech King gave that day from the same location. He too was killed by a racist. Keep an eye out for confederate flags. It was Lincoln who centralized the federal government these people despise so much. And beyond his civil rights work, King was also anti-war and in support of the hated unions. Clearly, Beck's rally is meant as a victory march on the graves of Lincoln and King, a stab at the heart of a nation still healing -- these many years later -- from the wounds inflicted by the deaths of these two men and the war that nearly tore our nation apart. Sure, they technically have the "right" to do it. But it'll hurt a lot of people's feelings, so "rights" should be ignored in favor of psycho-babble about closure and our deep emotional injuries. Perhaps it would be wisest to add "unless it makes us feel sad" to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

I mean that paragraph only half-mockingly. I doubt the intention is to insult Lincoln and King, but Beck's rally -- as well as his attempt to hijack the legacy of Dr. King -- is offensive. The people attending have been told to leave the signs at home (it's not technically a political rally, you see), but these are the same people whose signs attack the president's race and religion and these are the same people who fly the confederate flag. Expect to see a t-shirt or two that features either/or. And these are the same people who believe a Muslim version of a YMCA "desecrates" the memory of those who died on 9/11. They'll gather in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, on the day that Dr. King told us about the "fierce urgency of Now" -- a phrase that the despised President Obama later took as a title for a book -- and desecrate the memories of Dr. King and President Lincoln. That may not be their intention, but that will be the result all the same.

And they'll be allowed to do this, to deliver this insult to blacks and liberals and anyone who believes that people working together can solve problems (they call this "collectivism" and insist it's inherently evil). They'll be allowed to do this because that's the law and we're not insane. And the massive hypocrisy of what they're doing will be lost on them.





I want you to consider how Beck and the rest of the rightwing media would react to this section of King's speech if it were delivered today:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

Beck himself has already accused Obama of seeking reparations for slavery -- a charge completely without evidence to back it up. Does anyone out there really believe that he wouldn't glom onto this "cash a check" metaphor and cast it literally? Beck would be a friend of King's in the same way he's a friend of Shirley Sherrod and the NAACP. He'd attack him in the very same way. In fact, the tactics haven't changed at all from King's day; Beck would attack him as an anti-patriot and a communist, just as they did back then. Glenn's not fooling many people here.

"Beck is hijacking the imagery and symbolism of August 28 and the Lincoln Memorial to promote an agenda of intolerance," said Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League, told Media Matters. Morial said that Beck "is deliberately trying to poke a stick in our eye, or kick sand in our faces" by holding this rally.

"His vision of America is a vision of America from yesterday and our vision is an America of tomorrow that builds on yesterday," he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist movements in America, calls Beck's rally a "sick farce" and points out that his attacks on Obama and minority leaders have "earned him grudging respect from hardcore white nationalists who usually have little patience for major media."

Even the normally slow-on-the-uptake teabaggers have caught on. "I call it 'Beckaplooza,' because it seems to be all about Beck," Andrew Ian Dodge, the Maine state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, told Politico.

"There have been discussions continuously over the last year about whether he is necessarily a force for good or not necessarily," he said. "Beck takes it outside of the realm of fiscal conservatism into issues that are more emotional and make you wonder if we really want to be associated with this guy." According to the article, Dodge cites "Beck's inflammatory rhetoric, including his blasting of Obama as a racist."

So, when Beck and his little robots are marching around the Lincoln Memorial pretending to be patriots, remember that they're allowed to do this under the First Amendment. A counter-demonstration is planned, because that's freedom of speech too. And when Glenn Beck gets up behind the podium, squirts Vick's Vapo-Rub into his eyes, and starts "weeping for his country," remember that -- as stupid and phony as those tears are -- they're free speech.

Somehow, I doubt Beck and his robots will give that any thought at all. They're big fans of the First Amendment only when it applies to them. Let it apply to Muslims in Manhattan and they couldn't care less.

-Wisco


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The Hate Americans Crowd

It's what they do. Faced with accusations of bigotry, the right always defend themselves by finding token members of the group they're attacking. They aren't racist; look, black teabaggers! They aren't homophobic; see? Here's an anti-equality gay. It's supposed to be proof that the problem isn't their prejudices, because even hated _insert group here_ buy into their unconvincing rationalizations for those prejudices.

And so it is with the right's jihad against mosques. It's not about anti-Islamic sentiment and paranoid wingnut fantasies, it's about the weak justifications for those sentiments and fantasies. As accusations of bigotry rise, the right finds Neda Bolourchi, a Muslim woman whose mother died on 9/11. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Bolourchi defends the position of the prejudiced -- that a Muslim community center in Manhattan should not be built. Not now, not ever.

[A] mosque near Ground Zero will not move this conversation forward. There were many mosques in the United States before Sept. 11; their mere existence did not bring cross-cultural understanding. The proposed center in New York may be heralded as a peace offering -- may genuinely seek to focus on "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture," as its Web site declares -- but I fear that over time, it will cultivate a fundamentalist version of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not.

The Sept. 11 attacks were the product of a hateful ideology that the perpetrators were willing to die for. They believed that all non-Muslims are infidels and that the duty of Muslims is to renounce them. I am not a theologian, but I know that the men who killed my mother carried this message in their hearts and minds. Obedient and dutiful soldiers, they marched toward their promised rewards in heaven with utter disregard for the value of the human beings they killed.

It's hard for me to read the op-ed and not see, "Don't let them build the center, because we are terrible people." For some reason, this one anti-mosque Muslim is supposed to outweigh all the other Muslim voices. We're supposed to mistake the contrarian for the majority and conclude that even Muslims don't approve of a community center within walking distance of Ground Zero. People unwilling to think about it will do just that.

Meanwhile, a New York Times article makes the anti-"Ground Zero mosque" crowd's real agenda clear; no mosques -- nor Muslims -- anywhere in the US.

At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.

In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.

So, if Neda Bolourchi thinks these people are her friends, then Neda Bolourchi is a fool. The people she's defending think she's a terrorist. "What's different is the heat, the volume, the level of hostility," Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky told NYT. "It's one thing to oppose a mosque because traffic might increase, but it's different when you say these mosques are going to be nurturing terrorist bombers, that Islam is invading, that civilization is being undermined by Muslims."

These anti-mosque campaigns are happening all over the country. And the campaigners are pretty much identical in each case -- fairweather patriots who love the Constitution until they don't. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion only applies to their religion. Other religions -- and Islam especially -- should be banned. Let's be clear about one thing; this is Anti-American. It's the worst kind of demagoguery and staggeringly hypocritical for a group who compares everyone and everything to Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. Singling out a religious group for persecution is inexcusable and, if you're one of those doing it, you get to shut up about what a big-time patriot you are. "Patriot" is not a synonym for "dick." You might as well burn a flag, while you're at it.

And once again, I'm disappointed -- but not surprised -- by the seemingly bottomless cowardice of the Republican base. All you need to do is point to someone and say, "fear them!" and the wingnuts are diving under the furniture like there's a tornado on the way. The right is far, far too ready to be afraid and far, far too unwilling to embrace courage. At no time will a talk radio blowhard, FOX News personality, or Republican politician ever call on you to be brave. No, they'll massage that mile-wide yellow streak down the average teabagger's back to stimulate their overly-sensitive panic reflex. But don't worry, the Republican Party will protect you. You just need to go out and vote.

And, of course, the paranoia becomes fulfilling. Treat people like crap for long enough and they'll start to get the idea that you might just be cruel and stupid and unworthy of consideration. Shout insults at someone long enough and the thought of punching you in the mouth becomes more and more welcome.

Raw Story:

The efforts by some groups to prevent the construction of mosques could backfire, suggests a recent study that urges the building of Muslim community centers and mosques as a way of preventing Islamic radicalism.

The two-year-long study (PDF), which was brought to public attention in Sunday's New York Times, states that "the creation of robust Muslim-American communities may serve as a preventative measure against radicalization by reducing social isolation of individuals who may be at risk of becoming radicalized."

It asserts that "the stronger such communities are, in terms of social networks, educational programs, and provision of social services, the more likely they are to identify individuals who are prone to radicalization and intervene appropriately."

Oh wow. Hate and stupidity and jerking knees and demagoguery aren't really constructive.

Imagine my shock.

-Wisco


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Let's All Agree on One Thing -- Andrew Breitbart is Useless

Andrew Breitbart calls himself a journalist. He shouldn't. He's worked as a reporter for E! Entertainment's TV magazine and has served as an editor of the Drudge Report (Yeah, I'm not really sure what being "editor" of a news aggregator actually means either), but that was then, this is now. Let's go way out on a limb and say that those two jobs qualify as "journalism"; Breitbart still is no journalist. I was a cook a long time ago, but you don't see me walking around demanding everyone address me as "Chef." Breitbart quit the journalism business to set up shop as a propagandist.

I just typed out, "My opinion of Andrew Breitbart couldn't get lower," but then I deleted it. It's not exactly true. He could murder a child and I'm pretty sure I'd wind up liking him less, but that's really the only sort of thing that could drag my opinion of him any lower. If you take anything he "reports" seriously, then you're an idiot.

Which makes Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack an idiot. By now, you've probably heard of the story of USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development Shirley Sherrod, fired from that department for about two minutes from a 45 minute speech to the local NAACP. On video, Sherrod tells a story from 24 years ago, when a white farmer came to her for help. She thought he was kind of being a dick about it, talking down to her, so she decided she would not give him "the full force of what I could do."

"Racist!" cried Breitbart.





The weird thing about it is that even edited down as it is, you can still see where this story's going. "That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have," she says at the end of the clip. "It's not so much about [white and black]... because I took him as one of his own." We already see that it's about fighting racism within ourselves, which of course was exactly the moral of the story. When the entire tape came out, it was clear that Sherrod did help this guy, that she wasn't working for the feds at the time, and that Andrew Breitbart was a major source of misinformation pollution in our national discourse. In fact, Sherrod and the man she was accused of harming are actually friends now and as her friend, Roger Spooner and his wife ran to CNN to defend her.

Oh, and Shirley Sherrod was out of a job. AG Secretary Vilsack demanded her resignation and got it -- a move the White House is reviewing.

I propose a new rule; throw Breitbart in the same box with Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You know, the one labeled "Sources not to be trusted unless independently verified by centuries of empirical research." In fact, Breitbart's reporting here was so shaky that not even serial race-baiter and liar Glenn Beck would run with it. I don't care who you are or what you do, do not ever take action on Breitbart reporting. Ever. He is a one-man BS factory, while his two sites are more of a group effort in the manufacture and distribution of BS. In the world of journalism, he should be the target of mockery and ridicule -- either a blatant liar or a bumbling fool too incompetent to actually verify his sources.

Andrew Breitbart seems to take personal offense at the things said about the tea party -- as if they were being said of him. When accusations of racism within the movement sprung up, Breitbart had to prove the accusers were racist themselves. Not that this would actually prove that there weren't racist teabaggers, but let's not look for evidence of reason in an obsessive's mind. For Andy, one instance of racism apparently cancels out another. It's an idiot's math.

Kate Conway at Media Matters has a helpful hint for media and government in a post titled "Never trust Andrew Breitbart." Can you guess what that hint is? That's right, never trust Andrew Breitbart. The post is too long for me to do justice here, so suffice it to say that Andy has a record of lying, mudslinging, exaggerating, propagandizing, smearing, and general media villainy as long as your arm. So Conway is right; never trust Andrew Breitbart. Am I putting enough emphasis on "never?" Let's try "never!" then.

Media: do not let this man anywhere near your news cycle, he'll just stain it with horsecrap. And government: hire Shirley Sherrod back and don't ever, ever, ever believe a word from Breitbart's websites again.

-Wisco


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Calling Teapartiers Racist Offends Rightwing PC

The Tea Party is angry. They're angry about taxes -- at a time when their taxes where almost certainly reduced. They're angry about government spending -- after being silent about an eight-year government spending spree. They're angry about intrusive, big government -- while supporting candidates who advocate torture, warrantless wiretapping, government regulation the sort of sex you're allowed to have, and keeping women pregnant against their will. Hypocrisy seems to be a hallmark of the teabaggers, along with runaway ignorance and a new -- and disturbing -- sort of politically correctness.

But one thing the Tea Party is most definitely not is racist. Pointing out racists among the teabaggers is mostly definitely verboten by their new PC. And, since the teabaggers are just an extension of the Republican Party's base, it is likewise most un-PC to accuse the party of racism. And now the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is being most un-PC.

ABC News:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People this evening unanimously passed a resolution that calls on Tea Party members to repudiate what [NAACP President Ben] Jealous says are "ultra-nationalist and racist factions within the organization."

The resolution said the Tea Party members have used "racial epithets," have verbally abused black members of Congress and threatened them, and protestors have engaged in "explicitly racist behavior" and "displayed signs and posters intended to degrade people of color generally and President Barack Obama specifically."

Jealous specifically pointed to signs at rallies portraying President Obama as a witch doctor, and to claims made by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., that Tea Party protesters opposing health care reform hurled racial slurs at them.

"They need to be unequivocal and they need to be responsible and get the bigots out of their organization. It's that simple," Jealous added.

Oh sure, just because some teapartiers walk around with racist signs, it means that there are racists in the Tea Party. The St. Louis Tea Party coalition fired off a counter-resolution accusing the NAACP of bigotry and "hypocritically engaging in the very conduct it purports to oppose." Scholars of tactics in debate will recognize this as the rarely-used "Peewee Herman gambit" -- i.e., "I know you are, but what am I?"

But the question remains; is the Tea Party racist? As the NAACP points out, they seem way too comfortable with racists in their midst -- as is the GOP as a whole. If they don't encourage racist messages, they don't waste a lot of effort in chasing racists out of their rallies. And this is also true of the wider Republican Party. In an effort to promote their new PC, Republicans are pretending that certain Americans don't exist at all.

Associated Press:

Some Republicans are unhappy with the Bonner County [Idaho] Fair's theme of "Fiesta at the Fair," in light of ongoing battles to stop illegal immigration from Mexico.

The Bonner County GOP said it will decorate its booth with the word "celebrate" instead of "fiesta." The Republicans have also asked Arizona officials for some license plates to put in the booth, to show support for that state's controversial law targeting illegal immigrants.

"The Republicans at BCRCC want to make it very clear that English is our primary language, and call our booths 'Celebrate!' and display some Arizona license plates if you have some to spare," Bonner County Republican Central Committee Chairman Cornel Rasor wrote in a letter to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, according to The Spokesman-Review newspaper.

There are no legal Hispanics residents, I suppose. "Bonner County fair board Chairman Tim Cary said the fair was just looking for a theme that's fun to decorate with, and the choice had nothing to do with official language or immigration disputes," according to the report.

"Are we supposed to change the name of a burrito to something in English?" Cary said. "I'm thinking there's some narrow-mindedness here, but that's just my opinion." No Chairman Cary, I don't think that's an opinion. I think that's a fact being demonstrated at the very moment. "Fiesta" has just joined the growing list of words banned by the new rightwing PC. Right after "Islam," probably.

For other news on the non-racist right, we can turn to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which reports that white supremacists are donating to a legal defense fund aimed at helping that state defend it's "papers please" law against a Justice Department lawsuit. This shouldn't surprise anyone, since white nationalists have been behind this law since day one. A law that's practically designed to harass Hispanic people -- legal or not... what's not to love? At this time, the Arizona government is not turning away money raised by hate groups, but whether that changes will depend on whether the rest of the media picks up on that story. So, sadly, I'm guessing no. Like the Tea Party and the GOP, the Republican-led Arizona state government is way too comfortable with racists.

But we can't talk about that, because that's not PC.

-Wisco


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It's Only Hate Speech When Liberals Say It

Unless you've been actively avoiding the news, you've probably heard that Helen Thomas has been forced into retirement. Having been part of the White House press corps since the days of JFK, Thomas has covered every president in many people's lifetime, myself included. Often referred to as a liberal, Thomas cut no one any slack; she was a critical of Clinton as she was of Nixon, as hard on Obama as she was on Bush. You get the feeling that she has an actual distaste for powerful people and always assumes they're lying, which is probably what made her such a great reporter. She was always looking for the flaw in the argument, no matter how popular or unpopular that argument was.

Still, it's hard to find a way to excuse this:

OK, a couple of points here. First and foremost, "Go back where you came from!" is always a crappy argument and this instance is no exception. Yes, Israel is a European colony (before the establishment of the Israeli state, Jews made up only one-sixth of the population of what was then called Palestine), but history shows you can't undo colonialism. Even in a colony as young as Israel. Not only was Thomas's statement offensive to many people, it was also incredibly simplistic.





And then, of course, there's the hypocrisy. For the record, Americans don't get to make this argument. Unless Helen was preparing to hand her house over to an Algonquin, she has no business telling other colonials to give anything back to an indigenous population. Regardless of whether the "Go back where you came from!" argument is good or bad, the vast majority of Americans can't make it with any logical consistency or moral authority.

That said, you'll notice that the clip isn't the most timely bit of footage you've ever seen. The timestamp at the beginning of the video reads, "White House, Jewish Heritage Celebration, May 27, 2010." Israel began to catch a lot of heat for an attack on an aid ship on May 31. The video hit the media last weekend. And suddenly, everyone's talking about Helen Thomas being mean to Israelis, when the story just hours before was about Israelis' being way more than just mean to international peace activists. Mavi Marmara? What's that, some new dish at the Olive Garden? We've all gotta talk about Helen Thomas now! The media has the attention span of a goldfish and the "freedom flotilla" was knocked right off the news.

And, of course, there's evidence that the rabbi who took the footage was a rightwing dick. RaceWire found video of the same man in a "comedy skit," doing a racist parody of a Mexican immigrant. Of course, once that got out, Rabbi David Nesenoff pulled the video from YouTube. You don't delete a video you're able to defend. So, like Helen Thomas, it looks like Rabbi Nesenoff is guilty of some hypocrisy here. Perceived antisemitism is one thing, but undeniable anti-Mexican racism is another, more acceptable (if not defensible) thing, I guess.

And if Helen Thomas had to go, then what special magical protection does Pat Buchanan have? You want an actual, honest-to-goodness antisemite? There ya go. Or maybe someone can explain how advocating the expulsion of all Palestinians from Israel is logically different from what Thomas suggested? That's Mike Huckabee's argument. Where Helen Thomas basically made an unhelpful suggestion, Huckabee's advocating ethnic cleansing. He still works at FOX. No big media controversy there. Fred Malek, Richard Nixon's "Jew counter," is a Republican powerbroker now. This fact is greeted with a yawn by the media. Helen Thomas, being a liberal, is different. She conforms to the media narrative that liberals hate Israel and, by extension and suggestion, Jews. If something contradicts that narrative, it's just ignored.

Israel is automatically right in America, which means any criticism of Israel is automatically wrong -- so long as said critic is liberal. Thomas's comments may have been less than constructive -- even stupid and offensive -- but no more so than anything people on the right say almost daily about Palestinians or Israelis. A long career of excellent journalism comes to an end, because a reporter sinned against the right's version of politically correctness. And careers of idiotic punditry go on, because they operate within the confines of acceptable conservative racism.

-Wisco


UPDATE: Rabbi Nesenoff's video is up at Mediaite, if you're interested. I started watching, but was overcome by the unfunny idiocy of the whole thing. If you can make it through it, you're a stronger person than I.


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Cantor Unveils Plan to Eliminate Deficit Within 100,000 Years

Washington is spending way too much of your money on crazy things like keeping you healthy and keeping our economy afloat. After years of spending money hand over fist, without any thought to where that money was going to come from, Republicans have suddenly woken up to the idea that deficits are bad. That'd be news to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who famously told former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter. We won the midterms. This is our due." For his weird fetishism over the deficit, O'Neill was fired a month later -- by Cheney.

But there is no more zealous believer than the convert. Dick, George, and their free-spending White House crew are gone, so it's time to tighten the belt to pay for all the money that Dick, George, and their free-spending White House crew threw down the rathole. Luckily for America, House Republicans have an awesome idea on how to whittle that deficit down to nothing in no time:

The new GOP page explains:

YouCut – a first-of-its-kind project - is designed to defeat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress. It allows you to vote, both online and on your cell phone, on spending cuts that you want to see the House enact. Vote on this page today for your priorities and together we can begin to change Washington's culture of spending into a culture of savings.

Yay for Republicans!

There's just one little problem, none of the ideas you're allowed to vote on (you can't submit your own ideas) add up to jack. Savings range from $600 million to a mere $1 million. The federal budget deficit last year was $1.4 trillion. Not only aren't Republicans willing to make the tough choices, they aren't even willing to make the easy ones. Not on their own, anyway. They need you to decide what chicken feed gets cut. But you get to vote every week, so I guess it adds up. Or not.

"What's especially interesting, though, is that all of the proposals don't amount to much given the larger budget picture," writes Steve Benen. "Merit aside, if officials were to scrap every penny of the spending on Cantor's list, it would save taxpayers about $1.1 billion a year."

At that rate, this new Republican idea should eliminate the deficit in... quick back of the envelope calculation... Oh, about 20,000 years. Of course, that's not the rate at which Cantor's willing to cut. Remember, you get to choose one, not all. There are five possibilities this go-round, so if that's any indication of how this thing's going to work going forward, we should be out of the deficit hole in about 100,000 years. It's that sort of lightning-quick action we really need these days.

It strikes me that it's probably not a coincidence that Cantor's new big idea follows an Economist/YouGov poll last month showing that, when it comes to the budget, the average person is largely ignorant. And who can blame us? We've got our own budgets to keep an eye on. That's why we elect people to keep an eye on the federal budget for us and pay them to do it. It's worth pointing out that Cantor's all but admitting that he's unwilling to do that job.

According to the poll, 71% believe we should reduce foreign aid to cut the deficit. But foreign aid accounts for less than %1 of all government spending. We could eliminate it entirely and not even put a dent in the deficit. Starting to see a similarity here between the popular notion of what reduces the deficit and Cantor's little gimmick? Yeah, me too.

"In contrast, Democratic plans on health care, student loans, and energy policy would produce significant budget savings," Benen writes, "but generated apoplectic opposition from Cantor and other Republicans." See, those are Democratic ideas to reduce the deficit, which are socialism! Apparently, real capitalist deficit reduction takes about as long as the process of fossilization.

Of course, Cantor's little project is nothing but a gimmick. He wants you to believe that the ideas presented represent government waste, but number one on the list is eliminating the Presidential Election Fund, which provides matching funds for presidential candidates. Cantor says this will save $260 million in savings, but you probably know this better as the $1 check-off on your tax form. It's a voluntary program. It wouldn't save anything because, if the program ended, so would that check-off and so would the revenue generated by it. We'd be able to raid that fund once as we eliminated it -- if we were smart about it -- but after that we'd get nothing. There's a good chance we could reduce the deficit more with a yearly telethon, bake sale or fun run.

But, of course, this isn't a serious attempt to reduce the deficit at all. It's just the Republican Party trying -- and, one would hope, failing -- to rehab their image as hopeless spendthrifts. It's what they've been doing since Obama took office. If they want to get back into power, gimmicks might do the trick. However, if they want to stay in power, this isn't going to cut it. They're going to have to come up with real ideas and real solutions. I'm not holding my breath. What they've come up with so far is a joke. Instead of solving problems, they pretend to solve problems. And reality TV-style "vote them off the island" games are no way to govern.

-Wisco


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Tea Party Statists

Supposedly, I'm a statist. That's a fun new word all the teabaggers have learned from objectivist Utopians. It apparently means someone who's secretly a commie or a Nazi or both (they don't seem extremely clear on the difference). Or someone who believes in global warming and thinks we ought to do something about it before a bunch of people die. Or those who think that maybe not getting reamed by insurance companies might make for a helpful change of pace. Or someone who thinks that someone ought to do something about the fact that women make less on average -- for the same jobs -- as men. You know, crazy, pie-in-the-sky stuff like that. I love me some of that "Big Gummint."

And I do, to a point. I believe that government can be a force for good. If you have trouble believing that, then you need to consider big government programs like the GI Bill, the Civil Rights Act, and rural electrification. I think it's probably a good idea to make sure kids can read and, further, have some understanding of history, literature, science, and the arts. I think we have a responsibility to make sure houses and cars aren't death traps and that the food and pharmaceuticals sold to us are safe. Call me irresponsible, but I don't put a lot of trust in the Invisible Hand of the Market. Anyone who looks at the market meltdown, anyone who's paying attention to the Goldman Sachs fraud case, anyone who remembers Enron and Tyco and WorldCom, the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble, knows that this Invisible Hand is attached to a very visible mental invalid. The Genius of the Market is really just a drooling moron. It turns out that the financial world isn't greater than the sum of its intellectual parts. The opposite is true. It's prone to groupthink and a herd mentality that occasionally stampedes us all off a cliff.

Strangely, I harbor the belief that maybe we shouldn't let stampede happen. I guess this makes me part of some commie plot to institute a one-world government and crush out the light of liberty in the world.





So what about the people calling me a statist and saying this is the worst thing in the world to be? Some of them are Libertarians. I consider fullblown objectivist Libertarianism to be a form of political moonyism, but at least there's some reasoning behind it -- as flawed and blind to human events and nature as that reasoning is. Others are just repeating something they heard Glenn Beck or some equally insane blowhard say. They have no idea what it means but, like "Communism," "Fascism," and "unconstitutional," they just use it as a synonym for "bad."

And it's these people who seem to use the term most. "Big gummint-lover" doesn't have the same suggestion of smarts, so "statist" it is. So let's talk about statism. Real statism. What the morons mistakenly refer to as "patriotism." Specifically, police statism.

You've got people walking around tea parties in t-shirts with photos of Bush on them and the caption, "Miss Me Yet?" This despite the fact that, if there was ever a police statist in the White House, it was George W. Bush. You've got torture, indefinite detention, an honest-to-God concentration camp, warrantless wiretapping, and a political chauvinism that viewed political rivals not as opponents, but as enemies of the state and lovers of terrorism. A lot of people out there defend "Obama=Hitler" signs by saying that some lefties did the same to Bush. But in all honesty, who resembles fascism more -- they guy torturing people in a concentration camp and listening in on your phone calls or the guy who wants you to be able to afford healthcare and wants to make sure some dick on Wall Street doesn't screw you with his hubris and egotism? Bush got the comparison not because lefties are crazy, but because he practically invited it.

Now, you've got Lovers of Liberty who argue that women should be forced to remain pregnant against their will. That Arizona law should require all Hispanics to carry their papers with them at all times. That people should be discriminated against because of what they do in bed and who they love. These true statists believe that the government isn't a guiding force, but that the state is hammer used to crush those they deem insufficiently American. If the state's bullying people into thinking and behaving the way they do, well that's fine. Somehow, this isn't a love of big, oppressive and repressive government. I guess because they say so.

So the next time someone calls me a statist, I'll give them the link to this post. It'll save a lot of time, because I won't have to explain why I'm laughing at them.

-Wisco


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GOP Hypocrisy -- Again

Over the weekend, the media and the blogosphere were abuzz with the story that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens may retire. With the justice being 89 years old, this shouldn't surprise anyone. And, given recent history, it also won't surprise many to learn that things will probably get very stupid. It won't make any difference who President Obama nominates to replace Stevens, that nominee will be painted as a terrorist and/or (probably "and") a communist.

If we've learned one thing in recent years, it's that elected Republicans are reactionaries and that the reactions their jerking knees lead them to is always completely out of proportion to the facts. We've also learned that Republican voters, aided by talk radio blowhards and lunatic conspiracy theorists on FOX News and the internet, are panicky grandmas who are afraid of their own shadows and, worse, are almost eager to be frightened into a stampede of sheep. If Glenn Beck or Michelle Malkin say that the Obama nominee wants to kill everyone, then they'll be more than happy to believe what confirms their own paranoid fantasies.

Wait, did I say that "things will probably get very stupid?" I guess I misspoke. There is no nominee and things have already begun to get stupid.

Huffington Post:

The second-ranking Republican in the Senate suggested on Sunday that the party would filibuster the next appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, if that nominee were deemed to be outside of the judicial mainstream.

"It will all depend on what kind of a person it is," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) declared during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." "I think the president should nominate a qualified person. I hope, however, he does not nominate an overly ideological person. That will be the test, and if he doesn't nominate someone who is overly ideological, you may see Republicans voting against, but I don't think you will see them engage in a filibuster."

What makes for an "overly ideological" judge? We got a little preview of that. Arlen Specter was interviewed at the same time and told Chris Wallace that maybe we needed someone to balance out the court.

"I am a little troubled by what Arlen said," Kyl countered. "Don't have somebody coming in with preconceived attitudes. I'm going to be tough on the executives or I'm going to be for the little guy, we've had too much of that."

We've had too much of judges "standing up for the little guy?" Really? If Democrats don't grab that quote and run with it, someone's just not doing their job. It's about the dumbest damn thing I've heard in a while, as well as being nowhere near true.

And is Kyle actually threatening to filibuster a judicial nominee? Here's Kyle in 2005 on eliminating the filibuster when voting on judicial nominees (the "nuclear option"):

For 214 years it has been the tradition of the Senate to approve judicial nominees by a majority vote. Many of our judges and, for example, Clarence Thomas, people might recall, was approved by either fifty-one or fifty-two votes as I recall. It has never been the rule that a candidate for judgeship that had majority support was denied the ability to be confirmed once before the Senate. It has never happened before. So we're not changing the rules in the middle of the game. We're restoring the 214-year tradition of the Senate because in the last two years Democrats have begun to use this filibuster.

"[W]hat would occur as a result of the question that will be asked to the presiding officer in this debate is basically, is it the tradition of the Senate to have an up or down vote to give these nominees an up or down vote with the majority vote prevailing or is the last two years the real precedent of the Senate to require 60 votes?" Kyle said on the same program. "And I think that the presiding officer will say no the tradition of the Senate has been that a majority vote prevails."

By the way, all the Republicans called filibustering judicial nominees "unprecedented" and all the Republicans were wrong.

But more important is that Kyle is basically arguing that when Democrats filibuster a judicial nominee, it's a disaster of historic proportions. But when Republicans filibuster a judicial nominee, it's democracy in action. I'm getting awfully damned tired of typing out the word "hypocrisy" every other time I write about Republicans. It's tiring. I wish they'd just knock it off and try honesty for a change.

I'm torn over which offends me more, the Republican belief in my stupidity and inability to remember five years back or the idea that the American public needs to be protected from someone who'll "stand up for the little guy" -- i.e., the vast majority of the American public.

I guess in the end I can combine the two -- and a lot more -- by saying I'm offended by the shamelessness of the Republican party. Because Sen. Jon Kyle, Republican of Arizona, just announced he'd filibuster any nominee who'd promise to protect the American people from getting screwed.

And he said it as if it was a good thing.

-Wisco


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