Bill O'Reilly uses the Oslo terrorist attacks to claim that there's a massive media conspiracy to undermine Christianity

Holy fuck, first Beck, and now O'Reilly? What is the right wing's obsession with saying incredibly stupid things about terrorist attacks? Nixon himself couldn't give a better example of Nixonian "establishment" paranoia.

Video here

"Breivik is not a Christian. That's impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder. The man might have called himself a Christian on the net, but he is certainly not of that faith. Also, Breivik is not attached to any church, and in fact has criticized the Protestant belief system in general. The Christian angle came from a Norwegian policeman, not from any fact-finding. Once again, we can find no evidence, none, that this killer practiced Christianity in any way. So why is the angle being played up?

Two reasons: First, the liberal media wants to make an equivalency between the actions of Breivik and the Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh, and al-Qaeda. The left wants you to believe that fundamentalist Christians are a threat, just like crazy jihadists are. In fact, in the New York Times today, an analysis piece says that some believe we have we have overreacted to the Muslim threat in the world. Of course, that's absurd. Jihadists have killed tens of thousands of people all over the world. The Taliban, Iran, elements in Pakistan, use governmental power to support terrorism by Muslims. But the left wing press wants to compare nuts like Breivik and McVeigh to state-sponsored terrorism and worldwide jihad. Again, dishonest and insane.

The second reason the liberal media is pushing the Christian angle is, they don't like Christians very much, because we are too judgmental. Many Christians oppose abortion, gay marriage, and legalized narcotics--secular left causes. The media understands the opposition is often based on religion. So they want to diminish Christianity, and highlighting so-called Christian-based terror is a way to do that.

The primary threat to this world comes from Islamic terrorism. Iran is a major problem. If the country gets nuclear weapons, and is desperately trying to, does anyone doubt those weapons could be used? A Muslim in Pakistan exported nuclear technology to North Korea. And Muslim suicide bombers blow innocent people up almost every day. Yet once again the liberal media wants you to fear Christian terrorists. And going forward, when jihad is mentioned, you know Breivik and McVeigh will enter the conversation.

Sometimes I think the world's going mad. This Breivik guy is a loon, a mass murderer who apparently acted out of rank hatred. No government supported him, no self-proclaimed terror group like al-Qaeda paid his bills. Breivik is just another loser who caused tremendous horror by murdering innocent people. There is no equivalency to jihad, no worldwide Breivik movement. Just another violent, pathetic legacy stemming back to Cain.

You will never see a better example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. People often throw "No True Scotsman" around without fully understanding it, but this is just spot on. This is textbook dumbfuckery. Debunking this won't be hard:

1) No True Scotsman is a logical fallacy.
2) Logical fallacies are always wrong.
3) Bill O'Reilly used No True Scotsman.
C) Bill O'Reilly is wrong.

Out of all the fucking dumbshit things O'Reilly spewed out in this heap of garbage, this line pissed me off the most: "No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder."



Hitler believed in Jesus. The Vatican supported Adolf Hitler. The Spaniards who came to America committed genocide out of a belief that Indians were literally the spawn of Satan. The Americans who spread west by murdering and displacing hundreds of thousands of Indians did so because the Christian God commanded them to (Manifest Destiny). The Ku Klux Klan lynches people in the name of God. The Inquisition tortured and killed thousands of people because they thought witchcraft was real. Anders Behring Breivik killed 76 people, most of whom were teenagers and children. There is absolutely no reason why someone cannot simultaneously be a mass murderer, and also believe that Jesus Christ is the son of the creator of the universe.

There's also one other thing I want to point out. Why is it that Christian terrorists are never "true Christians," but Muslim terrorists always represent their entire religion? Oh yeah. Because Bill O'Reilly is a fucking racist piece of shit.

Glenn Beck compares the children who were murdered in Oslo to the Hitler Youth

"Saturday I was following the news of the shooting in Norway and the explosion in Norway, which happened what on Friday…When we heard the explosion everybody was willing to say, it’s Muslim extremists, it’s Muslim extremists. I don’t think we made a comment on it because we didn’t know other than a bombing had happened, and as the thing started to unfold and there was a shooting a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth or you know whatever. Who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing. But, anyway, so there’s this political camp and so crazy man goes and starts shooting kids."

Source

Funny, Beck didn't seem to mention his own summer camp for 8-12 year olds meant to teach children about "the principles of liberty, free markets, and limited government." You know what that sounds like to me? Hitler. Every child who goes to that summer camp is literally Adolf Hitler.

Aside from the whole 'Hitler Youth' thing, did the language Beck used jump out at anybody else? Breivik -- who is white, Christian, and right wing -- is not a terrorist. He's only a "crazy man." Fox News also refuses to associate him with terrorism, or even as a right winger. They called him a 'domestic extremist.' It's institutionalize racism, and it couldn't be more plain. Why don't they just call him what he is -- a Christian extremist. Beck used the words "Muslim extremist" candidly, what's changed? The terrorist himself isn't even ashamed of it. Breivik unabashedly describes himself as "the greatest defender of cultural-conservatism in Europe since 1950" and "the savior of Christianity" (I thought that was jesus lol).

You know, I've seen this popular idea among progressives that we shouldn't talk about far right political figures like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. The theory is that since the media pays attention to what the public is interested in, then not being interested in right wing dumbfucks will force the media to stop talking about them. If we ignore Beck, the media will ignore him too.

To me this idea just seems like a useless symbolic gesture. It gives us comfort thinking we hold power where we don't. Beck and Palin don't give a shit if progressives listen to them or not. They're not talking to us. They have a loyal audience who they know will never abandon them no matter what they say. Those are the sheep they're talking to. If anything, ignoring what Beck and Palin have to say puts the rest of us at a disadvantage. We would have no idea what the Republican base is thinking. And as the Republican party inches further and further towards fascism, it's more important than ever to understand the mindset they're in.

I mean, just think about this in a practical sense. I hate pop music. I think everyone who pays attention to fashion or pop culture is wasting their fucking lives. It's stupid. Since when has ignoring meaningless bullshit ever made it go away? I've ignored pop culture for my entire life, and Amy Winehouse's overdose still got more coverage than the Oslo terrorist attacks. My willful ignorance didn't do a thing. Everyone needs to realize that it is the media's job to guide our opinions -- not the other way around. If we want to change the way the media works, then it requires action, not willful ignorance. What got Beck off the air was an organized boycott of his advertisers. That's what these people pay attention to. That shit works. Even if I did choose to ignore Beck, how would they even fucking know? Do media elites read my blog? Ad revenue and profits are the only language these people understand, and until progressives realize that, everything we try to do to change this situation is just going to be useless circle jerking.

Al Jazeera Opinion: Global capitalism and 21st century fascism

Link

Obama’s campaign tapped into and helped expand mass mobilisation and popular aspirations for change not seen in many years in the United States. The Obama project co-opted that brewing storm from below, channelled it into the electoral campaign, and then betrayed those aspirations, as the Democratic Party effectively demobilised the insurgency from below with more passive revolution.

In this sense, the Obama project weakened the popular and left response from below to the crisis, which opened space for the right-wing response to the crisis - for a project of 21st century fascism - to become insurgent. Obama’s administration appears in this way as a Weimar republic. Although the social democrats were in power during the Weimar republic of Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s, they did not pursue a leftist response to the crisis, but rather side-lined the militant trade unions, communists and socialists, and progressively pandered to capital and the right before turning over power to the Nazis in 1933.

I feel that a lot of similarities can be drawn between our current political situation, and the social divide of the 60s. But a huge difference nowadays is that only one side has the extremists. You had both right wing and left wing extremists in the 60s, but these days the left is largely apathetic. They certainly have loud voices here and there, but nothing that could be considered “extreme,” and certainly nothing strong enough to counterbalance the neofascist rhetoric of the extreme right. I am a little hopeful though. The pro-labor backlash in Wisconsin and elsewhere shows that Americans aren’t going to take this shit lying down, and contrary to what the media likes to show, the right wing extremists really don’t make up that much of the population. Give it a few years. If you put America into the timeline of the Weimar Republic, we maybe have a decade or more until “fascists” take over. But by the time that’s supposed to happen, our generation will have grown up and matured, and will have started taking our foothold in American politics. In addition, the Republican leadership right now is nothing but a bunch of bumbling oafs who can’t get their shit together. It’ll all depend on if they can find their charismatic alpha male, and on how effective corporate propaganda is on the American people. But I’m even hopeful towards that, since the average viewer of Fox News is in his 60s. I’ve previously been extremely cynical about America’s future, but now I’m not so sure anymore. Both optimistic and pessimistic outcomes seem possible to me. The 2012 election is going to be interesting.

Glenn Beck's TV show will be pulled

Fox announced today that Beck will "transition off of his daily program" later this year.

His radio show wasn't mentioned, so he'll probably still have that. Regardless, this is still a huge victory for truth and rationality. Shame on Fox for giving an outlet to conspiracy theorists and sensationalist lies. If you listen to the regular conservative voices like Hannity or O'Reilly, I'm still going to think you're a bit of an idiot. But people like Limbaugh and Beck go way beyond the pale. They are pure propagandists, and I'm not going to respect your opinion if you take them seriously.

But part of me is still going to miss him a little. As horrifying as his ideas are, you can't help but sit back and laugh at how fucking dumb he is. We'll miss you, Glenn. Here's his greatest hits.

• Glenn Beck says Japan deserved the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster because God is punishing them

• Glenn Beck asks a Muslim Congressmen to prove he's not a terrorist

• Glenn Beck calls the president a "racist" with "a deep-seeded hatred for white people" and "white culture."

• Glenn Beck rapes the memory of Thomas Paine

As a lover of revolutionary American history, this, above everything else, has pissed me off the most. Beck got a guy to dress up and pretend to be Thomas Paine. But instead of reciting Paine's anti-nationalist, anti-religious, proto-socialist views, this asshole portrayed Paine as a xenophobic neocon who agreed with Glenn Beck on everything.

• Glenn Beck literally inspires terrorism

Wisconsin Republicans found a way to kill unions without the 14 Democrats present

After Scott Walker said he was going to negotiate, the Republicans abused a loophole tonight with no warning, allowing part of their "budget" bill to be passed without any of the Democrats present. In order to do this, they had to split the bill into two parts. They were able to vote on the section that banned union collective bargaining rights, because it was not a fiscal issue. By doing this, they blatantly admitted that this has nothing to do with the budget, and it's always been about killing unions.

To pass spending measures, 20 senators must be present, but Republicans hold just 19 seats. But Republicans would not need any Democrats to be present to pass the collective bargaining changes as a standalone bill because it is not fiscal in nature.They raised concerns that Republicans would take out all the spending in the bill and leave only the changes to collective bargaining.

They just threw fifty years of progress in workers' rights out the window. But I'm still hopeful. Unless he's looking at a presidential run, Scott Walker has effectively just committed political suicide. Wisconsin polls are overwhelmingly against this, and efforts for a recall of state senators have already reached a full quarter of the required signatures. But look on the bright side, Walker! If you, Sarah Palin, and Donald Trump run for president (yes, Donald Trump has been whispering about it), the Republican primaries will consist of two reality TV stars, and a teabagger who never graduated college!



There are questions about the legality of what has just happened, and you can bet your ass it's going to be challenged. Democrats have contacted Wisconsin's Attorney General. If these efforts fail, and this becomes the new status quo, then the last real counterweight of a corporate takeover of the United States has been cut off at the knees, and everything else is up for grabs. All I'm going to say is that the Corporations Republican Party has a headquarters in Madison. Hey guys, check out what Londoners did to the HQ of their conservative party. Not advocating anything. Just letting you know about it, it has nothing to do with anything ever.

Propaganda in America is alive and well

If you think Fox News is fair or balanced, then you are brainwashed and I'm not going to respect your opinions. A couple years ago, I wouldn't have agreed with that. I used to tolerate it as just a conservative wing of the media. But they are literally making shit up now, and if you still think there's a shred of actual journalism left with these propagandists, then there is nothing I can say or show you that can change your mind. Please leave. To those of you who still have power over your own opinions, here's a couple examples of Fox's fair and balanced coverage of Wisconsin.

Here's Bill O'Reilly portraying the Wisconsin protests as violent by airing footage of protesters who are not in Wisconsin. Fifteen seconds in, you will see palm trees.



Whoopsie daisy! Honest mistake! Just like when they aired the wrong rally footage to make Michelle Bachman look good! Or when they made it look like Ron Paul was booed at CPAC when he was never actually booed! Or when they took out laughter and applause at Obama's State of the Union address to replace it with silence and cricket sound effects! Or that one time when they showed the Gallup poll that said 61% of Americans opposed taking away collective bargaining rights for unions, and then reversed the results for no god damn reason.





Who woulda thunkit that all these mistakes just happened to help the Republican party!? What a funny coincidence! They should really have a talk with the guy who keeps messing this up, he's such a silly klutz!

But now they're going beyond simply editing footage. Now they've moved on to blatant lying. I can't find any footage of this, but a week or so ago, I saw someone on Hannity say that Scott Walker's budget bill would not eliminate collective bargaining rights for unions. That is a lie. But it gets worse. In their endless quest to portray the "violent" protesters in Wisconsin as something they're not, they made up a story about one of their reporters being “attacked,” “punched,” “hit,” and “battered" in the middle of a crowd. On live television. This should be a huge story! Why isn't the footage being blasted all across the air waves? What? He received a friendly pat on the shoulder? But... but... violent libruls... nazis... socialists... hitler...

Walker's Budget Bill Passes the Wisconsin House

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Newest right-wing smear: Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ

Right now I'm reading a book about Richard Nixon and the political divide of the 60s/70s (highly recommended), and it's made me realize something. These paranoid right wing fucks dominating the media right now may seem silly and sometimes frightening to a 20-something year old who's never seen anything like it, but they really have nothing on the right wing psychopaths of the 60s. Holy. Shit. I was so naïve, and I'm sorry.

I mean, there were certainly left wing militants in the 60s, but most of the dirty hippies were too obsessed with sitting in shacks and smoking pot with their heads up their asses to actually do anything. The fringe on the right wing was absolutely batshit. It was the birth of fascism in America, in all but name. And in a way, the right wing's potential now is even more frightening and dangerous. Reagan gave the lunatics a window into the mainstream, and our cowardly media rarely calls any of them out. But still, we're not here yet:

In Champaign, Illinois, [in 1965] leaders of peace demonstrations got stickers on their mailboxes reading, "You are in the sights of a Minuteman." In Queens, the DA seized an arsenal, to be used by the right-wing vigilante group the Minutemen in assaults on "left-wing camps in a three-state area," including mortars, bazookas, grenades, trench knives, over 150 rifles, a "half dozen garroting devices," and over a million rounds of ammunition.

But it certainly doesn't help when we get McCarthyists like Glenn Beck stoking the fears of what little audience he has left. Here's Rachel Maddow talking about Beck's latest obsession: the end times.

Ann Coulter at CPAC: "I think there should be more jailed journalists." Audience cheers.

When asked about "American values," a fascistsayswhat.



I'm confident Obama can win again in 2012. The GOP can't find anybody to lead them, and they're just going to keep throwing rocks. 2016 though. That's what I'm worried about. At this rate, all the money the GOP is trying to take away from PBS and NPR will soon be directed towards state television.

Glenn Beck thinks communists and socialists are running the Egyptian revolution, and it's only a matter of time until we fall too

People like Glenn Beck, and really most Tea Partiers and Republicans these days, seem to confuse everything they hate as being one single entity. For example, I remember Ann Coulter arguing a long time ago that because liberals are nothing but a bunch of atheists, global warming is simply a replacement for religion for them. She doesn't seem to realize that not all liberals are atheists, and not all atheists are liberals. You see it in the rhetoric these people spew out every day -- comparing liberals to "communists" and "fascists," regardless of the fact that communism and fascism are polar opposites of each other. I don't know what the fuck is going on in their heads, that they're able to make such drastic logical leaps while still believing they're making sense. They've become complete masters at self-manipulation.

Case in point: Glenn Beck seems to have convinced himself that the brown Islamos are also communists. His evidence? There is none. He doesn't have any. He just says things and then they're true. The end. Even Bill "the moon proves the existence of God" O'Reilly tells him he has no evidence.



Oh, and guess what. You remember when the Iranians did their little Iranian thing a couple years ago, with the green an everything? As Glenn Beck brought up in that video, they're not dead yet. They're calling for a 'Day of Rage' on monday. I've been wondering what's been taking them so long.

Former Fox News empoyee speaking anonymously: "Stuff is just made up."

From Media Matters. I've bolded his/her words.

Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”

[...]

“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”

[...]

Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.

“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,” says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.

“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”

The source explains:

“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content. The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”

What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains. “You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”

The source recalls how Fox News changed over time:

“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.

“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.

"When you first get in they tell you we’re a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media. So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.

“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.

“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”

It’s worth noting that Fox News employees, either current or former, rarely speak to the press, even anonymously. And it’s even rarer for Fox News sources to bad mouth Murdoch’s channel. That’s partly because of strict non-disclosure agreements that most exiting employees sign and which forbid them from discussing their former employer. But it also stems from a pervasive us-vs.-them attitude that permeates Fox News. It’s a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.

“It was a kick ass mentality too,” says the former Fox News insider. “It was relentless and it never went away. If one controversy faded, goddamn it they would find another one. They were in search of these points of friction real or imagined. And most of them were imagined or fabricated. You always have to seem to be under siege. You always have to seem like your values are under attack. The brain trust just knew instinctively which stories to do, like the War on Christmas.”

According to the insider, Ailes is obsessed with presenting a unified Fox News front to the outside world; an obsession that may explain Ailes’ refusal to publically criticize or even critique his own team regardless of how outlandish their on-air behavior. “There may be internal squabbles. But what [Ailes] continually preaches is never piss outside the tent,” says the source. “When he gets really crazy is when stuff leaks out the door. He goes mental on that. He can’t stand that. He says in a dynamic enterprise like a network newsroom there’s going to be in fighting and ego, but he says keep it in the house.”

It’s clear that Fox News has become a misleading, partisan outlet. But here’s what the source stresses: Fox News is designed to mislead its viewers and designed to engage in a purely political enterprise.

In 2010, all sorts of evidence tumbled out to confirm that fact, like the recently leaked emails from inside Fox News, in which a top editor instructed his newsroom staffers (not just the opinion show hosts) to slant the news when reporting on key stories such as climate change and health care reform.

Meanwhile, Media Matters revealed that during the 2009-2010 election cycle, dozens of Fox News personalities endorsed, raised money, or campaigned for Republican candidates or organizations in more than 600 instances. And in terms of free TV airtime that Fox News handed over to GOP hopefuls, Media Matters calculated the channel essentially donated $55 million worth of airtime to Republican presidential hopefuls last year who also collect Fox News paychecks.

And of course, that’s when Murdoch wasn’t writing $1 million checks in the hopes of electing more Republican politicians.

So, Fox News as a legitimate news outlet? The source laughs at the suggestion, and thinks much of the public, along with the Beltway press corps, has been duped by Murdoch’s marketing campaign over the years. “People assume you need a license to call yourself a news channel. You don’t. So because they call themselves Fox News, people probably give them a pass on a lot of things,” says the source.

The source continues: “I don’t think people understand that it’s an organization that’s built and functions by intimidation and bullying, and its goal is to prop up and support Republicans and the GOP and to knock down Democrats. People tend think that stuff that’s on TV is real, especially under the guise of news. You’d think that people would wise up, but they don’t.”

As for the press, the former Fox News employee gives reporters and pundits low grades for refusing, over the years, to call out Fox News for being the propaganda outlet that it so clearly is. The source suggests there are a variety of reasons for the newsroom timidity.

“They don’t have enough staff or enough balls or don’t have enough money or don’t have enough interest to spend the time it takes to expose Fox News. Or it’s not worth the trouble. If you take on Fox, they’ll kick you in the ass,” says the source. “I’m sure most [journalists] know that. It’s not worth being Swift Boated for your effort,” a reference to how Fox News traditionally attacks journalists who write, or are perceived to have written, anything negative things about the channel.

The former insider admits to being perplexed in late 2009 when the Obama White House called out Murdoch’s operation as not being a legitimate new source, only to have major Beltway media players rush to the aid of Fox News and admonish the White House for daring to criticize the cable channel.

“That blew me away,” says the source, who stresses the White House’s critique of Fox News “happens to be true.”

THERE IS NO SOURCE AND MEDIA MATTERS MADE IT UP BECAUSE THEY ARE EVIL RADICAL COMMUNISTS FOX NEWS TOLD ME THANK AMERICA'S CHRISTIAN GOD FOR FOX NEWS

This confirms something I've suspected for a long time. The people at Fox know they're biased, but they justify it in their heads because they're convinced everyone else in the news is an evil librul. They're just giving the other side! The true side! The right side! Watch how "left wing" our media is going to be by not reporting this.

Cenk Uygur shows that neocons really don't give a shit about democracy

This is a perfect example of why you always need to do your own research instead of depending on a middle man. I had no idea who the Muslim Brotherhood was when these protests were starting. When I first started hearing their name, I didn't freak out and listen to what the teevee had to tell me. I went and read about them. They're a political party. They used to be pretty insane, but they reformed themselves a few decades ago, and they're now vehemently anti-violence. Al Qaeda hates them because they think they're too soft.

I'm not saying I trust the fuckers, I'm pretty sure they would try to put a theocracy in power, but they're sure as shit not terrorists. Regardless of what I think, Egypt has its own country and its own culture, and it's not my place to question the government they want for themselves as long it's nonviolent. And everything we've seen so far indicates that this revolution is very nonviolent and very modern, so the Muslim Brotherhood may not even get into power at all. But don't take my word for it, because I likely have my own agenda. Go read.

Rush Limbaugh: Liberals should be "silenced" and "not be allowed to buy guns"

Crosspost from tumblr. Here's the transcript. Rush and a caller also say that the Tucson shooter is a "liberal," which is hilarious enough, but then it took a turn for the terrifying.

"I’ve got the solution to all this. I’ve got the solution to most crime in America. From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It’s just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society."

Well, here it is. With the Republican Party trailing further and further right every day, one of them finally went full on fascist and proposed that all opposition should be silenced, and their means of fighting back taken away. If he was trying to discourage me from potential gun ownership, then it had the exact opposite effect. Now my urge to own a gun is stronger than ever.

DEMOCRACY!!!!!!!

The Republican party sparks more terrorism

This is Gabrielle Giffords. She recently won an extremely close race in Arizona against Tea Party candidate Jesse Kelly. She's married to a U.S. Navy captain and astronaut. She ran a tire business before getting into politics. She loves to read, and has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition. Today, she was shot in the head at point blank. At least five people lost their lives, and at least eighteen others are wounded. A nine year old girl is dead. After some rumors that Giffords was killed, it's now confirmed that she's still alive, but in extremely critical condition. The surgeon is as optimistic "as he can be" in a situation like this. She's forty years old. The shooter is a twenty-two year old male. He's in custody.

This is a surprise to everyone except progressives. We've been warning against the consequences of right wing rhetoric for three years, but I guess it takes a god damn massacre for people to start paying attention.

Her opponent Jesse Kelly held target shooting events to "help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office."



A progressive reporter was assaulted by a mob

Sharron Angle thinks that if Republicans don't win, we should start shooting Democrats

Stephen Broden believes violent revolution is "on the table" if Republicans don't win

This Republican politician dresses up like a Nazi in his free time

Democrat Anthony Weiner was mailed some white powder with a letter telling him to "drop dead."

The right wing is calling for the deaths of gays and lesbians

Claiming in his own words to be inspired by Glenn Beck, a man got into a shootout with the cops on his way to California so he could murder members of Tides Foundation and the ACLU

Here's a letter from the Tea Party called "Why liberalism must be destroyed," which claims that "liberalism is the antithesis of freedom," and that "liberals do not want something like the will of the people interfering with their plans, so they have to make sure elections are in fact rigged."



Here's something that in retrospect can be considered nothing less than a hit list, which Sarah Palin put up on her website. The targets are pointing at Democratic politicians. One of the crosshairs on Arizona is pointing at Giffords.



Here's Palin's twitter



And here she is being a complete sociopath



Can you imagine what the reaction would be if this happened to a Republican politician during a Republican presidency? The entire Democratic party would probably be outlawed as a terrorist organization. The media is going to downplay the right wing's role in this. They'll be wrong. A nine year old girl was shot to death because of the actions and words of the Republican party.

The End of New Deal Liberalism

The post-war reconstruction era was the most corrupt and disgusting era in America's entire political history. We were effectively an established plutocracy run by corporations, and it wasn't until the 20th century when a certain man named Theodore Roosevelt came along, that we finally started knocking heads. Corporations became regulated. It became illegal for products to kill their consumers. All seemed well. When the economy imploded after World War I, liberals saw it as further proof that more regulation was needed. And so the greatest president of the 20th century enacted a New Deal. The idea was that if money was pumped into just the right key sectors of the economy, then it will cause a chain reaction and get everything moving again. And it worked. It got the United States out of the Great Depression.

Keynesian economics lost steam over the next few decades, but with the recession at the end of Carter's administration, Americans became disillusioned, and were willing to grasp onto anything. Enter Reagan. Dubbed 'Reaganomics,' his embarrassingly juvenile economic theory claimed that if the richest Americans were taxed less, then all the wealth would "trickle down" to the poor and middleclass. Redistribute the wealth to the rich, and the magical capitalism gods will make sure everyone gets what they deserve! This is the economic theory that the United States has predominantly been using for the past thirty years. What do we have to show for it? For one thing, the world has lost 40% of its entire accumulation of wealth thanks to the economic depression that America sparked. And for another, the top 1% richest Americans own nearly half the currency of the wealthiest nation on the planet, and 47.8 million Americans are living in poverty. For some reason, we have to relearn that the economic policies that caused the Great Depression cause depressions and unacceptable economic disparity.

Except we're not relearning it. The policies of the New Deal that were put into place to prevent another Great Depression from happening have been almost entirely dismantled, and corporate propaganda has convinced the majority of Americans that this is somehow good.

The new Speaker of the House John Boehner is the embodiment of everything that has led us to this point. As Matt Taibbi explains in his great new piece:

Look back over almost every controversial episode in the recent history of the U.S. Congress and you will find Boehner's face appearing, Zelig-like, somewhere in the foreground. He was a key figure in the historic waste of time that was his and Newt Gingrich's witch-hunting effort to get Bill Clinton impeached for lying about a blow job. He crossed the aisle to co-author the No Child Left Behind Act, a grotesque and grotesquely expensive expansion of federal power that helped jack up the federal education budget by an astounding 80 percent in the first five years of Bush's presidency, then voted for the obscene Medicare Part D, a staggering $550 billion handout to the pharmaceutical industry — two portentous initiatives that helped turn the Republicans into the new party of big government.

Then, in the middle of the Bush years, the man who got into office thanks to Buz Lukens' child-groping was enmeshed in his own sex scandal involving minors. When the news broke in September 2006 that Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from Florida, had been sending sexually suggestive e-mails to a 16-year-old male page, it turned out that Boehner had been sitting on the information for months. Nancy Pelosi called for an immediate investigation into the Foley scandal, but Boehner blocked the resolution. Boehner later claimed that he had told then-Speaker Dennis Hastert about the Foley incident as soon as he found out — and promptly retracted his own alibi. The ensuing scandal nearly toppled Hastert, but Boehner survived mostly unscathed.

[...]

But beyond all of that, Boehner just represents a certain type of hollowly driven, two-faced personality unique to the Beltway. It's not so much that he's likely at any moment to start pounding his fist in favor of something that only yesterday he was denouncing as a threat to the American way of life (when benchmarks in Iraq were a Democratic idea, Boehner said they would ensure failure; when George Bush came out for them, he said they were "very important"). Nor is it so much that he's prone to descending into hysterical hyperbole when the well-being of his campaign donors is threatened in even the vaguest way (he called the watered-down Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon," with the ant in question being a financial crisis that wiped out over 40 percent of the world's wealth). It's more that . . . well, you have to spend a lot of time in Washington to know the type, but he's the kind of guy who would step over his mother to score a political point.

Taibbi goes on to explain, in excruciating detail, just how much corporate interests control him. He's a lazy fuck who was dropped into his position almost entirely due to a hapless series of accidents. This man is third in line to be President of the United States. He's leading the charge back to the regressive Bush-Era clusterfuck that used "Reagan" as a brand name to promote the corporate interests they answer to. If any of these people are ever caught in an actual debate about policies, they never stand a chance. That's why they avoid policies altogether.

What does Senator Mitch McConnell say is the chief goal of the Republican party? Fixing the economy? Making sure the poor have food they can eat? Of course not. It's to make Obama a "one-term president." That's what's important. Asked to name a specific program that could be cut to save spending, John Boehner, the leader of the party that's "fiscally responsible," was unable to name a single fucking thing. I'm usually the first to dismiss 1984 comparisons as pure bullshit, but when corporate media is used to control opinions, digital information is regulated, unwarranted wiretapping is perfectly legal, and we fight never-ending wars for decades at a time, shouldn't we be a little more vigilant than we normally would? If you still think these manipulative bags of shit have us in their best interests, then you are responsible for transforming America into everything our revolution was fought against.

Ann Coulter calls Cenk Uygur a 'retarded person'

GOProud is an organization of gay republicans. Republicans don't think gay people should serve in the military, or enjoy the benefits of the Christian institution of marriage like atheists can (as long as they're straight), but for some reason, these people really think the Republicans are fighting for them. I feel like I'm obligated to make an Uncle Tom reference, but I'm white, and I haven't got around to reading that book yet, so I can't do that in good conscience. One of my favorite libruls Cenk Uygur interviewed one of them last week. You can watch it if you want, but the real story is below.



"The conservative movement offers policy fixes that are better for gay couples."

loooooooooooolllll

Known witch Ann Coulter saw this video, and used her twitter to call Cenk retarded. Think about this. Not only does she use twitter, but she tweeted the word "retarded." This is further evidence for my theory that GOP talking points are made up by high schoolers.



Well, when Cenk isn't filling in for MSNBC's real commentators, he has his own podcast called The Young Turks. He didn't like being called a retarded person.

Latest right wing conspiracy theory: Obama is giving america back to the injuns

SO THE INDIANS ARE MUSLIMS TOO????

Barack Obama yesterday voiced his support for a U.N. resolution that asserts that "indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources" that they traditionally owned or occupied. And they do. Just like every other American. It's non-binding, meaning it doesn't actually do anything. It's nothing but a group high-five.

Well luckily for real Americans like us, WorldNetDaily's on top of this shit..

Obama to give Manhattan back to Native Americans?

President Obama is voicing support for a U.N. resolution that could accomplish something as radical as relinquishing some U.S. sovereignty and opening a path for the return of ancient tribal lands to American Indians, including even parts of Manhattan.

The issue is causing alarm among legal experts.

In recent remarks at the White House during a "tribal nations conference," Obama endorsed the "United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People," which includes a sweeping declaration that "indigenous peoples have a right to lands and resources they traditionally occupied or otherwise used" but that later were acquired by occupying forces.

[...]

The international agreement is very serious business, one legal expert tells WND, and could cause problems for the U.S. long after Obama is gone from the White House, if made part of U.S. law.

"One can anticipate that some tribes will seek to use this resolution to re-litigate centuries-old land disputes that courts have already rejected," said Frank at the Manhattan Institute.

The litigation process, according to the roadmap drawn up during the Carter era, would seek, however, to create a "non-hostile environment" in which tribes could repurchase lands and "extinguish the rights of current occupants," Jennings Nottoway told WND.

What we have here are people who have a serious a problem with other cultures. I don't know what that's called. It's not exactly racism, and it's not exactly xenophobia, but I'm sure it's all related psychologically. It's a fear of people who look and act differently than you do. On Fox News' website a couple weeks ago, I saw a headline speculating that Obama is heading for reparations, simply because he's becoming more open minded about gay rights (what else is he going to change his mind on, HUH!?) The right wing would be hating a democratic president no matter what his skin color, but what we're seeing here is a special kind of hatred that's smacking of racial undertones.

Let's go back to Thanksgiving. Rush Limbaugh doesn't like it when Native Americans are acknowledged, especially when it's in a positive light.

In a Thanksgiving day proclamation on the White House website, Obama declared, "This Thanksgiving Day, we reflect on the compassion and contributions of Native Americans, whose skill in agriculture helped the early colonists survive, and whose rich culture continues to add to our Nation's heritage."

"...at their casinos and on their reservations," Limbaugh added as he read the president's words.

"This spirit brought together the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe -- who had been living and thriving around Plymouth, Massachusetts for thousands of years -- in an autumn harvest feast centuries ago," Obama's proclamation also said.

"So, we were the invaders," complained Limbaugh. "We were incompetent idiots. We didn't know how to feed ourselves so they came along and showed us how and that's what Thanksgiving is all about."

YES, YOU FAT PIECE OF SHIT. We invaded lands that were already occupied. The United States arguably committed genocide against the civilizations that were already here. That happened. Acknowledging it is the very least you can do, but I guess even that is too much for someone who's deluded himself into thinking that it's impossible for America to have ever committed a wrong in its entire history. I hope you choke along with all the rest of the holocaust deniers.

That guy in the picture up there next to Obama? I recognized him. That man is Joe Medicine Crow, and he is a fucking hero. Why do Republicans hate the troops? Here he is in Ken Burns' The War telling his unbelievable story.

Free Republic users calling for the deaths of gays and lesbians

Free Republic is a fascist "ultra conservative" internet forum. It's mainly the last bastion of hope for the old fucks who opposed civil rights in the 60s. In the wake of the DADT repeal, its founder Jim Robinson left this message to all forum users. "Zot" means banned.

A couple more posters got zotted today.

Guess we need another reminder:

If you support the homosexual agenda you are anti-constitution and you'll get the zot from FR. Homosexuals already have the same "rights" as everyone else. God did not grant and the constitution does not guarantee homosexuals any special rights. In fact, the homosexual agenda is a full frontal attack on OUR God-given, constitutionally protected rights to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, Life, Family, Marriage, Pursuit of Happiness, etc.

I don't want it on FR and won't have it on FR.

Like abortion, if you support the homosexual agenda on FR, your account here will be zotted!

Don't like it? Tough frickin Shinola! Get the hell OFF this conservative site!!

Supporting "the homosexual agenda's full frontal attack" (lol rape) will get you banned. Telling everyone you're gonna start shooting fags? Perfectly fine. Via reddit, click to enlarge.



It's a wonder why they haven't sought out the Taliban as an ally yet.

If you want to lose faith in humanity further, here's the actual thread where Jim left his message. The comments are fantastic.

• Agreed. The homo-positive agenda is an elite-sponsored cancer on America. Not in my house!
• Jim, Thank you, You Don’t know how refreshing it is for me to see a person who actually understands that OUR RIGHTS COME FROM GOD, And The Constitution Protects those Rights from Government Intrusion. Most people simply do not understand. Thank You
• Amen, we should stand firm and hold on to our beliefs and not give in to the radical left and their push to make this nation a homosexual haven.
• out of the thousands of fags I have met, only a handful can be remotely considered to be real humans...the rest are mentally deficient, with large amounts of emotional baggage
• I am all for praying for our troops, but what happens when the Sodomy Brigade is in full force?? I truly am at a loss right now as to what to do with regards to the military, How Do I support that which is Morally Reprehensible and an Abomination of Gods Law??

Propaganda and the American media

The word "propaganda" is not a word that should be thrown around. It has a specific meaning, and its important to know what that is. The goals of propaganda are not always evil. It was an extremely important tool to getting the American Revolution off the ground, and America may not even be a nation without it (see: the Boston Massacre). It's not always political either, advertisements use it all the time. But it is always manipulative. Its goal is to sway people into holding a specific opinion. One thing that is potentially very frightening about the modern age is the ease and speed that information can be spread. Hearts and minds can be manipulated more easily now more than ever before.

I want to focus on right wing media. All media of course engages in propaganda to a certain extent, but Fox and talk radio has taken it to McCarthyist levels. Edward Filene established a list of ten common propaganda techniques in 1937 to educate the American public on how to recognize it. Once you know them, you will start seeing them everywhere.

Name calling: This techniques consists of attaching a negative label to a person or a thing. People engage in this type of behavior when they are trying to avoid supporting their own opinion with facts. Rather than explain what they believe in, they prefer to try to tear their opponent down.

You see this all the time in right wing circles. They attach the names of people they don't like to policies they don't like, such as Obamacare or the Obama deficit. They've turned "liberal" into an insult. They call Obama a socialist, and a Nazi, and a Muslim, and a Kenyan.

Glittering Generalities: This technique uses important-sounding "glad words" that have little or no real meaning. These words are used in general statements that cannot be proved or disproved. Words like "good," "honest," "fair," and "best" are examples of "glad" words.

Maverick. Patriot. Freedom. Liberty. Real/Every Day Americans.

Transfer: In this technique, an attempt is made to transfer the prestige of a positive symbol to a person or an idea. For example, using the American flag as a backdrop for a political event makes the implication that the event is patriotic in the best interest of the U.S.



False Analogy: In this technique, two things that may or may not really be similar are portrayed as being similar. When examining the comparison, you must ask yourself how similar the items are. In most false analogies, there is simply not enough evidence available to support the comparison.

Here's Glenn Beck comparing a conservative health care bill to Pearl Harbor, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Neville Chamberlain's policies towards Nazi Germany, Jimmy Carter, and the Hindenburg Disaster all in less than two minutes.



Testimonial: This technique is easy to understand. It is when "big name" personalities are used to endorse a product. Whenever you see someone famous endorsing a product, ask yourself how much that person knows about the product, and what he or she stands to gain by promoting it.

Did you know the founding fathers were Republicans?



Plain Folks: This technique uses a folksy approach to convince us to support someone or something. These ads depict people with ordinary looks doing ordinary activities.



Card Stacking: This term comes from stacking a deck of cards in your favor. Card stacking is used to slant a message. Key words or unfavorable statistics may be omitted in an ad or commercial, leading to a series of half-truths. Keep in mind that an advertiser is under no obligation "to give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."



Bandwagon: The "bandwagon" approach encourages you to think that because everyone else is doing something, you should do it too, or you'll be left out. The technique embodies a "keeping up with the Joneses" philosophy.



Either/or fallacy: This technique is also called "black-and-white thinking" because only two choices are given. You are either for something or against it; there is no middle ground or shades of gray. It is used to polarize issues, and negates all attempts to find a common ground.

I don't even need to explain this one. Turn on Fox.

Faulty Cause and Effect: This technique suggests that because B follows A, A must cause B. Remember, just because two events or two sets of data are related does not necessarily mean that one caused the other to happen. It is important to evaluate data carefully before jumping to a wrong conclusion.

See this post.

Like everyone else, I have right wing friends who support Republicans. It scares me when they listen to this stuff. I can never tell just how much of it they're actually buying. How many of them are the smart ones - the Ron Paul/Penn Jilette libertarians? Or do they think Barack Obama really is a socialist? A Muslim? Do they think there's something wrong with being a Muslim? Do they really think there's a massive left wing conspiracy to derail the United States government in order to establish a socialist dictatorship? I always try to avoid getting into debates with them now, because I can never tell just where on the spectrum they stand. And I know that no matter what I say, their opinions will never change towards anything at all. Having a political discussion in any sense is completely pointless. There are legitimate reasons to criticize Barack Obama and the Democrats, but the right wing doesn't focus on them. Instead, they put their supporters into a world that does not exist. They fill their heads with lies and misinformation, and transform Obama into an inhuman boogeyman who is out to get them.

In fact, a recent study concluded that out of all major media outlets, it is Fox News' viewers, regardless of political party, who are least informed. They were "significantly" more likely to believe than non-viwers that:

-Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)
-Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)
-The economy is getting worse (26 points)
-Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)
-The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)
-Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)
-The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)
-When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)
-And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

Now tell me how many viewers of Fox will ever hear of this. And of those who do, how many will actually believe it? I'll bet no one. They'll likely convince themselves of a loophole they have no evidence of. The study is unfairly biased, of course. They'll reach that conclusion without ever reading it or doing any research about it at all. Here. Go ahead and read it yourself. It's pretty damning.